Susan Rheault: Let's turn our immigration problem into a major opportunity

Time magazine’s January issue spells out the major issue facing the No. 2 and 3-rated economies in the world, China and Japan: declining populations and increasing bills caring for their elderly populations. A country needs 2.1 children per woman for a stable population. Currently, the U.S. has a ratio of 1.84, whereas China’s ratio is 1.45 and Japan’s is 1.38. Russia has a ratio of 1.68. All of these competitors have expensive policies to encourage women to have more babies, so far with little result.

Nobody is trying to sneak into Russia, China or even Japan and South Korea: Dictatorships and racist countries are not attractive destinations, even for “temporary” workers.

We have the opposite problem: crowds of young people trying to get into the U.S. This could be a huge advantage if we can figure out a system to integrate some of these people into our economy — perhaps special economic zones in areas of stagnant growth. We certainly should welcome engineers and scientists, because China has been using our universities to train their students in these scarce skills.

Congress needs to actually do constructive work to find a viable set of laws to deal with this potential bonanza. Currently, they are happy to use the issue of immigration to demonize the competition and keep it alive as a divisive political issue. We are better off than other competing economies and our “major problem” could be our major opportunity.

Susan Rheault

North Conway