Birth tourism usually involves a woman trying to deliver a baby in a more prosperous country than her home nation, but an Australian “influencer” has turned that equation on its head and sparked a global debate over the practice.
Shannen Michaela said people from well-off Western nations are increasingly looking for a Plan B or escape valve to flee economic stagnation and growing government oppression in their home countries. She said delivering a baby in another country is a great way to do it.
Ms. Michaela has been posting for months about her experience in picking Costa Rica to deliver her baby. She figures the nation’s birthright citizenship policy would protect her new child and, by extension, give her status in another country.
“With an additional passport you always have an alternative place to go. You have protection in case anyone tries to restrict your freedom of movement,” she said in one social media post detailing her decisions. “Travel freedom is personal freedom, and the more passports you collect the more opportunity you create for your family.”
She drew media attention from New Zealand to Costa Rica and was met with a wave of criticism. Online, she was accused of showing excessive “privilege” by using a child to game the immigration system.
“Anchor baby instructions for rich people,” one commenter sniffed. Another called her “corrupt morally and socially.”
“This is some serious ‘What’s classy if you’re rich, but trashy if you’re poor’ vibes,” said another.
Ms. Michaela rejected that notion in her social media posts.
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Many people from the USA travel to [Central or South] America to give birth because it’s much more affordable.”
Using children as a means of immigration works in countries that allow birthright citizenship: the concept that a child unconditionally wins citizenship from its country of birth.
The Law Library of Congress, in a 2018 report, counted 34 countries that grant automatic citizenship at birth. They are heavily concentrated in North America and South America. Elsewhere, only Angola, Fiji, Lesotho, Pakistan, Sao Tome and Principe, and Tanzania have adopted the rule.
Some other nations grant citizenship to newborns based on their parents’ legal status. Many don’t allow any geographic birthright citizenship at all.
The U.S. is the largest nation to practice birthright citizenship.
Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said people take advantage of birthright citizenship for plenty of reasons but countries that allow it should ponder why.
“What’s in our interest?” he said. “It trivializes American citizenship, the most valuable thing in the world. Whenever you trivialize something, you make it less meaningful.”
He said two different but related situations take advantage of birthright citizenship. The first is what people derogatorily call “anchor babies,” born to illegal immigrants to deepen their ties to the country and create a potential defense against deportation. The second, birth tourism, uses a legal temporary visa with the intent to give birth.
Mr. Camarota, a demographer, has crunched Census Bureau numbers and calculated 20,000 to 26,000 births a year to women on short-term U.S. visas. He said the primary practitioners are thought to be Russians and Chinese, though the mix of nationalities is eclectic.
Before a federal raid, a California-based operation dubbed USA Happy Baby charged Chinese women up to $30,000, prosecutors said.
Birth tourists are usually thought to be from less stable or prosperous countries seeking a placeholder in a better nation.
That’s what makes Ms. Michaela’s case striking. She argues that women from wealthy nations can use birth tourism as an escape hatch.
Mr. Camarota said it speaks to the current ennui in more developed nations.
“There’s a contradiction there,” he said. “Although everybody is desperate to get to the West, in the West itself, there’s a sense of loss of confidence, a loss of optimism.”
The Washington Times’ attempts to reach Ms. Michaela through her listed email were unsuccessful.
She described her situation in various social media posts. She said she moved to Costa Rica when she was 26 weeks pregnant and chose Central America because it was “forward-thinking” in its approach to bitcoin, a digital currency.
Ms. Michaela cast birth tourism as a relatively cheap alternative to more financially draining pathways, such as a “golden visa,” or investor’s visa, which offers potential citizenship in exchange for a significant monetary investment in a country.
“I’m not suggesting you get pregnant to gain another passport elsewhere; however, if you already are, or are planning to be, it could be an interesting investment opportunity,” she said.
Before her birth tourism controversy, Ms. Michaela’s claim to fame was holding the Guinness World Record title for the farthest distance of an arrow shot using the feet.
Ms. Michaela’s home country, Australia, had birthright citizenship until the 1980s, when it changed its rules to require at least one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident for a child to gain citizenship automatically.
Debate over the practice is simmering in Canada and the U.S.
President Trump repeatedly threatened to issue an executive order curtailing birthright citizenship in cases of births to illegal immigrants, though he never made good on the idea.
Campaigning once again for the White House, he has renewed his vow. He said he would target not only births to illegal immigrants but also the birth tourism industry.
“Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the planet squat in hotels for their last few weeks of pregnancy to illegitimately and illegally obtain U.S. citizenship for the child,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a practice that’s so horrible and so egregious, but we let it go forward.”
He said his policy would require at least one parent to be a U.S. citizen or a legal resident. That would exclude illegal immigrants and those in the country on temporary visas.