Chinese parents pay U.S. women to carry citizenship babies

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Chinese nationals are increasingly turning to California’s unregulated surrogacy industry to secure U.S. citizenship for their children, paying American women to carry their babies before returning to China. This practice differs from the illegal “baby broker” operations that help pregnant Chinese women give birth in the United States.

The arrangement, which costs approximately $200,000 with surrogates receiving around $70,000, automatically grants the newborn U.S. citizenship, regardless of the family’s immediate return to China.

Chinese nationals are reportedly using the largely unregulated surrogacy industry in the United States — specifically California— to rent the wombs of American women and take the babies back to China. https://t.co/Sw2yi7rQtI

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 24, 2025

Joseph McNally, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, expressed significant concerns about this practice. He cited a specific instance where a child born through this process later joined the Chinese military while maintaining U.S. citizenship. “That provides a real national security asset to China. And a real problem to the United States,” McNally said.

Parham Zar, who owns the Egg Donor and Surrogacy Institute in Beverly Hills, revealed that Chinese clients once comprised 90% of their business. “It is a misnomer in this field that people are just coming here to be a U.S. citizen,” he said. “I haven’t met anyone who had nefarious intentions of having a child. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to go through this process.”

The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 report, “The New Face of Birth Tourism: Chinese Nationals, American Surrogates, and Birthright Citizenship,” provides context for this trend. The report states:

“Commercial surrogacy is illegal in China. In 2016, China lifted its restrictive one-child policy, but little changed in the childbearing outcomes of its citizens. Desperate to spur childbearing amid a looming demographic crisis, some provinces have even lifted restrictions that made it difficult and costly for children of unmarried parents to obtain a hukou—the household registration document that largely determines the child’s access to education and social services. The changes enable unmarried men and women to bear children without a financial penalty. This opened the door further for the Chinese to commission surrogate-born children in the United States. Nevertheless, birth rates continue to decline.”

The report highlights how American fertility organizations actively cultivate this international market, particularly in California, where many agencies maintain offices in both the U.S. and China, offering services in both English and Mandarin.

Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) has criticized the practice, describing it as “incredibly strange and dystopian.” She emphasized the need for national dialogue: “I just think we need to be having a national dialogue as to whether we think this is ethical, whether we think that this is appropriate. Whether we should be interpreting our own laws to be allowing the buying and selling of children essentially or the buying and selling of wombs.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement continues to combat illegal birth tourism operations in California. These underground operations charge upwards of $100,000 to house pregnant Chinese women in luxury accommodations throughout Los Angeles suburbs. According to McNally, this illegal system has resulted in approximately 30,000 Chinese babies obtaining U.S. citizenship.

“These were criminal enterprises that operated here in the United States and also people in China who would recruit,” McNally said. “The organizers here had contacts at hospitals and had contacts there. It was an industry. The organizers of these schemes were responsible for the birth tourism of thousands of babies. They had a system in place.”

CHINESE BABY FARMS l CALIFORNIA

RENT A WOMB

Brian Entin with NewsMax discovered this alarming story of our birthright citizenship being abused by Chinese nationals who rent American wombs. pic.twitter.com/MdegZj7vqj

— Sarah Sansoni (@sarahsansoni) March 24, 2025