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Estimates of the number of babies born to birth tourists in the U.S. each year range from 10,000 by the Centers for Disease Control to 40,000 by the Center for Immigration Studies.

PNG

In Canada, the number of births to non-residents has more than doubled since 2012, to just over 4,000 a year. Non-residents account for two per cent of all births in Canada.

Doctors have warned that the number of foreign nationals giving birth in Canada is putting a strain on health care delivery and have urged the federal government to take steps to curb the practice.

“We’re at a crisis, a tipping point, so it’s really important that some higher authority takes this on,” said Dr. Kathleen Ross, president of Doctors of B.C. “Hospitals and doctors have no option but to provide service. We can’t turn people away if they are sick, injured or in labour.”

More than half of all babies born to non-residents in B.C. — around 700 a year — are delivered at Richmond Hospital. In the past two years, 932 babies were born to foreign nationals there, about 22.6 per cent of all births, according to Vancouver Coastal Health. That’s up from 15 per cent in 2015.

Foreign nationals give birth to about 10 per cent of babies born at St. Paul’s Hospital and Mount St. Joseph, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

More than 92 per cent of medical fees are eventually recovered, according to Vancouver Coastal Health.

Richmond is home to a shadowy network of several dozen businesses that help women give birth in Canada for fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.