Travel Agents Arrested for Assisting Foreign Women in Organizing Births in the USA

When pregnant Chinese women called You Win USA Vacation Services, they did not request information about visiting Disneyland or the Grand Canyon. Instead, they were looking for information on how to take a completely different type of trip—a trip that aims to have a child on U.S. soil so that their children can become U.S. citizens.

Фото: Depositphotos

Supposedly, you Win USA Vacation Services employees told women that they had to write in tourist visa applications, hiding their real reason for visiting America, and made sure that women traveled to the United States before their stomachs grew to they will be impossible to hide, writes LA Times.

Women were told that at first they had to fly to Hawaii to mingle with crowds of tourists, and they were advised to indicate the Trump International Hotel in Honolulu as a destination. Then they had to take a flight to Los Angeles (California).

It was a scheme that, according to the federal authorities, lasted for years. But January 31, a tour operator You Win USA and owners of another illegal company specializing in maternity tourism in Southern California, were arrested on charges of immigration fraud, money laundering and identity theft.

The arrests were the final chord of a lengthy investigation conducted by agents of the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service in relation to the three divisions of the tourism campaign, which have been working for many years in Los Angeles, Inland-Imperia and Orange County. They took 100 000 dollars for their services, and Chinese parents were willing to pay this money for their children to receive American citizenship, which in the promotional materials of You Win USA Vacation Services is called “the most attractive citizenship in the world.”

In this case, 41-year-old Dongyuan Lee, the head of You Win USA Vacation Services in Irvine, was arrested; 53-year-old Michael Wei Yue Liu from Cukamong Ranch; and 42-year-old Jing Dong from Fontana, who, according to the investigation, owned and managed a company called USA Happy Baby in San Bernardino.

All three did not plead guilty in court on Thursday afternoon. Lee must be detained pending a hearing. Liu and Dong can be released on bail of 250 000 dollars each.

31 January was also charged by 65-year-old Wen Rui Deng, an American citizen who ran the Star Baby Care Agency in Los Angeles, which was responsible for organizing maternity tourism in the United States. She was not arrested, the investigation suggests that she lives in China.

The charges were also brought against several other people who lied when applying for a US visa in order to eventually have a child in the United States, but all of them are in China.

The government does not keep statistics on maternity tourism, but, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of newborn US citizens from parents with Chinese citizenship is about 36 000 annually.

Childbirth is a legitimate reason to travel to the United States if the traveler provides relevant documents and evidence that he can pay for medical care in America. However, if the application for a visa indicates false the purpose of the visit is fraud. Border agents at major ports of entry, such as Los Angeles International Airport, have tightened security controls for pregnant Chinese women in recent years and occasionally blocked them from entering the country.

Taiwan, Korean, Turkish and Russian future mothers also participate in maternity tourism in the United States, but this practice has become especially popular among the wealthy Chinese middle class.

You managed to establish frauds on the part of You Win USA Vacation Services thanks to a series of raids conducted in March 2015 of the year in dozens of apartments where pregnant women were accommodated and in other places related to generic tourism schemes.

After the raids, the judge ordered several women and their husbands living in these apartments to remain in the country as witnesses in the case. However, many of them fled to China, which led to the bringing of charges against them and their American lawyer, who helped them escape.

At the time of the investigation, a US federal agent, fluent in Chinese, pretended to be a pregnant Chinese woman. During several conversations with a company employee, she was taught how to deceive US immigration officers. She was instructed to fabricate work and training data. These fake documents were later used to complete an application for a US tourist visa. Later in the investigation were included the company Star Baby Care and Happy Baby USA.

It is not known how many women were delivered to the United States by these three agencies. On its website, Star Baby Care boasted of having organized 8 000 maternity trips to the United States since opening in 1999. Lee and Chen told potential customers that they had successfully transported more than 500 pregnant women to the United States.

Women were advised to come to the US before the start of the third trimester of pregnancy and wear loose clothing to hide the pregnancy from immigration officers.

After giving birth, mothers generally stayed in the United States long enough to keep the Chinese custom Yuoxi, a one-month special treatment that limits the diet and lifestyle of a new mother, designed to help her recover from pregnancy.

The document entitled “Strategies to maximize the chances of entry”, which investigators found during a search of You Win USA Vacation Services offices, outlined the features of the company's strategy. For example, women were told that specifying a Trump hotel as their place of residence in the United States would increase the chances of women getting a visa and passing control at the airport.

Among the company's clients were also prominent Chinese officials.

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