New York and other cities face a lack of resources that can no longer be ignored.
In the 1990s, I did a semester abroad in Kenya and fell in love with the place. After graduation, I got a fellowship to teach poor children in a town about an hour outside Nairobi. "Who's going to sponsor your work permit?" one of my professors asked me. I shrugged. I had no idea. I wasn't too worried about it — such is the luxury of youth, having an American passport and some funds from a fellowship. |
I jumped on a plane, bought a tourist visa at the airport and threw myself into volunteering under two Kenyan literacy teachers. I actually forgot I had a problem until I had to show my passport at a government office. A stern official noticed that I had overstayed my visa by several months and ordered me to leave the country. I begged him to let me stay. I had just started Jitegemee, an organization that would eventually be locally run and send hundreds of children to school and vocational training. The Kenyan official was unmoved by my pleas. The law was the law, he told me. So I did as I was told. I left the country. I took a bus across the border to Tanzania for the weekend. On my way back, I purchased another tourist visa. I lived like that for years. |
That experience helped shape the way I look at unauthorized immigration to the United States. I know that newcomers bring new ideas and energy, whether they are "legal" or not. |
But the truth is that there is virtually no limit to the number of people who would come to the United States to work. And not everyone who wants to do so is fleeing violence and war. But there are limits on the number of beds in a homeless shelter and the number of hotel rooms a city can pay for. There are limits to the number of people who can enter an industry, willing to work for less, before wages for the native-born start to fall. |
I approached this story as an intellectual question: Can a place have generous welfare benefits and an open door to immigrants at the same time? Or do generous benefits attract so many people that the system collapses or the taxpayers revolt? As I dug into it, I learned that there has been a long-running debate among academics about that very question. Milton Friedman held forth on it, as did the seminal book "Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference." |
I also approached the story as a moral question: What do we owe migrants at the border who are seeking safe haven from harm and a better life? What do we owe our own struggling citizens, who often compete with newcomers for unskilled jobs and scarce government resources? If we are honest about that — and we rarely are — it illuminates tensions in the Democratic Party, which has promised to fight for both groups. |
It seems to me that compassion begins at home. You can't invite the whole neighborhood over for dinner when your own children are hungry. If welcoming the stranger comes at the expense of our poorest people — as it often does — we are in trouble. |
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