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04-23-2015, 01:06 PM #1
Woman in 'birth tourism' case arrested at LAX as she tries to fly back to China
Woman in 'birth tourism' case arrested at LAX as she tries to fly back to China
April 22, 2015
Updated April 23, 2015 7:00 a.m.VIEW SLIDESHOFederal agents enter an apartment complex suspected of catering to maternity tourism travelers.JAE C. HONG, THE ASSOCIATED PRESSBY SCOTT SCHWEBKE / STAFF WRITER
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Birth tourism: An Irvine company makes $2 million in 2013 enticing foreign women to give birth to hundreds of babies in O.C., feds say
Federal agents raid homes, some in Irvine, in crackdown on pregnant Chinese women traveling to U.S. to give birth
IRVINE – A Chinese woman, a federal witness in an ongoing investigation into the birth tourism industry, is under arrest after trying to leave the U.S. with her newborn American son.
Ying Wu, 31, was taken into custody April 15 at Los Angeles International Airport by Homeland Security Investigations agents as she, her husband and the baby prepared to board a plane to Beijing.
Her arrest comes amid a large-scale federal investigation of several Southern California companies accused of persuading pregnant Chinese women to lie on visa applications so their babies can be born on U.S. soil.
At least one company seems to be continuing to solicit such business, with a website that’s active in Taiwan. The websites for other companies connected to the early March crackdown aren’t active.
Wu is a material witness in the government’s case. She was arrested after being ordered to remain in the U.S., said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
About two dozen women have been retained as material witnesses.
Wu, who on Friday appeared in a Santa Ana federal court, is free on a $10,000 unsecured bond. She is under house arrest at an undisclosed location, wearing a GPS monitoring device, Mrozek said.
Her husband, who has not been identified, and their baby also remain in the U.S., Mrozek added.
The arrest has been upsetting for Wu, said her Newport Beach attorney, T. Edward Welbourn.
“She is in some turmoil right now ... She wants to return to her family,” Welbourn said Wednesday.
Wu’s arrest follows a March raid by federal agents of about three dozen residences in Irvine, Mission Viejo, Rancho Cucamonga, Rowland Heights and Walnut connected to the burgeoning maternity tourism industry.
Authorities are looking for evidence of visa and tax fraud, money laundering and conspiracy involving three suspected maternity tourism companies, You Win USA Vacation Resort, USA Happy Baby Inc. and Star Baby Care. No charges have been filed against any company.
“Our focus is doing forensics on computers and a broad array of documents,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We have interviewed a significant number of witnesses and are in the process of culling through the evidence.”
Star Baby Care is the only one of the three companies with an active website. On Wednesday, the site touted Irvine as an exceptional place for mothers to give birth, mentioning the city’s low crime rate and proximity to shopping and restaurants.
The residences raided in March housed women believed to have each paid tens of thousands of dollars to maternity tourism companies that promoted American citizenship, free education and other perks for U.S.-born babies.
As part of the package, women were told their children would get Social Security numbers and U.S. passports that they could take with them when they left the U.S. After the U.S.-born children reach adulthood, they can then apply for visas for family members living abroad.
It is unclear how many of the women have given birth since March and returned to China or still remain in Southern California.
Maternity tourism operators have advertised their services in China, charging fees ranging from $15,000 to $50,000, according to affidavits from ICE.
The more the client paid, the more perks the women got, including trips to Disneyland, shopping malls and outings to a firing range.
Authorities estimate those who ran You Win USA Vacation Resort in Irvine made $2 million in 2013 and helped women give birth to 400 children in Orange County, the affidavits state.
It is not illegal for foreign nationals to give birth in the United States.
But authorities allege operators instructed their clients to deceive the federal government on visa applications and make false claims of indigence to get lower fees for health services.
In some cases, according to the affidavits, the women were told what to wear to hide their pregnancies at airports to avoid questions about the purpose of their visits.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7767 or sschwebke@ocregister.com. On Twitter: @thechalkoutline
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/w...ism-birth.html
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04-23-2015, 01:25 PM #2
Really? Get them out of here. How can the federal government detain a foreign national as a "witness" to birthing in the US which isn't even against the law? Federal authorities have no right to question a tourist about their personal privacy, such as whether or not they are pregnant. That's blatant discrimination against women. If you don't want anchor babies, then tell Congress to pass the law that bans states giving citizenship to children of non-permanent residents and more importantly bans the federal government from recognizing such births as citizenship births. But to detain a woman who came here to have a baby and did so well within her rights as a visitor to the United States so she can be a witness to some income tax scam? This detainment defies every civil right this country has ever stood up for, so take a deposition, cut her loose and get the whole kit and caboodle out of here.
What in the hell is wrong with you people? We have 20 million illegal aliens stealing jobs, filing phony income tax returns to get tax credit welfare, 71% or more are signed up on welfare benefits, stealing seats in college, dragging down our education and health care institutions, running drugs in and hauling our money supply out of the country, killing and robbing Americans, all the while running up our national debt to pay for this crap, and you're worried about some gawd damn income tax scam and are violating someone's liberty to be held here in our country against their will to be a "witness" presumably AFTER you've handed their anchor baby a US passport??!!
You people make me want to puke.
FairTax Now!!
And while you're at it, defund all these stupid US Attorney's Offices. I've yet to see a case out of any of them that I agreed with. Stop wasting our time and money on this garbage, and focus on removing the 20 million illegal aliens in this country sucking US dry as a bone.Last edited by Judy; 04-23-2015 at 01:29 PM.
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04-23-2015, 03:16 PM #3
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It seems that the "tourist" may have put themselves in an either or situation. Either help us stop the bad guys or you can be prosecuted for deceiving us on visa's app and lying about needing "welfare" assistance! Lie to me once, shame on you, lie to me twice, shame on me.
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04-23-2015, 03:41 PM #4
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SOUNDS LIKE CRIMINAL ACTIVITY TO ME.
http://www.alipac.us/f12/chinese-%91...-bills-318133/NO AMNESTY
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04-23-2015, 05:17 PM #5
Well, in our country, not paying a hospital bill or any other bill isn't "criminal activity". It's a civil matter and the hospitals and any other business they owe money to are free to put debt collectors on them and/or sue them and obtain a judgment against them. Again, there are 20 million illegal aliens skipping out on far more hospital bills than this and the federal government wants to give them work permits, tax credits, welfare and a path to citizenship.
From your article:
In most cases, Chen and Li’s customers either fail to pay anything or pay a greatly-reduced amount designed for indigent or low income patients lacking insurance, which is often ony approximately $4,000 per birth. During the approximately two years from January 2013 to presents, more than 400 children linked to Chen and Li’s visa fraud scheme were born at just one of the local Orange County hospitals used by Chen and Li’s customers.
If each of the 400 customers paid nothing or the $4,000 minimal rate, the local Orange County hospital would have been shorted $10 million or more in hospital birthing service bills.
The problem here isn't the Chinese women, and the US Attorney's Office is grasping at straws given the fact that tens of millions of births in this country by foreigners who aren't supposed to be here have occurred, none have paid their hospital bills, when these women actually had legal visas to be here and apparently paid around $4,000 to the hospital.
So what is happening here is discrimination against the Chinese women for different treatment than is handed out to Mexicans and Hispanics and other Illegal Aliens from all over the world every frigging day.
The PROBLEM is granting automatic birthright citizenship to babies of non-citizens who are not legal permanent residents of the United States. And no amount of dancing or prancing around against the Chinese women is going to change that fact. We need to pass David Vitter's legislation in the Senate and Steve King's bill in the House and grind this crap to a halt.
Ironically, it is the 14th Amendment that protects these Chinese women from prosecution, because it is clearly a discriminatory case against them, given the millions of others of different ethnic origins who are not only covered by Medicaid but handed other benefits to go with it, "welcomed" and given the new title of "New Americans".
So if I were the lawyers representing the Chinese women, I would file a 14th Amendment race discrimination suit against the US Attorney's Office, every federal agency involved, and the federal government as a whole.Last edited by Judy; 04-23-2015 at 05:36 PM.
A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
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04-23-2015, 05:51 PM #6
. . . Police also said that licensed operators could be fined for harboring individuals found guilty of immigration fraud, social welfare fraud or money laundering, Yu said.
Under US law, although it is not illegal for pregnant foreign nationals to give birth on US soil, it is illegal to conceal a pregnancy when applying for an entry visa.
US immigration officials said that the stepped-up investigation into Chinese post-natal care centers is aimed at countering a wide range of criminal activity including immigration fraud, where individuals have entered the US on tourist visas under false pretenses, defrauding social welfare benefits, where post-natal care centers help clients apply for public services such as medicare and money laundering, where post natal-care centers receive payments from their clients through bank wires and checks for illicit services rendered. . .
US authorities crack down on Chinese maternity tourism
@ http://www.alipac.us/f12/chinese-%91...-bills-318133/NO AMNESTY
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04-23-2015, 08:21 PM #7
Did Medicaid/Medicare pay for these 400 births?
Here's an article about Medicaid and illegal aliens:
http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/med...mergency-care/
Medicaid Helps Hospitals Pay For Illegal Immigrants’ Care
By Phil Galewitz February 12, 2013
Federal law generally bars illegal immigrants from being covered by Medicaid. But a little-known part of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor has long paid about $2 billion a year for emergency treatment for a group of patients who, according to hospitals, mostly comprise illegal immigrants.
The lion’s share goes to reimburse hospitals for delivering babies for women who show up in their emergency rooms, according to interviews with hospital officials and studies.
The funding — which has been around since the late 1980s and is less than 1 percent of the cost of Medicaid — underscores the political and practical challenges of refusing to cover an entire class of people. Congress approved the program after lawmakers required hospitals to screen and stabilize all emergency patients regardless of their insurance or citizenship status.
Some groups say the services encourage people to cross the border for care, while advocates for immigrants say the funding is inadequate because it doesn’t pay for prenatal care and other vital services.
“We can’t turn them away,” said Joanne Aquilina, the chief financial officer of Bethesda Healthcare System in Boynton Beach, Fla., which sees many illegal immigrants because of its proximity to farms where they harvest sugarcane and other seasonal crops.
Nearly one-third of Bethesda Hospital East’s 2,900 births each year are paid for by Emergency Medicaid, the category that covers mainly illegal immigrants. The category includes a small proportion of homeless people and legal immigrants who’ve been in the country less than five years.
Hospitals can’t ask patients whether they’re illegal immigrants, but instead determine that after checking whether they have Social Security numbers, birth certificates or other documents.
“We gather information to qualify patients for something and through that process, if you really hit a dead end, you know they are illegal,” said Steve Short, the chief financial officer at Tampa General Hospital.
A 2007 medical article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 99 percent of those who used Emergency Medicaid during a four-year period in North Carolina were thought to be illegal immigrants.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to limit immigration, said the funding led more women to give birth in the United States, especially since they knew that children born here would be American citizens. The group believes that tens of thousands of “anchor babies” are born each year to illegal immigrants who hope that giving birth to children recognized as citizens will help the women gain legal status themselves.
Anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. It’s unclear how many mothers later get green cards or become citizens.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform doesn’t dispute hospitals’ right to be reimbursed for care they’re required to provide.
“Our focus should be that you could save this money if you prevent the illegal immigration from happening in the first place. You can’t do it after the fact,” said Jack Martin, the special projects director for the organization.
Groups that advocate for immigrants say it’s foolish for Medicaid to pay only for the births and not for the prenatal care that might prevent costly and long-term complications for American children.
“It’s a lose, lose, lose,” said Sonal Ambegaokar, a health policy lawyer at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for low-income immigrants. She said denying broad insurance coverage to legal immigrants hurt doctors and hospitals financially, prevented patients from getting needed care and increased costs for the health system.
“There is no evidence that Emergency Medicaid is the cause of migration,” Ambegaokar said. “Immigrants migrate to the U.S. for job opportunities and reunifying with family members.”
Data that Kaiser Health News collected from seven states that are thought to have the highest numbers of illegal immigrants show that the funding pays for emergency services delivered to more than 100,000 people a year.
California hospitals get about half the $2 billion spent annually on Emergency Medicaid. The rest is spread mainly among a handful of states.
In 2011, for example:
- New York spent $528 million on Emergency Medicaid for nearly 30,000 people.
- Texas reported 240,000 claims costing $331 million. (One person could be responsible for multiple claims.)
- Florida spent $214 million on 31,000 patients.
- North Carolina spent $48 million on about 19,000 people.
- Arizona spent $115 million. It couldn’t break out the number of people.
- Illinois spent $25 million on the cost of care to nearly 2,000 people.
The federal government doesn’t require states to report how many people receive services through Emergency Medicaid payments to hospitals.
Legal immigrants who’ve been in the United States less than five years aren’t eligible for regular Medicaid coverage, though states have the option of extending it to children and pregnant women.
Despite the surge in overall Medicaid spending in the past decade, Emergency Medicaid costs have been remarkably stable. A 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office that looked at data from the 10 states with the highest expected Emergency Medicaid costs, reported $2 billion in spending. State officials say spending varies depending on immigration patterns and that during the economic slowdown, the number of illegal immigrants dropped.
The definition of emergency care and the scope of services available through the Medicaid programs vary by state. For example, in New York, Emergency Medicaid may be used to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy to illegal immigrants. In New York, California and North Carolina, it may be used to provide outpatient dialysis to undocumented patients.
Other states have tried to narrow the definition of “emergency” to limit what’s covered. “Each state has its own interpretation,” said Jane Perkins, the legal director of the National Health Law Program, which advocates for the working poor.
Last year, for instance, Florida changed its policy to pay for emergency services for eligible undocumented immigrants only until their conditions had been “stabilized.” Previously, its policy was to pay for care that was “medically necessary to relieve or eliminate the emergency medical condition.”
Many hospitals — particularly those in the immigrant areas of Miami and Tampa — feared the change would cut millions of dollars in funding. An administrative law judge ruled in December that Florida had enacted the change improperly because it didn’t go through a public hearing process; the state is appealing.
Short, the chief financial officer at Tampa General Hospital, said the $10 million the hospital collected each year to treat illegal immigrants was “very important to us.” He noted that Medicaid pays the hospital about $1,500 for each day a Medicaid patient is in the hospital.
Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami collects about $50 million a year in Emergency Medicaid funding, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
pgalewitz@kff.org | @philgalewitz
I would however support a prosecutorial investigation against everyone involved in the more than $2 billion a year of Medicaid money spent on delivering anchor babies. This I would totally support, which means they need to investigate the whole program under Medicaid and investigate every hospital involved that received money for it.
And it goes without saying that pregnancy services should not be covered by Medicaid/Medicare for anyone except US ctizens and legal permanent residents.Last edited by Judy; 04-23-2015 at 08:32 PM.
A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
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04-24-2015, 11:33 AM #8
'Maternity tourism' witness held after trying to board flight to China
By MATT HAMILTONcontact the reporter
Material witness in federal 'maternity tourism' case in custody after trying to leave for Beijing
A material witness in an ongoing federal probe of alleged "maternity tourism" operations in Southern California was arrested after she tried to leave the country, authorities said Thursday.
lRelatedL.A. NOW
'Maternity tourism' raids target California operations catering to Chinese SEE ALL RELATED
Ying Wu was arrested by special agents with the Department of Homeland Security on April 15 at Los Angeles International Airport after she, her infant and her husband were preparing to board a flight bound for Beijing, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.
Wu, 31, appeared Friday before a federal judge, who released her on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Under the terms of her release, Wu must wear a GPS monitor and is confined to house arrest at an undisclosed location.
She has not been formally charged, Mrozek said. Her husband opted to remain in the U.S. with the child.
Last month, scores of federal agents raided properties connected to three alleged maternity tourism schemes, which typically bring Chinese women into the United States on tourist visas so their children will be born U.S. citizens.
Investigators searched apartment complexes in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, hauling out boxes of documents, trash and diaper containers. Agents were looking specifically for indications of visa fraud and other evidence that could show women were coached to falsify documents and claim that they were visiting the U.S. as tourists.
No one has been charged in connection with the investigation, which is ongoing.
Wu is believed to have used the services of an Irvine-based company under investigation, officials said. She is among about two dozen witnesses designated for the government's case.
Her attorney could not be reached for comment.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...423-story.htmlNO AMNESTY
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04-24-2015, 07:29 PM #9
Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:48pm EDT
Material witness in 'maternity tourism' case arrested at L.A. airport
LOS ANGELES | BY DAN WHITCOMB
(Reuters) - A woman considered a material witness in an investigation by U.S. immigration authorities into so-called maternity hotels in Southern California has been arrested while trying to flee the country, prosecutors said on Friday.
Ying Wu, 31, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at Los Angeles International Airport last week while attempting to board a flight to China with her husband and newborn child, U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said.
Wu has not been charged criminally in connection with the investigation into the maternity hotels, which cater to foreign mothers-to-be seeking U.S. citizenship for their babies, but she had been ordered by a judge to remain in the United States on an unsecured $1,000 bond, Mrozek said.
"We received word that she had made plans to leave with her husband and very young child, several weeks old," he said.
"We got an arrest warrant that cited a violation of her release on bond."
Her husband and young child, who are not subject to a court order to remain in the country, were not taken into custody. At a hearing two days after her arrest, a magistrate judge raised Wu's bond to $10,000 and placed her under house arrest with supervision by a GPS device.
Mrozek said several others of the some two dozen women identified as material witnesses in the maternity tourism case had fled the country since search warrants were served in connection with the case.
Federal agents raided about 20 apartment complexes and other sites across Southern California in March suspected in the scheme.
Authorities said at the time that the maternity hotels offered their services largely to women from China who paid $15,000 to $50,000 in hopes of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their children.
More expensive packages "include recreational activities, such as visits to Disneyland, shopping malls and even an outing to a firing range," according to statement by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
No arrests were made at the time and no charges have been filed in the case.
The U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil, regardless of parentage, and immigration experts say there was nothing inherently illegal about women coming from abroad to give birth to children in the United States.
But investigators say they are seeking evidence related to such possible criminal offenses as visa and tax fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0NF24B20150424NO AMNESTY
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05-01-2015, 12:54 AM #10NO AMNESTY
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