Open The Doors.
By Michael Reynolds | Related entries in NewsWe’re going to have a very hard time paying Social Security and Medicare for the Baby Boomers. In addition to those massive tax burdens we have serious infrastructure work to do. We should increase the size of our military and we face a staggering bill to refit after the current war. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs and it’s only getting worse.
The pyramid is increasingly upside-down — too few workers at the bottom supporting too many elderly, sick and needy at the top.
You know what would solve a lot of problems? Say ten, fifteen, maybe twenty million new, highly productive taxpayers. More people. But not more people flipping burgers or picking fruit, with all due respect to those hardworking folks. We need millions of people who make hundreds of billions of dollars. And pay taxes on it.
So, a simple proposal — not original or exclusive to me: Let’s open the doors.
Rather than making it all but impossible for the world’s most productive people to move here, let’s make it as easy as opening a bank account. In fact, let’s make it exactly that easy. Open a bank account in a US bank, deposit $20,000, and if you pass a security screening, you’re in. You get a green card. The 20k is proof of potential. No long delay. No run-around. No paperwork beyond the security questionnaire. Open the account, file the security forms, wait 90 days for vetting, and hop a plane to JFK.
Don’t quite have the cash but you have lots of potential? Fine, show us your college degree, and you’re in. Hell, if you have an advanced degree in one of half a dozen fields, say engineering, physics, computer science, medicine, we’ll loan you cash for the plane ticket.
Welcome to America: Now get to work.
Yes, of course I know that Al Qaeda can afford to deposit 20 large in a bank account and gain entry for a terrorist. But they can afford to pay that to a coyote bringing a Qaeda member anonymously over the Mexican border, too. This way we have the advantage of a security screening that would include background data, photograph, fingerprints and a DNA sample. All paid for from that initial bank deposit, or from a loan extended to the indigent-but-educated.
How many would come? I don’t know. A lot, I think. Millions.
Who would come? European go-getters frustrated with the difficulty of starting a business there. Japanese women frustrated by the low glass ceiling. Africans frustrated by endemic corruption. Chinese frustrated with freedom-free-capitalism. The frustrated but capable of the world.
Attract ten million brand-new professionals over the next ten years making 100k a year each. That’s a trillion dollars’ income per year by the end of the surge, say 300 billion dollars a year in new taxes. Millions of new homes and cars, thousands of new malls and grocery stores. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs just to support the influx of immigrants. Any number of new businesses started by the new immigrants. All over and above current projections. New money. Found money.
Maybe even enough money.
This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
This sounds great. So long as corporate America doesn’t use them as an excuse to fire Americans and replace them with cheaper labor. What you plan could be is the in-sourcing of American unemployment. If protections are put in place, the plan sounds great.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
This may be the smartest thing I’ve read in a long time. It’ll never get through the protectionists on the left and the xenophobes on the right of course. But it is a great idea. An injection of new blood, people who really want to be here, people who would truly appreciate and understand the meaning of freedom, people who are willing to take risks and work hard to build a better life for themselves and their families. Exactly what this country needs. Genius.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:04 am
The more I look at it the more I like it. Imagine the effect on housing starts if they announced this policy. Imagine the ripple effect from that. Just think about how this would change our standing in the world. Consider how many new business connections would be forged with China and India. And not only would it cost us nothing, it would be profitable from day 1.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
How long do they have to keep the $20k in the account? I see huge potential for the same wolves who smuggle migrants in from Mexico now to shift their business practice. They “loan” the immigrant $20k, and enforce repayment through violence.
As for the highly educated people, the existing American workers will insist, as they do currently under HB-1, that this will severely depress wages, hurting highly educated native Americans and further discouraging young Americans from seeking higher degrees.
Beyond that, I worry tremendously about the negative impacts such a massive “brain drain” would have on other countries around the world. If all the smart people leave a country, say a country on the cusp of advancing to the developed world or falling back to banana republic status, then only the thugs will be left.
August 7th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Pat:
I think those are all legitimate concerns. But I think they’re minor when compared to the potential benefits. No doubt people will say it depresses wages, but that’s nonsense because these are in many cases the jobs that might be outsourced to India. As Mike above says, we’d be in-sourcing. And the overall improvement in our economy would lift all boats.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Michael,
The jobs that will be outsourced to India will still be outsourced to India or whoever has cheaper labor because that’s what it’s all about. There won’t be any insourcing to immigrants because to live here you still need to make more than the worker in other countries.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I love this idea – my ex husband could have saved himself many years of frustration and tens of thousands in legal fees if a system like this had been in place. He used to be a junior executive for Coca Cola, and has a business degree from one of the best schools in Mexico, so easily could have found himself a good career in America.
Instead, the easiest way for him to get sponsored was to become a teacher, which he does quite well at, but he doesn’t like, and which constitutes a significant level of underemployment for him. Plus the whole “force you to continue working for the same company for as long as it takes to get a green card” (currently about 8 years) is insane. He had to start over with the whole process because he moved from Texas to California, and was lucky enough to find a loophole to do so (usually you run out of time and can’t try again unless you live back in your home country again for at least a year.)
The only caveat I would have, and that’s a minor one, is that some controls and/or limits would need to be put in place to make sure that the influx doesn’t seriously damage the work force – if we just open it wide, several million might swarm in too rapidly and cause some significant unemployment until the economy can absorb them. Economic indigestion isn’t a pretty sight.