Federal agents crack down on birth tourism hotels in California

#birthtourism #chinesewomen #california #visafraud A lucrative business is flourishing in California where hotels cater to foreigners who come to stay and deliver their babies so that the newborns get the tag of American citizen as reported in bbc.com dated 3 March 2015.
It seems these "birth tourism" hotels, numbering more than a dozen, usually hosted women from China who paid anything from between $15,000 to $50,000 for the services. As per estimates, 40,000 of 300,000 children born to foreign citizens in the US each year are believed to be the product of birth tourism. This is as per the figures that have been quoted in court documents that have been filed by the authorities to obtain search warrants for the schemes.
The Federal agents in California have raided these hotels that cater to pregnant foreigners who want their children to be born US citizens and the raids focused on hotels because it is suspected that they are involved in visa fraud.
In order to get to the bottom, the Federal agents did a sting operation by using an undercover agent who posed as a pregnant mother. The modus operandi was to generate false proof of income and a college diploma. The woman was advised to enter the US through popular destinations like Hawaii or Las Vegas and to make advance reservations with hotels and tours. Subsequently, a China-based "trainer" was assigned to help put together the visa application along with full-length frontal and side photo of the woman’s belly to see how visible her pregnancy was.

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