“Birth tourism” is on the rise again in Canada.
In the past year, 5,219 babies were born in Canada to travelling foreign nationals.
In B.C., 102 non-resident births were at Richmond General Hospital; 99 were at Surrey Memorial; 97 were at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital; and another 85 were at Children’s Hospital, according to Andrew Griffith, a former senior director in Canada’s immigration department who is now an immigration analyst.
At the same time that Griffith was releasing data showing non-resident births are returning to 2019 levels in an article published in Policy Options last month, entrepreneurs in Richmond said there has been an uptick in inquiries from women in China and other parts of East Asia who want to have their babies in Canada now that President Donald Trump aims to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.
The ethical debate over birthright citizenship, also known as jus soli (right of the soil), is coming to a head as Democratic U.S. states challenge Trump’s initiative and non-resident births rise again in Canada with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows the percentage of non-resident births in Canada fell from 1.6 per cent of total births in 2019-20 to 0.7 per cent in 2020-22. It rebounded to 1.5 per cent in 2023-24.
A majority of countries forbid birthright citizenship, including virtually every country in Europe, Asia and Africa. It’s permitted in only about 33 nations.
Even though 160 years ago the U.S. enshrined the 14th Amendment to protect the constitutional rights of those born on its soil, particularly former slaves, Griffith said Canada’s laws on birthright citizenship could be more easily changed than in the U.S.
While most countries mandate that a child’s citizenship depends on the passport held by the parents, Canadian academics argue that birthright citizenship should be a “global human right.”
Today, one of the most common rebuttals to such a stand is that babies who receive citizenship only because they were born on Canadian territory are jumping the country’s immigration queue, which others must go through to qualify to become permanent residents and access universal education, health care and social services.
Two Canadian scholars who have obtained federal government grants to research birth tourism insist it must be protected in the name of “reproductive autonomy.” They say those who oppose it are “demonizing” and “criminalizing” non-resident pregnant people.
University of Carleton law professor Megan Gaucher believes critics of birthright citizenship are engaging in “settler-colonial” thinking that reflects “long-standing racist ideas.”
Ottawa’s Gaucher co-wrote an article on the subject with Lindsay Larios, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Manitoba who has obtained a federal grant to do collaborative research on birthright citizenship with B.C.’s Migrant Workers Centre.
Gaucher and Larios maintain attempts to portray birth tourists “as queue jumpers and citizenship fraudsters ignores the real-life obstacles they encounter within the health-care system and the Canadian immigration system.”
Larios argues that opponents who say offspring shouldn’t get citizenship because of their birth parent’s “precarious” immigration status are ignoring what she calls “reproductive justice.”
Opposition to the position set out by Gaucher and Larios has come from politicians, and medical and immigration professionals.
Rather than being disadvantaged, Griffith said, most women who engage in birth tourism come to North America with enough wealth to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for travel, accommodation (including in so-called “birth hotels”), and hospital deliveries.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada has said birth tourism needs further investigation. And Dr. Jon Barrett, head of obstetrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, has written that Canadian hospitals should have “absolutely zero tolerance” for it.
Doctors “should unite in a firm stand against birth tourism,” Barrett said, arguing it stresses Canada’s health-care system and puts pregnant foreign nationals at risk of being “fleeced by unethical individuals.”
An Angus Reid Institute poll found that in 2019, when Richmond Hospital was the epicentre of Canada’s birth tourism industry, that two-of-three Canadians believed “a child born to parents who are in this country on tourist visas should not be granted Canadian citizenship.”
Births to non-residents now make up 6.9 per cent of all deliveries at Richmond Hospital, which is down from 24 per cent before the pandemic. Despite this year’s jump in inquiries from people seeking to have babies in Canada because of Trump’s threat, Griffith believes the overall decline over the last few years at Richmond Hospital is owed largely to China restricting its citizens’ travel.
There is no data on whether international students in B.C. have given birth in hospitals here. International students in this province can join the Medical Services Plan by paying $75 a month. In Ontario, said Griffith, some non-resident mothers who have paid for hospital deliveries could be foreign students as that province doesn’t allow them to receive subsidized health care.
In light of a lack of government oversight of birth tourism, Griffith said there is need for more research, including like one study from Calgary. Four-of-five non-resident mothers who delivered babies in that city said their primary motivation was to give their newborn Canadian citizenship. The largest group, one-of-four, was from Nigeria.
Given the ethical issues at stake, Griffith suggests Canada, whose citizenship rules aren’t bound by a Constitution like in the U.S., take a responsible middle way in regard to birthright citizenship.
To reduce the chances of exploitation, he recommends Canada follow the lead of Australia, which allows a baby born on its soil to receive citizenship only if at least one of the child’s parents already has that status.
Multicultural Meanderings 