‘How to Have an American Baby’ Review: Giving Birth to Citizens

A documentary on PBS focuses on Chinese women who travel to the U.S. to have their babies and the murky system that enables them.

By John Anderson Dec. 7, 2023 6:08 pm ET. Original link here

Looking for an antidote to unbridled seasonal merriment? Runaway holiday cheer? Check out “How to Have an American Baby,” a documentary guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of closed-border proponents while presenting a puzzle for champions of legal immigration: There’s nothing illegal about pregnant Chinese women traveling to California so their newborns will have U.S. citizenship. It does seem like bad manners. An abuse of a generous system. But any crimes involved are about bureaucratic sloth, and how some of the women are treated.

A presentation of the long-running “POV” series, “How to Have an American Baby” is a virtual one-woman production, which may explain the extraordinary intimacy achieved by producer, writer, cinematographer, director and editor Leslie Tai. Her focus is less on the politics than the women—mostly wealthy, often pampered—who travel to the San Gabriel Valley from Beijing, Shanghai, Jilin City and Chengdu, take up residency in a “maternity hotel” and await the arrival of their freshly minted American. Some can’t wait to go back home; some decide to stay, although the circumstances surrounding visas and status aren’t explained in any concrete way—but, again, Ms. Tai is more concerned with the subjects than the process.

The pacing of “How to Have an American Baby” is erratic, to say the least, and it is often hard to tell where Ms. Tai’s sympathies lie, or where she means to direct those of her viewers. When her subjects are badmouthing America or complaining about medical costs—they pay cash, so assume they’re being gouged—they are not being particularly likable, and their haggling, especially when a baby’s health is involved, is distasteful. At the same time, the system they have bought into is a mystery—are they giving birth in clinics? In bona-fide hospitals? Who are these doctors? One protracted childbirth scene finally explains itself with an ob-gyn standing, arms crossed, at the foot of the bed of a patient who has resisted all his efforts to speed up the birthing. “You don’t want this, you don’t want that,” he says. “You’re on your own.” She finally accedes to his demands, but the physician seems to be late for his golf game.

And then there is Lulu, who loses her baby to what seems like medical misadventure—the description of her son’s birth sounds like a ripping from the womb and his quickly declining health is no surprise. But she has no recourse—no one to explain what happened, no one to blame for any evident malpractice, no one even to talk to: She is considered “a bad omen,” she says, and is kept away from the other women, especially the latest arrivals.

Ms. Tai leaves a lot to the interpretation of the viewer, though much is also plain to see: At several public meetings held in an unspecified California town residents complain about the maternity hotels, the increase in traffic, the pressure on public utilities, only to be told the municipalities have hit walls. We’ve gone to tax authorities, Homeland Security, health departments and no one will do anything, an official says. One citizen, employing the ever-popular atomic flyswatter, says nothing will be done until “we revoke the 14th Amendment” (which bestows birthright citizenship), but a less hysterical solution is suggested during a scene, on a beach, among several pregnant ladies who share notes: Yes, they heard a couple of women were deported, but no one really checked their own visas or their motives for visiting. And they recommend taking an American airline if you want to move swiftly through customs.

Why would a Chinese woman want to have an American baby so badly? It may seem obvious, but it takes a trip to Beijing late in the film, a year after the death of Lulu’s baby, to hear her wealthy husband spell it all out. “I am a very powerful man in my circles,” he says. “If this had happened in China, a lot of people would’ve gotten unlucky.” His meaning is clear, as are the couple’s motives. “Everybody wants to have an American baby,” he says. “Why? We have no sense of security.” Should Americans feel proud? Perhaps. And perhaps a little bit apprehensive.

- Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.