Maternity Tourism Trend Witnesses Steep Fall Amid Rising Covid Cases
Travelling overseas to deliver a baby has now become a popular tactic to get citizenship of another country. Maternity tourism trend is an emerging concept wherein firms offer foreign women the opportunity to visit another country on a tourist visa. For a steep fee, they offer women proper healthcare facilities to deliver the baby, acquire citizenship and then leave.
A little before Covid-19 spread its arms wide across the world in March 2020, many Western countries, including the US and Canada witnessed a major spike in the number of non-resident births. Data released by health officials revealed that 2019 was a year of positive transformations in maternity tourism trend.
Between April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020, Canada witnessed a 21.9% hike in maternity tourism. Easy availability of advanced healthcare facilities in the US has led woman from all over the world to travel to the US and claim birth right citizenship for their child. Statistics revealed that most of the tourists coming with the intention to gain citizenship are from China.
Due to ongoing flight restrictions amid Covid-19, maternity tourism businesses are witnessing a major downfall. Since most visitor visas were from China, which was deep into the grip of the virus in the initial part of the year, businesses were down by as much as 99.79% till June 2019.
Upon garnering an unreasonable popularity of maternity tourism trend, the US passed a new rule in January 2019 stating that travel to the US with the primary purpose of obtaining citizenship for a child by giving birth in the country is an impermissible basis” for a tourist visa.
Despite this law, several maternity tourism businesses attract foreign women by offering them multiple benefits. In recent news, the American authorities charged six people in an elaborate ‘birth tourism’ scheme that helped Turkish women to get US citizenship for their children.
Prosecutors claimed that the firm offering such services advertised its services on Turkish-language Facebook pages and various websites with titles such as ‘My baby should be born in America’.
One major loophole in US’ rule for birth tourism is that it only applies to countries whose citizens require a visa for entering the country. This implies that it doesn’t affect 39 countries whose citizens can visit the US without a visa for up to 90 days.
On the contrary, maternity tourism trend is technically legal in Canada, provided the pregnant woman provides all legal documents barring any false information. The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has clearly stated that “non-residents giving birth in Canada is not considered fraud under the Citizenship Act”. Moreover, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act clearly stated that any person can’t be denied visa solely because she is pregnant.
In recent times, experts have assessed a drop in the US’ maternity tourism numbers. This is mainly because expensive hospital costs and lack of proper government support have encouraged many pregnant women in the US to deliver their baby outside the country. The loss in revenue from medical tourism and specifically maternity tourism trend has affected the US’ economy, which is currently badly hit due to the pandemic.
Even though the distribution of Covid-19 vaccine might boost confidence of travellers planning leisure trips, people are still hesitant to go travel for healthcare.
