As birth tourism rises again, will Trump's citizenship moves send more Canada's way?

Liga Lin, right, and her assistant Evelyn Lin, pose for a photo in Richmond, B.C., on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nono Shen

RICHMOND, B.C. — Vancouver-based birth tourism operator Liga Lin says her phone has been buzzing with inquiries from expectant mothers since U.S. President Donald Trump moved to end American birthright citizenship.

Lin’s business, New Joy Postpartum Care, arranges accommodation and services for non-resident women — mostly from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong — who want to give birth in Canada, granting their children automatic citizenship rights.

The industry also exists in the U.S., but Trump’s executive order seeking to end the right to citizenship at birth on American soil has thrown it into disarray, even as the measure was blocked by a U.S. district court judge who called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, known in English as RedNote, has numerous discussions among people in China about whether they should stick to their plan to give birth in the U.S. or switch to other countries with birthright citizenship, such as Canada.

Lin — whose packages can cost up to about $100,000 including housing, a nanny, a housekeeper and massages, recalled a phone call from a Chinese woman already in a U.S. “birth house,” panicking over Trump’s announcement.

“She is very worried, and she asked me if there is any similar move going on in Canada. She wanted to come to Canada instead,” Lin said in an interview in Mandarin.

Birth tourism in Canada slumped during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Lin and other British Columbia operators say inquiries from potential birth tourists are spiking since Trump’s election last year, and his recent executive order.

You Wu has run a “maternity care agency” in the Metro Vancouver city of Richmond, B.C., since 2013.

“My company has experienced an increase in consultation requests after Trump came into power. The most noticeable change is many clients deciding to switch from the U.S. to Vancouver,” Wu said in Mandarin.

She said there was a sense of urgency, compared with other times when potential clients would question her closely and hesitate to sign contracts.

“It’s fantastic news for people who work in this industry in Vancouver,” Wu said of the shift.

Andrew Griffith is a former director-general of the Department Citizenship and Immigration, who has tracked the ups and downs of the birth tourism industry in Canada.

He said Trump’s executive order would require a constitutional amendment to stand, but it had already created uncertainty and panic among would-be U.S. birth tourists.

“It’ll make it eventually to the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, there’ll be lots of chaos, lots of worries,” said Griffith.

He has released data showing the number of birth tourists to Canada “declined dramatically” during COVID-19 due to travel restrictions, dropping by 50 per cent.

But he said births to non-residents are now back near pre-pandemic levels, jumping last year by 46 per cent to an estimated 5,219.

That is only about 1.5 per cent of all births in Canada, although critics of birth tourism point to the potential burden on hospitals where the practice is most common.

“The number of births is quite small, but it does have an effect on the perception of fairness,” said Griffith.

Dr. Jon Barrett, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster University, published an opinion letter in the Journal of Obstetrics and Genaecology Canada in 2023, saying Canadian hospitals and physicians should have “absolutely zero tolerance” for birth tourism, and decline to accept these patients into care, unless it was urgent.

Doctors, he said, “should unite in a firm stand against birth tourism”, which put hospitals at risk of “significant shortfalls” if a birth went wrong, and birth tourists at risk of being “fleeced by unethical individuals.”

Richmond was once the “epicentre” of birth tourism in Canada, said Griffith. Data provided by Vancouver Coastal Health shows that in the 2018 fiscal year, more than 23 per cent of all babies born at Richmond Hospital had non-resident parents.

But the health authority said “the number of non-resident births at Richmond Hospital for the past few years is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago,” and last fiscal year, the percentage of births that were to non-resident parents was 6.9 per cent.

Griffith said it’s unclear if Trump’s positions would have an impact on birth tourism in Canada, but discussions in the U.S. would pressure Canada to “revisit the need for curbs on birth tourism.”

“Canada and the U.S., in one sense, are the preferred destinations for people who would want to achieve citizenship,” said Griffith.

“Whether a Canadian political party will pick up the issue like the Conservatives did in 2012 remains to be seen.”

Longtime immigration consultant Peter Peng was uncertain whether there would be an “overwhelming” influx of birth tourists in Canada. “If you ask me, if we will see a big trend this time, my answer is soft Yes, not a solid one,” he said in Mandarin.

And while Richmond-based birth tourism operator Wenshi Peng said inquiries had jumped three or four times since Trump’s executive order, this had not yet been converted to an increase in clients, he said.

Peng said he didn’t think birth tourists, who pay full price for medical services, burden Canada’s health system

“For mothers who don’t have Canadian citizenships to give births here, they usually need to pay (the hospital) at least $13,000, and the price usually doubles if they run into any trouble,” Peng said in Mandarin.

“I don’t think they have taken up any local health care resources.”

Lin said that the birth tourism industry in the United States was more established than in Canada but both had appeal for someone seeking foreign citizenship for their child.

America, she said, is known for elite universities, while Canada was known for safe campus environments and its social benefits.

“Years ago, many moms who worked at high-tech firms in Taiwan used to travel to the U.S. in groups to give birth, but now they will come here instead,” said Lin.

She said that as a mother of two, she empathized with her clients as they navigated a foreign country to give birth.

Birth tourists just want a better future for their children, she said.

“They are under stress, and I always try my best to comfort them,” said Lin.

“For parents who choose to give birth here, they are worried that ten years later, it will be more difficult for their children to pursue studies or even immigrate (due to policy changes). The costs at that time will be way higher than $100,000, because of inflation.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2025.

Nono Shen, The Canadian Press