A brief drive through South Dallas, Chicago’s West Side, much of Houston, or much of LA shows you that, far from bringing vibrancy to a city, large numbers of immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, bring with them the poverty of their native lands. That is, the poverty they arrive with and which they largely do not escape. Their kids do slightly better, but we live in the age of the generous welfare state and “urban” culture which tend to create a different host of problem for immigrants’ kids and grandkids. CIS has a good report on this subject.
We used to not be a poor country. Poor immigrants’ kids and grandkids often rose to the middle class; my parents are I are of that sort. But that is not happening today. The bad economy is causing much self-deportation, but there’s no resaon we can’t make actual deportation of illegal foreigners a serious agenda item considering the high rates of unemployment and other fiscal problems our country is facing. As for those that are legal, we hardly discriminate enough. We let anyone in, and they often add little to our common life. We don’t need to import poverty, and we don’t need to create problems that supposedly “test our compassion” when these problems are totally avoidable and that compassion comes at the price of a real lack of compassion for our native working class.
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Economists of every brand theorize, debate, issue proclamations, support and oppose policies involving esoteric fine points in our struggle to recover from near-disaster. Meanwhile they ignore an obvious, commonsense, cheap solution: as you say, stop importing poverty. Don’t welcome Stone Age immigrants to be supported by the public purse. Encourage those who are already here to leave. Make the U.S. borders again something other than a printed line on the map.
If these things were done, economists as well as productive citizens would be amazed at how quickly prosperity would emerge.
I’ll be interested to see if you have anything to say on the Akin controversy.