Joking… here’s the real blog post
Ha sorry. Didn’t realize I was supposed to write about something in the news.
For the first time in American history, people are prioritizing reform for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States than border security reform. According to a CNN poll, 54% of Americans were more concerned about legalizing immigrants here currently.
This poll came out right when Congress was going to shelf the immigration issue. (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/17/polls-publics-immigration-priorities-changing/)
Most likely nothing will happen this year given the Republican’s distrust of President Obama, according to John Boehner, House speaker. But most republicans claim that changing the status quo will increase the amount of poverty in the United States, and will result a bigger demand for welfare.
Below is a really interesting article which affirms what we learned in class about the relationship between welfare benefits and illegal immigrants. According to the article, “the amount of welfare benefits given is unaffected by the foreign origin or diversity of population.”The article goes as far to say that immigration actually reduces the size of welfare states, as seen in some European countries.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/18/increased-immigration-is-unlikely-to-increase-the-size-of-the-welfare-state/)
This is especially interesting given Switzerland’s recent decision to limit their immigration. Economists are saying that this decision will most likely hurt economic growth. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/swiss-immigration-curbs-seen-as-threat-to-economic-growth.html)
Great connection to class material. I didn’t know about that poll!
In 1986, the US had an amnesty as a result of which over 3 million undocumented immigrants gained legal status, and many were able to get green cards and then become citizens later on. In large part, this was driven by lobbying by industries (e.g. agriculture) that rely heavily on immigrant labor.
This post reaffirms the mantra that immigrants are good for a country and its economy. They bring with them a will and a need to work. Still I find it interesting that 54% of the country is now more interested in reforming legalization rather than border security. This issue still has a long ways to go and the gridlock in Washington is doing nothing to help solve it.