He says it’s difficult to catch someone abusing the system at a municipal level because it is not illegal for a foreigner to give birth in Canada. “Our options are very limited,” he added.

“By flying in here, having a baby here, the child gets Canadian citizenship… Take away the incentive, it’s gone.”

Earlier this month (Oct. 5) in Ottawa, Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido, whose riding is Steveston-Richmond East, introduced a petition signed by nearly 11,000 people condemning birth tourism as an illegitimate industry.

“It’s folks and institutions that are profiting from having women come over to give birth … Nineteen years later, eighteen years later, their child gets citizenship,” Peschisolido said.

He feels birth tourism “has to be dealt with in a holistic way.”

“The federal government, their biggest role comes on the immigration side and also the messaging that this is not correct. The provincial government and the health authorities manage the hospitals. The municipalities deal with the licensing for the birthing houses. You have to deal with all of these elements.”

Richmond currently has more than 20 makeshift hotels, where expectant moms can rent a room until they’re ready to deliver their babies.

“What’s occurring is you have unscrupulous individuals, agents, folks that have started birthing houses, doctors that are involved in this system and they’re making money off of it,” Peschisolido added. “They’re putting the women who are coming over at risk. But they’re also, I think, undermining the integrity of the health care system [and] the immigration system.”

Peschisolido says this is a wide problem. “The official statistics from the province states that 23 per cent of births at the hospital in Richmond fall under this category of birth tourism, where we have someone overseas coming over to give birth and then leaving immediately.”

He believes that figure is understated. “A lot of folks who are part of the industry are giving the address of the birthing houses in Richmond as their address, while in fact, it’s an overseas address — whether it’s from Asia, Europe, or Africa. In Richmond, it’s mainly a problem from Asia.”

Peschisolido admits it’s tricky to ensure services are not denied to people.

While I wasn't here from another country—or pregnant—our little family found ourselves unexpectedly homeless for two weeks before moving to a new home and a room at the maternity hotel was the only one we could find for under $200 per night during the summer high season.

When I entered the million-dollar mansion I’d be calling home for the next two weeks, I immediately felt a sense of relief. I’d spent the last two nights wide awake, imagining a dark, damp house filled with screaming babies, the smell of medicinal broths and musky new moms who chose to follow tradition and not bathe in the month after birth.

Luckily, my fears were allayed when what I found instead was a large, spiraling staircase, a grand piano, and Susan, who sat quietly on the couch rubbing her big, round belly, never once looking up from her Kindle to see who her new roommates were.

As part of the Chinese community in Los Angeles by marriage, I was no stranger to birth tourism or maternity hotels. Several of our acquaintances would rent rooms to Chinese moms wanting to give birth in America, and it wasn’t unusual to see them quietly slipping into the kitchen for a drink of water while we barbecued. Every once in a while we’d be invited to dinner by my husband’s classmates who were in LA giving birth, renting apartments in Chinese neighborhoods where they had easy access to food and Chinese-speaking OB/GYNs.

But truth be told, the whole situation still made me nervous. While there is nothing illegal about coming to America to give birth, these “maternity hotels” operate in a legal gray-zone. A 2015 investigation resulted in widespread raids of these operations, and several proprietors were charged with fraud, tax evasion and building code violations, and numerous new moms and pregnant women were sent back to China.

My roommates were equally nervous about my presence: it was unusual to find a “foreigner” (a non-Chinese) in this neighborhood, let alone in their house, but once my half-Chinese toddler swooped in to steal a phone (it turns out Fiona, the school teacher, loves Peppa Pig as much as he does) and we established that I’d been in China for the larger part of my life, I was immediately invited to join them.

As I got to know these women, I found out that they’d paid anywhere between $25,000 to $40,000 for a three-month stay in this particular maternity hotel, which covered transportation, room and board, three meals a day, one excursion a week, help with the baby’s papers, and a nurse to help care for their baby once it arrived.

I was shocked, however, to find out that this did not include medical care, which is usually sold as a package by local hospitals that give steep discounts to patients who can pay their medical bills upfront. (Contrary to rumors, these women cannot purchase health insurance or qualify for medical benefits, as they don’t have a social security number) Fiona, who had a natural birth, paid around $6,000 for two months of prenatal care, a natural birth and postnatal care, while Rose, who had an elective C-section, paid closer to $8,000 for all her medical costs, bringing their total cost for three months in American to an average of $30,000.

As the days went on, we found our groove. Our toddler would patiently wait outside of aunty Fiona’s door for their early morning Peppa dates, and my husband, a restaurateur, quickly became a private chef, supplementing the bland but nutritious array of stir-friend veggies, meats and rice the proprietor would deliver to his maternity hotels throughout the day with rich, spicy hot pots and his favorite rice noodle dishes from Yunnan and Guizhou, known for their sour and spicy notes.

We’d go to the grocery store together, talk about baby gear and pregnancy discomforts, and gossip about our husbands. As the days went on, the experience seemed more and more normal. Despite the fact that I wasn’t pregnant, I had been initiated into a sorority of pregnant ladies, and I could already imagine myself returning for the camaraderie once we were ready to have our second child. Compared to my experience of working through the 38th week and giving birth three days after leaving my job, this was heaven!

One day, as we headed out for our customary post-dinner walk I worked up the nerve to ask them why they were willing to spend so much money to give birth in America. To me, this seemed like a private question, but Susan, who had finally warmed up to us and turned out to be a Canadian-educated business powerhouse, burst forth with the obvious reason: “Why wouldn’t we do this?”

Fiona quickly echoed the sentiment. “As a teacher I hate to say this, but our education system is terrible. It runs kids through the ringer for a minuscule chance of getting into a good college. When my son grows up, he can skip the college entrance exams and apply to a Chinese university as a foreigner, which is so much easier.”