Buy a House – Get a Green Card
Not surprisingly, Michelle Malkin has her knickers in a twist over this, and without thinking about it I would too; but I think there may be merit to the idea. The proximate trigger for our current economic meltdown was the bursting of the housing bubble. At this point, most of the “toxic” assets plaguing lenders is nonperforming real estate mortgages, because people are walking away from those that are upside down.
I have heard that there are over a million houses on the market with no buyers. A classic oversupply that has deflated the value of everyone’s real estate holdings. Meanwhile, we are supposedly permitting the mass migration of illegal alien peasants from Mexico because there are jobs American ghetto dwellers won’t get off their shiftless butts to do. Let’s kill two birds with one stone.
The program described in Michelle’s article is a typical governmental disaster; but what if we offered a green card to anyone with a clean record who would buy outright, with cash, any home for sale in America for the next year. We could also require them to deposit another $100K or more in an American bank to insure they had the capital to get started off on the right foot in their new life in America.
I would have infinitely less heartburn over entrepreneurial immigrants, who could pay their own way, not become a burden to our ever burgeoning welfare roles and social services, and are more likely to wish to assimilate into our native culture. Meanwhile, it would infuse our economy with a half of a trillion dollars of real cash, instead of taxpayers buying these assets; and property prices would go back up instead of continuing to crumble. Where am I going wrong here?
An interesting idea. I don’t discount it, but it may not work out. I am a supporter of allowing people who can prove themselves to be above average citizens to immigrate. I can’t remember where I saw it, but there was an article in recent weeks about companies that exist to give Chinese immigrants employment promises so they can get in the country, and then let them go do whatever they want. I imagine someone would figure out a way to circulate homes in order to cheat this system as well. We would need a mountain of regulations on cost of homes, time of residence, etc. Then we would need the government to employ people to enforce these regulations. I’d be wiling to give it a try as a very short term deal.
Housing prices probably are a bit too high. If only foreigners could afford houses in the U.S., we would be in a very interesting situation.
I’d like to find out more about this law. Where did you hear about it?
I am not sure where I got it at first… probably Twitter… but I think Michelle referenced it in her article, which I linked to above. I just did a Google search on the title of this post and got 39 Million hits! Start there. 🙂 â—„Daveâ–º
Yeah, I said it should only be a temporary one year program. Elsewhere I have said that a green card ought to be very provisional, and to get one should require a bond to cover deportation costs if an immigrant commits a felony, or becomes indigent. They should have to sign a waiver of any right to social services of any sort, etc. Citizenship itself should require competence in the English language, and perhaps other evidence that they have assimilated into our culture. Actually, we don’t need any more peasants, so we could easily require that they speak English just to get the green card. The time to be discriminating is before we ever issue one.
Illegal immigration is by no means just a Mexican problem. I was shocked by the airport section of the above report, which shows that the government’s own data reveals that over 3 million more people arrive by plane in the US every year than depart. I personally know immigrant families who came here legally; but then grandma, parents, and siblings come to visit them and just never went home. These particular families are self sufficient and not using social services, but they do utilize the infrastructure. I can imagine many others who game the system for all it is worth. â—„Daveâ–º