{"id":22342,"date":"2019-12-20T13:04:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T18:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22342"},"modified":"2019-12-20T13:04:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T18:04:07","slug":"birth-tourism-punishment-judges-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/12\/20\/birth-tourism-punishment-judges-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime and Barely Any Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dongyuan Li was not your average entrepreneur. The Chinese national <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-cdca\/pr\/chinese-national-pleads-guilty-running-birth-tourism-scheme-helped-aliens-give-birth-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">pleaded guilty<\/a> in September to crimes related to her operation of a multi-million dollar \u201cbirth tourism\u201d operation that serviced wealthy clients and members of China\u2019s communist government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nor was Li your average criminal conspirator. In fact, she earned the distinction of being one of three ringleaders to have \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-cdca\/pr\/federal-prosecutors-unseal-indictments-naming-19-people-linked-chinese-birth-tourism\" target=\"_blank\">the first-ever federal criminal charges<\/a>\u201d brought against them, as well as their customers. However, a federal judge decided on Monday that a mere 10 months was sentence enough and ordered her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/12\/16\/us\/birth-tourism-operation-trial\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">release from prison<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Li was facing a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison, but U.S. District Judge James V. Selna rejected the prosecution\u2019s 33-month <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2019\/12\/16\/birth-tourism-conviction-means-time-served-likely-deportation-for-chinese-woman-in-irvine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">sentence recommendation<\/a> saying that more evidence of visa fraud might have merited a longer sentence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly what did Li do to warrant such leniency?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the Justice Department: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>She charged more than 500 \u201ccustomers\u201d between\n$40,000 and $80,000 and then she and her employees coached them on how to\nanswer immigration officials\u2019 questions when entering the U.S., particularly\nhow to conceal their pregnancies;<\/li><li>She advised her wealthy clients to fly\nfirst from China to Hawaii and then from Hawaii to Los Angeles International\nAirport, thus avoiding greater scrutiny; <\/li><li>And, she received more than $3 million in\nwire transfers from China during the two years she ran You Win USA Vacation\nServices Corp., which she used to rent 20 \u201cbirthing houses\u201d in Orange County,\nCalifornia.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Li did generously agree after her plea to forfeit\nmore than $850,000 she\u2019d pocketed, a Murrieta residence worth more than\n$500,000, as well as several Mercedes-Benz vehicles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe will now pursue deportation since we can show that the current visa she has was derived from her husband who committed fraud to gain his visa,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/12\/16\/us\/birth-tourism-operation-trial\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">said<\/a> Daniel Showalter, a Special Agent within Homeland Security Investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that could hardly be considered punishment since\nher husband is in China having fled the U.S. before charges were filed and\nthree U.S.-born children (who returned after their father) are back in China\ntoo. Li\u2019s mother and teenage daughter, both of whom are Chinese nationals, are currently\nliving in Irvine, California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As U.S. Attorney for the Central District of\nCalifornia Charles Pell told the court before sentencing, \u201cMultiple years is\nthe only fair sentence. I don\u2019t think [the 10 months served]will deter others\nfrom committing this crime.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does this portend for the cases against the two\nother Chinese nationals arrested with Li? Will judges be as lenient with the\n\u201ccustomers\u201d who paid tens of thousands of dollars to violate immigration law in\norder to ensure their offspring were American-born?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Chinese have been <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lamag.com\/citythinkblog\/the-born-legacy\/\" target=\"_blank\">exploiting the immigration system<\/a> in California for years. The same <a href=\"https:\/\/miami.cbslocal.com\/2019\/03\/22\/south-florida-sees-boom-in-birth-tourism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">manipulative maternity business has a home in Florida<\/a> and every year more than 30,000 foreign nationals come to the U.S. to give birth and their children the benefits of citizenship. The industry and the fraud will continue until expectant mothers and those who profit off the births start receiving more than a slap on the bottom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dongyuan Li was not your average entrepreneur. The Chinese national pleaded guilty in September to crimes related to her operation of a multi-million dollar \u201cbirth tourism\u201d operation that serviced wealthy clients and members of China\u2019s communist government. Nor was Li your average criminal conspirator. In fact, she earned the distinction of being one of three<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/12\/20\/birth-tourism-punishment-judges-immigrationreform-com\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":22308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[4365,520,1524,502],"yst_prominent_words":[2365,2638,3528,5420,4363,4014,5852,1922,7400,1943,2697,1963,7398,1948,5741,7399,1939,2172,6195,7397],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22343,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions\/22343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}