By Jason Lim
A recent New York Times report on Chinese women titled, “Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving with American Babies,” sparked a heated public debate on the heretofore presumed right for babies born on American soil to claim U.S. citizenship, regardless of whether the parents are American citizens or even legally residing in the U.S.
As the title suggests, the article described how wealthy expectant Chinese mothers come to the U.S. on tourist visas for the express purpose of giving birth in the U.S. so that their children could claim automatic U.S. citizenship, which is a right that is constitutionally enshrined by the Fourteenth Amendment, commonly known as the “Citizenship Clause.”
This story hit mainstream America like a ton of bricks. Until now, any public awareness of the “problem” of anchor babies centered around poor women from Central America entering the U.S. illegally for work and giving birth while they are here, with the intent for their kids to assimilate into the mainstream American society.
But wealthy Chinese women paying thousands of dollars to come to the U.S. to give birth just to go back with their newborns with no intent for their children to grow up in America? This “maternity tourism” represented a whole new angle to this old problem.
Of course, this new angle has been an old story in Korea ever since Koreans actively engaged in maternity tourism beginning in the late 1980s as soon as certain segments of Korea became wealthy enough to afford to do so. It’s always been publically frowned upon yet privately pursued.
And it’s not just limited to conservative, pro-America, Grand National Party loyalists. I knew a classmate at Harvard Kennedy School a few years back whose political leanings was as far left as you could go with an anti-American chip as big as Dokdo who nevertheless managed to give birth to two boys in his two years in Cambridge. Yup, he and his wife sure kept themselves busy, and I don’t mean studying.
Despite the hypocrisy, I can’t really judge his choice because Koreans actually have a legitimate economic decision when it comes to maternity tourism. And that reason is called mandatory military service.
Every able-bodied male in Korea is required to serve 21 months in the military during the height of his youth during which he would otherwise be laying down the professional foundation for his future career. While there are pros and cons to the military service requirement, especially in Korea’s historical context, you can’t deny that a two year hiatus in his 20s represents a huge opportunity cost to someone who doesn’t want to make the military his career.
For most Korean males, it’s something to avoid at any cost, which even the Korean government implicitly admits by giving athletes an exemption as a reward for winning high profile international competitions.
I am sure that Chinese parents have similar economic reasoning, if not to avoid military conscription than for some other perfectly logical economic reasons intended to maximize their children’s future professional earning potential.
What I am confused about is why this expose galvanized the American right to want to overturn the Citizenship Clause altogether. Last week, four conservative American senators began the process by proposing legislation denying birthright citizenship to babies born in the U.S. to parents with illegal immigration status.
While the legislation doesn’t exactly target maternity tourism (yet), it still begs the question: is maternity tourism bad for America?
By all accounts, maternity tourism is about wealthy and educated foreigners investing their own time and money to make their children American citizens. While the children might not grow up in the U.S. and “socialized” as Americans, they would nonetheless feel an inevitable kinship for America, the land of their nominal citizenship; the natural association would be positive.
In fact, maternity tourists are actually creating a pool of well-educated, wealthy, and globally-savvy Americans in key regions around the world. They are exactly the type of new American immigrants that policymakers would want to increase America’s national competitiveness.
The tourist babies might not have the same emotional connection to America as those born and raised here. However, they would certainly be more sympathetic and supportive of American positions throughout the world because it would in their self-interest to keep American preeminent in the world. It would be an economic decision for them. Exactly as it was for their parents.
Granted, maternity tourism is bad for Korea and China because not only does it give the children of the well-to-do an unfair advantage but it also represents competing national loyalties for the future elites of their society. But for America, maternity tourism is an easy way to boost America’s future strength; in fact, the phenomenon speaks to the attractiveness of America’s soft power.
America should instead welcome maternity tourists and enthusiastically invite their children to become American citizens. Especially since they can afford to.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant in organizational leadership, culture, and change management. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com and on Facebook.com/jasonlim2000.