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

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.