Immigrants Are 'Saving' U.S. Cities
While some cities are attempting to drive immigrants out, others are welcoming them with open arms. As a Wall Street Journal writer asserts, "All booming American cities are immigrant cities."
"The fate of a two-year-old war on illegal immigrants declared by the mayor of tiny Hazleton, Pa., a former coal town, is now in the hands of a federal judge. He will rule by June on Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which penalizes local businesses and landlords who employ or rent to illegal immigrants."
"During the nine-day trial that concluded last Friday, Mayor Lou Barletta argued that some 10,000 undocumented immigrants have ruined Hazleton's quality of life...Yet business owners and landlords argued the opposite -- that immigrants had revitalized Hazleton's moribund economy, filling once-vacant apartments and patronizing once-declining businesses."
"In other cities the verdict is already in: Immigrants have significantly improved the quality of life in many of America's most successful cities. Take Flushing, Queens."
"The recent bitter debates about immigration have split parties and divided allies, but one group has steadfastly supported immigrants: the smart big-city mayors -- Michael Bloomberg (New York), Antonio Villaraigosa (Los Angeles), Richard Daley (Chicago), Manny Diaz (Miami), Thomas Menino (Boston)."
"All booming American cities are immigrant cities. It's practically tautological. Cities that welcome immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- tend to have vital economies that expand exponentially as immigrants open new businesses, fill vacant jobs and move into declining neighborhoods."
[Editor's note: Although this article is only available to WSJ subscribers, it is available to Planetizen readers for free through the link below for a period of seven days.]
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Once again...
Once again, the author conveniently omits the word "illegal" before the word immigrant. When will these authors realize their credibility is completely undermined because they are not really writing and researching what people are actually protesting about. I don't know anyone who is against legal immigration. Stop trying to slant your articles when you can't find anything to write about or when writing about illegal immigration would actually expose the problems you don't want to admit or acknowledge.
Read twice.
Once again, the author conveniently omits the word "illegal" before the word immigrant. When will these authors realize their credibility is completely undermined... etc.
Of course, not all immigrants are illegal, and the author makes this point when writing:
New York, with some three million immigrants (about one-sixth of whom are here illegally)...
and
Cities that welcome immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- tend to have vital economies that expand exponentially as immigrants open new businesses,
and
Jewish diamond cutters, Korean green grocers, Chinese restaurateurs, Russian massage therapists, Irish bartenders and Greek coffee-shop owners aren't stereotypes. They are the reflection of a real economic phenomenon.
So no credibility is lost in my mind, but myself, I read the piece carefully.
In much of North America, mobility and amenity-seeking drive people to relocate to new areas, making them immigrants too (they migrate to new areas).
HTH.
Best,
D
The point being...
The point being, if the author wanted to truthfully respond to what people are protesting against, the entire article would discuss illegal immigration, not immigration as a whole. Once again, Dano, people are not protesting immigration, they are protesting illegal immigration.
Many points to pick, or not.
Well, of course it's a hot-button issue, whipped up in the politics of fear generated in the FUD rhetoric purveyed by the party that just left power.
So the author's thesis:
Yet business owners and landlords argued...that immigrants had revitalized Hazleton's moribund economy, filling once-vacant apartments and patronizing once-declining businesses.
was couched in a way to soften the well-known but avoided message so as to avoid inducing polarizing political statements.
Because we have a perfect example right here of what happens when the hot buttons are pushed.
But we also know the truthful effect that illegals have on the economy, as many warm states truthfully can't get their crops in** and they are rotting on the ground ++.
But we don't talk about that. Sure, the dust devils from all the other truthful Murrican folk rushing in to pick those crops are obscuring my view, but still.
Best,
D
** "Given the divisiveness of the national debate, it is remarkable how many people here recognize the need for the workers who have come to this country illegally."
---------------
++ "[Colorado's] tough laws -- which encourage local police to check papers and make sure no one without a fistful of proper documentation receives one penny's worth of social services or a driver's license -- actually worked. Immigrants, both illegal and documented (who don't want the hassle), have stayed away.
In fact, so few migrant workers showed up for last year's harvest that crops were left to rot in the field.
...
Because the sad truth that few in the anti-immigration crowd wish to admit is that cheap labor artificially suppresses food prices.
Unless Americans are willing to further subsidize through tax dollars the cost of bringing crops to market or to pay higher prices in the grocery stores, we need some type of lawbreaker -- whether an illegal immigrant or an American criminal -- to do the backbreaking work for next to nothing in wages." [emphasis added]
Little Saigon, Orange County
Little Saigon in Orange County is one vivid example of this "saving", if ones note how the area was more than 30 years ago, and how much different the property and sale taxes the local government have been received then and now.
Local and federal government should provide more planning and financial assistance to help those new community centers to develop their special identities.
_____
Dr. Nam-Son Ngo-Viet is a planner / architect and researcher. His research focuses are physical form and human perception of urban centers in Pacific Rim countries.