- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we bring you a story with a log line
that might sound like something out of a futuristic movie.
People from a foreign country
plan trips to America to give birth,
thereby making the newborn a U.S. citizen.
It's called birth tourism, and it's explored thoroughly
in tonight's film How to Have an American Baby.
Outside the city of Los Angeles
is a suburb called Rowland Heights.
It is the epicenter
of a Chinese multimillion-dollar shadow economy
for expecting Chinese mothers and families
who pay big money for what are called birthing vacations,
that just so happen to coincide with the birth of their baby.
Director Leslie Tai got the idea for the film in 2014
when she received a Skype call from an old friend
who was in Los Angeles.
During the call, the friend revealed she was in LA
to give birth to her child
so the baby would be an American citizen.
Tai learned her friend was staying in Rowland Heights,
or what some Chinese people call "the city of big-bellied women."
It is the place the Chinese new rich come
to have their babies.
Chinese-based companies set up these birth vacation packages,
which include maternity hotels, car and food service,
nanny service, and sight-seeing.
Tai went to visit her friend
and quickly realized she had a story to tell
and a film to shoot.
In addition to this intriguing plotline,
there are beautiful and at times dramatic moments
watching what these families and women go through
in the birthing process, with so much on the line
and the lengths they have gone to to have an American baby.
Leslie Tai calls her film a kaleidoscopic voyage
into a shadow economy.
Tai uses a series of vignettes
to capture these deeply personal moments,
where some women deliver healthy babies,
but for others,
the dreams of having an American baby end tragically.
It's a story of choices parents make
to provide a better life for their children
and the global economy that comes with it.
How to Have an American Baby starts now
on PBS Wisconsin, your home for independent film.