The recent U.S. war on “illegal” immigrants caused the Recession. This is an aging country. Only the illegal immigrants with their young families were consuming enough housing, food, clothing, and transportation resources over the past several years to keep the economy growing. Then the Oppression started. Record numbers of immigrants were deported last year. The number of illegals crossing over the border dropped sharply. Thousands of Brazilians went home. Thousands of Irish left for a more welcoming Australia. All because of harrassment. Then the economy started to sink.
A great example is Rhode Island. Their economy was humming until the governor turned up the heat on illegals. Now they have the worst economy in the country.
The U.S is out of money and can’t borrow enough to turn this recession around. The whole world depends on U.S. consumption to drive their economies. The quickest way to jumpstart our economy is to open the border with Mexico for a few weeks and let everyone in. And give amnesty to those who are here.
A slower way to turn things around is to vastly increase legal immigration and work visas from around the world. Two thirds of the U.S. economy is based on consumtion. We need young families to come here and spend. We need them more than they need us.
Our economic troubles require a radical revision of our thinking. An inflow of people will create more jobs than any government stimulus.
who lives and organizes in a community of approximately 65% immigrants, i can say anecdotally that you vastly overstate the buying power of undocumented immigrants.
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p>first off, most of them are living hand-to-mouth. and any disposable income they happen to come up with is often sent off via wire transfer (most likely on saturday or sunday) to family members back in haiti or el salvador or brazil or elsewhere.
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p>secondly, undocumented immigrant dollars don’t circulate widely into the larger economy, but is spent almost exclusively in immigrant-owned niche markets offering basic commodities and services like groceries, laundry, and small sundries.
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p>if a property owner is renting a $1,000 a month 2 bedroom apartment to a group of 5 immigrants (who have to gang up like that to afford the rent), he is no better off than if he was renting the same apartment to 2 non-immigrants for the same $1,000.
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Well, since you have no links or a shred of evidence, I’ll play devils advocate in a similar fashion.
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p>Not oppressing the illegals earlier caused it. If we had a hard line illegal oppression deal going on, they wouldn’t have moved here, bought all kinds of mortgages they couldn’t afford and tanked the housing market with spurred a credit crisis that is reverberating on all levels of the economy.
Don’t lump all the illegal immigrants together. The Irish carpenters and plumbers,who have now left for Australia, didn’t live five to a room, or send money back to Ireland. The Brazilians, were opening businesses all over Massachusetts. Restaurants, bakeries, travel agencies, hair and nail salons, clothing stores. Drive through Medford now and see all the stores for rent.
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p>The economic downturn coincided with the increased arrests and deportations of the immigrants. What young people are moving into Massachusetts and other northern states as the older citizens leave for warmer southern states? Until last year it was immigrants. Now, our states are entering a downward spiral in population and spending because we have driven the immigrants away.
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p>There are only two ways to stimulate the economy. Increase spending per person, or increase the number of people. We can’t afford the first choice.
Let’s all go back to when the economy started failing and simply pick something that was happening and we can blame “that thing” for the collapse. Maybe it was Obama (or McCain) running for POTUS that did it. Maybe it was the Pats losing the Super Bowl or the Celtics winning the NBA Championship…
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p>Can anyone supply any true data showing the purchasing power of the illegal immigrant commiunity truly led to the collapse. I read many stories of Illegals sending their hard earned paychecks home to their families so what are they buying here?
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p>From a labor standpoint, does our economy do better with 100 illegal workers making $5/hour or 25 Legal workers making $20/hour? Does increasing the number of people really stimulate the economy… maybe if they had tons of money and were spending it wildly.
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p>From a stimulating the economy standpoint, what is the cost of illegals being here (healthcare, education, crime, social services including housing… vs. their stimulus power (whatever that means)?
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p>It’s an interesting idea but I don’t think the economic collapse was the result of this country enforcing the law.
Regardless of money sent back to relatives in home countries, people living here still need housing, food, clothing, and transportation. 70% of the U.S. economy is based on consumption. When people leave or are forced to leave, consumption drops. That has happened here.
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p>Massachusetts especially is in a tough spot. As our retirees relocated to Florida and Arizona, the only way the population stayed even was with the inflow of illegal immigrants. Now that they are leaving, our population will be dropping. This will result in fewer people to buy goods and services, fewer people to pay income and sales taxes, and a loss of federal funds and congressional districts.
We are in a downward spiral.
with what i see on the streets.
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p>the immigrant owned businesses that you speak of do exist, and they contribute mightily to the community. but they are all owned by legal immigrants. and i have never heard anyone fearing that they will go under without undocumented customers. most recognize that their growth potential is into the common mainstream market.
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p>any business is a risky undertaking. small businesses (which most immigrant-owned enterprises are) are always going to be the ones most vulnerable to an economic downturn. the ethnic composition of their customer base is not a very relevant factor to their survivability. if that was the case, most italian restaurants in the north end would have become extinct as immigration from italy ebbed decades ago.
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p>some indian friends of mine are considering moving to north carolina to start a business because commercial property there is cheaper, not because of racial oppression. and they’ve decided that they don’t like the massachusetts weather very much.
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p>and i can say with great confidence, that most immigrant businesses are run by very astute energetic resourceful people. they are not the helpless victims that you make them out to be.
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The Brazilian businesses were owned by legal immigrants. But they depended on the large Brazilian community for support. There were 100,000 Brazilians in Eastern Massachusetts in 2003. Now that the illegal Brazilians started flowing back to Brazil, those businesses have failed. This affects Massachusetts’ income and sales tax revenue.
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p>The Brazilian economy has improved since 2003; the Real was worth $.25 back then. Recently it climbed to $.50. But what pushed them back to Brazil was the recent oppression here: they suddenly couldn’t renew their drivers’ licences and were getting stopped and deported for going through a yellow light.
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p>The illegal Irish immigrants have left Massachusetts in large numbers in the past year to go to Australia. Businesses catering to the Irish (pubs and restaurants)in Boston are now suffering as a result. The Irish left because they also felt the strain of increased immigration enforcement.
of oppresion.
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p>but it all bears little semblance to the reality that i’m very familiar with in my immigrant-majority neighborhood.
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p>do you have a citation for the number of brazilian immigrants who have been deported for running a yellow light? i have brazilian immigrant friends and clients, and i have never heard of this happening to anyone.
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p>i must be missing a lot, if it is causing the downfall of the state economy, and i’ve never heard of even one instance of it happening in my community.
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Immigrants lost the advantage to coming here because of the dollar devaluation. In general, a devalued currency is the condition that prevails in the countries that feed illegal immigrants to the USA. Controlled devaluation is a strategy that the IMF imposes on governments of poor countries as a condition of their loans.
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p>Devaluation causes your prices to go up, your wages and savings to wither in relation to prices, and destroys capital formation.
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p>Devaluation favors export businesses, so exporters in these countries, who make and ship goods to the USA, and who generally come from the business elite, tend to do well, and favor devaluation of the currency. Technocratic leaders, leaders from teh IMF and World Bank, basically anybody you see on PBS or hear on NPR, will be from this class.
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p>The harmful policies which rich countries impose on poor countries is one cause, if not the only cause, of those countries’ poor economies. That leads to illegal immigration to rich countries.
No one thinks that the record number of deportations in the past year, the harrassment of immigrants in the “raids” on large businesses, and the loss of legal drivers licences for the immigrants causing many to leave has anything to do with the downturn in the economy?
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p>Look what has happened to Rhode Island in the past year. Their economy is among the worst in the country shortly after their governor declared war on illegal immigrants. People are afraid to drive there to visit or shop. Stores are empty and unemployment is very high.
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p>You think these are coincidences?