April 30, 2007
Why do they hate love us?
I found an interesting counterpoint to McCain's lament that poor public relations makes America an international pariah; John Derbyshire's tale of a Chinese family.
We have two Chinese friends, a husband-wife couple who came out of China in the late 1980s and have done pretty well, working at unspectacular jobs but salting away savings in that Chinese way. Now they are in their early sixties and looking at retirement. Since both are now U.S. citizens, they can draw Social Security wherever they live. With that, and their savings, they could go back to China and live pretty well.
However, they have two daughters in China. Both married well, to entrepreneurs who have got rich in the new China. They live in gated communities, their kids are in pricey private schools, and they have two cars per family — still pretty sensational in China. But guess what: They want to come out.
Our friends are in a quandary. The only chances their daughters (and their husbands) have to come out are if our friends sponsor them as close relatives, which they can. To carry through the process, our friends will have to stay here, scotching their plans to go and spend a prosperous retirement in China.
But why do these two successful, wealthy young couples want to come to the U.S.A., where they’d have to start over at some drudge jobs, with the handicap of not speaking much English? Have our friends explained the situation to them? “Of course. A hundred times!”
So why do they want to come out?
[Sigh] “Everybody wants to come to America!”
The only thing worse than America is everyplace else.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 30, 2007 08:08 AM
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