© AP Photo/Jerome Favre, File FILE - In this Jan. 26, 2003, file photo, a China Airlines Boeing 747-400 sits on the tarmac at the Chiang Kai-shek International airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan. A … TAIPEI, Taiwan — A Taiwanese woman who gave birth on a flight to the U.S. in what may have been an attempt to give her baby American citizenship could face a hefty bill for forcing the plane to divert to Alaska. The insurance firm of China Airlines will decide whether to ask the unnamed passenger to cover the cost of the stopover to ensure the health of her baby, airline media affairs staffer Weni Lee said Friday. The flight made an emergency landing en route from Taipei to Los Angeles on Oct. 8. Taiwanese media have estimated the bill at $33,000, although the airline said its insurer is still calculating the cost. The local media have widely reported that the woman evidently wanted to give the child American citizenship. Taiwan's China Times newspaper's website said that, before giving birth, she repeatedly asked the cabin crew, "Are we in U.S. air space?" Those comments couldn't be verified, and Lee said she could not confirm whether the passenger had made them. Alaska state officials say the baby is eligible for U.S. citizenship. A baby born in flight has the right to be a U.S. citizen if that is where the child first arrives, even if born in international air space, said Susan Morgan, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Social Services. The incident has garnered widespread attention in Taiwan, even rising to the level of parliamentary debate earlier this week. "This is a selfish act," ruling party legislator Luo Shu-lei shouted to the transportation minister during a session Monday. "It was clearly an act carried out to give the child U.S. citizenship. She affected the travel of other passengers. Is there no punishment?" The China Times website said the woman was 36-weeks pregnant, but that she told the airline she was less than 32-weeks pregnant. Under Taiwanese law, passengers must provide a medical certificate saying they are fit to fly if they have passed the 32nd week of pregnancy. The woman, whose identity has been kept confidential, was sent back Saturday from Alaska to Taiwan without the baby. American authorities have not said why. Before the 1980s, when Taiwan was still developing economically, some mothers tried to give birth in the United States, but nowadays that is rare. A cottage industry has sprung up in recent years facilitating the travel of women from mainland China to the U.S. to give birth and obtain automatic American citizenship for their babies. _____ Interesting, they should charge her the bill...didn't think the Taiwanese were into this, unless she's a mainlander and there's some background info to this. Really interesting that the baby is in the US and they sent her home.
What people assume is that the US would allow her to stay for the benefit of the baby. This is the whole concept behind the anchor baby movement. But frankly, the US owes her and her baby nothing. There's no way she's going to be allowed to stay just because of the baby; she herself will still be deported and the baby will be put up for adoption or a foster family. China Air Lines should make her pay back every penny for the diversion and then ban her from every flying again. The US State Department should then put her on a persona non grata list and never let her into the US ever again.
Really? Wow that seems a bit harsh on putting the baby up for adoption or a foster family...Is there stories on that? I'm actually writing an a paper on "Anchor Babies" didn't even know that was a derogatory word for them...any info is much appreciated! Although that does suck for the mom for doing something like that then, you would think she would petition to try and get her baby back.
Well, she is more than welcome to take her baby and go. If she abandons the baby in the US, the government is already doing more than it should by ensuring the welfare of the child by placement into a foster or adoption home. Then, when the baby turns 18 and is a legal adult, the baby can petition the US State Department for an entry visa for the mother. But, as the US State Department is the one government agency that does NOT have to function on any idea of fairness, it could just say no. Further, since the mother had abandoned the child at birth, I would bet that he would say f*ck you to the foreigner that dumped him years before and would be loathed to ever petition for her to come to the US. People are under the mistaken impression that immigration must be predicated on rules which the state department HAS to follow. Wrong. The state department, as the arm of the government that protects the sovereignty of the United States, makes its own rules, and can legally break them at will. But the US isn't the only nation that will do this. Another example of how government protects its sovereign interest above stated law; China, routinely denies citizenship to babies born on Chinese soil, of Chinese fathers and North Korean women. Why does China do this is apparent violation of its own laws? It does so purely to avoid dilution of Chinese nationalism with potential Korean maternal fealty. That is, where children who later become adults with full rights and access to participate in all levels of Chinese society; who, out of love or loyalty for their Korean mother, then begin to question Chinese authority. Hence, there won't be any babies who grow up as Chinese citizens if they're part Korean at birth. What makes this particular case especially egregious is the woman purposely hid her advanced pregnancy state from authorities and the airlines, then asked repeatedly "are we in US airspace?" during the flight. Together, the two facts establishes that this woman was willfully attempting to have her child be born a US citizen. This is in open violation of US immigration regulations and constitutes a fraudulent entry into the US, thereby subjecting her to immediate deportation. Further the idea of not allowing a criminal to profit from their crime is a legal precedence that is not new. In fact, the state of Texas is currently exploring that legal avenue, denying birth certificates to babies born of illegal aliens. I personally agree that US citizenship should be denied to babies born on US soil if the mother purposely traveled to the US to have the baby in direct violation of immigration laws. In fact I think these mothers should be made to serve prison sentences before their deportation as a general deterrent to others who would do the same. While border protection isn't warm and fuzzy like advocating family and generosity, one look at the debacle in Europe right now should convince many that open borders can make a nation's generosity into a curse. Oh, and BTW, why don't the Syrian refugees go to Russia, since it's only one third of the way to Germany? People who advocate open doors to all who come should think about that. The fact is, they would rather go to a nation that seems to welcome them over one that would treat them harshly. If the US wants to protect its borders, it too must treat immigration violations harshly.
LOL... I would vet the info with other reliable sources. A lot of the above is my personal, somewhat skewed opinion that may not stand up to legal scrutiny
Here's a better article that you can quote from: Spoiler: Why a Taiwanese woman gave birth on a plane — only to be separated from her child Why a Taiwanese woman gave birth on a plane — only to be separated from her child Updated by Dara Lind on October 25, 2015, 9:00 a.m. ET @DLind dara@vox.com Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, on October 8, a Taiwanese woman with the surname Jian went into labor on China Airlines Flight 8. Luckily for her, a UCLA doctor was on the same flight; and with the assistance of the flight crew, Dr. Angelica Zen was able to deliver the baby. (The delivery was captured on a cellphone video.) And the flight, which was supposed to go to Los Angeles, ended up touching down in Alaska instead so the woman could get postpartum care. The baby is still in the United States. But the mother has been deported back to Taiwan. She's been criticized by Taiwanese government officials. And she might end up having to pay the Taiwanese government (which is the majority owner of China Airlines) to cover the cost of diverting the plane to Alaska. This sounds incredibly harsh — and maybe it is. But the reason government officials and the media in Taiwan are so upset with this woman is that they suspect she lied to the airline (and possibly to the US government) about her pregnancy in order to get onto that plane, in the hopes of giving birth in the United States. In other words, she was trying to have an "anchor baby" — and it might have backfired. Here's why Taiwan is so concerned. "Birth tourism" is real, and it's a problem — particularly in East Asia Pretty much anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen, regardless of her parents' immigration status. Some immigration hawks worry that this is being exploited: People are deliberately having babies in the US so that the child can turn around and sponsor his parents to become legal US residents. (For the record, this would take a long, long time; you can't sponsor any relatives until you turn 21.) In the United States, when people talk about "illegal immigration" they're usually talking about immigration from Latin America, and when they talk about "anchor babies" they're usually talking about children born in the US to Latin American unauthorized-immigrant parents (even though, in most cases, the immigrants have already settled in the US before having children). But as we've written, the only evidence that people are actually coming to the US for the purpose of having US citizen children — otherwise known as "birth tourism," since parents arrive on six-month tourist visas — comes from East Asia. When politicians do acknowledge this, as Jeb Bush did in August, they do it in a clumsy and racially inflected way that casts aspersions on Asian Americans. But that doesn't stop it from being a real problem. The "birth tourism" industry caters primarily to Chinese parents-to-be. The Chinese government says 10,000 babies were born in the US to Chinese tourist parents in 2012; more recent, unofficial estimates are higher. (There's a very thorough recent feature about this from Benjamin Carlson of Rolling Stone.) But there's a large market for birth tourism in Taiwan as well. The Taiwanese woman may have had to lie to US and airline officials to board the plane Having a baby in the United States isn't illegal. But the US government has started to crack down on birth tourism by going after parents-to-be for lying to US officials. Chinese citizens can't come to the US without a tourist visa, and Taiwanese citizens have to get a tourist visa if they'll be in the US for more than 90 days. (Most birth tourists come for more like six months — giving them time in advance of giving birth as well as afterward.) To get a tourist visa, a family has to pass an interview with a US embassy official in their home country — and the embassy official can ask any questions he wants to make sure the family plans to use the visa for its intended purpose (tourism). With the rise of birth tourism, embassy officials have started questioning Chinese women who look like they could be pregnant; when the women travel to the US, some Customs and Border Protection officers do the same. (There are also stateside crackdowns on the "hotels" where birth tourists stay.) Lying to either of these officials is illegal. So would-be birth tourists who get asked about it, and say they're not having a baby, are breaking US law — and invalidating the terms of their visa. Taiwanese citizens who want to stay for less than 90 days get to skip past of this process. That's because Taiwan is one of the countries in the US' Visa Waiver Program — which allows short visits from certain countries without a visa at all. It's a gesture of trust that countries have good enough security not to allow their citizens to abuse their privileges. Even so, though, they still get questioned upon entering the US by Customs and Border Protection officials — who can deny them entry into the US. We don't know most of the details in the case of the Taiwanese woman: how far along she was in her pregnancy, whether she had a tourist visa for a longer stay or was planning to take a quick trip without a visa, whether she'd told anyone she wasn't pregnant, or why she got deported. But the facts certainly fit the hypothesis that she's a failed "birth tourist" who told a US official she wasn't pregnant (or at least was prepared to lie about it if asked by US officials upon landing) then blew her cover on the way into the country. This is what's behind the frustration with the woman in Taiwan. At a time when the US is already cracking down on "birth tourism," this is an embarrassing case for the Taiwanese government to have to deal with, and one that might lead to the US becoming more skeptical of Taiwanese citizens generally — or even booting the country our of the Visa Waiver Program entirely. Certainly, the fact that the US deported this woman so quickly — mere days after she gave birth — indicates that the government is trying to send the message that it takes birth tourism seriously. While we don't know if she had already broken US law, we do know that she almost certainly had to lie to get onto the plane. Most birth tourists head to the US a few months before the baby is due (to avoid this exact situation). This woman apparently did not (possibly in order to keep her stay in the US under 90 days). If the Taiwan Airlines crew had known the truth about her pregnancy, they might not have let her onto the plane for her own safety. This has motivated speculation that the woman might also have lied to the flight crew. That could justify forcing her to pay the cost of the diversion; the flight crew and her fellow passengers boarded a flight to Los Angeles without knowing there was a chance they'd have to take a time-intensive and costly detour to Alaska. Why has the mother been separated from her baby? According to reports, even though the Taiwanese mother has been deported, the baby is still in the United States in the care of a friend. Parents of US citizens are deported with depressing frequency: At the peak of deportations during President Obama's first term, 200,000 parents of citizens were deported over two years. The overwhelming majority of those were unauthorized immigrants who were settled in the US, and whose children had lived in the US for their whole lives — so the children typically stay in the US in the care of another relative or adult, or in foster care. As you'd expect, dealing with a parent's deportation can be traumatic — but parents often figure it would be less traumatic than uprooting their children to a country they've never seen. In this case, though, it's not clear the child will be raised in the US. For one thing, even after all that trouble, it's not even clear the child is a US citizen. It depends on where the plane was when he was delivered. If the plane was in US airspace — above a location on US soil, or above ocean that's within US territory (a 12-mile stretch from the shore) — he's a citizen. But he has to prove it to the US government: Generally speaking, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would require some documentation of the birth, generally an excerpt of the ship’s/aircraft’s medical log or master/captain’s log, reflecting the time, latitude, and longitude when the birth occurred. Even if he is a citizen, though, he might just be staying in the US until it's safe for him to fly to Taiwan. Most birth tourists want US citizenship for their children so that the kids can hopefully attend an American school down the road— private schools are cheaper for US citizens, and citizens are eligible for financial aid in college. But they care more about sending their children to school than about settling the family in the United States. This runs counter to the "anchor baby" stereotype. But it's easy to see why the US government wants to crack down on it: At a time when most students struggle to pay for college, and many public schools make a lot of revenue off international students, it's a serious financial hit when students living abroad get aid. And the more concerned the US is about it, the more pressure it will put on Taiwan. Source: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/25/9604468/baby-plane-taiwanese The baby was prevented from flying back with the mother because it has to be at least 14 days old before being allowed to board commercial aircraft. Depending on the source, the baby now remains either with a family friend or in foster care. IMHO, I would personally think the baby is in foster care because the chances of a Taiwanese mother being en route to LA, coincidentally having a friend living in Alaska, is probably slim to none.
I think the mother will get back the child and then wait until the children can go back to the US, even if it will be so many years later. I don't really know what to think about her. On the one hand she lied about her pregnancy so I think she should be put on some kind of list to avoid her to come back. She wasted so many people's time just by her egoist thought and she put the baby and herself into a dangerous situation. On the other hand, maybe she just wants a better future for her child. I'm not saying she was right to do this because I think it is crazy but why so many people want to give birth outside China if they're having a great life? I didn't know it was the same for Taiwanese people. So sad to see people can do so silly things because they're not intelligent enough to think about something else.
Agree there and thank you again for more on this info. I wonder if they mean in LA that the baby is in care with, but then again like you said 14 days the baby can't fly must be the same for domestic flights? Technically Alaska is US soil, but hopefully they don't give the baby the citizenship and just send it back to Taiwan. That's what they should be doing with all these Mainland Chinese babies being born in the US. The other thing is from experience the mainlanders in LA buy up all the dang formula too ugh.
Under international convention and past practices by the United States, much of these citizenship rules have to do with years of maritime law. That is, a child born at sea in international waters, may claim citizenship of the first port of embarkation either or their parent's home state. So it didn't really matter that the vessel was a Taiwanese flagged carrier in international air space; if the mother wanted US citizenship for the child, the first port of embarkation was Alaska, so the child is entitled to such a claim. Having said that however, it may be argued by the US government that the various violations and circumvention of rules and laws by his mother to achieve that, means that the State Department may, because of extenuating criminal circumstance, deny the commonly accepted practice of granting citizenship. In fact, if Taiwan did the same thing (as unlikely but possible), then the child literally could be considered stateless. The politics of citizenship is not new so it would be interesting to see how this case evolves. For those that also have an interest in the historical aspects of foreigner claimed US citizenship in the past, here's a good read: United States vs Wong Kim Ark I've included the syllabus below. Go to the link to see discussion of the prevailing opinion and dissent for further reading. Spoiler: US v Wong Kim Ark - Syllabus United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 U.S. 649 United States v. Wong Kim Ark (No. 18) Argued: March 5, 8, 1897 Decided: March 28, 1898 ___ Syllabus Opinion, Gray Dissent, Fuller Syllabus A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, All person born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. This was a writ of habeas corpus issued October 2, 1895, by the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California to the collector of customs at the port of San Francisco, in behalf of Wong Kim Ark, who alleged that he was a citizen of the United States, of more than twenty-one years of age, and was born at San Francisco in 1873 of parents of Chinese descent and subjects of the Emperor of China, but domiciled residents at San Francisco, and that, on his return to the United States on the steamship Coptic in August, 1895, from a temporary visit to China, he applied to said collector of customs for permission to land, and was by the collector refused such permission, and was restrained of his liberty by the collector, and by the general manager of the steamship company acting under his direction, in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, not by virtue of any judicial order or proceeding, but solely upon the pretence that he was not a citizen of the United States. At the hearing, the District Attorney of the United States was permitted to intervene in behalf of the United States in opposition to the writ, and stated the grounds of his intervention in writing as follows: That, as he is informed and believes, the said person in [p650] whose behalf said application was made is not entitled to land in the United States, or to be or remain therein, as is alleged in said application, or otherwise. Because the said Wong Kim Ark, although born in the city and county of San Francisco, State of California, United States of America, is not, under the laws of the State of California and of the United States, a citizen thereof, the mother and father of the said Wong Kim Ark being Chinese persons and subjects of the Emperor of China, and the said Wong Kim Ark being also a Chinese person and a subject of the Emperor of China. Because the said Wong Kim Ark has been at all times, by reason of his race, language, color and dress, a Chinese person, and now is, and for some time last past has been, a laborer by occupation. That the said Wong Kim Ark is not entitled to land in the United States, or to be or remain therein, because he does not belong to any of the privileged classes enumerated in any of the acts of Congress, known as the Chinese Exclusion Acts, [*] which would exempt him from the class or classes which are especially excluded from the United States by the provisions of the said acts. Wherefore the said United States Attorney asks that a judgment and order of this honorable court be made and entered in accordance with the allegations herein contained, and that the said Wong Kim Ark be detained on board of said vessel until released as provided by law, or otherwise to be returned to the country from whence he came, and that such further order be made as to the court may seem proper and legal in the premises. The case was submitted to the decision of the court upon the following facts agreed by the parties: That the said Wong Kim Ark was born in the year 1873, at No. 751 Sacramento Street, in the city and county of San Francisco, State of California, United States of America, and [p651] that his mother and father were persons of Chinese descent and subjects of the Emperor of China, and that said Wong Kim Ark was and is a laborer. That, at the time of his said birth, his mother and father were domiciled residents of the United States, and had established and enjoyed a permanent domicil and residence therein at said city and county of San Francisco, State aforesaid. That said mother and father of said Wong Kim Ark continued to reside and remain in the United States until the year 1890, when they departed for China. That during all the time of their said residence in the United States as domiciled residents therein, the said mother and father of said Wong Kim Ark were engaged in the prosecution of business, and were never engaged in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China. That ever since the birth of said Wong Kim Ark, at the time and place hereinbefore stated and stipulated, he has had but one residence, to-wit, a residence in said State of California, in the United States of America, and that he has never changed or lost said residence or gained or acquired another residence, and there resided claiming to be a citizen of the United States. That, in the year 1890 the said Wong Kim Ark departed for China upon a temporary visit and with the intention of returning to the United States, and did return thereto on July 26, 1890, on the steamship Gaelic, and was permitted to enter the United States by the collector of customs upon the sole ground that he was a native-born citizen of the United States. That after his said return, the said Wong Kim Ark remained in the United States, claiming to be a citizen thereof, until the year 1894, when he again departed for China upon a temporary visit, and with the intention of returning to the United States, and did return thereto in the month of August, 1895, and applied to the collector of customs to be permitted to land, and that such application was denied upon the sole ground that said Wong in Ark was not a citizen of the United States. [p652] That said Wong Kim Ark has not, either by himself or his parents acting for him, ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, and that he has never done or committed any act or thing to exclude him therefrom. The court ordered Wong Kim Ark to be discharged, upon the ground that he was a citizen of the United States. 1 Fed.Rep. 382. The United States appealed to this court, and the appellee was admitted to bail pending the appeal. Wiki's version
Thanks again...would be interesting to hear where this baby ends up at, at the end of this all. Shame on the mom for jeopardizing this.
