In this article, I would like to compare several major immigrant countries that I have lived and worked in, and tell me what I have seen and heard in various countries.
I used to live in New Zealand for seven years, and now I have been in the United States for seven years. I have worked in Australia for half a year, and I have been to Australia many times in the last two years, and I have many relatives in Australia. So I know Australia well, too. Now let me talk about what I saw.
Sources and characteristics of migrants
The first characteristic of Chinese immigrants in the United States is that the number of skilled immigrants is very small, and the main immigrants come to the United States through marriage, relatives and political asylum, as well as a certain number of investment immigrants. This characteristic is the result of the discriminatory immigration policy of the United States.
U. S. immigration laws have an exactly equal quota for skilled immigrants from all countries, which cannot exceed 7% of the world's total quota, regardless of size and population. The world's total quota for skilled immigrants is only 140000, which means China has a quota of 9,800, the same as Iceland and New Zealand, which have just a few million people.
In fact, there are only about 8,000 places for skilled immigrants in China. Because of political reasons, the United States issued a large number of green cards to China in the early 1990s, which will be deducted year by year over the next few decades.
To make matters worse, the quota for more than 8000 Chinese skilled immigrants includes the spouses and children of the main applicant.
According to the U.S. Immigration Service, one major applicant in the United States (both real skilled immigrants) carries an average of 1.5 families. In this way, there are only more than 3000 skilled immigrants from China who really come from the United States each year. The pitiful figure is roughly the same as the number of skilled Chinese immigrants New Zealand receives every year, with a population of just over 4 million, and much less than the Chinese skilled immigrants that Australia receives every year.
This policy has led to nearly five hundred thousand Chinese students in the United States, few who can really stay through skilled migration. In contrast, the United States has no limited number of married immigrants, and the application time is very fast. As a result, many Chinese women come to the United States by marriage and can be seen everywhere in big cities.
In addition, the quota for family reunification migration in the United States is twice that of skilled immigrants, so it is much easier for family reunification immigrants than for those on their own.
Another feature is that the waiting time for skilled immigrants in the United States is not only very long, but also far away, even the United States government does not know how long you will be in line. Personally, I'm a university professor in the United States, and I've been in line for four years before I get my green card. Due to the surge in the number of students studying in the United States, it is estimated that skilled immigrants will be scheduled for 6-8 years now and in the near future. During the long schedule, applicants are not allowed to change jobs and spouses are not allowed to work. Therefore, American skilled immigration is a very hard, very inhuman system.
Therefore, I do not recommend that young people come to the United States for green cards and waste their precious youth waiting forever (except for marriage).
In contrast, neither Australia nor New Zealand has any discriminatory quotas. All nations are fully equal and emigrated on their own. As a result, Chinese immigrants to Australia and New Zealand mostly rely on their own knowledge and skills to emigrate, rather than marriage and relatives.
Australia has about one hundred and thirty thousand skilled immigrants a year, as many as a dozen times its population in the United States. And the skilled immigrants from China are about 20, 000 a year. This is more than two times the number in the United States.
In addition, New Zealand and Australia are encouraging skilled immigrants who can contribute to their economic and technological development, while restricting marriage and family reunification is the opposite of U. S. policy. Australia, for example, had 128550 skilled immigrants worldwide in 2015-2016, compared with 57400 in households around the world. Of these, 29005 Chinese immigrants (including skills and families). There are only 30 million people in Australia, while there are 300 million in the United States!
My friends and relatives are almost exclusively skilled immigrants to Australia and New Zealand.
Age of immigrants
I found that Chinese immigrants in the United States are older, most of whom are post-50s and post-60s. Most of their generation came to the United States in the 1990s, thinking differently from our young people and not going together. Young immigrants are relatively few in the United States, although there are many international students here. This, of course, is a corollary of America's policy of restricting skilled immigration.
In contrast, in Australia and New Zealand, the vast majority of skilled immigrants around me are post-70s, post-80s and post-90s young people. In particular, our post-80s immigrants are the main force of Australia and New Zealand. Most of the post-80s stay through skilled immigrants after studying at their own expense in Australia and New Zealand.
How difficult it is for new immigrants to take root
In the United States, new immigrants want to take root in the United States is a difficult process, will encounter a variety of policy and procedural obstacles. For example, it takes time to get a social security number, (Social Security Number, and a driver's license. In Australia and New Zealand, it's easy.
In the United States, new immigrants can't get a home loan. The reason is that there are two important conditions for bank lending in the United States:
- Have a history of credit and a high enough credit rating;
- There will be two years of uninterrupted revenue records in the United States.
So, unless you have 100% cash, you won't be able to buy a house in the United States for three years.
When I first came to the United States, the first point above forced me to death. Although I was an American professor with a higher salary than the average person, I couldn't get a credit card at the time because I had no credit record. As there is no credit record, no bank has agreed to issue a credit card to me. But to have a credit record, you have to have a credit card or other loan. This becomes the "egg laying chicken or chicken laying eggs" dead cycle. I was in a hurry! Finally, my old dean came to his acquaintance, the president of the bank, and it took me my first credit card in the United States to unravel the knot.
In New Zealand and Australia, newcomers go to the bank with a job contract and passport, and they give you credit cards or even home loans on the spot. So, it's not a thing at all.
In addition, new immigrants to the United States, because there is no history of credit, rental is extremely troublesome. Most landlords investigate the tenant's credit record, so new immigrants who don't have a credit record often run into the wall.
The social, political and economic status of migrants
When I came to the United States, I felt deeply that the political, social and economic status of Asians in the United States was far lower than that of Asians in Australia and New Zealand. For example:
The United States discriminates against Asian-American children for college entrance exams. Prestigious schools such as Harvard ask Asian-American high school students to get almost full (SAT or ACT) scores for college entrance exams, lower for whites and even lower for blacks. The only ones that do not discriminate against Chinese are California's universities, because only California's legislation requires college admissions not to be classified according to their children's race. So, the University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles are filled with black-eyed students. Out of California, universities in other states are more or less discriminating against Chinese.
But they still have to find a reason to discriminate against Asian children, saying that Asian children are nerds who can only read, but lack practical and leadership skills. Cut. It's a new layer of discrimination! This is the general impression of Americans and the American media about Asian descent, (stereotype). Asian boys, in particular, are often perceived by native Americans and Chinese girls as lacking masculinity.
Asian lack of leadership? When the Chinese played the Spring and Autumn period, the Romance of the three Kingdoms, and the Art of War, your American ancestors did not even enter the dark ages in Europe. You still have the face to say that we don't have the ability to lead?! Discrimination is discrimination, I admit it! But please don't look for stupid reasons.
Another example of discrimination is the quota for skilled immigrants mentioned above.
In the United States, you can hardly see newly immigrated Chinese working at all levels of government. In New Zealand, many of my friends work in government, and some of the post-70s and post-80s, similar to my age, have become managers of various government departments, equivalent to section chiefs and even chiefs.
A good friend of mine is a IT woman who has just arrived in New Zealand directly through the security audit (security clearance), is directly responsible for the administration of some important national databases in the Ministry of the Interior. Other friends are at the Ministry of Health, at the Justice Department, and at the National Police Directorate. This is only a dream for Chinese newly arrived in the United States.
The above talk about the work of government, let me talk about the economic strength of the Chinese in Australia and New Zealand. In Sydney, Melbourne, Oakland, Wellington and other big cities to buy million-class luxury homes, the proportion of Chinese is very high. You can go to street auctions every weekend in Sydney and Melbourne. Although there are many white people on the lookout, it is often Chinese who can bid for the last place at a high price.
In the United States, although there are also many mainland housing groups, but the average economic strength of Chinese immigrants is not as good as local people.
Take a tour of downtown Sydney and you'll find that almost 50% of passers-by are Asian faces. Sydney is definitely the most international city, and no city in the United States is comparable to Sydney at this point. I've been to my niece's elementary school in Sydney, where 99% of Asian faces.
In addition to the large number of Chinese, plus the economic and social status of the Chinese, in Australia and New Zealand, there is no organization, any government dare to discriminate against the Chinese. Besides, many of us Chinese immigrants work at all levels of government in Australia and New Zealand. This is very different from the social status of Chinese Americans.
Another phenomenon is that in the United States, a large proportion of Chinese women prefer to marry white men, look up to whites, and despise Chinese men. It is estimated that because of the low social status of the Chinese people in the United States, the Chinese people are still somewhat inferiority or feel like outsiders, so they are more willing to "climb higher branches" and, subconsciously, they are more willing to become more localized through marriage. To improve their social status. This is a social ethos, not an individual phenomenon.
But in Australia and New Zealand, the vast majority of Chinese girls prefer Chinese men to marry. First, skilled immigrants are easier, plus the social status of the Chinese is no lower than that of the local people, and the academic background and economic strength are not weak. Therefore, I know almost all Chinese girls in Australia and New Zealand preferred Chinese men, after all, they have the same cultural background, easy to understand each other. Even my own 20-something nieces and cousins grew up in Australia-born Australia, but they went to college to talk to second-generation Chinese, and white is still a minority.
One generation looking for a generation of immigrants, two generations looking for two generations, this is the main form of marriage of Australian and New Zealand immigrants. At this point, there is a big difference between immigrants and foreign students in the United States.
Income and career development
In terms of revenue, the United States beat Australia and New Zealand significantly. GDP (PPP) per capita in the United States is $5, 7, 000, GDP (PPP) in Australia is $49000, and GDP in New Zealand is $39000. However, the distribution of GDP varies greatly from country to country.
America's rich are very rich, and the poor are very poor. The gap between the rich and the poor in Australia and New Zealand is small, and everyone's income is in the middle. The poor are few, but the very rich are not too many.
The United States is a country that looks at individual abilities very much. If your personal skills are very high, then your career in the United States can be uncapped, you can become a billionaire, or win the Norbert Award, or become a university president. But in Australia and New Zealand, these opportunities are limited, so you may not get 100% of your talent.
However, if your abilities are generally or moderately superior, then Australia and New Zealand's career opportunities may also be good. Although you may not win the Nobel Prize or become a multimillionaire, you can do quite well.
If your ability is low, it is best not to come to the United States, because the fierce competition here will make you unbearable.
Lifestyle and social
In the way of life and social, Australia and New Zealand unquestionably defeated the United States.
In the United States, I feel very monotonous in Chinese life, that is to go to work, off work, send children to school, shopping. I note in particular that American Chinese are less sociable, at least not as sociable as Australian and New Zealand Chinese. This is actually a national culture in the United States, where adults are more lone and less sociable outside work.
Putman, a Harvard sociologist, published Bowling Alone as early as 2000, a comprehensive analysis of the increasingly lonely social phenomenon of Americans. This has a lot to do with job pressure, high crime rates, lower trust between people, and so on.
My personal experience is entirely in line with the judgment of the sociologist. Interestingly enough, I found that my students didn't talk to each other before and after class and did their own things. Americans seem to be afraid to disturb each other, either out of excessive politeness or out of distance from one another.
In the United States, you will find that Americans show a lot of enthusiasm on the surface, but that enthusiasm can only be maintained on the surface, and it soon disappears. So you can't really make friends with them, you can't make friends with them. According to my observations and readings, this is not the result of cultural differences between us immigrants and locals, but a culture in which native Americans do not interact with each other in depth. Americans are very lonely.
A survey by a leading American university in 2014 found that 25 percent of Americans did not have a friend in 1980; in 2010, as much as 50 percent of Americans did not have a close friend. In this highly materially developed United States, people's spiritual life is extremely scarce.
I don't seem to have met any Chinese living in the United States without saying that life is boring. One or two people, 300 square meters of the big house, not even a speaker, what is the meaning of such a life? As a result, many Chinese people couldn't stand it and finally returned home. I privately suspect that old professor Yang Zhenning has the same reason to spend his old life back home. In fact, this is really not our own Chinese, but the problem of the overall social environment in the United States.
In Australia and New Zealand, Chinese life is much more colorful.
For example, I have never had a birthday in the United States, but once New Zealand birthday, there are more than 10, more than 20 friends to celebrate together, I am so grateful. Why do Chinese Americans not like to treat each other? We also have a variety of Chinese interest groups in New Zealand, such as mountaineering group, IT group. Wait。
For the middle-aged and the elderly, all New Zealand public libraries have sunset homes dedicated to Chinese. Among them are teaching the elderly to learn English, computer, calligraphy, Taiji and other activities. My mother said she was more lively in New Zealand than at home.
material benefits
The United States is a low welfare state, while Australia and New Zealand are high welfare states. As we all know, I won't say much. Health care in the United States is so expensive that you can't afford to pay for it yourself without a job offering you health insurance (for at least $5000 a year). For example, it costs $2000 to do an CT in the United States, but in New Zealand and Australia it's usually free because government medical care is there.
Other benefits are also good for Australia and New Zealand, bad for the United States.
education
The best universities in the world are concentrated in the United States. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago and other famous schools such as cloud. But elite education in America is expensive. Not everyone can afford a $45-$50, 000-a-year tuition fee. By contrast, Australia and New Zealand's university level is also fine, although not the top, but very cheap. For immigrants, college tuition in New Zealand is about $7000 a year, equivalent to less than $5000. (note: this is the tuition fee for immigrants, not for international students.)
In addition, the average level of ordinary primary and secondary schools in the United States is relatively poor, so bad that I can't laugh at it! There are plenty of young people in the United States who graduate from high school and can't solve such a simple a=b*c equation. The first year of math in American universities is a complete complement to China's first and second year of junior high school. If you know English, take the U. S. college entrance examination (SAT) to let Chinese junior high school students take the exam, just like playing.
The average level of primary and secondary schools in Australia and New Zealand is more solid. English, mathematics, science are relatively difficult, of course, not so exaggerated at home.
（分析研究经验做出结论） sum up
The United States, Australia, Xinzhen really has a thousand and a thousand. The United States has more and better career opportunities for capable people, but life in Australia and New Zealand is more comfortable. The social and political status of Chinese Americans is relatively low, and Chinese in Australia and New Zealand are so powerful that no one dares to bully us.
There is no correct answer here, please choose the right space for your own life!