January 12, 2008


U.S. could take page from China on immigration

Yeh Ling-Ling

The U.S. economy is teetering into a recession. Global warming is also a major concern to many Americans. Before making promises to voters, presidential candidates should learn from the Chinese experience.

Forty years ago, China symbolized the Third World at a time when the United States was the most prosperous country on Earth. Since then, the United States has become the greatest debtor nation in human history, while China now holds the largest foreign currency reserves in the world. What have the Chinese done right? Many factors have contributed to China's meteoric rise and America's rapid decline. But, the population issue in China cannot be ignored.

Three decades ago, the Chinese government already understood that population growth would seriously impede its economic success. It went as far as adopting the draconian one-child policy in 1979 and still restricts mainland citizens from settling in Hong Kong. Leaders realized that a heavy influx of people would sink Hong Kong's economy. Further, China seriously limits immigration and welcomes only investors. It hands out no welfare checks and demands self-sufficiency of its people.

Conversely, the United States has allowed its population to balloon by 50 percent since 1970, from 202 million to 303 million, mainly due to immigration policies. If the U.S. population continues to grow at the rate of the last decade, by 2100 - within the lifetimes of today's children's children - we will approach India's current population. Instead of advocating sustainable immigration, many presidential candidates are promoting immigration policies that will further increase our population, thus adding more people using energy and social services to this country.

Undoubtedly, many immigrants are excellent workers and students. However, 75 percent of our adult cash-welfare recipients nationwide are between the ages of 20 and 39. Why not seriously enforce existing immigration laws and give welfare recipients incentives to take jobs now held by illegal migrants? Some growers in Idaho and Colorado are using nonviolent prisoners to replace illegal migrants. Why not make it a national practice? This move makes fiscal sense and is good for prison inmates as well.

According to test scores, American children fall behind their counterparts in many Asian countries. This is partly because schools in many states are overwhelmed by an explosion of immigration-related enrollments, and many teachers without proper credentials have been hired to cope with students speaking little to no English. Since many school districts have already had to cut programs affecting U.S.-born and legal-immigrant students, how many more foreign nationals should we invite to this country?

In 2002, there were 757,000 teen pregnancies in the United States. Can any country prosper with a growing semi-literate student population, burgeoning numbers of babies having babies and swelling welfare rolls? In recent years, the United States has massively exported jobs and imported workers. Furthermore, most new jobs created in this country are service-sector, low-paying positions, not generating enough income to support a family or tax revenues to cover the cost of social services provided to those workers and their families.

China is far from perfect and indeed has many problems. One of the most pressing is environmental degradation, caused largely by China's exploding economic growth and increasing consumerism. Therefore, to improve the quality of life for natives and legal immigrants already here, the United States must immediately adopt policies that would effectively lead to U.S. population stabilization, encourage self-reliance, cut consumption at all levels, foster strong work ethics and train our youth to think critically and with foresight.

Americans must realize that the United States is no longer the prosperous nation that it was in the 1960s. We owe China some $400 billion in federal debt. The Euro, weaker than the dollar in 2000, is now worth more than $1.45. Cutting interest rates and developing green energy alone will not solve our economic or environmental problems.

Unless our national leaders have the courage to take the above steps, this country will soon become a Third World nation.

YEH LING-LING, a naturalized citizen of Chinese ancestry, is executive director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, based in Oakland, Calif.