More Chinese giving birth in US
ECNS, October 24, 2014
The number of pregnant Chinese women who travel to the United States to have babies is expected to increase by 100 times next year compared to that of 2007, the Globe magazine reports.
After the movie "Finding Mr Right" was screened in March 2013, agencies helping Chinese women give birth in the US have seen their businesses soar. The movie is now jokingly called a "documentary of an American confinement center."
The report by Globe magazine shows that the number of people from the Chinese mainland who gave birth in the US increased from 600 in 2007 to more than 20,000 in 2013.
The number is expected to reach 30,000 in 2014 and as much as 60,000 in 2015, an increase of 100 times in less than 10 years.
Chai Jing, a well-known TV host in China, participated in the trend this past March, spurring an extensive debate in China.
"The education resources in the US are a major reason why Chinese people choose it as the place to have their children," said Zhan Kanwang, marketing director of JIIAA, a service provider for childbirth in the US.
Giving birth in the US was once a privilege for the rich, but now more middle-class Chinese have joined the trend in order to secure American passports for their kids.
The most convenient way to become a US citizen is to marry one, while the second is investing $500,000 in the country. However, immigration has put many off because of the high threshold and complicated requirements, an industry insider said.
Like China, the US offers free elementary and secondary education, but tuition fees after high school are much cheaper than the cost of overseas study. The annual cost for an elementary or middle school student to study in the US is more than $30,000 (about 200,000 yuan) a year, which means US citizenship can save some 600,000 yuan for three years of high school.
As for colleges, California State University, a medium-level university, charges a foreign student $12,000 in tuition fees a year, but only about $2,000 for a US student.
Zhao Kanwang added that children born in the US are entitled to advanced education resources, lower tuition fees at the place of birth, and priority at prestigious universities. Giving birth in the US is not only good for a child's future development, but can also help the family emigrate there in the future, he said.
Zhao also pointed out that the second biggest reason is food security and the overall living environment, as years of severe smog in China have become a serious concern for would-be mothers.
Gray zone
In the industrial chain of childbirth in the US, the agency is upstream and the confinement center downstream, and both provide services for Chinese families that want to have babies there. But the industry is more or less a gray zone, as neither the Chinese nor the US government have defined its legality.
An industry insider who asked to remain anonymous said that there are few companies with teams of 10 to 200 people, and several dozen with 10 to 20 staff. Most of the companies only have two or three people working for them.
If every customer pays a service fee of 300,000 yuan ($49,034), the largest company in the industry (which serves more than 1,000 customers a year) can register a sales volume of several hundreds of millions of US dollars. But an agency also has to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan per year on rent and staff compensation, in addition to ever higher advertising costs.
"We sign a consulting service contract with customers, which is under the administration of the industry and commerce authority. Visa services in China and medical services overseas are not covered by the contract," said Zhao Kanwang.
Meanwhile, the number of confinement centers in the US has skyrocketed. Statistics from AMSM, a US-based mom and baby care association, show that there were about seven types of confinement centers in the US in 2013. They included low-priced home stays, apartment styles, shared houses, hotel styles, independent villas, high-end clubs and family lodgings.
"The Chinese government neither encourages, advocates or objects to such agencies, because it is after all a small industry and involves national pride. The US constitution, on the other hand, stipulates that anyone born in or naturalized by and under the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen of the country and the state of residence - and changing the constitution is extremely difficult in the US," an industry insider told the Time Weekly.
Therefore, giving birth in the US won't be shut down because of policy risks in the short term.
However, the China Press, a newspaper in the US, pointed out that as more pregnant women from the Chinese mainland go to America to give birth, business disputes with confinement centers are inevitable.
Most pregnant women who enter the US by concealing their real purpose usually choose to keep quiet when disputes occur. But those who are approved by visa officers are more likely to stand up for themselves, only to find that there's nowhere to complain.
A young expectant mom who stayed at a confinement club in Irvine, California, on Oct 15 encountered such a situation, claiming that the conditions at the club were not as advertised.
She had found the club online and contacted its representative in Beijing, a woman surnamed Li, who promised many "privileged" services, including "one-on-one" service two months before childbirth, a separate suite, and free organic milk.
But "it was a totally different story when I got here," she said, adding that none of those promises were delivered. Moreover, the so-called "club" was nothing more than a few rented apartments in a gated residential area, where three other such services often shared rented rooms.
Feeling cheated, she confronted the head of the confinement club, surnamed Pei, and demanded a refund. However, Pei charged her for housing expenses in the amount of $1,000 per day and threatened to report the expectant mom to the immigration bureau.
Pei said in an interview that she had been deceived by the representative in Beijing, who had solicited customers with false expectations. She also admitted that her confinement club wasn't registered by the California government.
