True
Tourism
May 6 is National Tourist Appreciation Day, which falls on National Travel and Tourism Week from May 5th through May 13th. Why do people become tourists? Usually, it is so they can see the sights of a city or go on a relaxing vacation. However, this Tourist Appreciation Day, I’ll be covering a less well-known, but much more important reason for tourism: birth tourism.
Birth tourism is the phenomenon of traveling to another country while pregnant and giving birth, with the intention of obtaining that country’s citizenship for the baby. Many countries, like the US, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, have jus soli citizenship. Also referred to as birthright citizenship, jus soli (“right of the soil” in Latin) grants any person born in a country that country’s citizenship. Birth tourists will travel to these countries and have children in order to receive citizenship for them. This avoids the long process of applying for citizenship, waiting in line for years, and filling out mountains of paperwork. Convenient! However, this process can raise multiple political and economic issues.
Kavya Seth