For many pregnant Chinese, a U.S. passport for baby remains a powerful lure

Washington Post ^ | July 18, 2010 | Keith Richburg

[Poundstone]

SHANGHAI -- What can $1,475 buy you in modern China? Not a Tiffany diamond or a mini-sedan, say Robert Zhou and Daisy Chao. But for that price, they guarantee you something more lasting, with unquestioned future benefits: a U.S. passport and citizenship for your new baby.

Zhou and Chao, a husband and wife from Taiwan who now live in Shanghai, run one of China's oldest and most successful consultancies helping well-heeled expectant Chinese mothers travel to the United States to give birth.

[Poundstone]

Although the article notes accurately that there's nothing in the US visa regulations that prohibits this practice, I know that individual visa officers often find some reason not to issue a visa to a woman who's obviously pregnant and whom they suspect wants to give birth in the US. When I was a visa officer in Manila, I routinely refused to issue visas to pregnant women. Sometimes they (or more often their husbands) would come back and complain and try some other tactic to get a visa for the woman. I just waited them out -- after a month or two, it was too late!

[Genoa]

And there’s ample precedent for the baby growing up to become President of the United States!

[omega4179]

Q What is the difference between Spock and 0?
A: We know who Spock’s father is!

[Genoa]

Oh, I’m satisfied that the father was Barack Hussein Obama, subject of her majesty the Queen.

[silverleaf]

the africans are smarter than the Chinese- they get some family member here, then as soon when a relative finds out she’s pregnant she comes to visit-

taxpayers in my county are footing the bill for pregnancies delivered when women just show up at the ER- a sudanese woman “visiting her MIL” just dropped quints at our local hospital, into months and months (if not years) of intensive care at US taxpayer expense

[La Lydia]

We need thousands more like you. And our law needs to be changed.

[artaxerces]

Well done, anchor babies should not be allowed under any circumstances.

[RnMomof7]

If this means a baby that would have been aborted in China gets to live I am all for this .

[DWPittelli]

This is not the ideal way to select future immigrants to the United States. But I do not expect we will see bad things come from allowing any reasonable number of upper-middle to upper-class Chinese into this country.

[Texas Fossil]

Except it is “questionable” if the ONE (WON) was actually born in the U.S.

No evidence has been presented that “established” he was born in the U.S.

[9YearLurker]

If I thought the Africans were smarter than the Chinese I might not feel so okay with this story.

[kabumpo]

thank you for your service — but OMG — shouldn’t this be in the visa regulations?

[Poundstone]

It should be — but it isn’t.

[Orange1998]

For the $1,475 basic fee, Zhou and Chao will arrange for a three-month stay in a center -- two months before the birth and a month after. A room with cable TV and a wireless Internet connection, plus three meals, starts at $35 a day. The doctors and staff all speak Chinese.

HUH???? 1,475 pays for 3 months of medical care, room and board for add'l $35.00 a day??? Chinese have been known to be the low cost producer but doing it in America is amazing. If the child is premature or serious complications arise my guess they are moved to the neonatal emergency room. Who pays for that care.