<p>Re post 101. What is relevant is not what Chinese policies towards immigration are now; what’s relevant is those policies 15-20 years ago when many of the Chinese who are now in college or high school arrived here as young children.</p>
<p>You may remember something called Tiananmen Square. It happened in
1989. China cracked down on emigration during that time period. A fair number of Chinese came to the US illegally in the five year period after that event. While some were able to regularize their status, many were not. Their children are illegals. Those children have grown up in the US. </p>
<p>BTW, not everyone who is born in the US is eligible for US citizenship. If your parent is here as an employee of an embassy or consulate or of an international organization, you don’t get citizenship by being born here. </p>
<p>Then there are the people you ridicule as “boat people.” They came here illegally as cheap labor. Their kids grew up here too. They had more opportunities than their parents and many have done very well academically.</p>
<p>And, I’ve never heard of North Korea making it easy to come to the US. </p>
<p>RE post #102. Bay, I agree with you–but our immigration laws do not. They favor the educated and skilled, not the unskilled.If you think that’s immoral, then I urge you to write to your Congressional rep and Senator and ask them to work towards a change in our immigration policies. </p>
<p>Moreover, I was reacting to earlier posts which made it seem as if not only the illegal alien parents were a drain on the US, but all of their children are too. (See, for example, your own post #93, Bay.) That’s far from true. Many of the very smart kids who are illegals and are now in college or approaching college age are the children of unskilled laborers, who came here as “economic” refugees–a category that doesn’t get you into the US. However, the children of those refugees have grown up here and many of them are for all practical purposes Americans. </p>
<p>That’s true of many other groups besides Chinese and Koreans. In my neighborhood, it seems to be particularly true of Haitians. They have almost no chance of getting political asylum, even if they have run afoul of the government. </p>
<p>To both of you, I think you are missing the point that we have thousands of illegal aliens who came to the US when they were very young. In most cases, nobody was thinking about where they would go to college. Mom and dad just wanted to put food on the table. Due to our lax enforcement, mom and dad were able to stay here for many years. The kids who came here as infants or toddlers are now young adults, who have no familiarity with their homelands and in many cases cannot read or write in their native tongues. </p>
<p>If they are caught do we deport them even if they have never been in trouble in the US and have played by every other rule? Even if they came here when they were so young that it would be laughable to hold them responsible for the fact that they did not get here legally? </p>
<p>Personally, I would be opposed to the idea that any kid who manages to stay here for three years of high school can be considered in state. However, I tend to think that any kid who is in the US by some age like 10, remains here continuously and isn’t “caught” before finishing high school at an American high school, should be given some very easy way to regularize his or her status.</p>