(Nate Beeler-Cartoon / caglecartoons.com)
New York City-headquartered companies have relocated or are planning to move in large numbers, mostly to Florida or other welcoming locations in the Southeast.
Some companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan & Co. have Wall Street roots that date back to the mid-19th century.
Thousands of high-paying jobs at financial institutions were packed up and abandoned as employers like Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UBS, Citigroup, and AllianceBernstein relocated their workforce to cheaper destinations in North Carolina, Dallas, Nashville, and Salt Lake City.
Residents cannot leave Manhattan fast enough either. Approximately 3.57 million people, including many high earners, left Manhattan between January 1 and December 7, 2020. Although millions, mostly on lower incomes, came to replace them, the city’s net exodus cost the city 34 billion US dollars in revenue.
Both individuals and companies gave the same reasons for leaving Dodge while the exit was still good: high taxes, rising cost of living, the clumsy governance of Mayor Bill de Blasio, appeals, the police in the face of ever-increasing random crime and questionable schooling to relieve shutdowns.
A Manhattan Commission poll found that 44 percent of city residents who earn more than $ 100,000 and contribute 80 percent of the city’s income tax revenues are considering moving. Auditor Scott Stringer warned that the city’s wealthiest residents who remain should be willing to pay higher taxes to close the huge $ 4.2 billion deficit.
While legitimate companies and the executives who manage them are fleeing the Big Apple, another, albeit less palatable, industry thrives with dubious oversight. Birth tourism, the blatant abuse of federal immigration law, is resurrecting in New York.
But a warning to Stringer who may expect a tax gain: Birth tourism is often unregulated and unlicensed. Similar maternity hotel operators were charged with tax evasion. Stringer’s town may never see a dime.
In 2015, federal agents in Santa Ana executed 35 search warrants resulting from the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, IRS Criminal Investigations, the Irvine Police Department, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. The result: federal criminal charges of widespread immigration fraud, international money laundering, and fraud against landowners who leased their homes to house the foreigners.
The Los Angeles Times reported that several hundred Chinese birthplaces were listed in Southern California at the time.
The original in California years ago is unchanged today in New York. Operators set up a website in the foreigner’s native language – most commonly Chinese, but also Korean, Russian, and Spanish – to encourage pregnant women to pay between $ 40,000 and $ 80,000.
In return for the princely sum, the women receive coaching on how to deceive airport immigration officials, how to receive ethnically specific care in the United States, and how to give birth to a child with American citizenship.
Too often, US taxpayers collect a large portion of the bill. A Chinese couple paid the needy $ 4,080 hospital fee despite having more than $ 225,000 in a bank account they opened to pay for luxury shopping.
It is not known how many in the United States skip payment altogether. Unpaid medical bills for the birth of babies have been reported in the Northern Mariana Islands, which is important as children born there are granted US citizenship as US territory.
A reported birth tourism case in Canada left a hospital with an unpaid newborn bill of $ 1.2 million.
Little has changed in the birthing industry since the practice became common 30 years ago. A May 15 story in the New York Post revealed that there are 80 birthing centers in the metropolitan area.
Yet inexplicably, Congress continues to tolerate several federal crimes committed with impunity under their noses: visa application fraud, money laundering, Medicare fraud, income tax fraud, and identity theft.
Birth tourism is terrible for America, and poses a threat to national security. Moored babies granted US citizenship under the Misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution mean thousands of people through a fraudulent process have received free K-12 public training and countless other positive benefits receive.
Eventually, they will serve as anchors for their returned parents and non-nuclear extended family members who will receive equal entitlements.
With political courage, three solutions could end birth tourism in the short term.
First, fully prosecute offenders, including mothers. After you get a medical certificate that the mother can travel safely, you fly her home. Otherwise, she can give birth under medical supervision while in detention and then be sent home. She will achieve her original goal of being a bourgeois child, but under dramatically different circumstances than she had originally imagined.
Second, Congress has to get tougher. Remove the lure of citizenship; Enact legislation that requires citizenship to require at least one parent to be a national or legal resident. Unsurprisingly, previous common sense citizenship reform efforts have had few congressional co-sponsors.
Third, use the “fruit from the poisonous tree” doctrine, which in cases of citizenship at birth would mean that citizenship benefits have been acquired illegally and must therefore be forfeited to the government, e.g. citizenship revoked. Congress must stop rolling over the three-decade-old birth tourism scam that harms Americans and helps foreign nationals, mostly Chinese.
These bold but lawful measures would minimize and eventually end childbirth tourism. The remedies suggested are simple, direct and legal.
Nonetheless, a sluggish Congress steadfastly refuses to implement any of the three measures and is content to tacitly support the ius soli process – Latin for “the right to land” – which other most developed nations long ago abolished.
The United States should join other advanced nations and grant valued citizenship based on the nationality or residency status of the child’s parents.
– Joe Guzzardi is an analyst and researcher at Progressives for Immigration Reform, now based in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter: @ joeguzzardi19. Click here to read the previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.