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Comment by wat10000 | Hacker News Reader

How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?

I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.

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Usually birth tourism is done by wealthier foreigners but that foreign wealth is not visible to the government so they end up qualifying for welfare.

That doesn’t answer my questions at all.

What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.

Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.

Hard for Americans to hide their assets in america. Land ownership is usually public.

They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.

Most Americans like owning their home.

One of my ideas was a way to fraudulently get most of the benefits of home ownership while hiding it; why wouldn't a rich dishonest Real American do that? Pride? So you think all children of wealthy birth tourists have no pride?

It appears your argument is that foreigners are greedy, lazy, fraudulent, exploitative, and shameless, but Real Americans never stoop that low. Again, do you have statistics on this, or is just kind of a feeling?

It's just not viable if you have a mortgage and insurance. There's also FinCEN reporting though temporarily suspended. I get the feeling you dont have any experience dealing with these bureaucracies. Otherwise you wouldn't be so flippant.

How do these wealthy welfare queen birth tourism beneficiaries manage it?

By having their assets overseas. You're going in circles now.

Both classes of people are American citizens, subject to the same laws and reporting. Why would one be able to hide assets overseas and the other not?

If your answer is dual citizenship giving them access to banks abroad, a wealthy American can buy another citizenship.

There is nothing to stop them from just not owning a mortgage or house, since that is the thing you say will catch them.

Are wealthy foreigners really coming to the US and deciding to live a lifestyle of food stamps and welfare checks, rather than utilizing said wealth?

Of course, everyone likes free stuff.

This conversation is reminding me of arguments about non-citizens voting, or assaults committed by trans fakers in bathrooms. Both have probably happened, as some weird wealthy dual citizen has probably decided to live on food stamps at least once. But I'd bet all of them are so rare they round to zero compared to the general rates of election tampering, sexual assaults, and welfare fraud, which are perpetrated by any other group than the minority being accused in each case.

If people can’t tell me how prevalent it is, then I’ll assume it’s pretty much nothing.

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