据说这种月子中心是非法的

洛杉矶报道：

Southern California authorities recently shut down a makeshift maternity ward that allowed foreign pregnant women to have their babies in the United States. The illegally converted townhouse in San Gabriel was home to 10 newborns and a number of Chinese nationals when neighbor complaints prompted a visit by code enforcement officers.

The reason for the cramped visit? The women wanted to have their babies born in the U.S.

"These were not women living in squalor -- it was a well taken care of place and clean, but there were a lot of women and babies," Clayton Anderson, a city inspector who shut down the house on March 9, told The New York Times. "I have never seen anything like this before. We really couldn’t determine the exact number of people living there."

The maternity tourists apparently paid thousands of dollars to the homeowner to stay, according to authorities. They gave birth at nearby hospitals, which automatically bestows citizenship on the babies, and then the families planned to return to their homeland.

Anti-illegal immigration advocates have demanded that lawmakers end the effects of the 14th Amendment, which gives U.S.-born babies automatic citizenship. While their ire has been directed at immigration from Latin America, the "maternity ward" tourists are apparently wealthy and legally here on tourist visas.