Birth tourism usually involves a woman trying to deliver a baby in a more prosperous county than her home nation, but an Australian “influencer” has turned that equation on its head — and sparked a global debate over the practice.

Shannen Michaela said people from well-off Western nations are increasingly looking for a “Plan B” or escape valve they can use to flee economic stagnation and growing government oppression in their home countries. And she said delivering a baby in another country is a great way to do it.

Ms. Michaela has been posting for months about her own experience in picking Costa Rica to deliver her baby, figuring its birthright citizenship policy would not only protect her new child but, by extension, give her status in a new country.

“With an additional passport you always have an alternative place to go. You have protection in case anyone tries to restrict your freedom of movement,” she said in one social media post detailing her decisions. “Travel freedom is personal freedom, and the more passports you collect the more opportunity you create for your family.”

She drew media attention from New Zealand to Costa Rica and was met with a wave of criticism online, where she was accused of showing excessive “privilege” by using a child to game the immigration system.

“Anchor baby instructions for rich people,” one commenter sniffed, while another called her “corrupt morally and socially.”

“This is some serious ‘What’s classy if you’re rich, but trashy if you’re poor’ vibes,” said another.

Ms. Michaela rejected that notion in her social media posts.

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Many people from the USA travel to [Central or South] America to give birth because it’s much more affordable.”

Using children as a means of immigration works in countries that allow birthright citizenship — the concept that a child unconditionally wins citizenship from the country where it is born.

The Law Library of Congress, in a 2018 report, counted 34 countries that grant automatic citizenship at birth. They are heavily concentrated in North America and South America, where nearly every nation allows it. Elsewhere, it is rare, with only Angola, Fiji, Lesotho, Pakistan, Sao Tome and Principe, and Tanzania adopting the rule.

Some other nations grant citizenship to newborns based on their parent’s legal status, while many don’t allow any geographic birthright citizenship at all.

The U.S. is the largest nation to practice birthright citizenship.

Steven A. Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said there are plenty of reasons why people might want to take advantage of birthright citizenship, but said countries should ponder why they allow it.

“What’s in our interest?” he said. “It trivializes American citizenship, the most valuable thing in the world. Whenever you trivialize something you make it less meaningful.”

He said two different but related situations take advantage of birthright citizenship. The first is what people derogatorily call “anchor babies,” which is when an illegal immigrant woman gives birth, deepening her ties and creating a potential defense against deportation.
The second, birth tourism, is where someone arrives on a legal temporary visa with the intent to give birth.

Mr. Camarota, a demographer, has crunched Census Bureau numbers and calculated there are between 20,000 and 26,000 births to mothers on short-term visas in the U.S. every year. He said the main practitioners are believed to be Russian and Chinese women, though there is an eclectic mix of nationalities.

Before the feds busted it, one California-based operation focused on Chinese women, dubbed USA Happy Baby, charged up to $30,000, prosecutors said.

The one common theme is that birth tourists are usually thought to be women from less stable or prosperous countries seeking a placeholder in a better nation.

That’s what makes Ms. Michaela’s case so striking. Her argument is women from wealthy nations can use it as an escape hatch.

Mr. Camarota said it speaks to the current ennui in more developed nations.

“There’s a contradiction there,” he said. “Although everybody is desperate to get to the West, in the West itself there’s a sense of loss of confidence, a loss of optimism.”

The Washington Times’ attempts to reach Ms. Michaela through her listed email were unsuccessful.

But she described her situation in various social media posts, saying she moved to Costa Rica when she was 26 weeks pregnant. She chose Central America because it was “forward-thinking” in its approach to Bitcoin, a digital currency.

Ms. Michaela cast birth tourism as a relatively cheap alternative to other more financially draining pathways, such as a “golden visa,” or investor’s visa, which offers potential citizenship in exchange for someone investing a significant amount of money in a country.

“I’m not suggesting you get pregnant to gain another passport elsewhere; however, if you already are, or are planning to be, it could be an interesting investment opportunity,” she said.

Before her birth tourism controversy, her claim to fame was holding the title in the Guinness World Record for the farthest distance of an arrow shot using the feet.

Ms. Michaela’s home country, Australia, had birthright citizenship until the 1980s when it changed its rules to require at least one parent to be a citizen or permanent resident for a child to gain citizenship automatically.

Debate over the practice is simmering in Canada and the U.S.

President Trump repeatedly threatened to issue an executive order curtailing birthright citizenship in cases of births to illegal immigrants, though he never made good on the idea.

Campaigning once again for the White House, he has renewed his vow, saying he would target not only births to illegal immigrants but also the birth tourism industry.

“Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the planet squat in hotels for their last few weeks of pregnancy to illegitimately and illegally obtain U.S. citizenship for the child,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s a practice that’s so horrible and so egregious, but we let it go forward.”

He said his policy would require at least one parent to be a U.S. citizen or a legal resident. That would exclude both illegal immigrants and those here on temporary visas.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.