Two Different Approaches to "Birth Tourism" In North America

The first approach is the American one. See, for instance, this:

Southern California apartment complexes that doubled as "maternity hotels" for Chinese women who want made-in-America babies were raided early Tuesday, capping an unprecedented federal sting operation, officials said.

NBC News was on the scene as Homeland Security agents swept into The Carlyle, a luxury property in Irvine, California, which housed pregnant women and new moms who allegedly forked over $40,000 (C$49,868) to $80,000 (C$99,736) to give birth in the United States.

"I am doing this for the education of the next generation," one of the women told NBC News.

None of the women were arrested; they are being treated as material witnesses, and paramedics were on hand in case any of them went into labour during the sweep.

Instead, the investigation was aimed at ringleaders who pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars tax-free to help Chinese nationals obtain visas and then pamper them until they delivered in an American hospital at a discount, court papers show.

"It's not necessarily illegal to come here to have the baby, but if you lie about your reasons for coming here, that's visa fraud," said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Los Angeles...

Here in Canada, of course, officials approach the issue in a typically Canadian fashion (i.e. by being gullible and naïve, and by pretending that all is for the best in this, the best of all possible Trudeaupias):

[Canadian] immigration and citizenship experts say the issue of birth tourism is way overblown, and that it would do more harm than good to overhaul the way people become Canadians.

"Eliminating citizenship by birth on Canadian soil would be a hysterical response to a handful of cases that, in statistical terms, amount to a rounding error," reads a 2014 press release from the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), which has repeatedly tried to quash the notion that Canada's citizenship laws are being taken advantage of by throngs of non-Canadians.

The problem of birth tourism across Canada is negligible at best, Josh Paterson, the executive director of BCCLA told VICE News by phone.

"The fact that someone giving birth here is a foreign national does not mean it's birth tourism. And there's very little evidence to show this is a problem requiring action," said Paterson. "Changing our laws would be far-reaching and far costlier than whatever costs are being incurred by people without citizenship having babies."

On Wednesday, the Vancouver Sun published a story about internal government documents that reveal investigators with the BC health ministry are aware of 26 private residences in the province where foreign pregnant women can stay before and after giving birth. According to the documents, these so-called "baby houses" offer hospitality services to women with temporary and permanent residency status.

The report also pointed to Chinese brokerage firms and databases that promote birth tourism in BC to Chinese nationals, including one agent in Shenzhen who hosts a website listing hospitals in the province with Mandarin-speaking doctors on site.

Sounds to me like these Chinese enterprises are playing Canadians for fools, which, considering the cluelessness of Josh Paterson and his ilk, is ridiculously easy to do.