Saturday, November 19, 2005

New York Parents Sending Children Back to China

The New York Sun reports:
Americans have already outsourced manufacturing of garments and electronics to China, but the latest trend in overseas labor is more personal - a new study of Chinese immigrants in New York shows that 57% of the mothers surveyed are sending their babies back to China for the infants' early years.

Facing enormous debt and six-day workweeks, the majority of mothers said the lack of affordable child care in the city forced them to send their babies to relatives in China. Parents typically bring their children back when they are old enough for school.

"It's an economic calculation they have to make to deal with survival," the executive director of the Chinese-American Planning Council, David Chen, said.
For many New York isn't the land of opportunity.