{"id":22438,"date":"2020-01-28T14:40:11","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T19:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22438"},"modified":"2020-01-28T14:40:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T19:40:14","slug":"birth-tourism-media-visas-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/01\/28\/birth-tourism-media-visas-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Media, Politicians Are Breeding Birth Tourism Myths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What could be wrong with making changes to visa regulations<\/a> in order to prevent pregnant foreigners coming to America on tourist visas when their real goal is to give birth in the U.S., thereby securing citizenship for their unborn child? Nothing, but even the smallest of moves to crack down on abuse of our immigration system seems to inspire mythmaking by immigration activists and their allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is that the two changes announced by the State Department<\/a> last week are quite limited in scope. First, the new rules only give overseas consular officers additional leeway to refuse a \u201dB\u201d nonimmigrant visitor visa<\/a> to someone whom they suspect is traveling to the U.S. \u201cfor the primary purpose\u201d of giving birth to a U.S. citizen.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second update will require applicants who claim to\nbe seeking urgent medical care to demonstrate that medical arrangements have\nbeen made and that they are able to pay for the care, as well as associated\ncosts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fantasy world of some in the media, this will result in women being required to take pregnancy tests<\/a> before flying and is actually \u201ca way to control women<\/a>.\u201d The media are not alone in purporting that a measure designed to combat visa fraud represents an attack on women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) retweeted<\/a> a news article (not the actual rule) and claimed, \u201cThis administration is now targeting pregnant. [sic]women. When you single out the most vulnerable, the cruelty is the point. #AbolishICE<\/a> #BreakUpCBP<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beside the fact that the State Department, not\nImmigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection issue\nvisas, the rule hardly targets pregnant women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As officials made clear in a press call<\/a>, consular officers have been told that they can only ask a visa applicant if they are pregnant if there is \u201ca specific, articulable reason to believe that an applicant is pregnant and planning to give birth\u201d in the U.S. And then they must determine whether the reason for giving birth is legitimate or for the purpose of achieving birthright citizenship for a child. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feminists and pro-choice advocates joined in the distortion antics. Kerri Talbot, with the Immigration Hub, an immigration rights group, claimed<\/a> consular officers will become \u201creproductive policemen\u201d and that women \u201cwill have to conceal their pregnancies just to get a tourist visa to visit the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon Kowalski of the International Women\u2019s Health Coalition asserted in a Vox interview<\/a> that the changes \u201cwill make it harder for women, particularly young women, to travel to the United States for any purpose,\u201d while Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women says the new rule<\/a> \u201cportrays women and people with the capacity for pregnancy as a danger to the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, these advocates for \u201cwomen\u2019s rights,\u201d who\nhave no expertise in immigration, also contend consular officers are not suited\nto screen women because they have no medical training. They are correct.\nHowever, they are trained and fully qualified to identify through questioning when\nan applicant is being truthful or not. They are most qualified because they\nhave encountered those engaging in birth tourism in practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As David Seminara, a former embassy official, wrote<\/a> in a 2018 Wall Street Journal column, \u201cForeign women come to America to give birth to U.S. citizens. When I worked as a consular officer at U.S. embassies overseas, I frequently interviewed mothers-to-be for their visa applications. And I was often compelled to renew U.S. passports for children who had been born in America but never lived there. I complied with the law but felt as if I was complicit in a scam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest myth is that \u201cbirth tourism\u201d is only a problem<\/a> in the wild imaginations of anti-immigrant nativists. The myth could not be farther from the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, an ABC News report<\/a> cited data from the National Center for Health Statistics showing the number of\u00a0U.S. births<\/a>\u00a0to non-resident mothers increased by 53 percent between 2000 and 2006. In 2015, both BBC<\/a> and USA Today<\/a> aired investigative reports documenting cases the increasing numbers of wealthy Chinese nationals receiving tens of thousands of dollars to bring in women whose sole goal was to deliver their babies in American hospitals. NBC News has also reported on the Russian women flocking to Florida<\/a> to give birth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign women are paying large sums to come here, but American taxpayers pay too for the estimated<\/a> 33,000 births to tourists every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a study<\/a> that \u00a0examined how birth tourism babies impacted the neonatal intensive care unit at Children\u2019s Hospital in Orange County, California. They found that babies born to women who had traveled to give birth in the U.S. were \u201cpresenting more complex medical, social and financial challenges\u201d to the hospital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs birth tourism increases in our region, so do\nsubsequent NICU admissions and significant social and financial burdens arising\nfrom the unanticipated medical needs of the babies,\u201d said the study\u2019s lead\nauthor, Dr. Michel Mikhael, in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, those ballooning costs associated with\nbirth tourism are not easily-dismissed myths. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What could be wrong with making changes to visa regulations in order to prevent pregnant foreigners coming to America on tourist visas when their real goal is to give birth in the U.S., thereby securing citizenship for their unborn child? Nothing, but even the smallest of moves to crack down on abuse of our immigration<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":13765,"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":[7],"tags":[4365,7596,1524],"yst_prominent_words":[2365,7590,4355,6233,7592,7594,4715,7591,7589,7593,1963,2971,4793,4791,7595,2363,1939,1933,2172,1957],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438"}],"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=22438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22439,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22438\/revisions\/22439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22438"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}