Criticism leveled against birth tourism from Asian families by US presidential candidates is unwarranted, as the bigger picture is that the US is losing its appeal to Chinese immigrants, analysts said Wednesday.

US Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush used the term "anchor baby" last week during a radio interview, saying "If there's abuse, if people are bringing - pregnant women are coming in to have babies simply because they can do it, then there ought to be greater enforcement … Better enforcement so that you don't have these, you know, 'anchor babies,' as they're described, coming into the country."

"Anchor baby" is a pejorative term for a child born in the US to foreign national parents who are not lawfully admitted for permanent residence.

Bush's campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said later that what Bush was really referring to was birth tourism after the term "anchor baby" was criticized by other US presidential candidates, such as Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.

"What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed where there's organized efforts - frankly it's more related to Asian people coming into our country, having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship," Bush said.

The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution grants citizenship to any child born on US soil, regardless of parentage.

Outdated stereotype

Analysts, however, said that while there is a trend of Chinese people traveling to the US to give birth, the bigger tendency is that the US is losing its attraction for Chinese immigrants.

"It is outdated to stick to the old stereotype - that the US is the promised land - and miss the bigger picture," Sun Chenghao, an assistant research fellow at the Institute of American Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

The Annual Report on Chinese International Migration (2015) issued by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in March said that the number of Chinese residents receiving US permanent residency dropped to around 71,000 in 2013, a 12.2 percent decrease from 2012.

Meanwhile, over 350,000 students returned from overseas in 2013, about 30 percent more than the number in 2012, which was recorded at around 272,000, according to another CCG report in December 2014.

Analysts have attributed this to the narrowing gap in national strength between China and the US.

"The US no longer holds as strong an attraction as before, since China has been working to narrow the gap between itself and the US, in both economic and social development," said Song Quancheng, director of the Institute of Migration Studies at Shandong University.

Birthright citizenship

Estimates from the Pew Research Center and the Center for Immigration Studies in 2010 said that over 300,000 newborns were born to at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant in the US every year, according to the Washington Post.

The Post added some 70 percent of such immigrants come from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, while undocumented immigrants from China, the Philippines, India and Korea made up 8 percent of the total.

Republicans have identified illegal immigration as a key issue for primary voters.

Some seeking the 2016 presidential nomination, including Donald Trump, have criticized across-the-board birthright citizenship.

"Bush's comment went a little bit too far, but it is not unexpected. He may lose votes in some immigrant communities, but he could secure votes from conservative voters," Sun said.

Sun added that it is common to see candidates using eye-catching phrases to improve exposure as part of their campaign efforts.

Media reports have repeatedly reported on the birth tourism industry. China even released a romance movie in 2013 whose heroine featured a pregnant Chinese woman traveling to Seattle to give birth. 

In March, US federal agents launched dawn raids on dozens of Chinese "birth hotels" in southern California where Chinese nationals caught were charged up to $50,000 by birth tourism operators for arranging their US travel, media reported.

Since these raids, there has been a decline in the numbers of Chinese people traveling to the US for birth tourism, The New York Times reported Tuesday.