// September 26th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Immigration
The nativist hate-o-sphere is at it again. After blaming legal immigrants for causing global warming, now illegal immigrants are facing the brunts of their latest accusation. What is it? Why, don’t you know, those migrant workers, low-income wage-earners, illegals in the military, undocumented students struggling to afford college, caused the financial collapse of Wall Street, Main Street and are responsible for the foreclosures. Now we need a $700 billion dollar bailout for them! See what Quaker at DreamActivist has to say about this.
(Psssst, while the nation is conveniently distracted, lets also give DHS $4billion for overbudgeting on old technology)
Tancredo ran in the Republican presidential primaries on a platform devoted strongly against illegal immigrants (a noun, verb and ‘illegal alien’). He garned less than 1% of the vote but that has not stopped him from obsessing over those illegals and running around to ‘catch them.’ We cannot blame him though; forget ‘illegal aliens’, ethnic diversity is a sight for sore-eyes in his state so of course he is longing for rarity.
So, despite the fact that the last movie flopped, illegal aliens are responsible for the mortgage crisis, booms nativist Tom Tancredo, in a new theatrical sequel. Viewer discretion is advised. Strongly advised.
If these 38 million illegal aliens are in fact, attaining mortgages on housing property, that means they are buying houses (creating demand) and paying property taxes on them in the thousands annually. Wait, that cannot be right, ILLEGALS don’t pay taxes, they just reap all the benefits that belong to American citizens!! Which one is it Tancredo, ALIPAC, and the nativist blogosphere? Are you screaming double-bind with little room to wiggle? Did not think the erroneous claims all the way, did you?
Alleged anchor baby, Michelle Malkin is adamant that it is no coincidence that foreclosures have hit hardest in cities that are ‘illegal alien sanctuaries’ such as “Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.” Even if we were to accept that these cities are largely hit due to illegal immigrant presence, we would still be making the mistake of assuming causation when there is in fact, only correlation.
The correlation is explained by the fact that the housing bubble created massive jobs for illegal immigrants in construction, who settled in those areas. Fueled by the boom, the INDUSTRY over-built using the old adage, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ The Census held that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are good for the housing market — they created demand and bought houses that otherwise may remain on the market, creating losses for builders. When the market started to unravel in 2006, the bubble burst as is a tendency inherent in the capitalist system, and thousands of undocumented immigrants in construction work found themselves unemployed with no ‘cushion paychecks’ and unable to afford mortgage rates. Now, do we blame companies and industries for overproducing or do we blame workers for simply doing the jobs they were given? The answer is simple.
For the more seasoned reader – Even if you believe that illegal aliens are to blame for some, even a tiny bit, of the mortgage crisis because lets admit it, we do have lenders who help straw buyers access loans, do consider that attrition through enforcement has created a self-fufilling prophecy. The idea of attrition through enforcement is to make life so tough for illegal immigrants that they would self-deport. Counties like Prince William and states like Arizona, Oklahoma, Rhode Island (flowing with illegal Canadians), pride themselves for driving out ‘illegal aliens’ by getting tough on them. Lets deploy ICE in various cities, and round-up the working mothers of undocumented families in the thousands. It makes for great entertainment for the nativists, but the TRPs don’t translate into any sort of economic or social gain.
Guess what is left behind? Well, yes, the children have the huge mortgages on their hands now. But eventually, empty houses, bank losses upon ‘bailouts’ and no one to buy the homes in foreclosure since the overwhelming number of consumers do not have the capital to invest at this time. Well, congratulations to nativists and nativist policy-makers — if you are blaming illegal aliens for the ‘mortgage crisis’ three more fingers are pointing back at you.
Without immigrants, legal or illegal, we have even less demand for housing, and hence a falling rate of profit for the real estate bubble. BURST! If you want ‘illegal immigrants’ gone, be prepared to pay the price of huge losses to the economy. Don’t turn around and blame immigrants, legal or illegal, for the mess that they just may have cushioned or softened.
