More guest posts from NAPW panelists! Priscilla Huang is Project Director of the Reproductive Justice Program and the Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow at the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.
Immigrants have become the new scapegoat lately for everything from budget shortfalls to taking Toys ‘R Us prize money away from “real� Americans. As a result, immigrant women of childbearing age are increasingly becoming the target of unjust immigration reform policies. Under our current citizenship laws, persons born on U.S. soil are automatically considered U.S. citizens. But anti-immigrant groups such as the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) believe immigrant mothers are to blame for the country’s so-called “illegal immigration crisis.�
Groups like FAIR think immigrant women enter the U.S. solely to give birth to “anchor babies� –kids that are automatically eligible for various public benefits and who, upon reaching the age of 21, can permanently anchor the family in the U.S. by sponsoring the immigration of other relatives. Immigrant mothers and their anchor babies are seen as financial vortexes that drain the U.S. of its social welfare funds despite the fact that tons of studies have shown over and over again that immigrants access these services at disproportionately lower rates than U.S. born citizens. (BTW- Is anyone else seeing parallels with the ‘welfare queen’ image—you know, the lazy, single black mother who breeds children just to fatten up her welfare check—that was touted by the Clinton administration to justify the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act?)
Unfortunately, Congress is listening to these anti-immigrant groups and proposals to change our birth citizenship laws have already been introduced. There have also been reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are targeting pregnant immigrant women for deportation. One woman, an immigrant from China who had lived in the U.S. for 11 years, miscarried her twins after ICE officials shoved her into a van during a routine interview and drove her to JFK airport for immediate deportation.
Anti-choicers are also starting to get in on the immigration debate. In fact, many anti-immigrant advocates are also long-time anti-choice advocates who are manipulating the issue of immigration reform to advance their anti-choice agenda. In November 2006, a report from the Missouri House Special Committee on Immigration Reform concluded that abortion was partly to blame for the problem of illegal immigration because it caused a shortage of American workers. As the author, Rep. Edgar Emery, explained, “If you kill 44 million of your potential workers, it’s not too surprising we would be desperate for workers.�
In September 2005, Dr. John Wilke, founder of the National and International Right to Life organization, testified as a medical witness in the South Dakota Taskforce to Study Abortion Report:
Muslim countries forbid abortion. Furthermore they have large families…. Germany’s birth rate is 1.2…. That is the Aryan Germans. What is happening? They’re importing Turkish workers who do all of the more menial labor and right now there are over 1500 mosques in Germany. The Muslim people in Germany have an average of four children. The Germans are having about one. So it’s only a question of so many years and what do you think Germany is going to be? It’s going to be a Muslim country.
Clearly, immigrant rights is a reproductive justice issue. Anti-immigrant policy makers and advocates are not only working to deny automatic birth citizenship rights to the U.S.-born children of immigrants, but they are trying to limit the birth of certain groups of children by denying immigrant women the right to reproductive autonomy. The ‘logic’ they rely on seems suspiciously reminiscent of the early 1900s eugenics movement, which was rooted in nativist fears of immigrants (and other unwanted social groups) out-breeding “old stock� Americans. And at the center of these past and present movements is none other than the good ole womb. So, who do you think is worthy of procreation in the U.S. today?
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The story of the woman who miscarried is unconscionable, an example of what happens when the president nurtures an atmosphere of xenophobic bigotry. How do people think it’s okay to treat someone like this, and once again a pregnant woman no less, who is *begging* for medical help.
The INS should be focused on human traffickers, smugglers, criminals, terrorists, not a woman who has been successfully running a business for 10 years (!), paying taxes, and generally living ‘the American dream’. She sought and was denied asylum based on China’s “one child� policy and the U.S. was immediately deporting her because *she was going to have another child* (maybe she should have had an abortion?!). Unbelievable. Bush has lowered the bar to “we don’t have to be any better than China� when it comes to human rights.
The reproductive justice issue here is very real (pregnant? you’re deported!) and attempts to deny automatic citizenship to children born here is sickening. The parallel to eugenics movement is very insightful – remember that Prescott Bush was a proponent of the eugenics movement; you have to wonder what dinnertime conversation was like in the Bush household. Or maybe it’s not so hard to imagine.
Sorry to be so long-winded but this boils me. I hope jail time awaits the people who roughed Ms. Jiang up.
Its easy to feel against this, especially since I am not her, in this specific situation.
But at the same point, she was breaking the law, and a criminal for doing so. The task force that deported her did the right thing.
There is no evidence they hurt her or caused her to miscarry. I know of a woman who was mugged and stabbed while she pregnant, and she gave birth to a healthy girl.
She shouldnt have been here, and more importantly, she shouldnt have expected to be treated like a law abiding citizen, because she was breaking the laws, and an ILLEGAL immigrant.
It's one thing to sympathize with illegal immigrants and fight for more humane treatment. But I have yet to see a coherent argument that their use of public services is not a drain on our public money -- pointing out that they don't use the services as much as U.S. citizens doesn't really cut it. Framing it as a eugenics issue is just not fair. We have to make some tough choices as to how we want to spend our public money, and pretending that illegal immigrants don't use welfare funds or contribute to a tighter labor market isn't going to help.
JenPhen, I don't think you have the facts straight (at least as I read the NYT article Priscilla links to). The article states:
"No one disputes that under immigration law, Ms. Jiang could have been deported at any time after 2002, when she exhausted her appeals on the denial of her application for political asylum on the ground of China's one-child policy.
But her husband's political asylum case is still pending on appeal, Mr. Bortnick said, and the couple, whose sons were born in the United States and are citizens, have worked legally and paid taxes as Chinese restaurant operators in Philadelphia for a decade.
Ms. Jiang had been allowed to report routinely for years to an immigration office in Philadelphia until last Tuesday, he added."
So she was doing just fine in this country -- she could have been deported at any point after 2002, but the point is, the government didn't bother deporting her until she was pregnant with twins and then it went about doing so in the roughest, most inhumane way possible. The federal agents saw her as the nefarious Other, not someone who'd been an asset to our society for more than a decade.
Also, JenPhen, there's a whole body of law called criminal procedure that specifies that agents of the government still have to follow a code of conduct even when dealing with people who break the law. Government agents can't inflict needless misery upon American lawbreakers, and it isn't okay for them to do it to Chinese immigrants either. Though I'm sure the proponents of Bush's torture policies would disagree.
The only truly 'old stock' Americans are Native Americans.
The portion of our nation's budget spent on social services, regardless of who is using them, is shockingly low.
Human rights should be just that, human rights. If people are here in this country and they need help, they should get it. They should be treated with dignity and respect. Humans are humans are humans- regardless of nation of origin, regardless of color. How can our government rationalize treating people so badly, in our name, regardless of citizenship? Because they were born somewhere else? Give me a fucking break.
If these policies are truly the best that the U.S. can come up with, after generations of WASP control of the government and national resources, then maybe we will be better off down the road if nonWASPs 'take over' like the example of Germany becoming a Muslim country.
Thank you for pointing that out Paige, I did not see it in that light.
"that was touted by the Clinton administration to justify the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act?"
I believe Reagan was the one that embellished the little story. Just goes to show how long the Right's framing of issues can effect public polivy.
This in no way excuses the way that immigration officials treated Ms. Jiang (I am constantly shocked by the brutality of our own government; perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am), but there is a real discussion to be had regarding how much of an obligation this country's government has to care for the citizens of other countries. A big factor of that discussion should be the state of the country the person emigrated from: is that government incapable or otherwise unwilling to care for that citizen in a fundamentally decent way? If not, perhaps we have a moral responsibility to step in, I don't know. Perhaps the first line of defense against "illegal aliens" is to put pressure on neighboring governments to come up with domestic policies that care for its citizens, but I don't think putting up a wall and deporting people, saying "if your government refuses to take care of you that's your own damn fault" is the answer.
Regarding the financial drain on our country that illegal immigrants pose: even if this were true, and we were losing insane amounts of money, I might point out that Bush is also financially strangling the rest of the government to finance his little colonial adventure. It's not a logical argument to make, but those billions of dollars could be money well spent on domestic issues, alleviating some of the pressure put on the government by illegal immigrant access to public services.
The US government was wrong for letting her stay as long as she did.
The US was wrong for deporting her because she became pregnant.
She should have been deported a long time ago.
And the government doesnt put up a wall. If someone would like to come to work in the US, or even become a citizen, there are procedures for doing so. If the get rejected for any reason, too bad.
The US gives enough aid to other countries. Immigrants do put a tremendous strain on public resources. If they are he illegally, the should be thrown out, if necessary with the use of force, period.
Open borders to where people can cross the border, take public funds in the form of medical services, money, etc, and come and go as they want? thats crazy and will not happen, thankfully.
The US was wrong for letting her stay past 2002, but not in its normal immigrant policy.
And yes, access to government funds should be limited to the country in which you were born.
Actually, jenphen, immigration law isn't criminal: there are very few criminal immigration statutes, and those involve re-entering the country after having been deported. Immigration law is administrative, in that it is enforced and executed entirely by the executive branch of the government, and only touches on actual judicial-branch courts in very few instances. For that reason (and the fact that immigration judges are often former enforcement officers), it's very hard to ensure your due process rights in immigration proceedings.
-- ACS
But, ACS, don't you understand: they're IMMIGRANTS. They DON'T HAVE RIGHTS OR DUE PROCESS under the law. /snark
Seriously though, a woman comes to the US asking for political asylum because she has more than one child (and this is before she gets pregnant with twins), and the US decides to send her back to China. What, pray tell, will happen to her second kid? What kind of punishment will she have to face for having the ghastly ability to commit the worst of crimes: having a baby? Maybe we can't tell other countries what to do with their citizens, but when a person comes to us and asks for help, to say "no, go home, it's your fault for having sex"?
It's the whole Star Trek Prime Directive, people: you don't get involved in the private affairs of another country. But if someone asks you for help, you have a moral duty to respond humanely. And sending a couple back to their home country where they will be punished for private decisions made in their own bedroom does not qualify as "humanely" in my mind.
The ToysRUs contest was for the mother, and it specified she had to be a citizen or legal resident. The Chinese mother was apparently not, and the woman in Georgia was indeed a real American. The fact that Huang would put "real" in quotes reveals an inability to understand those distinctions.
The rest of the post is barely coherent and statements like "Groups like FAIR think immigrant women enter the U.S. solely to give birth to “anchor babies�" are highly misleading. FAIR doesn't say that all "immigrants" do that, only some. And, even the LAT has covered the issue of BirthhTourism, describing a clinic in Los Angeles that specifically advertises to fly women from Korea to the U.S. in order to give birth.
Jenphen,
In your rush to insist that illegals have got to go, you missed a big part of the point – the law was being *selectively* enforced on someone because of their pregnant status. That is an irrefutable fact. I took the point of the post to be selective enforcement of a law based on reproductive status, not a debate on immigration reform.
The u.s. was happy to let her pay taxes and to report to the immigration office steadily for 5 years despite their ability to deport her if they so chose. But having a husband and 2 children here, they correctly elected not to deport.
Until she became pregnant. Pregnant woman=get her the fuck out of here? Then she’s hustled to the airport while her husband and children sit waiting on her, oblivious to what’s going on.
Her getting roughed up (allegedly, as you contend) is certainly terrible, but was not even the main point here (although it deserves its own separate consideration), and mentioning that you know of someone who got stabbed and still delivered a healthy baby is ....wow... incredibly irrelevant and somewhat disturbing “proof� of the innocence of the task force.
If you think this is good policy and that the task force who deported her did the right thing, your America and my America are not the same.
It's the whole Star Trek Prime Directive, people: you don't get involved in the private affairs of another country. But if someone asks you for help, you have a moral duty to respond humanely. And sending a couple back to their home country where they will be punished for private decisions made in their own bedroom does not qualify as "humanely" in my mind.
I never miss an opportunity to nit pick, so...the Star Trek Prime Directive forbids any interference with "less developed" cultures. This includes direct aid, even if doing nothing means the destruction of a civilization. In all the various episodes when the Star Trek characters helped people in a less technologically advanced culture, they were breaking their own laws.
I would love to see our asylum rules expanded, but are we going to offer asylum to one billion-plus Chinese? Asylum makes sense to save people from ethnic cleansing or certain persecution/death for political/cultural issues, but all Chinese citizens are subject to the one child policy. We quite literally can't save everyone. The best we can do is put diplomatic pressure on other governments to cease their normalized oppressive policies, but I guess that would require "interference."
I hope it's just a coincidence that Ms. Huang used a dead NY Times Select link for the information on the miscarriage, but, if you track down afree article, you'll see that Zhenxing Jiang's other two children were already U.S. citizens. The anchor baby issue had nothing to do with her deportation.
...immigrant rights is a reproductive justice issue. Anti-immigrant policy makers and advocates are not only working to deny automatic birth citizenship rights to the U.S.-born children of immigrants, but they are trying to limit the birth of certain groups of children by denying immigrant women the right to reproductive autonomy.
No they are not. Look, anti-choicers aren't trying to interfere with immigrants' reproductive rights, they're trying to interfere with U.S. citizens' reproductive rights. They're using anti-immigration hysteria to make their case that our white women aren't reproducing enough. So, we need to make abortion illegal to keep our country "pure" and to supposedly reduce our demand for immigrant labor. It's a whole lot of hokum and nonsense, but it's a completely different set of hokum and nonsense than what's claimed in this post.
Keshmeshi,
In making the Star Trek analogy (and forgive my hopeless dorkiness), I certainly wasn't trying to say that we shouldn't exert diplomatic pressure on other governments to change oppressive policies, though given how the Prime Directive works, I can see how it would have sounded that way. What I was acknowledging, rather, was the idea that we can't physically change another nation's domestic policies (as in going in and rewriting their laws ourselves), and putting forth the idea that when someone gets here and asks for help, sending them back from whence they came seems cruel. Especially when that person left her home country due to rules regarding how many children she had, and we're sending her home pregnant with twins (well, I guess she wasn't pregnant when she got there, but I dont' think that makes this any better. That seems to make it worse, actually). Just by virtue of that pregnancy, she would have faced a hefty fine when she got home. To use puerile language, what the government did just seems mean (at best):
"You came here seeking asylum because you have two children instead of one... *five years go by* oh, look, you're pregnant with two babies at once. Sorry, girl, we're gonna hafta send you home now, so you're back at square one minus the rest of your nuclear family".
>>We have to make some tough choices as to how we want to spend our public money,
You're absolutely right. So you're in favor of ending Bush's War *right* now, not spending another penny on it except to bring the troops home?
>>Framing it as a eugenics issue is just not fair.
1) The argument that we're making is that it *is* a eugenics issue. Hell, the argument that a lot of anti-immigration pundits are making is that it's a eugenics issue.
2) Who cares what you think is fair? Right-wingers call left-wingers everything from baby-killers to traitors, and we're supposed to be nice? Sorry that we won't tie a hand behind our back for you.
>>But at the same point, she was breaking the law, and a criminal for doing so. The task force that deported her did the right thing.
>>She shouldnt have been here, and more importantly, she shouldnt have expected to be treated like a law abiding citizen, because she was breaking the laws, and an ILLEGAL immigrant.
Am I the only one who gets *very, very* disturbed when I see arguments like this? As a general rule, when someone says "They broke the law! They deserve _______", they're not talking about a rapist or murderer. It's like they're trying to convince us to shut off our compassion when dealing with THEM.
Get this through your head, Jenphen:
Perhaps they should have sent her back in 2002, if that's what the law states. However, they allowed her to stay while her husband's case was being appealed. She was checking in regularly as she did so. She was not "putting a strain on public resources", she and her husband were working hard and contributing to society. She *was* following procedures - grasping at every last technical chance she had, it seems - until the day she was hauled off without warning to herself or her family to be immediately deported.
Perhaps she miscarried from the treatment or the stress perhaps not. It still happened on their watch.
And nothing you can say will convince us that this is okay. It's not. This is a human being who was treated like this, not some Other. Repeating "She was an illegal immigrant, illegal immigrants are criminals, they can't expect to be treated like law-abiding people" over and over will not convince us. Immigration law is legitimate and deportation is a part of it, but there are some things that you just don't do to people.
>>There is no evidence they hurt her or caused her to miscarry. I know of a woman who was mugged and stabbed while she pregnant, and she gave birth to a healthy girl.
Good for her. She's very, very lucky. Not every woman will be.
"2) Who cares what you think is fair? Right-wingers call left-wingers everything from baby-killers to traitors, and we're supposed to be nice? Sorry that we won't tie a hand behind our back for you."
You know absolutely nothing about me. I am not a right-winger, and there's nothing right-wing about wanting real facts and numbers instead of namecalling and Hitler comparisons.
And, yes, I am in favor of ending the war.
Yeah, people who break the law immediately forfeit all their human rights. Every day during rush hour the traffic reports describe gnarly high speed collisions. Deploying ambulances and fire trucks to each crash scene hogs a lot of our county's resources. If the victims were exceeding the speed limit in the first place, why should they be entitled to any kind of rescue when they break the law (other than being immediately issued a citation as they slowly bleed to death in their cars at the bottom of the ditch)?
If the US spent the 1.3 trill from Iraq on domestic programs, if US trade and economic policies didn't bring people here and if ppl knew the US takes in only 1% of the world's immigrants, we wouldn't be having this convo.
I can out-nerd you all!! Technically, the Prime Directive from Star Trek applies to "primitive" cultures, where "primitive" is defined as a culture that has not yet developed warp drive technology.
;)
As to the problem here, as someone mentioned, there's a heavy strain of "we need more white babies!!!" in the discourse (UGH, just TYPING that makes me want to vomit). Similarly, there's an implied contention that it's a "problem" if "non-Americans" (read: non-whites, particularly given the revolting allusion to Aryan Germans by Idiot McAsserson) are birthing lots of babies.
Immigration here is a smokescreen for the bigger issue. This is racism, pure and simple. It's base and it's vile -- and it's the same sort of irrational FEAR that has caused the American public to lose its wits entirely in the past six years and willingly hand over civil right after civil right, all in the name of "protecting" ourselves from "terrorism" (which, by the way, has already won if we're so TERRIFIED that we don't even care anymore whether our government becomes a dictatorship).
Donna, the trade policies that hurt the developing world the most are European, not American. The EU has higher farm subsidies than the US, and so does Japan. But, of course, the US still has a long way to go - the UN says its total subsidies amount to $100-110 billion a year, which is bad enough as it is.
Jenphen, the "too bad" comment about people who're refused citizenship isn't especially informed. Immigration officers can refuse citizenship to anyone they don't personally like. I know a lapsed Muslim who didn't get a citizenship because the immigration officer, a devout Muslim, saw that he had an old DWI on his record, and was outraged that he was drinking.
The15th, illegal immigration is a net drain on the US economy, you're right. But as I noted a while ago when ripping into a particularly nasty racist, the total drain is 0.1% of GDP. The current health care system, in comparison, drains about 8% in the form of inefficiencies.
NAFTA is one of the main drivers of Mexicans into the US.
>And, yes, I am in favor of ending the war.
Good. Consistency. I can respect that, at least.
>>You know absolutely nothing about me.
True. All I have to go on is what you're saying here. Which is to repeat right-wing talking points.
>>there's nothing right-wing about wanting real facts and numbers instead of namecalling and Hitler comparisons.
True. I'd like to see some very much. Got any?
And no one made any Hitler comparisons, that I can see. Why is *he* on your mind at this particular moment?
"Instead of Mexico being able to export its food to the United States, what's really happened is that U.S. corn exports to Mexico have tripled, pushing 2 million Mexican corn farmers out of business. And those are the very people who then migrate [to the United States]." Those migrants then work for low wages inside the United States, Mittal argues, pushing wages for all workers down. Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans -- lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras -- are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US. (CommonDreams)
The only thing I have to say on this subject was said way better by Andrea upthread (in fact, the whole post of hers sums up pretty much what I've been trying to get at): "there is a real discussion to be had regarding how much of an obligation this country's government has to care for the citizens of other countries." Understandably, it's a discussion that not everyone wants to have.
The15th, I believe I owe you an apology. Upon rereading the thread, you *are* saying essentially what Andrea said - although you're right, she says it much, *much* better - but you had the misfortune to post immediately after Jenphen, whose callousness disgusted and enraged me. I would have disagreed with you anyway, but a great deal of the anger I've directed your way has been a result of that.
That said, it's not *us* who have framed this as a eugenics issue.
I'll admit, I've been expressing myself rather ineptly. Perhaps time for me to take a break from the keyboard.
Donna, that's why I was railing against farm aid. There is no level playing field under NAFTA; the US gets to pay farmers to export corn to Mexico at artificially deflated prices, while Mexico can't do anything in return. Free trade agreements that prohibit dumping, like those prevalent in Europe, don't have the same ill effects as NAFTA.
The15th, if you want to have that discussion, then let's start with why we should break things down by country. What obligation do New Yorkers have to send 5 cents of every dollar they make to people upstate or in other states?
My tolerance for the illegal immigration "debate" is nil, but to all people who think that no one should be able to come to this country without following "procedures," I respectfully request that you take your smallpox infested blankets and go "home." Oh yeh, that's right, I'm sorry - this is your home now.
I'll take today's illegal immigrants ANY day over people who come, intentionally spread disease, take children from their homes for "their own good," beat those children if they speak their native language. Then a few short generations later, romantize to the point of ridiculousness, the cultures that were destroyed (and pretend it was one big culture), THEN get REAL uppity about how new immigrants are taking their stuff (money/school seats/innoculizations).
I know, I digress, but holy moly. A little perspective goes a long way. And while I expect the regular posters on this site to know what I am talking about, some others may need to read their history a little more closely.
The way I see, this is MY land, and I welcome anyone who wants to come...
I hate those uppity Indians. What kind of tyranny is it when corporations can't dump toxic waste on Indian reservations with impunity and when the government has to spend on health care and education in reservations at the same rate it spends on them elsewhere?
"there is a real discussion to be had regarding how much of an obligation this country's government has to care for the citizens of other countries."
there's 20 million illegal immigrants and more than half are mexicans due to nafta. what do you do when governments cause people to become desperate? these are working families. protesting free trade agreements and out governments goes to the source of these problems.
"The recent ferment on immigration policy has been so narrow that it has excluded the real issue: family-sustaining wages for workers both north and south of the border. The role of the North American Free Trade Agreement and misnamed 'free trade' has been scarcely mentioned in the increasingly bitter debate over the fate of America's 11 to 12 million illegal aliens." (CommonDreams)
look what alon said:
illegal immigration is a net drain on the US economy, you're right. But as I noted a while ago when ripping into a particularly nasty racist, the total drain is 0.1% of GDP. The current health care system, in comparison, drains about 8% in the form of inefficiencies.
Wow. Even given the other things Jenphen has said, this takes the cake. At the very least, I would expect her to say "citizen" or "legal immigrant", unless she somehow thinks that naturalized US citizens, or foreign-born citizens such as John McCain, shouldn't be elligible for Medicare.
(This note brought to by a US "natural born citizen" who was born in the UK. Sen. McCain was born in Panama)
Alon, Sarcasm is my favorite flavor. I know I was a bit off topic, but I couldn't help myself.
Here's what bothers me about this situation:
As someone said upthread, the Chinese woman (did we get a name? I am not seeing one) sought political asylum because of the one-child policy that is applied to everyone, and as we saw recently, is being loosened. But America cannot take all the the Chinese women who want more than one child. What then is our response as a country to China's policy? It is simply impossible to allow .5billion people to come to America, obviously. We could encourage China to change the policy (economically, militarily, whatever) but then we The Big Mean World Power, and that still doesn't change the fact that China's goverment feels there are too many people. We could encourage the Chinese to either stop ancient traditions that discourage birthing girls, or we could encourage China and the rest of the world to stop viewing having children as a right and instead view it as a privilage.
The simple fact is that there are too many people in this world. 6 billion and growing is absolutely insane. We can't kill the ones that are already alive. What, besides China's policy, can we do?
And if there is nothing else we can do, how can we offer asylum to people of a country that is doing what they think is best to ensure that there are a reasonable amount of people in their country- an amount that will not strain the country's resources too badly, and an amount that they as a goverment can care for?
A lot of this stuff makes me think of some things my grandmother told me. She believes that minorities get "too much free stuff", like welfare, free college educations and free medical care, and that whites don't get any, and it's all because of the blacks and Mexicans. The things she said reminded me of things I'd heard from the mouths of white supremacists! *GAG!*
But there are confusing and complicated issues being argued here that I feel strongly on. I really don't think that illegal immigrants should be here. They are a drain financially and in the public service sector. If they want to be here, they should apply for citizenship. We cannot accept into the country everyone that doesn't like whhere they live. This country is overpopulated and has enough of a problem taking care of the people that are already legal citizens. I do think it is wrong the way this woman was treated, but she was also here illegally. That doesn't condone her treatment, though.
As for China's one-child policy, I personally support it. I may well be called a bad person, but I can see why they are doing it. The world is terribly overpopulated, and China's population is (was?) out of control. They're trying to slow it down. People aren't going to stop reproducing en masse all by themselves, given that the average person believes that they should be able to have as many kids as they want just because they're human, the people that already exist be damned.
Agree with me or not, it is a problem, and problems of this magnitude need solutions, even if they seem drastic to some.