Illegal immigration: our best foreign aid

Chinese swimmers reached the finals for Group B in L.A., while 3 silver and 1 bronze medals were snatched at the 24th Games, 7 Asian bests were created, and 10 national records were bettered. The heartening achievements, a break through zero, helped open a new era in China's swimming history. Chinese women rowers sprang a surprise by taking a silver and a bronze in the coxed fours and coxed eights respectively. Before that, no Asian athletes had ever entered the finals. In addition, the number of Chinese athletes in track and field witnessed a big increase, and notably, woman shot-putter Li Meisu gained a bronze—the only track and field medal for Asia at the Games.

Undocumented students deserve aid too

THE UTTER collapse of immigration reform in Congress was particularly devastating to one group: undocumented students. It leaves those who have excelled academically in our high schools, but who are not legal residents, ineligible for financial aid. Such a barrier means our students, through no fault of their own, have no path to success or citizenship.

I say "our students" because that is just who they are. We have invested in these children, providing them access to public education in our K-12 schools. Our teachers have encouraged them to learn, to compete and to succeed. It is only after these eager and ambitious young people gain college admission and apply for state or federal financial aid that we turn them away. We must not penalize these young people because their parents brought them here illegally.

The futures of high school graduates are being shaped now. These young people cannot wait out yet another attempt at broad immigration reform. Every year that passes, we deny another class of talented, keen young people hopeful futures for themselves and their families and relegate another generation to an existence on the margins of society.

It's a terrible waste of young talent — talent that this country desperately needs. Each year across the nation, 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school after having spent at least five years in this country. Because California is home to an estimated 40% of the nation's undocumented students, that means 20,000 or so are in this state.

Statistics on how many go on to the state's public colleges and universities are more difficult to come by. Applications don't require proof of citizenship if a student graduated from a California high school. At UC Berkeley, we may have dozens of such students, but we hear about their struggles only anecdotally or when they apply for financial aid, only to learn that they do not qualify.

Undergraduates who are California residents will pay as much as $25,000 for fees, room and board and books and supplies for the coming school year at Berkeley. It is no surprise that 70% of them rely on state and federal financial aid. But federal law prohibits making these same grants and loans available to undocumented students. They cannot even be hired for campus jobs.

How do they manage? Many are forced out of school for a semester or longer. They work multiple low-paying jobs hoping to save enough to re-enroll. It can take them many more years to graduate, yet they are determined. But other high-achieving California students never even consider attending the University of California or other universities. Even if they could pay for it, a college degree doesn't get them any closer to legal residency status, which they need to put their degrees to work.

To address the plight of undocumented students, Congress must ensure that the well-conceived and broadly supported federal DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act goes forward. The act, which provides access to financial aid and a thoughtfully mapped-out path to citizenship for qualified students, became entangled in the latest failed immigration bill. It is time to pass the act on its own merits.

Legislation that would create a California DREAM Act, offered by state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), is moving forward in the Legislature. It allows all qualified students to apply for institutional aid at the University of California, California State University and the California Community Colleges.

Financial aid and a path to citizenship is a sound and humane investment. If we provide up-front loans and grants to talented students seeking to escape generations of poverty, society will be paid back many times over. With higher education, they will be able to raise their standard of living as they become taxpaying citizens. We must seize the opportunity to adopt these well-designed state and national policies that will be good for everyone — our students, their families, our state and nation.

Back Where They Belong

NYT

Gov. M. Jodi Rell vaulted Connecticut to the forefront of the juvenile justice reform movement when she signed a bill that removes 16- and 17-year-old offenders from the adult courts and puts them back into the juvenile justice system where they clearly belong. This new law comes in response to studies showing that children who do time in adult jails are more likely to become hardened criminals — and to commit more violent crime — than youthful offenders who are handled by the juvenile system.

The rush to try children as adults began in the early 1990s, after high-profile crimes like the Central Park jogger case, in which a young woman was badly beaten and raped in New York’s Central Park. Extreme violence and sexual assault clearly merit severe punishment. But today, in too many states, young people are routinely tried as adults, even those who commit nonviolent offenses.

In adult jails, these youthful offenders have little protection from being battered or sexually assaulted. Even those who leave jail determined not to go back, find that a conviction in adult courts closes off their chances for finding decent jobs.

After Connecticut’s law takes effect, New York and North Carolina will be the only two remaining states that automatically transfer 16-year-olds who commit crimes to adult courts. Unfortunately, nearly every state has laws that encourage prosecutors to try children as adults. The country needs to abandon these failed, destructive policies.

Is China's Air Clean or What? - Mixed Messages in researches

There is Richard MacGregor's article titled 750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution accompanied by a Financial Times editorial titled China must come clean about its poisonous environment. Here is Richard MacGregor's report:

Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social unrest”. The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.

China’s State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials. Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too sensitive.

“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial Times. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous World Bank research.

Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team, said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths “could cause misunderstanding”. “We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick,” he said in an interview.

The pared-down report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has yet to be officially launched but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet was released at a conference in Beijing in March.

Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research. Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the published report, according to advisers to the research project.

Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment. The World Bank said that the findings of the report were still being discussed with the government. A spokesperson said: “The conference version of the report did not include some of the issues still under discussion.” She said the findings of the report were due to be released as a series of papers soon.

I look at this sentence: "Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment" and I think these people must be brain dead. Silence is likely to be taken to be admission of guilt that will generate a wave of criticisms. Why not deal with the issue head on?

First, consider the World Bank study. Actually, I have no information about this study itself, but I take it to be a top-quality study like similar studies on the same subject. The problem here is that it is hard to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to pollution. If you want to estimate the number of excess deaths due to the war in Iraq, you compare the mortality rates before and after the invasion and you get the number of excess deaths (e.g. the Lancet study). If you want to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to tobacco, you can compare the age-specific-adjusted mortality rates among smokers and non-smokers (e.g. American Medical Association study). In these cases, you always qualify your results by stating that there can be unaccounted for causes (and that was how the tobacco lobby managed to stall anti-tobacco legislation in the United States for several decades).

But if you want to estimate the number of pre-mature deaths due to pollution, you do what? You cannot compare the mortality rates of the present China against a China without pollution. The latter does not exist objectively. Therefore, you have to make some assumptions (e.g. compare mortality rates in high pollution cities versus low pollution ones), but these assumptions are tenuous. For example, the high pollution cities are the economically developed urban agglomerations while the lower pollution cities are economically undeveloped cities in the backlands. Are you sure that they would have the same mortality rates if pollution does not exist? Have you thought about the impact due to differences in income, diet, nutrition, health care services, etc? The technical explanations may elude most readers, and that may be the reason why Sepa and health ministry do not want to comment as it may only make matters worse. But their silence is making things worse now.

For illustration about why the technical description is hard, here is a statement made at a US Congressional hearing:

There are two ways of studying the health effects of particulate matter: time-series studies and cohort studies. Time series studies track people over short pollution episodes, correlating morbidity (illness) and mortality with daily pollution levels. As of 1997, numerous time-series studies had reported associations between PM and daily mortality and morbidity. Landmark studies include Dockery and Pope (1994), Schwartz (1994), Katsouyanni, et al. (1997). These studies were criticized because they were largely conducted in single locations chosen for unspecified reasons and were analyzed with different statistical approaches.

In 2000, a Health Effects Institute study used explicit criteria to select cities from a well-defined sampling frame and analyzed them in a consistent fashion. The results from this 90-city study corroborated previous results, including the Katsouyanni 15-city study and a recent meta-analysis of 29 studies in 23 locations in Europe and North and South America (Levy, et al. 2000).

Cohort studies follow initially healthy people over longer periods to see how they develop disease or die. Landmark cohort studies include the Harvard Six Cities Study (Dockery, et al. 1993) and the American Cancer Society Study (Pope, et al. 1995). These studies followed large numbers of individuals over many years and observed their rates of mortality. They found that long-term average mortality rates were 17 percent to 26 percent higher in those living in communities with higher levels of PM2E even after accounting for the effects of other risk factors. The results have been used to demonstrate lifespan reduction attributable to exposure to PM2E pollution. Other researchers have independently confirmed the findings of both of these studies.

A recent study reanalyzed the American Cancer Society (ACS) data (Pope, Thurston and Krewski 2002). This study tracked people over a longer time and controlled more extensively for individual risk factors. They compared data on particulate and gaseous air pollution with data on the cause of death among 500,000 people followed for 16 years by the ACS. After compensating for risk factors, as well as possible regional differences, the researchers found that every 10-microgram increase in fine particles per cubic meter of air produces a 6 percent increase in the risk of death by cardiopulmonary disease, and 8 percent for lung cancer. This is similar to the risk faced by those with long-term exposure to second-hand smoke.

What is the general public going to think about this type of description? They don't know and they only want a count of the number of dead people due to air pollution

Secondly, how would you interpret the figure 750,000? If you line the corpses in a row down the road, then it is a horrible sight. You would like it to be zero, but that is not happening anywhere in the world. So what is a realistic goal for China to aim for? Or to be even simpler, what is the number if China were just to meet the global average? Here is a global estimate from BBC:

The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries.

So 3.0 + 1.6 million = 4.6 million people were killed worldwide by air pollution. China has about 20% of the population of the world. 20% of 4.6 million people is 920,000. This is for indoor/outdoor air pollution only. The World Bank estimate of 750,000 is for all pre-mature deaths in China, most of which are due to air pollution. Now what? It would seem that China has even fewer pollution-related deaths compared to the rest of the world!