US seeks to shut 'maternity hotels'
2013-01-30 13:00
Los Angeles - A Los Angeles official moved on Tuesday to crack down on
so-called maternity hotels he said have sprung up across parts of Southern
California as pregnant women travel to the United States in a growing
"birthing tourism" trend.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe asked colleagues to approve a series
of steps designed to ultimately close the hotels - typically single-family
homes carved into bedrooms where visiting women pay to stay in anticipation of
giving birth to a child who will be born a US citizen.
"His intent here with this motion is not to regulate these maternity
hotels, it's to eliminate them," Knabe's spokesperson, Cheryl Burnett,
said following a Board of Supervisors meeting.
"These are really underground money-making schemes that attract women
to the US to have their babies," she said.
Health, sanitation
The issue of maternity tourism bubbled to the surface in recent months when
residents of an upscale Los Angeles suburb protested against what they said was
a maternity hotel operating in their neighbourhood to host pregnant women from
China.
They complained it caused sanitation and other issues.
The US Constitution grants citizenship to any child born on US soil,
regardless of parentage, and immigration experts said there was nothing
inherently illegal about women coming from abroad to give birth to children in
the country.
Burnett said that Knabe's action was directed at zoning and health and
safety issues associated with the hotels, noting that county officials have no
jurisdiction over immigration laws. She said US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement
would be asked to determine how the women were entering the country.
Burnett said the board of supervisors was expected to approve the motion
next week, directing a number of county agencies to investigate the hotels. It
also orders the county counsel to draft zoning ordinances that would put them
out of business in Los Angeles County.
Neighbour complaints
Last month residents in an upscale neighbourhood of Chino Hills protested a
large hilltop home that was found to have been divided up into 17 bedrooms and
17 bathrooms.
The Los Angeles Times quoted Chino Hills officials as saying in a December
court filing that 10 women from China and their babies were staying in rooms of
the home, which did not have permits to operate as a business.
Neighbours had complained of a sewage spill from an overloaded septic system
and cars speeding in and out of the driveway. An inspection found exposed
wiring, missing smoke alarms and holes in bedroom floors - as well as brochures
on how to have a US citizen baby, according to the Times.
Since then the county has received some 65 complaints about maternity homes
operating in the county's San Gabriel Valley, home to a large Asian population.
Mushrooming trend
A report commissioned by the county board of supervisors in December said
zoning enforcement agents had investigated 20 such illegal maternity hotels
that it described as part of a mushrooming "birthing tourism" trend.
"This trend seems to be expanding in Southern California [particularly
in Los Angeles counties] as well as New York City and Vancouver, Canada,"
the report said.
Southern California immigration activists suggested the issue was being
blown out of proportion, saying it may have been stoked by an ongoing national
debate over illegal immigration.
"If you've got a home and it's unsafe for one reason or another, you
certainly want a public safety interaction making the place safer," said
Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern
California.
"But this is playing out against the terrain of pretty heated
immigration politics that's likely to get even more heated in next few
months," Pastor said.
In October, a pregnant woman who was arrested trying to cross from Mexico
into California with a fake identification documents to deliver her baby in Los
Angeles made headlines when she told customs agents that she was the daughter
of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
The woman, Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman-Salazar, pleaded guilty in December
to using a false passport and was deported to Mexico before she could give
birth.
