sending babies to China

[Brad De Long]

>[here's a story that has it all]
>
>New York Times - September 14, 1999
>
>Women Keep Garment Jobs By Sending Babies to China
>
> By SOMINI SENGUPTA
>
>he spent her days at home with her newborn son, knowing that every 
>day she did not work was another day without money to pay back her 
>$20,000 smugglers' debt.
>She spent her nights awake, hushing the baby so he would not disturb 
>her husband or the three other restaurant workers who shared their 
>three-room apartment in northern Manhattan. She named the boy Henry, 
>and for four precious months, she nursed him, even after friends 
>warned that she would soon have to let him go.
>
>On the second Thursday in July, the woman, Xiu, finally did. 
>Wrapping a tiny gold bracelet around his wrist, she placed her son 
>in the arms of a friend of a friend, who, for $1,000, agreed to take 
>him to China.
>
>Xiu's mother is raising him there now, along with the 10-year-old 
>daughter left behind last year when Xiu joined her husband in New 
>York. She plans to bring Henry back when he reaches school age. But 
>until then

Perhaps it is time to get rid of the Multi-Fiber Agreement? To allow 
free trade in textiles and garments?

Brad DeLong