Saipan: the Island Where Chinese Mothers Deliver American Babies
Pacific island sees boom in Chinese babies
2013-07-29
Significant women from cathay are fueling a infant boom on the little-known U.South. Pacific Island of Saipan afterward a clampdown on nascence tourism by the Hong Kong regime.
Many pregnant women, mostly from China and Due south Korea, have been arriving equally tourists on the isle, which is part of the Republic of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), in recent months.
"There has been an increase in the numbers of Chinese tourists arriving in Saipan," said an employee who answered the telephone at the County Hotel in Saipan, which caters mostly to tour groups and individuals from China.
"Quite a lot of mainland Chinese women are coming hither to give nascency," she said. "At that place are several flights a week from the Chinese mainland."
The government of Hong Kong limited the number of mainlanders who can requite birth in the city to 34,000 in 2012 following public anger over what was seen as an increasing number of mainland mothers taking advantage of the health and educational benefits that come with citizenship for their babies.
Now, Chinese nationals are flocking to Saipan, which they need no visa to enter as tourists, to requite nativity on the island to children who can automatically get U.S. citizens regardless of the nationality of their parents.
The parks of Saipan are thronging with meaning Asian women taking their regular practice, while they are a increasingly common sight at the isle's only hospital, the Commonwealth Health Center.
A birth tourism manufacture has sprung up in recent years to cater for pregnant Asian women who tin can give birth to a U.Southward. citizen on the island for an estimated U.S. $20,000, depending on infirmary fees.
Booming tourism
Ding Hongxia, who heads a company selling birth tourism packages to Chinese women, said her company added Saipan equally a destination in 2010, and currently sends "about one or 2 women a calendar month" to the island.
Ding, whose Ya'an Qile International Consulting Co. started up eight years ago to send pregnant women to requite nascence in Hong Kong, said that a total bundle could set a couple back by around U.S. $xx,000, including around U.S. $6,000 in fees to her company.
"Our local representative has been in Saipan for many years and is very influential at that place," Ding said, adding that the average nativity tourism stay lasted around three months.
She said her company processed the women'due south visits past the book, while others offered cheaper stays in illegal dormitory-manner accommodations.
"If someone reports you, then the border government will detain you, which is why our clients stay in hotels, which is legal," Ding said.
Citizenship
While the South Koreans who give nascency at that place may simply be motivated past the prospect of U.S. citizenship, many of the mainland Chinese women who go there are too escaping draconian "one-child" family planning policies imposed on urban couples by Beijing.
The growing popularity of the United States as a destination for high-schoolers and university students is also a huge factor, as the not-U.South. parents of American citizens tin bring them along if they relocate there for work or report, local media reports said.
Some of the women who requite nascency to U.Due south. citizens take remained on the islands long afterward their tourist visas expire, boosting illegal immigration figures while they wait for their kid's birth document to exist delivered.
Earlier this year, growing concern over the phenomenon prompted calls from CNMI officials for tighter border controls and measures to accost the issue from Washington.
Ding said immigration authorities had begun patrolling U.Due south. passport offices in recent months for parents of newborns who may have overstayed their tourism visas in lodge to wait for their child'due south passport.
"If they are going to do that, so my representative has very good relations with a lady in the passport role who used to be his girlfriend ... so she volition telephone call him and tell him not to go at that place to apply for a passport that day," she said.
"Last March, some people were deported, but not one of our clients had this happen to them."
Post-partum intendance
The nativity tourism industry has as well given rise to post-partum guesthouses catering to the needs of Chinese women who traditionally go through a month of full rest afterward childbirth.
"Last twelvemonth, nosotros successfully hosted 50 mothers who had babies here from mainland China," said the proprietor of one guesthouse surnamed Jing.
She said her guesthouse charges around U.S. $eleven,000 for full lath, hospital nurses, mail-partum care, translation, chauffeurs and all documentation.
Mothers tin expect to pay a further U.Due south. $7,000-12,000 in medical bills on top of that, she said.
However, an American son or daughter is a luxury that is still only affordable to the richest Chinese families, equally hospital bills must be settled in full before a U.S. passport tin can be issued to a newborn, local media reported.
Some on Saipan say that birth tourism has boosted the islands' economic growth, considering significant women spend lavishly on medical bills, apartment rentals, machine rentals, translation services, equally well every bit food and other retail sales.
However, non all birth tourism agencies operate inside the law.
Last August, Taiwan national Chen Kuan-yi was jailed by the CNMI District Court for ix months for encouraging the illegal entry of aliens for financial gain, and for harboring aliens for financial gain in connectedness with a birth tourism scheme, the local Islands Business news website reported.
Reported by Pan Jiaqing for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Link to original story on RFA website
Copyright notice: Copyright © 2006, RFA. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.
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