The problem with the Reason article, Immigration Better Than Industrial Policy, is the allegation that immigration is a “bottom-up rather than a top-down solution.” I disagree. Over the last couple of years, I have wondered where the money came from for the housing subsidies and debit cards for the immigrants. I do not remember anyone in Congress debating this subject, but my gut says this looks like the heavy hand of the Federal government at work. I found the answer. The article, Chaos in Aurora, says:

the Biden administration, in partnership with Denver authorities and publicly subsidized NGOs, provided the funding and logistics to place a large number of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora

The same top-down solution that brought Venezuelan migrants to Aurora brought Haitian migrants to Springfield. The money came from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), also called the COVID-19 Stimulus Package. Immigration is a top-down solution, until it isn’t. Both Aurora and Springfield will have to figure out what to do when the subsidies run out.

Here is the comment I made on the Reason article.

I have a couple of points to make.

The nearest Honda plant is located in Marysville, 35 miles away from Springfield and much closer to Columbus than Springfield. A job at the Honda plant sounds great if you are fluent in English, have relevant work experience, and have a car. However, I suspect a small portion of the Haitians have these qualifications. The Dole plant is in Springfield and employs about 900. The Dole plant has more unskilled jobs than Honda. Even if Dole fired all of its unskilled employees and replaced them with Haitians, I doubt it would make much of a difference in the unemployment problem. So where are the 10,000 to 25,000 Haitians going to get a job?

Many of the complaints to the Springfield council members are about the overwhelmed welfare system. Non-Haitian residents are being squeezed out of the food banks and medical services. This is the same problem being faced by large cities like New York and Denver. Unfortunately, Springfield’s immigrant population is a higher percentage than that of New York or Denver.

The most important question yet to be answered is what happens when the subsidies go away. In Aurora, Colorado, the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), also called the COVID-19 Stimulus Package, subsidized migrant housing. I would not be surprised if this bill also provided housing subsidies for Haitians. Since this bill is unlikely to be renewed, what happens to the large population of unemployed immigrants in New York, Denver, Aurora, and Springfield?

If building the fence is the issue then history says the prudent action is to let Trump have his fence. Building a border fence is even more complicated today than in 2006. There is a pretty good chance the only border fence built is where the Federal government and locals agree that it is necessary. That sounds like they will spend more than Ms. Pelosi’s $1 but probably considerably less than 5 billion dollars. That sounds like a win-win for the taxpayer and immigration control. Maybe we can get a DACA fix, too!

When the press jumped all over President Trump’s comments about Sweden’s immigration policies it reminded me of the PBS Mystery series, Wallander. For people who are unfamiliar with the series, it is about murder mysteries involving a Swedish detective named Wallander. In the 2010 episode, Faceless Killer, one of the major subplots was Sweden’s struggles assimilating Muslims into society. Although most of the Swedes enjoy a high standard of living, the Muslim community does not. The author chose to personalize the assimilation question by portraying Wallander struggling with his daughter’s new boyfriend of Syrian descent. If this episode is a reasonable portrayal of the Swedish Muslim situation in 2010 and there has been no progress assimilating Muslims then it is hard to disagree with filmmaker Ami Horowitz’s two assertions.  Sweden’s choice to accept large quantities of refugees is directly related to the surge in crime. Dumping refugees into a volatile situation is a really, bad idea.

Update

After writing this piece I ran across this article on The Federalist, Yes, Violent Crime Has Spiked In Sweden Since Open Immigration. Although I am naturally skeptical when an author chooses to remain anonymous, I did follow one of his links to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet – Brå) and picked up this graph.

With all of the talk by Mr. Trump about revoking birthright citizenship for illegal aliens I was curious how the folks in Europe handled birthright citizenship. Our birthright citizenship policy seems odd and counterproductive. The Library of Congress analyzed this question and found that most of the European policies are quite similar. If we can agree that birthright citizenship policies in the United States is a major stumbling block to immigration reform then a good first step would be to incorporate some of the European pragmatism into the United States immigration policies. Here is an excerpt about Germany’s birthright citizenship.

Germany

Germany bestows birthright citizenship only on the children of aliens who have lived long enough in Germany to petition for naturalization in their own right. A child born in Germany to parents who are aliens acquires German citizenship only if one parent has had his or her habitual abode in Germany for at least eight years and either has a permanent German residence permit that entitles him or her to reside in Germany or another European Union (EU) member country or has the citizenship of another EU member country.[3] Aliens who have had their habitual abode for eight years in Germany are entitled to petition for naturalization,[4] if no impediments exist.[5]

A foundling—that is, a child found on German soil whose parents are unknown—is deemed to be a German only for as long as it is not proven that he or she is an alien.[6] Under the generally prevailing principle of jus sanguinis, only a child born to a German parent is a German citizen, with the exception of long-term residents described above.

I confess that last week I was trying to figure out how the Administration could salvage their immigration plan. I am personally skeptical about comprehensive immigration reform but I was curious how well this Presidential edict would fare on a complex political issue like comprehensive immigration reform.  Is this a step forward or just another stir of the witches brew in election year politics?

My focus was the complications arising from issuing of social security numbers to illegal immigrants and the first issue on the docket was the earned income tax credit. A few years back we legally hired a person from Mexico to work in our barn. He was a better, more reliable worker that was better than the two high school girls we were replacing. At that time our government was less stupid about guest workers so he had a H2B VISA and a social security number. He did not care about the taxes that were collected from us or him, he just wanted a job so he could send money back to his wife and two boys in Mexico. He was just another guy trying to provide for his family and really did not care about earned income tax credits. He was willing to make major compromises in his life so that his family could live a better life. This week the erstwhile friend of the Administration, Mr. Koskinen, said that one of the unintended consequences of the President’s plan is that the illegal immigrants will now be able to file tax returns for previous years and claim earned income tax returns. I am pretty sure that guest workers and illegal immigrants don’t care about Earned Income Tax but when you give out free money somebody will fill out the forms necessary to collect the handout. It looks like H&R Block and Intuit are the big winners here.

My initial thought of resolving this issue was to adopt a modern form of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for income tax filling issues with previously illegal immigrants.  Obviously many of the illegal immigrants told a few lies about their employment status and maybe were part of some crimes along the way. So now we are parsing crimes to figure out which crimes are okay and which crimes are a pretty good indicator that we want to get them on the next plane out of here. So we are a nation of laws except in the case of illegal immigrants. Although we continue to hope that we can resolve immigration without political debate, I think the Administration will find out that there is no easy solution. As an example I still do not understand how this immigration edict is good for those low skill, low education workers we are having the huge problem finding jobs for. Yeah, I doubt this immigration handout is playing well in poor black neighborhoods! The one thing the Administration should have learned from the Healthcare.gov debacle is that there are no shortcuts and it would be really nice if Congress would provide the Administration some cover. It is a sign of insanity to keep doing stupid stuff and expect good results. Is this the issue we ask the President to put his pen back in the desk, hang up the phone, and ask Congress to do its job? Maybe this time Congress will read the bill and fix the problems before they vote on it. I think the Administration has to recognize its limitations. If you did not accomplish comprehensive immigration reform in your first six years maybe it was never meant to be.

Why don’t we set up boarding schools in their native country? It is probably cheaper and more compassionate than George Wills idea. Having your kid in a local government run boarding school is definitely less stress on the family than having the kid in child welfare services somewhere in America with no family or friends. We could call them refuge schools. Maybe we would even ask the Catholic church for some advice on how to run them. They have a few centuries of experience.

Here is another idea. If these kids graduate from a refuge school and a U.S. university or serve in the U. S. military for four years, we could offer them the same immigration opportunities as the Dream Act kids. These are the high value kids we want in the USA. It would be a nice way to motivate the kids.