A Wall Street Journal investigation reports on a practice that should alarm every U.S. citizen who still believes their citizenship means more than a purchasable commodity. Wealthy Chinese are exploiting America’s surrogacy and IVF industry to produce U.S.-born children, claim birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, and then ship those children back to China to be raised in China. This is human trafficking and industrialized citizenship laundering.
In Los Angeles, a judge denied parental rights to a Chinese gaming billionaire who sought legal recognition for multiple unborn children conceived through surrogates in the U.S. This billionaire had already fathered or was in the process of fathering many more children. Appearing by video from China, he said he hoped to have 20 or more U.S.-born children, preferably boys, because they were “superior to girls,” and envisioned them eventually taking over his business. Several of the children are currently being cared for by nannies in California while awaiting paperwork to leave the country.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental rights to at least four unborn children, and the court’s additional research showed that he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering at least eight more—all through surrogates.
When Pellman called Xu Bo in for a confidential hearing in the summer of 2023, he never entered the courtroom, according to people who attended the hearing. The maker of fantasy videogames lived in China and appeared via video, speaking through an interpreter. He said he hoped to have 20 or so U.S.-born children through surrogacy—boys, because they’re superior to girls—to one day take over his business.
Several of his kids were being raised by nannies in nearby Irvine as they awaited paperwork to travel to China. He hadn’t yet met them, he told the judge, because work had been busy.
Pellman was alarmed, according to the people who attended the hearing. Surrogacy was a tool to help people build families, but what Xu was describing didn’t seem like parenting, the people said.
The judge denied his request for parentage—normally quickly approved for the intended parents of a baby born through surrogacy, experts say. The decision left the children he’d paid for to be born in legal limbo.
Wall Street Journal (Free Link)
That case is not unique. The Wall Street Journal documents other Chinese billionaires ordering dozens, sometimes hundreds, of children through American surrogacy agencies. One executive reportedly fathered 10 girls using U.S. egg donors with the goal of marrying them off to powerful men. People in the surrogacy industry openly describe clients seeking 50, 100, even 200 children. Agencies collect tens of thousands of dollars per pregnancy, and no system exists to track how many simultaneous surrogacies a person is commissioning.
This is where the 14th Amendment enters the picture as a weapon against the United States. Birthright citizenship is not intended to be used by foreign nationals who have no connection, loyalty, or physical presence in this country. Yet right now foreign billionaires exploit our system to buy American citizenship by renting an American womb.
At a minimum, this should force immediate regulation of the IVF and surrogacy industry. There is no reason for U.S. clinics and agencies to provide citizenship-producing services to foreign nationals. Limiting American commercial surrogacy and IVF arrangements to U.S. citizens would shut down this practice overnight.
U.S. taxpayers helped finance China’s economic rise through decades of trade and policy decisions. Now the U.S. is creating future citizens for the Chinese elite who openly describe children as assets to be exploited.
This story should be a clarion call to repeal or amend the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. It’s long past time to stop granting automatic citizenship just because you happen to give birth in this country. Citizenship is not a product and children are not inventory. If this does not demand reform, it is hard to imagine what ever will.
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