An opportune Confinement

A heartwarming (for some) story entitled "Happiness Times Five" appeared in the Washington Post earlier this month. It tells how a heavily pregnant lady called Adwai Malual, from the popular tourist spot Sudan, flew to America to seek her Mother-in-Law's blessing for her pregnancy (yup! that's her story). However, once in America, she felt unwell, was rushed to hospital, and out popped five new automatic American citizens.

How very opportune!! Just think, if she hadn't happened to be visiting America, seeking mum in law's okay for getting knocked up, when she had her quintuplets, the poor little mites would have been Sudanese citizens rather than automatically Americans.

It appears there may be some issues of the bill, given that the happy mother does not have insurance, but the hospital is making various noises which suggest that they will "sort something out", and in any event, it is more than made up for by the fact that the family now have five little anchors in the land of the free.

Interestingly, if there hadn't been five babies, the story would not have made the news, so we will never know how many other world travelling mothers are in the same lucky situation. Reluctant as I am to paraphrase the ghastly Michael Howard, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Of course, we should not forget that had Mrs Malual, been visiting relatives in Andover, Basingstoke or indeed Tower Hamlets, rather than Annapolis when her contractions started, exactly the same situation would have applied, and there would be five new British citizens anchoring their large and extended Sudanese families to our welfare state.

Naturally, given how desperate that authorities are to hide such information, there are no figures as to how many bulging foreign ladies arrive at Heathrow, grimly crossing their legs and clutching a guide to nearby maternity wards. However, is it just me who suspects they are not what you might call rarities?!!

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