Posted on 03/18/2010 10:14:13 AM PDT by spintreebob
In Mar 2003-2006 I posted Your Landscaper has Arrived. I don't think I posted it in 07-09. Wednesday in traveling I55 South Chicagoland to Bloomington I saw a caravan of buses from CUNEJO and CAVALLO (rabbit and horse competition to Greyhound). They seemed full of eager seasonal immigrant workers.
First, notice how one's personal experience impacts perception of reality. I spend only 2-4 hr per week on I55 and rarely on Wednesday. So did it happen in 07-09 and I missed it? If in 03-06 I saw it in 4 out of 168 hrs/week, how many did I miss in the other 164 hours? How many other drivers see those buses and don't distinguish them from the high school team going to an out-of-town game? Bottom line, we form knowledge and opinion based on limited data and understanding.
Second, has there really been any change in border security? Or is the number of immigrants totally a function of supply and demand? My wife and daughter recently made a trip to Mexico and back with hassles about papers for the vehicle but scant interest in papers for the people. Apparently one can still rent papers from a local family business, walk accross the border, return the rented papers to a member of the family business, and be in the USA with no papers.
Historically there has always been a reverse migration in November with far more immigrants leaving the USA than entering. Then when Tancredo's Hr4437 and the ensuing debate emerged people's behavior changed, or so it seemed from an Illinois perspective. Illegals, and even legals not confident in their papers, chose to stay in the USA over winters and not risk being unable to return if they left. For that reason the number of illegals in the USA seemed to increase while no surge in entering reflected that increase.
During the housing boom new immigrants created that extra demand that drove up housing prices at the margin. It was then the flippers who mistakenly jumped on the bandwagon at the peak. But when the HR4437 anti-illegal scare occurred, immigrants who would have normally bought housing pulled back from the market because they depended on the certainty of illegal cousins and in-laws living with them to help pay the mortgage. So at least in Illinois, it was the immigrants pulling out of the housing market that popped the housing bubble. Of course, the bubble was a bubble and would have popped anyway. It just happened that the anti-illegal rhetoric was the proximate cause of the pop.
Back in 2003-2006 I described the same role of immigrants in the housing boom and accurately predicted that chasing them out of the housing market (and out of the USA) would collapse the housing market. Other freepers who opposed my free market capitalist approach to immigrationn agreed with me that reducing the demand for housing by immigrants would destroy the housing market. But they argued it was a price we should be willing to pay. Illegal is illegal and we should not benefit from the illegal activity of others.
Are there changes in immigration? Or just my perception of it? How much does immigration level reflect our economy? The economies of others? Non-economic things such as chaos between drug cartels?
What facts can we agree on in the debate, even if we disagree on some parts of what to do about it?
Jesus is my Gardener . . .
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.