Website sells Canadian birthright for $35K to foreign moms

A suspicious website is advertising would-be mothers from around the world the opportunity to have anchor babies in Canada, ensuring their children become naturalized citizens.

A suspicious website is advertising would-be mothers from around the world the opportunity to have anchor babies in Canada, ensuring their children become naturalized citizens.

The Russian-language website “CanadaMama consulting” is advertising their services at fees ranging up to $35,000 for migrant women interested in baby-tourism. The website promises a “safe birth” and a “life full of opportunities.” 

Potential clients are being lured by the prospect of free education, healthcare, employment opportunities and international travel for their children. The website’s default language is set to Russian, but also has built in English, Ukrainian, Chinese and Spanish translations.  

Canadian TikTok influencer Mario Zelaya was the first to bring attention to the website.

Among the services offered to those interested include property rentals, immigration consultation, visa support, medical service advisory and even newborn photography. 

Akin to airline companies, the website has multiple package options ranging from economy, to optimal to comfort, with additional services such as food delivery, hospital tours, shopping advice and interpretation services offered to those willing to pay extra.

CanadaMama also claims to operate “under contract” and work alongside Canadian hospitals – an unverified claim. 

The company claims to have operated for more than five years, carrying out dozens of successful births

Unconditional birthright citizenship in Canada is attracting many birth tourists, especially in British Columbia–where some hospitals have reported non-citizens making up a quarter of their maternity ward patients.

A Calgary-based obstetrician gynaecologist, Dr. Colin Birch, said in a CBC interview that birth tourism had the biggest impact on cities that had international airports, with trends slowing down after air travel was shut down during the pandemic. 

Birch predicted that Canada would see a slow rise in birth tourism eventually returning to pre-pandemic levels, and that the foreign birth tourists can displace local patients, forcing them to seek care with another provider. 

In Calgary, a system was put in place to separate birth tourists from other groups of uninsured patients, requiring a $15,000 deposit for physician fees. 

Even with programs in place, a BMC Health Services research report quotes “a third of birth tourist mothers still have unpaid bills for maternal care” in Calgary. 

Not only does the issue of birth tourism present challenges for Canada’s struggling healthcare system, but may also be a security concern according to David Thomas; a veteran immigration lawyer and senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute. 

Thomas told True North “the problem with granting citizenship to a child whose parents have no connection to Canada means that the child will be raised in a foreign country. 

“They may have no Canadian official language abilities, nor a sense of what it means to be Canadian.”  

Thomas also implies that being raised abroad presents security challenges; “since they may be raised in a country that is hostile to Canada or the USA, and may be recruited to be a spy or terrorist, their citizenship will guarantee them future access to the country”. 

The lack of oversight on this issue, and the legal status quo around bright right citizenship in Canada enables such businesses and migrants to receive Canadian taxpayer-funded benefits such as healthcare, without the same contribution to Canada’s economy as legal immigrants. 

There have been attempts to end birthright citizenship in Canada. For example in 2018, Conservative party members voted to end birthright citizenship for those who have parents that are not non-Canadian citizens/permanent residents.

According to Thomas, the loophole currently present in the legal status quo amended easily by changing s. 3(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act, “if Canadian citizenship in that section was limited to children born in Canada to Canadian citizens or permanent residents, then there would be no incentive for birth-tourism”. 

Thomas describes “jus soli” or the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship as an “ancient concept that has no place in the 21st century”.

When True North reached out for comment, CanadaMama did not respond.