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Health ministry investigators are aware of more than two dozen so-called birth houses in B.C. offering pregnant foreign mothers temporary room and board before and after giving birth in local hospitals, according to Freedom of Information documents obtained by Postmedia.

The baby houses, as they are called in Asia, are used by women seeking instant Canadian citizenship for their newborns.

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The internal briefing document, titled Birth by Non-B.C. Residents, was created in response to a Vancouver Sun story last year about the three-fold increase since 2009 of non-resident births.

A department in Victoria called the Audit and Investigations Branch, Eligibility, Compliance and Enforcement Unit (ECEU) knows about 26 private residences offering hospitality services to foreign pregnant women. It said the residences are used by two groups.

The first includes those in Canada on a temporary resident document, such as a tourist visa, work or study permit. They come to deliver a baby “who by birth is then granted Canadian citizenship status.” They do not access Medical Services Plan-funded benefits and “they declare themselves as self-pay at hospitals and to doctors.”