Sunday, March 8, 2020

Forgotten issues in the coronavirus debate: Mass migration and offshoring to China

Oleksii Liskonih/Getty Images
This week, Congress will debate its reaction to the coronavirus. One hundred percent of the discussion will revolve around how much money to throw at HHS agencies already flush with record budgets, but nobody is discussing the biggest policy problem implicated during critical public health crises – mass migration and outsourcing to and from the very source countries of these outbreaks.
Immigration, when managed properly, at the right levels, from the right places, with prudent vetting and fostering of Americanization among the new arrivals, can enrich a country. But when done with no regard for American sovereignty and security, and through irresponsible and unchecked mass migration, it can be the biggest conduit for whatever global concerns we seek to avoid – whether drugs, cultural problems, espionage, terrorism, trade theft, or communicable diseases.
It is evident from both the 2003 SARS and 2020 coronavirus outbreaks that China cannot be trusted to keep these viruses in check or to be truthful and collaborative in containing them. Living with such a clear reality, why are policymakers not questioning the effect of bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese students and tens of thousands more on other visas every year? Why do we not clamp down on mass travel the minute there is a sense of a novel virus outbreak in China? Those are the questions policymakers should be grappling with this week.
Given the sheer number of Chinese students studying in our universities, an outcome the American people never voted for, how many countless thousands traveled back from school vacations in China when the new semester began in January? That coincided with the outbreak of the virus. What protocols were put in place to ensure they were not carrying the virus, or is such an effort even possible with such large numbers in a rush to get back for the new semester?
There are certainly a lot of terrific people who come here from China. But we can’t ignore the fact that the Chinese government is our biggest adversary and is using its diaspora of students, which flows into a pipeline of Chinese workers employed in sensitive industries and government research lab, as a means of stealing our expertise, data, and trade secrets and bringing it back home.
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