http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/07/17225891-born-​in-the-usa-birth-tourists-get-instant-us-citizenship-for-thei​r-newborns?lite

Born in the U.S.A.: Birth tourists get instant U.S. citizenship for their newborns


Thu Mar 7, 2013 2:40 PM EST.




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Lou Alfonso


Angry neighbors picketed outside a Chino Hills, California, maternity hotel in December

By Anna Schecter
Rock Center

This is an update to a previous report from October 28, 2011.

UPDATE: There has been uproar in neighborhoods across Los Angeles county in recent months over a controversial industry called birth tourism. Wealthy foreign women in the late stages of pregnancy fly to the United States and stay at special maternity hotels. The women stay just long enough to give birth and obtain U.S. birth certificates and passports for their newborns.

These maternity hotels are often run out of single family homes in suburbia. Angry neighbors picketed outside a Chino Hills, California, maternity hotel until authorities shut it down for zoning and code violations in December, 2012.

Birth tourism has also ignited outrage on Capitol Hill.

"They are gaming the system…and people should be put in jail,” said Representative Phil Gingrey (R-Ga), one of several members of Congress trying to put an end to birth tourism