My New Year's Wish: A Sustainable Immigration Policy
By Yeh Ling-Ling
Published by Asian Week, January 14, 2005.
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My wish for the new year is that Asian Pacific Americans will come to agree
that all causes are lost causes unless we also stop population growth.
Reducing immigration, the driving force behind the U.S. population increase,
is in the interest of APAs and other legal residents.
Some immigrants are assets to this country and create employment
opportunities; most, however, need jobs, housing and social services. Since
millions of professional and low-skilled legal residents are unemployed or
underemployed, why continue to massively import temporary or immigrant
workers?
Health care costs have skyrocketed. Hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy
due to the health care they are required by law to provide to illegal
immigrants. The 2003 Current Population Survey conducted by the Census
Bureau reported that immigrants, legal and illegal, and their U.S.-born
children accounted for 95 percent of the growth of the uninsured population
in this country.
Time magazine recently estimated that 3 million illegal immigrants entered
this country in 2004. Presently, more than a quarter of our federal prison
inmates are illegal aliens who committed crimes. Bonds costing billions of
dollars have been passed yearly to pay for our overburdened infrastructure.
Aren't APAs also being impacted?
Immigration advocates argue that cutting corporate welfare will solve our
problems. Not only is this unrealistic, but immigration-driven population
growth also affects homeland security, our quality of life and the political
future of the United States. As our law enforcement agents are overwhelmed,
why not advocate a moratorium on immigration so that the United States could
focus on intercepting potential terrorists at our borders and rooting out
those now operating on U.S. soil?
President Bush has caved in to Mexico and the cheap-labor lobby and is
determined to massively increase immigration. He would give amnesty to 11
million foreign nationals by granting them temporary work visas and
subsequently U.S. citizenship. Once naturalized, those migrants can bring
extended families, adding tens of millions of additional people to this
country before long. Promoters of racial harmony should heed statements
expressed publicly by many leaders of Mexican descent.
In 1997 Ernesto Zedillo, then president of Mexico, proclaimed that "the
Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that
Mexican migrants are an important - a very important - part of it." Jose
Pescador Osuna, then Mexican consul general, said in California in 1998, "We
are practicing La Reconquista in California." Elena Poniatowska, a
prize-winning Mexican novelist who has taught at many American universities
such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, clearly stated, "Mexico is recovering
the territories yielded to the United States by means of migratory tactics."
Is this why Mexico has vigorously lobbied for amnesty and benefits for
millions of illegal Mexican migrants who could vote in future U.S. elections
after being naturalized?
Finally, Mario Obledo, co-founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund and former California secretary of health and welfare,
remarked in 1998, "Eventually, we are going to take over all the political
institutions of California." He also said that California is going to become
a "Hispanic state" and if anyone doesn't like it, "they ought to go back to
Europe." Undeniably, conflicts exist even among people of the same racial
and ethnic backgrounds. One can expect that there are APAs who don't like
Mexicans and vice-versa. Tensions are bound to escalate if APAs are asked to
go back to Asia.
While many Mexican illegal migrants are good workers and have no political
agenda, they and their children could be mobilized by Mexico to vote
according to Mexico's interests. Juan Hernandez, U.S.-born member of
President Vicente Fox's Cabinet, has said, "We are betting that the Mexican
American population in the United States will think Mexico first."
Furthermore, professor Charles Truxillo of New Mexico University confidently
predicted that the American Southwest will secede. He reminded skeptics,
"Throughout history, nations and empires rise and fall. No nation's borders
have been permanent."
For the best interest of all Americans, we should oppose all amnesty
proposals including Bush's, support the enforcement of immigration laws and
advocate an immediate three-year moratorium on legal immigration. This would
allow us to address problems that are not caused by immigration but are
exacerbated by exploding U.S. population growth.
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