LA County plans move on immigrant birthing hotels
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Los Angeles County is planning a crackdown on makeshift maternity wards where mothers from other countries stay while giving birth so their children will be U.S. citizens.
The county has received 60 complaints about such facilities in the past month, according to a report by the Planning Department submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
That compared to just 15 complaints in the previous five years. The surge might be due to publicity over the closure of a house in Chino Hills that authorities contended had been used to house as many as 30 Chinese women.
It isn't illegal for foreign citizens to give birth in the U.S., but authorities say the maternity tourism hotels frequently are remodeled single-family homes in areas that aren't zoned for hotels or boarding houses.
County Supervisor Don Knabe wants to develop a county law that would specifically outlaw such facilities.
"They're a moneymaking machine. They're totally unsafe," Knabe said. "It's so obvious that they jeopardize not only the health of the baby, but the mother as well."
The Planning Commission report said efforts were being made to crack down on the hotels for zoning, building and health code violations.
Pregnant women, many from Asia, can pay thousands of dollars to stay in the facilities, authorities said.
Officials who went to the Chino Hills home in November said the single-family home had been divided into 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms. Neighbors complained of a sewage spill from an overloaded septic tank.
The house was shut down after the city sued the owners.
Elsewhere, joint inspections have been staged by the planning, public works and child welfare departments, and cases have been referred to the state tax board, the report said.
Inspections can be difficult because people answering the door sometimes claim they are unable to speak English and won't allow inspectors to enter. The Planning Department will try to include Chinese-language translators on its inspection teams, the report said.
In addition, child welfare investigators will look for signs of child abuse and neglect, such as newborns crowded into makeshift nurseries, said Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services.
"We'd not only ask about sleeping arrangements, we'd ask, has this baby been seen by a doctor? Has it had its shots?" Zanville said.
The county has received 60 complaints about such facilities in the past month, according to a report by the Planning Department submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
That compared to just 15 complaints in the previous five years. The surge might be due to publicity over the closure of a house in Chino Hills that authorities contended had been used to house as many as 30 Chinese women.
It isn't illegal for foreign citizens to give birth in the U.S., but authorities say the maternity tourism hotels frequently are remodeled single-family homes in areas that aren't zoned for hotels or boarding houses.
County Supervisor Don Knabe wants to develop a county law that would specifically outlaw such facilities.
"They're a moneymaking machine. They're totally unsafe," Knabe said. "It's so obvious that they jeopardize not only the health of the baby, but the mother as well."
The Planning Commission report said efforts were being made to crack down on the hotels for zoning, building and health code violations.
Pregnant women, many from Asia, can pay thousands of dollars to stay in the facilities, authorities said.
Officials who went to the Chino Hills home in November said the single-family home had been divided into 17 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms. Neighbors complained of a sewage spill from an overloaded septic tank.
The house was shut down after the city sued the owners.
Elsewhere, joint inspections have been staged by the planning, public works and child welfare departments, and cases have been referred to the state tax board, the report said.
Inspections can be difficult because people answering the door sometimes claim they are unable to speak English and won't allow inspectors to enter. The Planning Department will try to include Chinese-language translators on its inspection teams, the report said.
In addition, child welfare investigators will look for signs of child abuse and neglect, such as newborns crowded into makeshift nurseries, said Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services.
"We'd not only ask about sleeping arrangements, we'd ask, has this baby been seen by a doctor? Has it had its shots?" Zanville said.
This mess is the direct result of being soft on illegal immigration. The U.S. has misinterpreted the 14th Amendment over the years over the section which states .....subject to the jurisdiction..... Foreign "subjects" are NOT subjects of the United States of America. They are subjects of the countries from which they came. These foreign subjects are visitors to the U.S. There children born here are foreign subjects as well. How we ever got off on this tangent to the 14th Amendment is beyond understanding. Apparently, everyone knew what was meant by "subject" at the time the amendment was written, but somehow the meaning was lost over time. Unless one of the birth parents is a U.S. citizen, we have no business conveying U.S. citizenship to the newborn.
 @Donald H I couldn't agree more!!
British Columbia used to have a problem with Chinese illegals showing up pregnant so their anchor babies would be citizens. BC (Canada) got smart and stopped the practice and changed their laws. The US should do the same.
 @TimBurr Constitutional Amendment - Don't hold your breath. By the way, Canada still allows automatic citizenship, but does not allow automatic sponsorship of parents. So the parents and the child have to go home with no benefits.
 @ShallowEnder 3 less freeloaders on Canada's healthcare system.
At some point we need to stop the rhetoric and slogans and come up with a rational immigration and guest worker program.
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The US runs on immigrant labor. Check out any farm, orchard, construction site, landscaping job or sanitation facility in just about any state, and you will find "illegal" workers of some form or another. Sending them all home would provoke the biggest recession the world has ever seen- so somehow or other we have to accept this and make it work above board.
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This is just one more symptom of that problem.
 @al_02 I don't know about that. I know a lot of LEGAL citizens that would take those jobs in a heartbeat.
 @scoreboard So where are they? We have had 12%, and arguably 24% unemployment in this area during the last few years. But if I take a drive through the fruit loop, or watch who cuts my grass, those faces haven't changed a bit.
 @al_02 Now look at those types of farms from back in the 30s... they still existed and yet, there wasn't a huge ILLEGAL labor force. How could that be?
 @Peregrine  @al_02 Interesting that you chose the 1930s. Exact statistics are hard to come by, but there is no question that there was significant (compared to total US population) levels of illegal immigration in the 1920s. By the '30s, it dropped off because of the Great Depression, a rate correlation which we saw in the last few years as well.There is also evidence that a percentage of factory workers during that time were also illegals, but more from Canada and European countries.There are also reports (Google away) that some 500,000 - 1,000,000 illegal Mexican immigrants were deported during the late 1920's.
 @Peregrine Yes and no. Sure, if picking grapes paid $60/hour, there would be a line of able and willing Americans outside every field.
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But it doesn't, and it can't. Not today, and probably not in the '30s either. The price of labor is no longer a local matter, those days are long gone. The price that the world is willing to pay someone to harvest fruit, make cars, or skin chickens is set in California, Chile, China and everywhere in between.
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GM just spent a few billion dollars proving this. You can't do business with uncompetitive costs, not in today's world economy.
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The good news is this tends to raise living standards. There is no question that "cheap" food has been a benefit to us all (ignoring health concerns of a rich diet), as have cheaper cars, clothing and everything else.
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The bad news is that there are no more entitlements. Just because you live in Detroit no longer means you are automatically entitled to make $70/hour to bolt fenders on a Buick. Someone in China will do that for $7.
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In theory, the US and other first world economies survive by having highly skilled and productive workers, and in segments that are safe from low-cost competition. Silicon Valley, aerospace and biotech were, at least for a while, examples of this.
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And I'd agree with you that we sort of lost this formula. But trying to unilaterally raise US labor rates over world-wide levels isn't going to work. Instead we need to concentrate on making American workers more valuable and productive.
 @al_02 I chose the 30s because of similar economics. I also know that there were plenty of americans willing and wanting to work those fields. I also know that if the farms were forced in to compliance, after the market corrections worked themselves out, there would be plenty of willing LEGAL americans to work those positions. The problem is, they have been allowed to deviate for so long, that the positions do not pay a legitimate wage for a legal worker. And as such, they've artificially kept costs low and by extension kept prices low-ish and now if they were forced in to compliance, it would hurt them... but it's a pain of thier own creation and continuing to allow them to break the law is just rewarding and reinforcing thier illicit behaviour.
 @Peregrine  @al_02 Simple - 65% of americans worked in agriculture in the 1930's. Less then 30% do today, and there is no evidence that very many of the rest are at all interested in the work. Alabama's anti-immigrant policies have resulted int he bankruptcy of more then half of the small farmers in the state due to lack of labor for planing and harvest.
By the way, if you go to Mexico City, you'll see lots of billboards promising "Mucho Dinero in Estados Unidos" with no questions. These are from Tyson, Perdue, Swift, and the other packing houses and big Ag companies. They are employing coyotees (smugglers) to bring illegals into the US for cheap labor.
Strangely, none of the conservatives has a problem with this policy of the big Ag group
I was speaking with a rancher in southern Texas who said that what's happening down there is that the aristocrats bring a planeload of them over on 3-day work visas and fly whoever's left back to Mexico when their visas expire, instead of hiring the legal hispanics who are looking for work in southern Texas.  But he said the worst problem that they're having is the Colombian kids, who grew up among extreme social violence and have no qualms bullying their way to the front of a line or fighting anybody who tries to stop them, because that's the culture in which they were raised.Of course, if you're a liberal trying to get elected, you get as many of these people to vote for you as you can by promising amnesty.That's why the California and urban liberals want to require a background check or photo ID to exercise your 2nd Amendment, but not to vote.
 @Playanekes You missed the whole point of this article and I find it strange that the AP would sanitize this so much.  Did a question mark go off in your head when the article stated "The Planning Department will try to include Chinese-language translators on its inspection teams, the report said."
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Did you think "why would they need Chinese translators to speak to Hispanics" then google it to find articles like this. Â
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/12/chinese-maternity-hotel.html
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Note the next one was written in 2011...how long has this been going on? Â How many children have been born here? Â How long can the government keep this type of insanity going?
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369657/Chinese-maternity-tourists-paid-35-000-babies-born-U-S.html
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This is about the Chinese paying big money to come here  and have their babies to make it easier for their children to get back into the US later in life for college and other benefits that should be afforded to the people who actually live here!  Makes me wonder how many Chinese we will see in America in the next 50 years!
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It also makes me wonder why the AP didn't mention this specifically!
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Disgusting on SO many levels! Outrageous!
Our elected officials have got to be the dumbest creatures on earth. The only thing they are aware of is their wallet and how to pad the financial future.
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These people that have cash to buy citizenship for their anchors are the same as the other parasites that illegally enter the US. They just enter with a visa,  drop a baby and go home to return later.
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New common sense law:Â One or both of the natural parents MUST be a US citizen at the time of birth for the child to have US citizenship. NO CITIZENSHIP for a child born on US soil of non US citizen parents.
@FreerideNOT The only problem I have with your proposed new law is in regard to legal immigrants. What if a couple comes to America intent on becoming U.S. citizens and, during the course of years that it takes, the woman becomes pregnant and has her baby? Should the couple have to get a green card for the baby, etc.?
I'm glad to see that LA and California's budget crisis is over and that they can spend more tax money on helping illegal aliens! Who comes up with these idiotic ideas to help law-breakers?
They don't want to give birth in the hospitals because of the cost and because their kids get birth certificates which requires us to pay taxes for life! You get everything for free without a birth certificate!
And the hospitals are unsafe and unsanitary as well!
Not as unsanitary as the ones in Mexico!