Joel Kotkin: Legal, but Still Poor - The Economic Consequences for the Amnesty Immigrants

Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com, writes with great clarity.  

If you read through Kotkin's full piece at New Geography, it is easy to see how cynical and disastrous for the U.S. are the policies and politics of the Democrat Left, especially in the coastal Blue States where lemming liberals congregate.

What is the true motivation of these liberals, especially the one in the White House?  Dooming millions of amnesty immigrants to government dependency status, which is right where liberals want them. 

Whenever you hear liberals and Democrats say 'safety' nets, interpret that to mean not nets, but fences and ceilings.

There are no economic escalators for amnesty immigrants to ride into the life style of the Wealthy Blue Cities.

Instead, amnesty immigrants get a path to vote Democrat, and get blue bus fare to work in blue kitchens, gardens and nursing homes to supplement government stipends.

WWLHM: Wealthy White Liberal Hierarchy Maintenance.   PB
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From Joel Kotkin:

Expanding amnesty to undocumented immigrants without creating new jobs is a recipe for keeping new Americans poor and dependent on social services.

With his questionably Constitutional move to protect America’s vast undocumented population, President Obama has provided at least five million immigrants, and likely many more, with new hope for the future.

But at the same time, his economic policies, and those of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, may guarantee that many of these newly legalized Americans will face huge obstacles trying to move up in a society creating too few opportunities already for its own citizens, much less millions of the largely ill-educated and unskilled newcomers...


This workforce is being legalized at a time of unusual economic distress for the working class.

Well into the post-2008 recovery, the country suffers from rates of labor participation at a 36 year low.

Many jobs that were once full-time are, in part due to the Affordable Care Act, now part-time, and thus unable to support families.

Finally there are increasingly few well-paying positions—including in industry—that don’t require some sort of post-college accreditation.

Sadly, the legalization of millions of new immigrants could make all these problems worse, particularly for Latinos already here and millions of African-Americans.

African-American unemployment is now twice that of whites.

The black middle class, understandably proud of Obama’s elevation, has been losing the economic gains made over the past thirty years.

Latino-Americans have made huge strides in previous decades, but now are also falling behind, with a gradual loss of income relative to whites.

Poverty among Latino children in America has risen from 27.5 percent in 2007 to 33.7 percent in 2012, an increase of 1.7 million minors...

Ironically, the places where the cry for amnesty has been the loudest—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago—also tend to be those places that have created the least opportunity for the urban poor.

This is in part due to the fact that these areas have tended to de-industrialize the most rapidly, discourage fledgling grassroots businesses through high taxes, environmental and housing, regulations...
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Link: http://www.newgeography.com/content/004780-legal-still-poor-the-economic-consequences-amnesty