They look so happy.
The couple in the short video rejoice in the positive pregnancy test before them. Smiles all around.
“The coming of a new life is groundbreaking,” a pleasant-sounding woman (AI? Who knows these days.) says with a smile in her voice. An instrumental bed in the vein of Hilton Garden Inn hotel lobby music is the score for the website’s “Institutional Video.”
“A moment of discovery,” the nameless narrator says softly as the mother googles where in the United States of America to have her baby. Ah! The couple find just the place. The company makes it look so easy. Just one call. A sanguine receptionist checks a box. “Patient confirmed.”
In the next scene, the couple are on their way to Miami. They’re ready to bring their baby into the world, the U.S. specifically. Another expecting couple, dressed in matching white outfits, stroll down a sunlit dock in the video’s closing scene. He stands behind her, cradling her baby bump as they visually drink in some of the most expensive yachts on the planet. Perfect.
And that’s the overarching theme: The apparent foreigners in the video picked the perfect obstetrics’ clinic. The ultimate draw, of course, is the opportunity to deliver the baby in America, which, thanks to an insanely expansive interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, guarantees the child will be from henceforward a citizen of the United States. And this new American will be entitled to all of the benefits and privileges that come with citizenship.
‘It Should Appall Every American’
The purpose of the clinic is in its unsubtle name — Have My Baby in Miami. It’s part of the growing and troubling industry known as birth tourism, a delivery business aimed at making automatic Americans. Republican lawmakers have launched an investigation into the practitioners of the booming business, and Have My Baby in Miami is on their list.
“It should appall every American to know that there is a thriving birth tourism economy on our soil, perpetuated by foreign nationals who undermine our sovereignty and have no regard for our rule of law,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, in a press release.
The Texas Republican is chairman of the newly created Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses. Gill and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., last week sent letters to four U.S. entities and businesses “that are engaged in and profit from birth tourism.” Seeking company documents, the lawmakers accuse the delivery centers of exploiting birthright citizenship by “explicitly marketing their maternity services to foreign expectant mothers who take advantage of the U.S. immigration system to give birth in the U.S., which gives their child U.S. citizenship.”
The chairmen sent the letters to Have My Baby in Miami, El Paso, Texas-based Doctores Para Ti (Doctors for You), International Maternity Services, also of El Paso, and to Dr. Athiya Javid OB/GYN, who runs a birthing business in San Jose, California. The Federalist attempted to reach out to all of the facilities. International’s website appears to have been removed. Officials from Have My Baby in Miami and Doctores Para Ti did not return calls seeking comment. An employee who answered Monday at Javid’s clinic said the doctor was not in the office.
‘That is Against the Law’
Also known as “maternity tourism,” birth tourism uses temporary visitor visas in the birthplace citizenship scheme.
The letters from Gill and Comer assert that, because the expectant mothers predominantly come from China and Russia, the industry is opening the door to national security and election integrity threats from America’s biggest enemies.
While it’s not against the law for a foreign traveler to deliver her baby in the United States, Gill said it is illegal to “misrepresent yourself.”
“For instance, to say that you’re coming here to be a tourist for a short period of time if you’re knowingly doing so for the purpose of having a child,” the Texas congressman told me Friday on The Dan O’Donnell Show on NewsTalk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee. “That is against the law, and I think that is the nexus that we’re going to have to clamp down on these companies.”
In 2020, the State Department issued a final rule restricting temporary visitor visas to foreigners coming to the U.S. to give birth and grab up U.S citizenship for their children.
“Tourists” could be charged with visa fraud if they lie on their applications.
The committees have requested the companies send documents and communications regarding marketing and promotion for prospective foreign expectant mothers, maternity services packages, the legal structure of the firms, and “coaching materials or ‘how to’ guides for the screening process by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” among other records.
Gill said he expects to find that birth tourism practitioners are “shady” outfits involved with foreign adversaries.
“And I think that’s something the American people need to know about,” he said, adding that the goal is to make birth tourism illegal. “And we can clamp down whenever we find illegal activity on these companies and hopefully get some bad guys in jail.”
‘Regardless of Their Parents’ Citizenship’
The companies’ websites make their business model clear. As the lawmakers note, the Doctores Para Ti’s social media campaign boasted in Spanish that “Every day, more families trust Doctores Para Ti 🙌 Close care, safety, and complete support throughout your experience. #BirthTourism.”
In advertising that its maternity services are provided “exclusively for international patients,” the birthing firm posts its package prices “in The USA for foreigners.” Vaginal births cost $6,652. A caesarean birth is listed at $8,177, according to the website.
In their letter to Dr. Julio César, Novoa Medical Director and owner of International Maternity Services, the lawmakers note that the firm also offers different pricing packages. And, like Doctores, it advertises a “broader suite of services, including logistics support, temporary housing assistance, and legal consultations, provided either directly or through affiliated third-party providers.”
Miami Medical Concierge Services, LLC, doing business as Have My Baby in Miami, explicitly markets its services to foreign expectant mothers. Its website declares that “the dream of having your child in the United States is closer to reality.” The congressional letter was addressed to Dr. Wladimir Lorentz, Founder and Chief Medical Officer Miami Medical Concierge Services, LLC.
Doctores Para Ti’s website includes a frequently asked question: “Is Having My Baby in the United States Legal?”
“In an increasingly interconnected world, parents are exploring international medical care options for childbirth. One avenue that has gained prominence in recent years is maternity-related medical tourism in the United States,” the website notes. It goes on to discuss birthright citizenship, asserting that “current U.S. law” grants citizenship at birth, “regardless of their parents’ citizenship.”
‘The Consequences are Severe’
Birth tourism has definitely “gained prominence.” According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there were about 70,000 births to temporary visitors in 2023.
“Furthermore, if we assume, based on past experience, that births equal about 2 percent of the total temporary visitor population each year, then there have been close to 500,000 births to temporary visitors over the past decade,” the think tank reported.
Birth tourism is a multi-billion dollar business, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) recent report, “Citizenship for Sale: The Birth Tourism Industry Built on a Constitutional Loophole.”
“The consequences are severe: nearly 1.5 million U.S.-citizen children raised overseas with primary loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, an explosion of chain migration, and more than $150 billion in annual net costs shifted onto American taxpayers,” FAIR asserts in a press release.
While the Biden administration may have opened the floodgates to a wave of illegal immigration, the birth tourism industry got a big boost from Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama. A New York Post investigation found “1,000 companies operating out of just one US territory in the Northern Mariana Islands” where citizens of communist China had U.S. babies thanks to the Obama administration’s 2009 visa-waiver program.
“Birth tourism has been a problem for the three decades that I’ve been enforcing immigration law, especially from Russia and China, where hundreds of thousands of their nationals come to this country just to give birth,” Border Czar Tom Homan told Fox News last month. “So we’ve got hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals and Russian nationals who have U.S. citizen children. And if that continues, that is a significant national security threat.”
‘A Plane Ride Away’
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a pivotal case in which the justices are expected to decide whether President Donald Trump’s executive order significantly limiting birthright — or birthplace — citizenship will stand. Solicitor General John Sauer warned the justices that “8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”
Many of the justices seemed resistant to arguments that the 14th Amendment’s First Section was never meant to allow birth tourism and anchor babies from mothers whose first act in coming to America was breaking U.S. laws.
Gill said he’d like to see a constitutional amendment clarifying what birthplace citizenship actually means. In the meantime, the congressman said the committees want to get a better understanding of how the businesses operate so that they can tighten up the laws. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently introduced a bill that would make birth tourism a deportable offense.
“What we don’t want is to go after these four companies, and probably more, get justice there, get some criminal referrals, and then see more LLCs popping up that are engaged in the same practice,” Gill said in the radio interview. “We want to tighten up our immigration laws in that sense as well. So it’s kind of a two-pronged approach.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
