[LorenC]

Back to Hawaii... when the islands became a state what was going on? Vietnam. The state was getting a very large number of refugees, and immigrants. It was the Ellis Island of the Pacific. Hawaii did not have the resources to deal with this. I am sure they used many avenues towards gaining revenues from the Federal Government to handle it. One of the things they did was to make it very easy to register births of babies. You could register ‘late’ a birth for up to a year. All you needed was a ‘witness’ signature. Lots and lots of those babies were NOT born in Hawaii or anywhere else in the United States.

Hawaii literally gave Hawaiian birth documents, Certificates of Live Birth, to thousands of babies over more than a decade this way.

Considering that this is more or less the crux of the argument you made above...do you have any actual sourced evidence to substantiate ANY of these claims you're making?

That Hawaii was the recipient of an exceedingly large number of Vietnamese immigrants?

That Hawaii's resources were taxed by the influx of immigration during the period?

That Hawaii was granting Certificates of Live Birth to "thousands" of babies based on nothing more than a witness signature?

That Hawaii was giving out fraudulent birth certificates to lots and lots of foreign-born babies?

Can you actually provide sources for any of these claims you're treating as established fact, or are you just making crap up as you go along?

[Danae]

Its up to you to disprove the theory. But being a decent researcher this will get you started regarding the foreign born population of Hawaii and how it has increased. This has ALWAYS been an issue in Hawaii.

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageNavigator/facts/state_data_HI

The 2000 Census recorded 212,229 foreign-born residents in the state. That was 17.5 percent of the state's overall population and an increase of 30.4 percent above the 1990 foreign-born population of 162,704 residents. That rate of increase in the immigrant population was much higher than the 5.7 percent increase in the state's native-born population, but it was lower than the national average increase in the foreign-born population of 57.4 percent.

A comparison of the increase in the immigrant population from 1990 with the change in the overall population during the same period shows that immigrant settlement directly accounted for 47.9 percent of the state's overall population increase over that decade. The share of the population increase due to immigration would be still higher if the children of the immigrants born here after their arrival were included with their immigrant parents in the calculation.

The 2000 Census found that 34.1 percent of Hawaii's foreign-born population had arrived in the state since 1990. This demonstrates the effects of the current mass immigration, although it was a lower share than the national average (43.7%).

+++++++++++++++++++++++ It wasn't just Vietnamese. They came from all over the pacific. That graph represents 60 to 70 THOUSAND immigrants around the time of 1960, and it has only ever gone up. Hawaii is TINY and had a tiny economy compared to any other state in the United States. The financial pressure of taking care of the sheer numbers...... Anyone who has lived in Hawaii knows about this.

Hawaii just made it overly easy to get babies registered as having been born in the state and therefor eligible for state assistance, and through the state Federal assistance.

You prove ME wrong Loren.

[Danae]

More:

Immigrant Admissions

Hawaii Immigrant Admissions by Fiscal Year
1997	8,436
1998	6,867
1999	5,465
2000	4,299
2001	6,056
2002	6,313
2003	5,503
2004	4,899
2005	6,347
2006	6,580
Total	60,692

Recent immigrant admissions have jumped 66% since admissions just after adoption of the current immigration system in 1965. During the 1965-'69 period, annual admissions averaged about 3,700 immigrants. During the 2002-'06 period, admissions averaged about 6,145 immigrants.

The charts below show recent immigrant admissions and the cumulative INS immigrant admissions data since 1965. The number of annual admissions has ranged from 1,721 in FY'65 to 9,053 in FY'78. The cumulative total of admissions to Hawaii between fiscal years 1965 and 2006 was about 293,800 immigrants.

 

The data for fiscal years 1989-91 were artificially raised slightly by the inclusion of former illegal aliens who were amnestied in 1986. According to INS data (1991) the number of amnesty applicants from Hawaii was 2,330 (1,356 pre-1982 residents and 974 agricultural workers).

The data for FY'95, FY'97-'99 and FY '03 were artificially low because the government did not issue green cards to all the eligible applicants for adjustment of status who were already in the United States. In those four years, new immigration could have registered as much as 30 percent higher, if the government  had kept up with its workload.

Beginning with FY'01, the INS began to increase admissions as a result of reducing the size of the backlog of Section 245(i) adjustment of status cases, i.e., amnesty, for illegal aliens.

INS DATA BY NATIONALITY: FY'96 - FY'05

The table below furnishes INS data on the immigrants who have been admitted for residence in Hawaii since 1996 by nationality.

The INS data are for nationals of the countries with the largest number of immigrants admitted or adjusted to legal residence each year since 1996. The absence of data means that the total number of admissions to the United States by nationals of that country was not enough to merit detailed reporting in that year.

The nationalities may change each year, so the totals in some cases will not reflect all the immigrants of that nationality who have become legal immigrants in Louisiana during this period.

The Department of Homeland Security website is has detailed data on immigrant admissions since FY’03 by year and by country. That resource has data for all source countries. (See http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/data/dslpr.shtm).

A dash (-) indicates that the data for that year was not published for that country in the Immigration Statistical Yearbook.* China includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Soviet Union, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro-Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The 31 nationalities above represent nearly nine-tenths (89%) of all immigrant settlement and adjustment in Hawaii during this ten-year period. The principal source countries for Hawaii's immigrants (Philippines, China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan) accounted for more than four-fifths (83%) of all immigrant admissions since 1996. Immigrants from the Philippines alone accounted for more than half (57.3%) of the total new "green cards".  

Back to Top

Immigration Impact

IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT AND QUALITY OF LIFE

Disappearing Open Space: Each year, Hawaii loses on average 1,400 acres of open space and farmland due to development.¹

A study of urban sprawl between 1970 and 1990 that calculated the impact of population increase and per capita land use found that 23.7 square miles of additional land were consumed by urban sprawl in the Honolulu metropolitan area, and 100 percent of that sprawl was attributable to population increase.²

Crowded Housing: An estimated 39,055 of Hawaii's housing units were classified as crowded in 2008, defined as units with more than one occupant per room. This amounted to 8.9 percent of the state's housing units. In addition, 12,101 units were severely crowded, with at least 1.5 occupants per room.³ All three metropolitan areas in Hawaii with more than 65,000 people ranked among the nation's top 20 for crowding in 2008. Kahului-Wailuku is seventh, Hilo is 13th, and Honolulu is 18th.⁴

Nationally, crowded housing rates are driven upward by immigration, where 27 percent of children in immigrant families live in crowded housing compared to 9 percent of children with native-born parents. In Hawaii, the shares are 35 percent of children in immigrant families are in crowded housing compared to 23 percent of those in native-headed households.⁵

Poverty: Hawaii's immigrants are more likely to be poor than their native-born counterparts. In 2007, 9.3 percent of foreign-born households were below the poverty line, compared to 7.7 percent of native households. An additional 8.1 percent of the foreign-born and 5.2 percent of native households were not in poverty but had incomes less than 1.5 times the poverty level.⁶ 19.5 percent of children in immigrant families were poor in 2006, compared to 11.2 percent of native children.⁷

Traffic:Vehicle traffic on Hawaii highways increased by 24 percent from 1990 to 2008. Unfortunately, its road system has not kept up with the increased volume. Almost three-fourths (75%) of the state's roads are in poor or mediocre condition, resulting in $515 in additional repairs and operating costs for each driver in 2010 (or $456 million statewide).⁸

Nearly half (45%) of Hawaii's major urban highways were considered "congested" by The Road Information Project (TRIP) in 2010.⁹ The typical Honolulu commuter lost about 26 hours and burned 18 gallons of fuel due to traffic congestion in 2007, resulting in an estimated cost of $199 million.¹⁰ About 17 percent of Hawaii commuters had a commute of 45 minutes or longer in 2008.¹¹

Solid Waste: Hawaii generates 1.4 tons of solid waste per capita each year.¹²

Education: It is projected that the enrollment of Hawaii's K-12 students will increase by over 20,000 (11 percent) students by the year 2015, to a total K-12 enrollment of 203,000.¹³ Hawaii's student-teacher ratio of 16.3 currently ranks 38th in the U.S.¹⁴

As a result of the swelling student population, schools throughout the state are struggling with overcrowding. Some schools on Windward Oahu and East and Central Honolulu are stretched beyond their physical abilities, and even new schools are finding themselves filled beyond capacity within a few years. Some schools are trying to cope by switching to year-round, multi-track scheduling.¹⁵

The state Department of Education forecasts a classroom shortage crisis in the next few years, which will result in even more overcrowding. "New schools, additional classroom building, and additional classrooms to alleviate overcrowding will not be built in sufficient quantities or in a timely manner," says one school official.¹⁶

In some areas, like Kane'ohe, classes are being held in converted closets, stage dressing rooms, teacher's lounges, and a patio. In some cases, two classes are forced to share the same room at the same time.¹⁷

ENDNOTES: