A California woman has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for organizing a Chinese birth tourism scheme.
Phoebe Dong, 47, was sentenced to 41 months in prison and immediately taken into custody in Los Angeles on Monday.
Dong and her husband’s “USA Happy Baby” business helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to give birth so that their children would have automatic United States citizenship.
Dong and her husband, Michael Wei Yueh Liu, 59, were both convicted of conspiracy and money laundering in September. The couple helped at least 100 women travel to the U.S. to give birth.
Liu was also sentenced to 41 months in prison in December.
The Department of Justice said in a press release after their convictions:
According to evidence presented at a four-day trial, from at least January 2012 to March 2015, Liu and Dong ran a maternity house in Rancho Cucamonga. Liu and Dong rented apartment units in Southern California to provide short-term housing and provided other services to pregnant women from China who traveled to the United States to give birth so their children would acquire U.S. citizenship. Typically, within one or two months after giving birth, the women returned to China.
Among the services Liu and Dong provided was assistance on how to obtain visas to enter the United States, customs entry guidance, housing, and transportation in the United States, as well as assistance applying for U.S. legal documents for the children of their customers.
Liu and Dong advised their customers on how to hide their pregnancies from the immigration authorities. Liu and Dong also knew – or deliberately avoided learning – that their customers lied on their visa applications submitted to immigration authorities to enter the U.S.
Generally, their customers’ visa applications falsely stated that the purpose of the trip to the United States was for tourism, when it was to give birth, and the length of the stay was days or weeks, when it was in fact months. The visas also misstated the location where the customers intended to stay, which was defendants’ maternity hotel.
Trump issued an executive order redefining birthright citizenship within hours of taking office so that at least one parent must be a U.S. citizen for it to apply.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported:
There are some 33,000 births in the US to foreign nationals each year.
Another 39,000 babies are born to foreign students, guest workers and other long-term temporary visa holders.
And, an additional 300,000 babies are born to illegal aliens each year in the United States.
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