Robert Zhou and Daisy Chao, a husband and wife from Taiwan who now live in Shanghai, run one of China's oldest and most successful consultancies helping well-heeled expectant Chinese mothers travel to the United States to give birth.
For the $1,475 basic fee, Zhou and Chao will arrange for a three-month stay in one of three Chinese-owned "baby care centers" in California. -- two months before the birth and a month after. A room with cable TV and a wireless Internet connection, plus three meals, starts at $35 a day. The doctors and staff all speak Chinese. There are shopping and sightseeing trips.
The mothers must pay their own airfare and are responsible for getting a U.S. visa, although Zhou and Chao will help them fill out the application form.
U.S. officials confirm that it is not a crime to travel to the United States to give birth so that the child can have U.S. citizenship.
Zhou, a former marketing director, and Chao, a former television producer in Taiwan, said they have helped between 500 and 600 mothers give birth to American babies in the five years they have been in business..
About 40 percent of their clients come from Shanghai, 30 percent from Beijing and the rest from Guangzhou and elsewhere, including Taiwan. And all are affluent, Zhou and Chao said. Unlike the poor illegal immigrants from Central America who try to cross the border to have their babies in the United States, Zhou said, these Chinese parents fly in on first-class seats.
"They also do some shopping," he said, "so they are contributing to the economy."
pollution," Chuo said. "We thought it would put us in a good mood looking at the nice scenery, the hills and the water." (Source: Keith B. Richburg with Wang Juan, Washington Post, Jul 18, 2010).