Chinese Birth Tourism Companies Promote U.S. Citizenship as Trump Administration Moves to Restrict P

Chinese birth tourism companies are advertising U.S. citizenship benefits following the Supreme Court’s June 30 birthright citizenship ruling, while the Trump administration has directed prosecutors to pursue birth tourism schemes and issued new orders seeking to curtail the practice.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

Chinese companies marketing birth tourism are openly promoting the ability of foreign nationals to obtain U.S. citizenship for children born in America, highlighting a practice that has drawn renewed attention following a Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship and new efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to restrict commercial birth tourism operations.

“US Supreme Court decision finalized: Birth tourism babies still become citizens!” the China Mifubaby Group, also known as Meifu Jia’er, declared in a translated message on its website. The company advertises an “American Postnatal Care Center” in Irvine, California, with images of bedrooms decorated in pastel blue, pink and green. Packages range from $33,800 for a mid-range suite to $43,800 for a two-bedroom, one-bath villa. “With the increasing demand for childbirth in the United States, more and more expectant mothers in China are planning to give birth there,” the company states. Another Chinese company, Kangbixing, displays an image of a pregnant Chinese woman with an American flag and advertises packages for “overseas medical treatment for childbirth in the U.S.,” including recommended obstetricians and partner American hospitals. A detailed Epoch Times report examined those operations and the broader birth tourism industry.

The renewed marketing followed the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in Trump v. Barbara, which held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Trump’s Executive Order 14160 had attempted to end automatic birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants and temporary visa holders, but the order was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Chinese nationals are not the only participants in birth tourism; organizations tracking the practice have also identified women from Mexico, Turkey, Russia and Nigeria.

The issue recently surfaced along the U.S.-Mexico border when a Texas hospital advertised “childbirth packages in South Texas” on a Spanish-language billboard in Mexico. The advertisement offered prices beginning at $3,950 for a natural birth and $5,525 for a cesarean section and directed prospective customers to havemybabyinTEXAS.com, a website that is no longer operational. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott accused the hospital of participating in birth tourism and called for an investigation this month. Trump also responded publicly, writing July 8 on Truth Social: “Billions of dollars will be illegally made by this SCAM, with Citizenship going to anyone willing to pay. It will be, by far, the number one way of becoming a citizen, and then the entire family will be allowed to follow. Not sustainable. NOBODY SAW THIS COMING!!! AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP IS NOT FOR SALE!”

Estimates of the scope of birth tourism and its significance vary. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told The Epoch Times he expects the practice to increase following the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision. “We have absolutely no control over who their parents are, or why they were in the United States,” von Spakovsky said of foreign nationals who are in the country illegally or temporarily and give birth in the United States. He cited a 2023 Pew Research Center study estimating that approximately 320,000 babies were born in the United States to parents who were either in the country illegally or on temporary visas. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies are born annually specifically through birth tourism. The Migration Policy Institute, however, has argued that birth tourism represents only a small portion of U.S. births and that concerns about its scale are overstated, describing it as “an extremely small phenomenon with no sign of becoming more pronounced.”

Giving birth in the United States while visiting from abroad is not itself illegal. Federal criminal exposure can arise when people knowingly provide false information on visa applications, which can constitute immigration fraud under Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1546(a). Federal authorities have also brought conspiracy, money laundering, wire fraud and health care fraud charges in cases connected to organized birth tourism. The Department of Justice has described birth tourism as one method by which foreign nationals can exploit U.S. birthright citizenship and circumvent immigration laws intended to protect American sovereignty and security. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the DOJ issued a memorandum directing prosecutors to prioritize investigations of illegal birth tourism schemes and instructed U.S. attorneys to work with the Department of Homeland Security to investigate and prosecute such operations.

Trump expanded that effort Aug. 6 by signing an order aimed at curbing birth tourism. He also signed a separate executive order seeking to exclude children born to women who engaged in commercial birth tourism from U.S. citizenship. That order is expected to face court challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s June decision.

Federal authorities have pursued organized birth tourism operations before. An investigation launched in Southern California in 2013 uncovered what authorities described as the nation’s first major organized birth tourism network. One company, You Win USA Vacation Services Corporation, served more than 500 women through what it called a “100-person team” operating in China and the United States, making it one of the largest schemes uncovered by federal investigators. According to an indictment, Chinese clients sometimes failed to pay their full hospital, doctor and other medical bills after giving birth, leaving outstanding balances that were sent to collection.

One woman in the You Win USA case paid a hospital $4,080 under an indigent rate even though her actual hospital charges exceeded $28,000 and she had access to $225,000 in a U.S. bank account at the time, according to the indictment. Authorities said she and a partner were also making purchases at a Rolex store in Costa Mesa, California, and at Louis Vuitton in Beverly Hills. California police have separately identified schemes in which wealthy Chinese men used American surrogates to give birth to U.S. citizens.

National security concerns have also become part of the debate. John Shu, a California legal scholar who served under Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and is a member of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations, told The Epoch Times that birth tourism could create security vulnerabilities, impose costs when medical bills go unpaid and create difficulties for children themselves. Shu argued that an American citizen born in the United States but raised in communist China could potentially become attractive to China’s Ministry of State Security because the person would hold a U.S. passport and could travel freely into and out of the United States. “The Constitution says you have to be born here. It doesn’t say anything about having to grow up in the United States,” Shu said.

Von Spakovsky similarly argued that American-born children raised overseas could eventually qualify for sensitive U.S. government positions or even the presidency. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the Chinese government, Chinese spy agencies were themselves involved behind the scenes in financing and organizing these kinds of operations,” he said. Federal indictments in previous cases identified affluent clients that included doctors, lawyers, Chinese government employees and officials. One operation, USA Happy Baby Inc., served clients including a deputy director at Henan People’s Radio Station in Zhengzhou, the wife of the “Chairman” of Chengdu Baotai Industrial Group Co. Ltd., and the wife of a former police officer with the Public Security Bureau of the Beijing Municipal Government.

Happy Baby operators Michael Wei Yueh Liu and Jing Dong were convicted by a jury in 2024 of conspiracy and 10 counts of international money laundering and were each sentenced to 41 months in prison. “Many of these women, their husbands were high-up, important officials in the communist regime that runs China,” von Spakovsky said. Referring to the Public Security Bureau, which he described as Beijing’s secret police, he added that it was unlikely the wife of a former member would have traveled to the United States without Chinese officials knowing. “Now why would they want their wives participating in something like that?” he asked. “Well, because that’s an easy way to, years later, get their sons and daughters who’ve been trained to be anti-American while they’re growing up in China into the U.S. If their secret police were involved in this, that was a deliberate, intentional policy.”

Ammon Blair, a security consultant and senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure and Sovereign Nation Initiative, also warned that U.S.-born children who grow up abroad could pose risks if they later return with hostile loyalties. He said Beijing could potentially use social engineering or espionage against the United States. “Every foreign national that comes here, that either owes allegiance to outside the United States or is under bondage and captivity to another foreign nation … must do the bidding of that nation while they’re here inside the U.S.,” Blair said. Those claims reflect the experts’ assessments and do not establish that children born through birth tourism are engaged in espionage or other hostile activity.

Federal prosecutors indicted 19 people connected to three Southern California birth tourism operations that helped thousands of foreign nationals give birth in the United States, according to a 2019 government announcement. Most either pleaded guilty, were convicted and sentenced, or remain fugitives, primarily in China. Mifubaby now boasts that it has assisted “thousands of Chinese mothers who traveled to the United States to give birth,” offering consultation, U.S. visa processing, maternity lodging and follow-up services after American-born children return to China. Kangbixing similarly markets U.S. citizenship as providing better employment prospects, Social Security benefits “even outside the U.S.,” and the possibility that relatives could later immigrate to America.

Those selling points closely resemble advertising used by You Win USA more than a decade ago. Federal prosecutors said the company described American nationality as “the most attractive” and promoted U.S. military, political, technological and cultural advantages “with no sign of that fading.” Operator Dongyuan Li pleaded guilty in September 2019 to conspiracy to commit immigration and visa fraud and was sentenced three months later to 10 months in prison. She also agreed to forfeit more than $850,000, a residence and vehicles. Chao “Edwin” Chen pleaded guilty in 2016 to visa fraud, marriage fraud and filing a false tax return before fleeing to China. He was sentenced in absentia in June 2020 to 37 months in prison and remains a fugitive.

You Win USA promoted American birth as a hedge against environmental, educational and political problems in China and advertised free public education through high school, lifetime Social Security retirement benefits after 10 years of employment and the ability to seek citizenship for parents “after the child becomes an adult,” according to an indictment. Prosecutors alleged that clients would obtain tourist visas for supposed eight- to 14-day stays in Hawaii, New York or Los Angeles while actually planning to remain for about three months in Irvine to give birth.

According to the criminal complaint, the company advised some customers on strategies intended to “slip through the U.S. Visa and Customs,” including flying through Hawaii instead of directly to California because operators believed immigration authorities there would be easier to deceive. Applicants were reportedly instructed to say they planned to stay at the “5-star Trump International Hotel Waikiki Beach” in Honolulu before taking a separate flight to Los Angeles. Federal documents also alleged that You Win USA operators rented 20 Orange County apartments under false names to accommodate a rotating population of pregnant Chinese clients.

Federal prosecutors said the operation generated millions of dollars, with customers paying between $40,000 and $80,000 for birth tourism packages. Li drove a $118,000 Mercedes-Benz and purchased a $2.1 million Irvine home, according to her indictment. The continuing appearance of similar services more than a decade later has kept birth tourism at the center of the broader dispute over the reach of the 14th Amendment, immigration fraud enforcement and the Trump administration’s effort to restrict commercial schemes built around U.S. citizenship at birth.