Thread: The foreigners U.S. should fear don't live here

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The foreigners U.S. should fear don't live here

Published on: 03/05/06
It's not the Mexicans we should worry about. Or the Guatemalans, Colombians or Salvadorans. Waves of laborers — legal and illegal — from south of the border don't constitute the grave threat to national security or economic stability that the anti-immigrant hysteria would suggest.

If you want to worry about the future, look to China. Or to India. Those countries are producing millions of well-educated young people who are already taking jobs from American workers — and are poised to take more. While Congress and state legislatures busy themselves with meaningless bills aimed at undocumented workers pouring over our southern borders, they're ignoring the real threat to U.S. economic hegemony.


It's not gardeners from Guerrero who are likely to replace American accountants, engineers and graphic designers. It's eager students from Bangalore who master mathematics and engineering, speak English and work for less — at least for now. Already, multinational corporations are transferring scores of job categories to workers outside the country. Those aren't limited to customer service reps in call centers but include Indian computer geeks who can design video games.

China, too, intends to be more than a low-cost manufacturing center. As Thomas Friedman put it in his latest book, "The World Is Flat": "China does not just want to get rich. It wants to get powerful. China doesn't just want to learn how to make GM cars. It wants to be GM and put GM out of business."

You'd think members of Congress, who are supposed to be smart people, would have noticed. You'd think they'd be making speeches, appointing task forces and appropriating funds — all aimed at preparing American students to meet the challenges of a global economy. You'd think President Bush would back a broad national program to jump-start education in math and science, starting in elementary school.

Instead, the Bush administration has engaged in wholesale warfare against science, censoring reports, rewriting documents and muzzling scientists whenever their conclusions contradict the religious views of a narrow constituency of ultraconservative Christians. Congress, meanwhile, is bogged down with controversial legislative efforts to seal off the borders and punish illegal workers.

It's not as if Mexicans are suicide bombers. With all the inflammatory rhetoric on talk radio and cable TV — CNN's Lou Dobbs has carved a new career out of bashing illegal immigrants — you might get the impression the United States had the same problem with its Latino immigrants that Western Europe has with restive Muslims, some of whom have cozied up to the jihadist strain of Islam that despises the West and scorns modernity. By contrast, Latinos, including those who crossed the border illegally, want nothing more than to assimilate. They like baseball, Nikes and Wal-Mart. What could be more American than that?

It's true that some regions of the country, including areas around Atlanta, have been burdened by a huge influx of illegal workers; they are often minimum-wage earners who speak little English and need social services. But the rapid influx of undocumented workers has a fairly simple solution: Impose harsh penalties — prison time — on the business executives who employ them, and fewer companies will take the risk. If fewer jobs are available, fewer workers will cross the borders. It's as simple as that.

The challenge of a global work force cannot be met as simply. It will require politicians who are open-minded and forward-looking, with the political courage to resist the easy call for closed borders and restrictions on free trade. They will have to resist, as well, a growing xenophobia that would see in a rising China a new "yellow peril."

Instead, President Bush and Congress should be pouring billions of dollars into a brand new science and math initiative, modeled after the program that followed the Soviets' successful launch of Sputnik in 1957. With national defense as the battle cry, it was easy enough to get Americans behind a plan that churned out mathematicians, scientists and engineers. Now that those baby boomers have started retiring, the nation needs another plan to groom biologists, physicists and computer engineers.

That makes more sense than spending millions more to seal off the border with Mexico. Some of those young illegal immigrants — the children of today's poultry workers or landscapers — could be tomorrow's American scientists.

• Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.

Originally Posted by Cynthia Tucker

The foreigners U.S. should fear don't live here

Oh what a relief! You reporters are so brilliant. Well, Cynthia, surely you won't mind having a few MS-13 gang bangers (from El Salvador) over to dinner! Be sure and let us know how the party turns out.

Sung Liberation