Amerca Migration

Don't Fear the MigrantsDon't Fear the Migrants

What America really needs to worry about is when they stop coming.

BY FRANK JACOBS | FEBRUARY 14, 2013

U.S. President Barack Obama probably didn't have Chunyun in mind when he pressed for immigration reform during his recent State of the Union address. During China's annual spring festival travel season, or Chunyun, approximately 200 million Chinese -- give or take a few million -- make like salmon and return from the industrial centers on China's coast to their ancestral homes farther inland (with a few going against the flow from rural areas to the cities in which they or their families grew up). It's the world's biggest annual human migration, and 2013 promises to be a record-breaker: An estimated 3.4 billion journeys will take place in the roughly 40-day period around the Chinese New Year, more than ever before, and way up from 2 billion in 2006./.../