My parents moved to the US in the late 80s. A few years ago, they moved back to China. Most of my Chinese co workers from their generation also plan to retire back in China.
On paper, there is no comparison between American and China. Cleaner air, food, and water, better Transportation, more stable government, etc. But eventually these immigrants hit a ceiling at work or miss some intangible quality about their homeland.
Most of my Chinese classmates had plans to move back, but after they had kids there was just no way. It's not just the pollution, but school system and education fees. After they had a second and third child, legally they just couldn't go back.
Some say they will go back on retirement. But at that point it doesn't really matter.
This is the same dilemma that 1st generation Indian immigrants also struggle with.
Sir V.S. Naipaul compares it to being 'Shipwrecked'. You've arrived at a new land where you don't know anyone and build your life from scratch. You spend enough time here, but still don't "fit in" to the culture because you did not grow up here. Festivals are alien (ex: Halloween), holidays are alien (ex: Thanksgiving Day). You hit ceilings at work because the promotions in corporate america are mostly reserved for white men in their 40s. Your kids grow up here, and experience High School, Prom, College, Internship and such, and they have no idea what you are talking about when you say you miss the homeland.
You can't leave either, because you've put down roots, probably had some kids, and back home, things have changed dramatically, and even if you go back for good, you don't "fit in" there either, because you are always treated as the "NRI" - Non Resident Indian.
So after a decade or two,you are neither here nor there, essentially "shipwrecked" in America.
I don't know about the glass ceiling. Our CEO is from India (bet you can guess the company), many of our SVPs are Chinese. As a white male approaching his 40s, I'm not quite sure how promotion will work for me when all of our managers in my local site are ethnic Chinese (granted, I work in China and there aren't many foreigner datapoints).
In high school, I had a lot of ABCD classmates, and there parents were incredibly successful in the Seattle area, especially at Boeing. They had no problem going into management.
Cheer up, man. Who wants to fit in anyways? Kind of a platitude but it's true. The homogenization of culture (or asking immigrants to totally fit in to their new surroundings) are negative things for humanity.
Very true. I think it is precisely the not-fitting in which makes cultural mixture very very productive. Or in other words, cultural homogeneity is stagnation and unproductive.
Besides, did anybody realize how much chinese are contributing to high tech, battery tech from a chinese guy at stanford. Math from many chinese.
That said, of course the chinese government will want to take advantage of this like the russians will with their emmigres. The scale though may be frightening.
Hint, nobody really "fits in" in America. Even white natural born Americans are hardly the dominant group as they have many divisions within themselves.
Reading Naipaul was the very therapeutic for my first generation angst. On some level I now accept that I will now never feel at home - either in my country of origin or in the country that I have immigrated to.
Welcome to the human condition. It applies not just to first generation immigrants, but also multi-generation minority communities (try being black in America, pre-Obama) and lifestyle choices at the periphery of society (e.g. being openly gay).
The same thing happened to Japan a few decades ago. It's also happened to Korea more recently.
When your country is poor, moving to the U.S. offers great opportunities for you and your children. But as your country gets richer, the difference shrinks. At some point, you might find that your home country offers the same or better opportunities for you. As soon as the kids go to college (or get married), the parents are free to go back.
Too many elderly people coming back, though, could cause strain on a country's pension and welfare system. After all, they've never contributed anything toward a pension plan in their home country. Some people intentionally keep their old citizenship (even after decades of living in the U.S. and multiple opportunities to apply for U.S. citizenship) just so they can claim pension and welfare when they go back. Their lack of U.S. citizenship also makes them less emotionally attached to their new home and less involved in the public life of the U.S., making them even more likely to go back.
Worth mentioning: the US and Japan, as well as most first-world countries, have "totalization agreements" to take care of this. If you've paid into US Social Security for your entire working career and then retire to Japan, Japan pays you (fairly) equitably, and this is net out against e.g. me working for my entire career in Japan and then drawing US Social Security. (This includes two major question marks, like whether I'll be in the US at retirement and whether US Social Security will be worth enough to justify a postage stamp to get it.)
On paper, there is no comparison between American and China. Cleaner air, food, and water, better Transportation, more stable government, etc. But eventually these immigrants hit a ceiling at work or miss some intangible quality about their homeland.