By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Trump’s consiglieri, Jeff Sessions, came out yesterday to smear the some 800,000 young people in the DACA program, undocumented people brought to the US when they were children, without their having decided as individuals to break any law. He implied that the deferment from deportation instituted by President Obama endangered Americans’ security. The allegation is a huge lie. Trump also keeps implying that Dreamers, as immigrants, are a drain on the US economy.
Immigrants cause economic growth. I follow developments in the Middle East, and Turkey took in over 2 million Syrian refugees. Economists estimate that as a result, its economy has been growing 4% a year, despite a lot of political upheaval. That rate of growth is directly attributable to Turkish businesses, including farms, having access to more workers, and Syrian refugees creating companies and investing in Turkey.
In contrast, a country like Japan that rejects immigration, is in danger of shrinking demographically, economically and geopolitically.
1. Dreamers are 14% less likely to be incarcerated than the general population, and Dreamer women are twice as likely to stay out of jail as a native-born American.
2. Dreamers are from unusually educated families and are themselves disproportionately well-educated. Roberto G. Gonzales at Harvard found that 36% report having at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree. [Roberto G. Gonzales, Veronica Terriquez, Stephen P. Ruszczyk, “Becoming DACAmented Assessing the Short-Term Benefits of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA),” American Behavioral Scientist 2014]
Of Gonzales’s sample,
22% have a Bachelor’s degree
27% have attended a 4 year college but have not graduated
32% have attended community college
20% have not attended college.
3. Given that this group is young, many of those who have not attended college may be in high school, and many who do not have a BA may still be in college.
Some 27% of Americans have a BA, so Dreamers are educated proportionally in comparison with the general population.
4. 91% of Dreamers are employed.
5. Deporting the Dreamers would therefore cost the US some $460 billion over the next ten years.
6. Not all Dreamers are originally from Mexico, though they predominate. In 2016, around 3,000 were from Poland, over 5,000 from India, 15,000 from South Korea, 8,000 from the Philippines, and nearly 6,000 from Jamaica.
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Related video:
Hispanic Chamber Of Commerce President Javier Palomerez Says ‘Dreamers’ Move America Forward | MSNBC
This is how a businessman with numerous failures and six rescues thanks to bankruptcy court runs the government like a business.
With fingers crossed I hope that Congress will overcome 16 years of deadlock to provide the dreamers with citizenship.
Trump said “If congress doesn’t fix the Dreamer situation within six months I will revisit it.” That sounds like his arrogant but hollow campaign rhetoric “I and only I can fix this nation’s problems.”
…and what “Re visit?” He never has visited or addressed the Dreamers other than to say “I love kids.” . What a joke.
Wake me up when America is great again.
Your opponents might argue that there are over 700,000 skilled jobs worth $40 billion a year and thousands of seats at good colleges up for grabs in the DACA debate. It’s a conundrum that this President and this Congress are not up to solving. Maybe we should think about the impact the dreamers could have on their birth countries if they returned for a few years as volunteers in a Peace Corp style program.
If I were the President of Mexico or one of the other Latin countries with Dreamers in the USA, I would follow the example of China and India and actively recruit the dreamers by providing financial incentives for them to bring their skills “back home.”
Both China and India very actively recruit their citizens that have been educated in and worked in the USA, since they bring a huge amount of soft skills that are needed to advance both countries to the point they can supersede the USA.
Mexico could provide incentive like low cost housing, good jobs, and education assistance at top non-USA universities in Europe or Asia.
A good friend of mine from Nigeria graduated from a major USA university then stayed in the USA to work for a large multinational USA company. But one day, the president of Nigeria asked my friend’s father to have him come home to help build the country. My friend reluctantly did as his family asked. In the last 20 years, he has helped build an electronic finance system in Nigeria and helped spur the nationwide cell network and inexpensive cell phones so almost everyone in the country can exchange “money” electronically. By luring my friend from the USA , to Nigeria, the small country vastly improved. I have several friends in India and China that have done similar things, especially after the USA voided their H1B visa.
Mexico should embrace the Dreamers as a way to spit in trump’s eye.
many people do not want to go to a country they don’t have a real connection to. They think of themselves as Americans.
As to those going to China and India, l in Vancouver, British Columbia, they may work in China but they own houses in Vancouver and the surrounding cities, where their wives and children live. They commute. They only work in China, they live in British Columbia, Canada. They only do it for the money. Many of the Dreamers don’t want that kind of life style and the renumeration in the countries they may have come from do not offer salaries as high as those in the U.S.A. nor do they offer in salaries what they do in China and India to gain the best and brightest. That is why the fled to the U.S.A. Some of the Dreamers come from areas of incredible violence. it is why their parents fled. there is no amount of money which will induce them to return to those areas. Try it yourself some time if you think its such a good idea to go some where to help out.
For Jeff Sessions all Dreamer must go. they do not belong to the WASP group he represents. Even with all the statistics in the country, all the evidence to demonstrate the Dreamers will make money for themselves, the economy, the government, it does not matter. This is not an issue of substance but an issue of Jeff Sessions and his ilk not wanting immigrants of any sort in their lily white country. Unfortunately for Jeff and the folks, that ship sailed before they even got to America. America was populated by people of colour. Then the newly arrived “whites” decided to import slaves, who were black.
Jeff and his crew may want to return to the days of whites in charge, First Nations dying on reservations, and African Americans as slaves, but he needs a reality check. its not going to happen. These whites live in dreams and not the type Roy Orbison sang about.
Jeff Session, Trump, etc. may have convinced their rabid white base, if every one is forced out of the country, they don’t want in it, the rabid white base will once again become well employed. That isn’t going to work. these Dreamers have skills, education, and drive the “white rabid base” does not. if the rabid white base actually went out and got an education they might not be in the situation they currently are in.
I don’t give a damn about the money. This is about sending American kids to a foreign country to satisfy the racist fantasies of a crazy President and his idiot “Base”.