When asked about immigration during this interview, Chao mentioned that the West, particularly the United States, has a population with a lot of elderly people and that in order to excel in the future, the West needs the youth from "Third World" countries. He explains that providing legal status to immigrant young people would require the United States to honor the rights of these immigrants, and therefore it is cheaper and easier for the United States to deny so many young immigrants a legal status. He then said that the "Occident...needs to open the borders."