Word has it that there’s an infamous home in Chino Hills, California that operates as a maternity center for pregnant Chinese women who go to the U.S. on tourist visas for the express purpose of popping out a so-called “anchor baby,” a kid that would be entitled to U.S. citizenship. Once the kid gets citizenship, then the parents can petition to stay, etc. This is the kind of thing that makes Republican heads explode.

The Associated Press has the scoop:

Residents of a Southern California suburb are protesting against a hilltop home that they say serves as a maternity center for Chinese mothers paying thousands of dollars to give birth to so-called “anchor babies.”

Dozens picketed a Chino Hills intersection on Saturday, holding signs that read “No Birth Tourism” and “Not Here! Not in USA!”

The city’s mayor tells the San Bernardino Sun that rooms in the house have been rented out to pregnant Chinese women until they give birth.

Yeah, that kind of thing doesn’t go over so well, particularly in a country with so many recent immigrants who came over legally. Tends to make some folks a bit angry.

Of course, immigration is a politically sensitive issue in the U.S. If one is critical of illegal immigration, for example, the fine line between policy critique and racism must be navigated. In this case, the louder the protest, the more likely someone from the National Association of Chinese-American Racial Harmony (if such an organization existed) will hop on a plane to LA and stage a counter-demonstration. And no one likes to be called a racist, especially if you suspect that you might actually be a racist.

That’s why the critics like to dress up their denunciations with “Rule of Law” language. You see, they aren’t griping about Chinese people, just anyone who breaks the law. One can take this sort of thing too far, though, and we get the following kind of hilarious excuse:

Protesters say they don’t want to see a business in a residential area.

Ha ha! See, this has nothing to do with illegal immigrants coming to steal our jobs and mooch free health care and education off us. No, we’re really concerned with zoning violations! Dammit, get that anchor baby business out of the suburbs and put it in Chinatown where it belongs.

You can’t make this stuff up. I wonder if they’d protest an illegal Starbucks franchise that moved into the neighborhood?

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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