‘Canada is a very tolerant country,’ said one offshore mother who took advantage of birthright citizenship. Some, however, say Canada should find a middle way on birthright citizenship
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A singer in China’s famous Beijing Opera, Danyang Yang flew to Vancouver in 2014 to have her baby in a Canadian hospital. She did so to deliver another child in 2017, like thousands of other so-called birth tourists who come to Canada each year.
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Both times Yang immediately returned to China. A few years later, the singer and her husband, Tong Zhang, moved their family and much of their real-estate fortune to Canada, where they eventually became permanent residents.
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When the couple’s extensive Metro Vancouver property holdings become the subject of a lawsuit, a B.C. Supreme Court judge recently asked why Yang chose to give birth in Canada.
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“Canada is a very tolerant country,” Yang answered. “We thought it would be a wise idea to give birth to our second child and third child here.”
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Birthright citizenship, which makes possible so-called “anchor babies” who automatically gain the full privileges of citizenship in the countries in which they’re born, is a simmering political issue in Canada. In the U.S., it’s even more fiery, for different reasons.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to make a decision this summer on President Donald Trump’s executive order to stop birthright citizenship, which isn’t common in most of the world. The practice of jus soli (right of soil) exists in the U.S., Canada and 30 other countries.
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Birthright citizenship grants automatic passports to babies born on Canadian or U.S. soil to non-citizens, which includes people on valid student or guest-worker visas and undocumented migrants.
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Pew Research reported this month that nearly 10 per cent of all births in the U.S. in 2023 fall in the category of birthright citizenship.
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Of the 320,000 babies in the U.S. who gained birthright citizenship in 2023, Pew said 245,000 were born to unauthorized migrants, 15,000 were born to mothers who had temporary legal status and about 60,000 were born to mothers who were unauthorized migrants while the child’s father was a citizen or permanent resident.
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Pew Research demographer Jeffrey Passel noted “birth tourists,” or mothers who obtain temporary visas specifically to secure U.S. citizenship for their newborns, accounted for about 9,000 of U.S. births in 2023.
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While the American public remains divided on the outcome of the upcoming Supreme Court ruling, some U.S. authorities have nevertheless been cracking down on those who run so-called birth hotels. This year a California couple who operated a birth hotel were sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering and helping Chinese women travel to the U.S. under false pretences so they could deliver their babies there.
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While birth hotels operate in Canada, where it’s an offence to counsel people to mislead border officials, no charges have ever been laid in this country.
