If it's racist to encourage native births in order to counteract the immigrants of a different race YOU ARE ALLOWING TO COME IN, then surely you would admit that the most racist countries on the planet, are those like China and India, which don't even allow other races in at all.

Hello FiniteQuantity,

I am not sure why you include India in that. You see, there is absolutely no race called Indian. If you have travelled to India, you will know this. Every racial feature on this planet can be found in the populace of the sub-continent. There are millions who cannot be distinguished from Africans, there are millions who can easily melt into the crowds of south-western China, there are millions who will not look out of place in Spain or Italy. And the vast majority falls somewhere in between all these. Even within the same family, siblings may look like they are from different "races"!

As an Indian, when I first came to Singapore to work more than a decade ago, I was puzzled by the Immigration form which had the field "Race". I wondered what I should write: "Dravidian", "Indo-Aryan", "Mixed", or just plain "Human"? I found out later that they expected me to write "Indian". And, by the way, they expect all white-skinned people to write "Caucasian" - how about that?

Anyway, the sad thing is that all newspaper articles in Singapore about racial issues start with stories about "Indians". I have written time and again to editors and authors, as I am replying to you now, that there is no single race called "Indian". I have never got a reply (although two of my letters related to other issues have been published in the Straits Times here).

I suspect the reasons for other nationalities finding it difficult to enter India are totally different and not connected to "race" :-)

I have definitely seen Indians who appeared to have a lot of the Mongoloid race in them. But I don't know that I have seen any that looked like they were 100 percent Mongoloid. Well, maybe one. But I have not seen one who looked like he was Negroid. I have seen very dark skinned Indians but they did not have the hair or facial features of the Negroid race. When I was a child there was some class where we were taught that there were three races - Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid (this thinking may have changed). Indians were supposed to be Caucasoid, but I would definitely agree that there is Mongoloid in the mix as well. And if you say there is Negroid as well, then they cannot be ridiculed for having an immigration policy that is biased against races other than their own.

I was actually being facetious when I made my original statement, trying to rebut some charge of the US being racist for some reason. To me China and India are obviously too overpopulated for a politician to even remotely justify immigration. However, I may be wrong about that assumption as China appears to have abandoned its "1 child" policy. Given how long ago they instituted it, with only 1 child per woman, by now their population would have shrunk. With 2 (or is it 2.1) per woman it would have stayed even. And yet, their population is increasing. Someone I know with relatives in China says that the recent increases in prosperity there has caused the government to believe that it's OK for the population to grow again. If their unemployment can get low enough, and their standard of living high enough, you might see some politicians or businessmen over there calling for immigrants from some poorer country. I don't know what Indias official policy is on their large population. If they are cornucopians they too may try for immigrants if the standard of living gets high enough and the unemployment rate low enough.