Gaucher: Here’s why Canada’s parents and grandparents reunification program is problematic

2025/08/23 Leave a comment

Absent, of course, is any real discussion of the various trade-offs between different categories and classes, demographics and impact on the broader population. It’s not just about the needs of migrant families:

…Our preliminary research on grandparent sponsorship explores how elected officials consider the place of migrant grandparents in Canadian society. We’ve so far found they regard permanent family class migration as “good for business” as it attracts economic migrants. At the same time, elected officials believe that certain dependants monopolize health and social safety nets. 

Grandparents, in particular, are treated by governments as human liabilities who must be admitted “responsibly.” 

Admitting grandparents to Canada is tied to their perceived ability to support their sponsors by performing unpaid domestic labour. Our research has found elected officials celebrate sponsored grandparents for the substantial unpaid care work they provide like meal preparation, child care and cleaning. 

In a recent survey on grandparent sponsorship, sponsors describe the unpaid work conducted by grandparents as essential to their participation in the Canadian workforce.

Migrant grandparents are also positioned as providers of cultural care for their grandchildren. Our research draws attention to elected officials often invoking memories of their own migrant grandparents passing along languages, practices and values that shaped their unique cultural identities. 

Despite the benefits migrant grandparents provide, sponsored grandparents are consistently suspected of taking advantage of Canada’s health care and social welfare systems. This is why the super visa is promoted as an alternative pathway. 

Dependent on sponsors

Grandparents who come to Canada through the super visa are financially reliant on their sponsors. Even though the government recognizes that the number of sponsored grandparents applying for old age security is relatively small, treating migrant grandparents as economic burdens allows governments to justify caps and application pauses on PGP sponsorship.

Contrary to governments’ framing of the super visa as aligning with migrants’ families demands for temporary care, our research shows that grandparents often resort to humanitarian and compassionate applications to obtain permanent residence once their super visa has expired. In these cases, their ability to perform care work is further scrutinized.

In terms of grandparent sponsorship, care is largely understood as temporary and one-directional — in other words, migrant grandparents are welcomed when they provide care, but are seen as liabilities when they need care themselves. 

Prioritizing the needs of migrant families

How do we reconcile government claims that family reunification is a “fundamental pillar of Canadian society” with the reality that permanent grandparent reunification remains difficult to obtain?

Intake announcements like the most recent one in July allow governments to celebrate permanent grandparent migration. At the same time, the inconsistency of the PGP and solutions like the super visa keep migrant grandparents in a state of legal, political and economic precarity.

With the Liberal government announcing cuts to family class admissions over the next three years, the impact of these changes on grandparent reunification warrants attention. 

Rather than temporary reforms and routes, the government needs to consider structural changes to Canada’s family class pathway that focus on the needs and interests of families seeking permanent reunification.

Source: Here’s why Canada’s parents and grandparents reunification program is problematic

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Todd: Should birthright citizenship, banned in most countries but not Canada, be a human right?

2025/02/18 Leave a comment

More on birth tourism, based on some of my analysis:

“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.

Source: Should birthright citizenship, banned in most countries but not Canada, be a human right?

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Labman and Gaucher: Why the ‘language of loopholes’ should be avoided if Trump cracks down on the Canada-U.S. border

2024/11/30 Leave a comment

Representative of the views of most academics/activists and divorced from both domestic and Trump administration realities.

It would be far more productive for them to make practical and realistic suggestions to attenuate the impact for those most in need rather than making these general arguments. (e.g., Rob Vineberg’s suggestion on how to improve asylum claim processing).

The general statement that these restrictions will result in an increase in “undertaking dangerous and sometimes deadly measures to seek protection” is correct but will likely cause some to reconsider the risks.

As to the loophole terminology, the reality is that it is likely perceived as such by migrants themselves and those helping them, as they understandably seek a way to enter Canada:

Refugee advocates on both sides of the Canada-United States border are already gearing up for the next round of battle regarding the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).

With the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the incoming appointment of Tom Homan as a “border czar” and stated plans for border crackdowns and mass deportations, there is heightened awareness of the impact on Canadian border crossings.

Trump, in fact, has threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico until they clamp down on drugs and migrants crossing the border.

STCA timeline

Originally signed in 2002, the STCA permits the return of asylum seekers who arrive in Canada from the U.S. — or vice versa — because both countries are considered safe.

For more than two decades, refugee advocates have called for it to be suspended given the agreement’s negative impact on access to asylum and how it can fuel human trafficking. Instead, the agreement was expanded in March 2023 to make it harder to cross the border.

Simultaneously, Roxham Road, a central crossing point in Québec for asylum seekers travelling from the U.S. to Canada during the first Trump administration, was closed down in 2023.

Supposed loopholes

Debates around the STCA often feature complaints that the agreement contains loopholes that must be closed.

Prior to March 2023, the agreement allowed Canada to refuse refugees coming through the U.S. who sought entry at official border crossings. Crossing at an unofficial border point, however, did not trigger the agreement, a detail described by critics as a legislative loophole.

These critics argued that asylum seekers were exploiting the loophole by avoiding official land ports of entry to make their refugee claims.

To be clear, the decision about official and unofficial border crossings was not accidental. It was an intentional recognition of the expansive reach of the Canada-U.S. border and the impossibility of attentively monitoring or tracking all refugee routes into Canada or the U.S.

Obscuring understanding

Our research, featured in Emmett Macfarlane and Kate Puddister’s upcoming book Disciplinary Divides in the Study of Law and Politics, explores how this language of loopholes works to dangerously obscure our understanding of how migrants move, the STCA’s effectiveness as a tool of border control and whether the U.S. is in fact safe for refugees.

The idea of a loophole implies an error that must be addressed, and, at the border, a hole to be closed or a road to be sealed. The language of loopholes centres on the “security” of the border.

The revised STCA now applies across the entirety of the border between Canada and the U.S., at both official and unofficial crossings. The perceived loophole of crossing at unofficial entry points and being able to claim asylum has been closed. Yet, in the aftermath of the U.S. election, new loophole language is surfacing.

Under the new STCA, migrants who cross into Canada at irregular border points will be returned to the U.S. (or vice versa) — but only if they’re discovered within the first 14 days of their arrival. This incentivizes refugees to evade detection for two weeks so that they can make a claim for protection in Canada.

With the land crossing “loophole” closed, we now see critics pointing to this 14-day provision as yet another loophole, describing it as an ill-considered gap in the revised agreement that must be closed — further limiting access to asylum.

Placing asylum seekers in harm’s way

Many refugee advocates have argued this new 14-day condition puts asylum seekers at greater risk, pushing them into hiding and making them reliant on human traffickers. But these advocates don’t use the language of loopholes — they simply see it as further argument on why the STCA is not the right way to control irregular crossings and should be suspended entirely.

With a Canadian federal election on the horizon and ongoing debates around the agreement looming large, Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged there may be need to consider a “different approach” to border management. He says the government is focused on a “secure” border.

This public fixation on the type of border crossing migrants undertake isn’t unique to commentary on the STCA.

Migrants arriving in Canada by sea from various South Asian regions on the Komagata Maru in 1914, the Amelie in 1987, the Ocean Lady in 2009 and the MV Sun Sea in 2010 were met with strong opposition from Canadian governments, accused of using a disingenuous channel to seek entry.

Excluding some migrants

Characterizing asylum seekers who are crossing the border as exploiting a loophole is therefore aligned with a Canadian immigration history that, while inclusive in certain respects, has been marked by both legal and illegal attempts to exclude certain groups of migrants.

In fact, crossing a territorial border to trigger a legal right to claim asylum is viewed fearfully in contrast to the airport receptions of resettled refugees who, for the fortunate few with access to this discretionary route to protection, are celebrated.

Debating whether asylum seekers are exploiting perceived loopholes taps into public sentiment about specific migrant arrivals of the past.

It also ignores both Canadian and American complicity in facilitating these unofficial crossings in the first place by choosing to place obstacles in the way of asylum seekers rather than devoting care and resources to a fair and orderly processing of refugee claims.

Closing ‘loopholes’ won’t deter migrants

This language of loopholes suggests that once the loophole is closed, applications for asylum and incidents of trafficking will decrease.

This assumption is empirically false given the grim realities of migration. The presence or absence of loopholes does not prevent asylum seekers from undertaking dangerous and sometimes deadly measures to seek protection.

Conversations around the STCA that focus on loopholes have lost sight of the needs of asylum seekers and our commitments in international law to protect refugees. Instead they emphasize the supposed illegitimacy of border crossers, echoing the country’s longstanding preoccupation with how one negotiates the border.

Source: Why the ‘language of loopholes’ should be avoided if Trump cracks down on the Canada-U.S. border

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Birth tourism showing post-pandemic rebound in B.C.

2024/01/20 Leave a comment

Expands on my analysis of the data on non-resident births from CIHI, with comments by others in excerpt below:

….Since there was more significant media coverage on the matter prior to the pandemic, Griffith notes the federal government has not done anything to curb the issue, despite public debate, while B.C. Minister of Health Adrian Dix has dismissed concerns about problems such as Canadian mothers being diverted from hospitals such as Richmond.

Griffith says, “given the current and planned increases in immigration, it is highly unlikely that the government will act as the numbers are a rounding error compared to overall immigration of 500,000 by 2025.”

But to Griffith, stopping the practice is more a matter of principle.

“I still think it’s important on principle and for the value of citizenship; it’s one of those things that can irritate, with people going around the system, taking advantage of the system,” said Griffith, who believes amendments to the Citizenship Act — requiring one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident to grant the baby citizenship — are warranted.

Several polls on the topic show significant support for amendments. In 2019, Angus Reid Institute, for example, reported “two-thirds (64%) say a child born to parents who are in this country on tourist visas should not be granted Canadian citizenship, and six in ten (60%) say changes to Canada’s citizenship laws are necessary to discourage birth tourism.”

Some critics of proposed changes contend people are unfairly targeting disadvantaged foreign women.

University of Carleton associate law professor Megan Gaucher was provided $223,328 from the federal government in June 2021 to research “how constructions of foreignness undermine the longstanding assumption that formal legal citizenship is an uncontested condition for membership to the Canadian state and explore how political and public discourse around birth tourism ultimately reproduces settler-colonial imaginaries of ‘good’ familial citizens.”

Gaucher says proposed measures “risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence.”

Griffith has contested such views, noting birth tourists are “not disadvantaged women; they are people who have money to travel here and pay all the related expenses.”

In B.C., refugees and temporary foreign workers would not be categorized as self-paying births. And figures in B.C. also do not count international students, who are covered by the province’s Medical Services Plan. Hence, the “non-resident self-pay” numbers are a more accurate depiction of the practice, Griffith notes.

Conversely, others such as Michael Juneau-Katsuya, CSIS’s former chief of the Asia-Pacific, have shared contrasting opinions on the emerging phenomenon.

Juneau-Katsuya told Glacier Media he sees birth tourism as a national security threat. He suggests the People’s Republic of China may document and monitor returning children and utilize them as agents of the communist state should they return to Canada as adults.

Still, others have expressed concerns that there may be a cumulative impact on returning citizens who may utilize Canada’s social safety nets and reap benefits of citizenship without investing time in the country. Those concerns are in addition to the added stress birth tourism places on the health-care system.

Source: Birth tourism showing post-pandemic rebound in B.C.

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Impact of birth tourism on health caresystems in Calgary, Alberta

2022/02/19 Leave a comment

This is exactly the kind of detail that is needed for regions and hospitals that have high numbers of non-resident births.

Some highlights of the study from my perspective:

  • 102/227 patients were identified as birth tourist (45 percent)
  • 83% of patients stated they came to Canada with a Visitor Visa
  • Country of origin: Nigeria (25%), Middle East (18%) China (11%), and India (8%) and Mexico (6%), none from Western Europe or Australia
  • 77% stated that their primary reason to deliver their baby in Canada was for the the baby to be eligible for Canadian citizenship, while only 8% stated their reason to deliver in Canada was to access better health care
  • Almost a third of women had a known preexisting medical condition
  • 29 mothers and 17 newborns had unpaid invoices, $290,000 and $404,000 respectively at the time the report was written.

More kind of this detailed analysis by medical professionals and researchers is needed rather than the legal and policy analyses that diminish the issue (disclosure the researchers and I have been in contact over the past few years).

Hospitals where studies would be useful would be for the top ten hospitals with the largest percentage of non-resident births:

Funding should be provided for these kind of empirical studies rather than for more ideological studies such as the one underway by Megan Gaucher, Jamie Lieu and Amanda Cheong (Insight Grant 2021 Birth Tourism and Citizenship):

Background:  Birth  tourism  refers  to  non-resident  women  giving  birth  in  a  country  outside  of  their  own  in  order  to obtain  citizenship  and/or  healthcare  for  their  newborns. We  undertook  a  study  to  determine  the  extent  of  birth  tourism  in  Calgary,  the  characteristics  and  rationale  of  this  population,  and  the  fnancial  impact  on  the  healthcare  system.

Methods:  A  retrospective  analysis  of  102  women  identifed  through  a  Central Triage  system  as  birth  tourists  who delivered  in  Calgary  between  July  2019  and  November  2020  was  performed.  Primary  outcome  measures  were  mode of  delivery,  length  of  hospital  stay,  complications  or  readmissions  within  6  weeks  for  mother  or  baby,  and  NICU  stay for  baby.

Results:  Birth Tourists  were  most  commonly  from  Nigeria  (24.5%).  77%  of  Birth Tourists  stated  that  their  primary  reason  to  deliver  their  baby  in  Canada  was  for  newborn  Canadian  citizenship. The  average  time  from  arrival  in  Calgary  to the  EDD  was  87  days.  Nine  babies  required  stay  in  the  neonatal  intensive  care  unit  (NICU)  and  3  required  admission  to a  non  NICU  hospital  ward  in  frst  6  weeks  of  life,  including  2  sets  of  twins. The  overall  amount  owed  to  Alberta  Health Services  for  hospital  fees  for  this  time  period  is  approximately  $694  000.00.

Conclusion:  Birth Tourists  remain  a  complex  and  poorly  studied  group. The  process  of  Central Triage  did  help  suport  providers  in  standardizing  process  and  documentation  while  ensuring  that  communication  was  consistent. These  fndings  provide  preliminary  data  to  guide  targeted  public  health  and  policy  interventions  for  this  population.

Source: Impact of birth tourism on health care systems in Calgary, Alberta

Filed under Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , , , ,

ICYMI: Insight Grant 2021 Birth Tourism and #Citizenship – Activist or Academic?

2022/01/22 Leave a comment

Some background of possible interest to this grant.

My initial 2018 analysis (Hospital Stats Show Birth Tourism Rising in Major Cities) provoked rebuttals from Jamie Lieu and Megan Gaucher.

While part of their arguments concerned my interpretation of the data (largely addressed given the sharp drop in visitor visas covered in my Birth Tourism in Canada Dropped Sharply Once the Pandemic Began), the bulk of their arguments were on policy grounds where we disagree.

Ironically, we had submitted a joint-proposal in 2019 for funding research looking at the policy issues, but were unsuccessful. It has now been successfully resurrected with the original researchers but without my “contrarian” presence and thus may well lack balance given the common perspective of the researchers.

Their concern that “proposed measures risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence” is somewhat ironic as they contest the best evidence that we have regarding the likely numbers of birth tourists.

As a whole, the proposal reinforces critiques of universities and academics not having a diversity of views and perspectives in their work:

Birth tourist is a term used for non-resident mothers (NRMs) who come to Canada with the sole purpose of giving birth so that their child has a claim to Canadian birthright citizenship.

“They are accused of undermining Canada’s jus soli citizenship laws and subsequently labelled ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘system cheaters,’” says Megan Gaucher. “While both completely legal and statistically low, birth tourism continues to be identified by political parties as an issue in need of remedy.”

Gaucher, an associate professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies, has been awarded a five-year $223,328 SSHRC Insight grant for the project, “Mapping the Discursive and Institutional Landscape of ‘Birth Tourism’ and its Perceived Attack on Canadian Birthright Citizenship.”

“Proposed measures have focused almost exclusively on refusing automatic citizenship to children born on Canadian soil unless one of the parents is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident,” says Gaucher. “Calls for legislative action however, remain reliant on an incomplete picture of the prevalence of and motivations for engaging in birth tourism, the socio-legal structures that facilitate it and the implications current political and public discourse present for NRMs.”

The project will provide the first comprehensive mapping of the state of birth tourism in Canada. Gaucher — along with team members Jamie Chai Yun Liew (University of Ottawa), Y.Y. Chen (University of Ottawa) and Amanda Cheong (University of British Columbia) — will conduct interviews with NRMs and their family members, birth tourism industry insiders, health care practitioners, government officials and local residents.

These interviews will be complemented by an analysis of pre-existing government data, Parliamentary Hansard, birth tourism promotional materials and media coverage from mainstream and ethnic media. “Current conversations about birth tourism tend to rely on data from health facilities,” says Gaucher. “Our project will bring together experts in political science, law, health and sociology to critically interrogate how multiple socio-legal spaces are used to both criminalize and restrict access to NRMs and their future children.”

This study will explore how constructions of foreignness undermine the longstanding assumption that formal legal citizenship is an uncontested condition for membership to the Canadian state and explore how political and public discourse around birth tourism ultimately reproduces settler-colonial imaginaries of “good” familial citizens.

“As debate around birth tourism in Canada and the appropriate policy responses continue to unfold against a backdrop of knowledge gaps, proposed measures risk being driven by polarizing narratives about borders and citizenship rather than by evidence,” she says.

Source: Friday, June 18, 2021 in Department of Law and Legal Studies, News, Research
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A dangerous discourse prevails that draws on long-standing racist ideas about who deserves citizenship. Better data and a new focus are needed.

2020/01/18 Leave a comment

The latest in response to CBC’s Fifth Estate birth tourism episode with the same issue of conflating issues related to wealthy “birth tourists” and the cottage industry that supports them and those pertaining to other temporary residents, which appears to be the main focus of this and related articles. Working on a piece to unpack this and related data issues:

The phrase “birth tourism” has been used by media and political parties to derogatively describe the circumstances in which noncitizen women come to Canada to give birth; the suspicion is that the women do this so that the children can claim citizenship and thus take advantage of their birth country’s education and health care systems, and eventually the children can sponsor their parents to immigrate. At its 2018 convention, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) went so far as to pass a nonbinding resolution to refuse automatic birthright citizenship to children born to two nonresident parents, as a solution to the “crisis” of birth tourism. Echoing these sentiments, a recent investigation of birth tourism by the CBC’s Fifth Estate drew three conclusions: Canadian birth tourism is on the rise, it demands a legislative response, and it is a disingenuous pathway to citizenship

All three of The Fifth Estate’s conclusions are flawed, and they have serious implications for those pregnant migrant women who are being labelled birth tourists.

Take the argument that birth tourism is on the rise. Neither the Canada Border Services Agency nor Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada tracks the entry of pregnant nonresidents into the country. Moreover, hospitals are not legally required to inquire about the mother’s nationality, as it is not a prerequisite for a birth certificate. Researchers at the Canadian Institute for Health Information have developed a workaround based on hospital financial data, which include a code for services provided to nonresidents (“other country resident self-pay”). These data show that 3,628 births (1.2 percent of total births) in Canada(not including Quebec) in 2017 were to nonresident mothers. They also show that this number has doubled since 2010 but is geographically focused, primarily in 25 hospitals in Ontario and British Columbia (with comparable numbers in Montreal). But this is only a proxy measure for birth tourism, because it includes international students, migrant workers, those with work visas and foreign government personnel, all of whom could have given birth in Canada, but whose entry into the country was not likely a product of birth tourism.

Nevertheless, the focus on birth tourism has persisted. Parliamentary petitions to refuse birthright citizenship to children born to two nonresident parents were sponsored by Conservative MP Alice Wong in 2012 and in 2018 by Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido. The Fifth Estate segment is the latest in a series of media investigations into the perceived dangers birth tourism presents, not for the pregnant migrant women at the heart of this narrative but for the integrity of Canada’s immigration system and Canadian citizenship at large.

Birth tourism does happen, but the available numbers do not suggest a trend in need of government action — especially action in the form of birthright citizenship refusal. Ministers of both parties reached the conclusion that no measures were necessary: in 2012, it was the Conservative minister of citizenship and immigration, Jason Kenney, and in 2018, the Liberal minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, Ahmed Hussen. The two MPs’ parliamentary petitions failed to gain any legislative traction; provincial legislatures in Ontario and British Columbia also voted against legislative action. Even the CPC opted not to include any mention of birth tourism in its 2019 electoral platform, despite its convention resolution. The continued focus on birth tourism misrepresents the actual urgency of birth tourism, and ultimately this harms nonresident pregnant women by casting them as illegitimate and glossing over the barriers they face with the Canadian immigration system.

Temporary residents often migrate with their families or stay in Canada for prolonged periods — years — and form intimate personal relationships in their Canadian communities.

Discussion of nonresident births must be contextualized within broader immigration trends and the limitations on access to health care. The number of temporary residents arriving in Canada has steadily increased, and many of these people will pursue permanent residency through programs such as the Canadian Experience Class and contribute substantially to the social and economic well-being of their communities and the country.

For nonresidents temporarily residing in Canada, access to public health insurance depends on their immigration category. For example, international students’ access to health coverage in Quebec is limited by nationality; in Ontario and Manitoba it is not available to holders of study permits. For temporary workers, coverage is restricted based on the type or duration of work permit and can require a three-month wait period. Furthermore, people with temporary-resident visas or who are without formal status do not qualify for any medical coverage whatsoever. People enter and live in Canada with temporary resident visas for all kinds of reasons, including to live with their spouse while waiting for their family sponsorship applications to be processed. Temporary residents often migrate with their families or stay in Canada for prolonged periods — years — and form intimate personal relationships in their Canadian communities. The desire to have a family and children is widely considered a natural aspiration that all people should be free to pursue alongside studying and working. While many nonresidents can access public health insurance, access is not universal — a distinction not addressed in the current data. Our research, which is still ongoing, shows that when nonresident women without insurance arrive at a hospital or clinic seeking perinatal care, they are often assumed to be “birth tourists” and treated as if they are unfairly taking advantage of Canada’s health care and immigration systems.

While technically legal, birth tourism is presented as a way to jump the immigration queue by utilizing a disingenuous pathway to Canadian citizenship, and ultimately taking away resources from more “deserving” and “committed” Canadian citizens. MP Wong spoke in favour of the nonbinding convention resolution, saying that “passport babies” take away resources from Canada’s system and that Canada should “fight for our own babies.” This framing of so-called birth tourists and their children as system cheaters is part of a larger trend of criminalizing migrants using the language of deservedness, desirability and illegality to pit “undeserving” migrants against the generosity of Canadians. To this end, birth tourists and their children are marked as less desirable because they are using what is thought of as an improper — albeit legal — channel to obtain Canadian citizenship.

Claims of deservedness suggest that citizens must have an ongoing commitment and obligation to Canada, and children being born as a result of birth tourism are said to disrupt this because there is no way for them to actively demonstrate a clear connection to their acquired status once they’re adults. This, however, is not the defining feature of birthright citizenship: Canadian-born citizens do not actively commit to their status. Moreover, political scientists Rita Dhamoon and Sunera Thobani, among others, conclude that Canadian-born citizens — specifically white Canadian-born citizens — rarely undergo ongoing evaluations of their commitment to the Canadian state. How, then, do we reconcile this double standard where Canadian children born to nonresident parents are held to different, and arguably unrealistic, expectations around citizenship than those born to resident parents? The unspoken accusation here is that “undesirable” migrants are using a legal channel to claim Canadian citizenship.

The result is that nonresident pregnant women are framed as potential perpetrators of migration or citizenship fraud. While available data do not distinguish between racialized and nonracialized mothers, most media and political analysis focuses on racialized birth mothers. This echoes the historical treatment of nonwhite and non-European immigrants as a security concern. For example, Canada’s heavily racialized temporary foreign worker programs have largely restricted family migration and permanent settlement, and there has been increased scrutiny of our family sponsorship program as officials look for marriage fraud. It is important to also consider how this narrative draws on broader problematic perceptions of racialized (and other marginalized) women as not making “ethical” reproductive decisions: for example, choosing to have children to procure state resources for themselves. Considering that the evidence does not support the broad claim that birth tourism is an imminent threat to the country, we question whether it is an issue in need of a legislative response or simply a dog whistle that calls back long-standing sexist and racist immigration legacies that perpetuate the criminalization and surveillance of racialized pregnant nonresident women.

More research needs to be done on birth tourism. Rather than furthering narratives that demonize and criminalize nonresident mothers as birth tourists, we need to shift the focus to how these women’s experiences are eclipsed as a result of this dangerous discourse. Marking these women as queue jumpers and citizenship fraudsters ignores the real-life obstacles they encounter within the health care system and the Canadian immigration system. In our research, we find that these women face challenges accessing perinatal care, building trusted relationships in health care settings and having their voices heard. They pay high hospital and doctor fees, resulting in situations where they forgo necessary care at their own personal risk. It is this crisis rather than the perceived crisis of birth tourism that is in need of further legislative attention.

Source: Birth tourism and the demonizing of pregnant migrant women                                                                

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with ,