‘Many Chinese giving birth in CNMI trying to get around one child policy’

Many tourists from mainland China who come to the CNMI to give birth to U.S. citizen children wanted to get around the Chinese government’s “one child policy,” said one of the individuals who are helping these “birth tourists” through translation services for a fee averaging $30 an hour.

At the same time, on the day that at least three websites were published as advertising or marketing the CNMI as a good destination to give birth to U.S. citizen children, two of them removed from their pages some information about the CNMI.

One of the sites, www.saipanbaby.com, removed the contact numbers in the CNMI but retained the contact numbers for China and Los Angeles.

The second site, www.pacificweekly.net removed on its page the link to www.saipanbb.com.

“Most of the pregnant Chinese who come here give birth to their second child, not first child.  Depending on how rich they are, they stay at a three-bedroom hotel room or apartment, or just one bedroom apartment,” the translator told Saipan Tribune yesterday.

He said because children born here are U.S. citizens, the birth tourists coming here won’t have two Chinese children when they go back to their country “so they are not violating the one child policy.”

“But more important, they want their children to be able to leave China when they grow older and they don’t want their children to be communists.  They said they can’t change the communist system but they can have their children live outside China later on.  When the children reach a certain age they can bring their parents to the U.S. too,” he said.

He added that most if not all of the birth tourists are rich because they could afford to pay all the hospital bills all at once so they could get their newborn’s birth certificate, rent an apartment or hotel room on Saipan for two to three months or more, pay for utilities, rent a car, buy food and other consumer goods, plus pay other services rendered by individuals or agencies specializing in helping birth mothers such as translation, looking for apartment rentals and visiting the hospital.

The translator also said that lately, the CNMI has seen an increase in birth tourists from small cities and provinces in China.

“Before, they were all from Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong.  But now, they also come from small cities like Zibo in Shandong Province,” he said.

The websites, in Chinese language, show pictures of the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.’s facilities on Saipan where clients from China are supposed to give birth, photos of some Saipan apartments/housing rentals where clients could stay, Saipan tourist spots, links to CNMI and federal agencies’ websites, and a list of benefits of having a U.S. citizen baby, among other articles.

The websites also list the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and birthright citizenship as reasons to have babies in the CNMI, whose capital is Saipan.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees U.S. citizenship to those born on its territory, provided the person is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.