It's been an incredibly strange year between the US and Russia, to say the least. Russian oligarchs seem to have some strange web of ties with US oligarchs, including
Donald Trump, though no clarity or finality has been brought to these theories. It remains unproven conjecture that Russia swayed the election in any way, or that Donald Trump was a co-conspirator with the Kremlin.
Still, they've clearly been enjoying each other. Donald Trump, as a wild card, was certainly
Vladimir Putin's preferred candidate. Anyone who would loosen the grip of NATO on Eastern Europe, through incompetence or anti-globalist philosophy, was in the national interests of Russia.
And it seems that Russians really like the Trump brand. So much, in fact, that they want to stay at Trump's hotels in the US.
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...To have children.
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That's right: wealthy Russian parents are coming on vacation to the United States for the express purpose of giving birth to babies.
“I was looking particularly for Trump Towers," said Valeriya Storozheva, one of the many pregnant mothers staying in real estate like Trump Royale, in Miami's Sunny Isles.
The hashtag “births in Miami" in Russian accompanies most Instagram posts from these expecting mothers. Sunny Medical Center, the choice place for Russian vacationers to give birth in Miami, publicly advertises US citizenship as a benefit of birth.
Valeriya Storozheva had already given birth to one child seven years ago in Sunny Medical Center. She had such a good time, that she decided to come back for her next.
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So, what gives? Is this the ultimate Russian conspiracy to take over the US? To the contrary, it's a very advantageous strategy for rich Chinese and Russian parents to have their children in the United States. As a safety net for their trust fund kids, US citizenship is an extra layer of opportunity, giving them the chance to live in a less authoritarian country, study in the US, work there and have an easy time at the border.
Birth tourists are just on another level, I suppose. So why Trump properties? Well, to ordinary Russians, Trump is associated with the United States more than any other person. He's a major celebrity, especially abroad - the idea of the rich celebrity President who likes Russia goes over pretty well with rich Russians.
“A building which has more Russian officials than all of Moscow,” reads a post describing Trump Palace on DeliveryinUSA.com, a website devoted to birth tourism.
It's like if China had an iconic billionaire who became President. If you were going to take a trip to China, and that President owned hotels and apartments, wouldn't you go with the name recognition alone? It seems like a lot do. And US politics is so foreign to them that his controversial agenda doesn't really matter.
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Trump, however, would be against this, at least in principle. In an interview with Bill O'Reilly, he even said that birthright citizenship, or children born in the US to non-citizen parents, is not necessarily legitimate:
“I don’t think they have American citizenship and if you speak to some very, very good lawyers—and I know some will disagree, but many of them agree with me—and you’re going to find they do not have American citizenship. We have to start a process where we take back our country. Our country is going to Hell.”
Maybe he's just talking about Middle Eastern and Hispanic kids. Still, if Trump wants to move forward on immigration, why the double-standards? Russians, Europeans and Chinese people are okay, but only certain types of kids are not? It's a strange business indeed.
