Good Immigration Policy is Good Economic Policy

What we’re not talking about in the ‘Sanctuary’ and ‘Welcoming’ city debate

It was a broken window that had brought us all there on a Saturday morning. My father and his friends fell into a hushed conversation: Do we call the police? Will they even care? They closed in around the brick that had caused all the commotion as I re-read the fourth Harry Potter novel in the main prayer room of our little community mosque. In Yakima, Washington, the mosque is little more than a house with a sign above the mailbox — in Arabic and English — marking it as place of faith. They discussed taking that down, too.

It was just weeks after 9/11. At 11-years old, I was too young to recall the particulars of the discussion or even the depth of impact on this small diaspora that had formed a tightly-knit community in the most unlikely of places.

I was old enough, however, to sense the paralyzing fog that many Arab-Americans suddenly found themselves in — simultaneously mourning a national tragedy with their neighbors while frightened of being mistaken for a terrorist by the very same people.

Nearly 16 years later and it would seem that we haven’t come all that far.

A mosque in Bellevue, Washington is burned down within a weeks of being vandalized twice in a month. Less than twenty miles away, an American Sikh gets shot in his own driveway after being told to go back to his own country. Mosques in Austin and Victoria, Texas are intentionally set on fire just weeks apart. A mother of two US citizens and resident of over twenty years, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos goes into her eighth annual check-in with ICE after Mass one day only to be immediately deported. Outside Tampa, Florida, an arsonist sets another mosque ablaze. A Salvadoran brain tumor patient gets detained by ICE during treatment. Two Indian engineers are shot, one killed, in a Kansas City bar. Travel bans. Border walls. Withholding federal funding from ‘sanctuary’ cities. An administration hell-bent on waging a culture war, aiming the real economic anxiety of poor and middle-class white people at the boogie-man du jour: Brown Immigrants.

It’s heartening then to see progressive cities, counties, and states combat the forces of evil by declaring ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions. The promise to keep local law enforcement out of the deportation business (which, by the way, is basically what that means) is a Very Good Thing for America—or at least, for the people who live in those cities, counties, and states.

Don’t get me wrong—I, for one, am grateful to live in King County, in the other Washington as opposed to, say, Maricopa County, Arizona, where law enforcement and immigration enforcement often mean it’s likely the same people with guns hunting you.

However, a ‘sanctuary’ is not enough. The designation lacks a legal definition. It’s not only slippery to defend in court, but it often takes the form of a pro forma resolution that has no real teeth.

When we’re fighting a war of words, it’s worth quibbling over the specific choice of ‘sanctuary’ as the thing we, as well-intentioned progressives, have adopted. Declaring sanctuary is meeting them on their terms. It is rushing to the defense of the vulnerable. It is declaring yourself savior (which is perhaps appropriate for a movement of church congregations responding to Reagan-era deportations but not for the #resistance). It is reactionary. It is not painting a vision of collective prosperity. It is not building community. It does not project a position of strength.

Some jurisdictions — King County, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Boise, for example — have declared themselves to be ‘welcoming’ places. This is a rhetorical improvement that at least begins to frame the issue as one of collective responsibility. It does not suppose a power dynamic and pushes a narrative of inclusivity, but even this rhetorical shift must be accompanied by a substantive policy contributions.

Truly becoming a ‘welcoming’ place for vulnerable communities means more than adopting a resolution to not do a thing (i.e. asking for immigration status). It must be supported by a robust policy agenda. In the way that government budgets are political value statements, economic policy is where feel-good rhetoric translates into real-life pocketbooks.

We have to pull every available policy lever that could afford all people living and exchanging goods in America — including and especially undocumented immigrants and newly-placed refugees — a path towards economic stability and prosperity.

In the vein of current ‘welcoming’ discussion, elected officials should expand the scope of their resolutions to include every layer of their jurisdiction’s government, ensuring that no one is denied any government service due their immigration status. That same principle should extend far beyond government services. People should not be given or treated less, in any arena, because of their immigration status. Eradicating wage theft, ending predatory lending practices, empowering sexual assault victims to take action against their assailant —these are just a few of the many examples that welcome, not just an inclusive community, but a thriving economy.

Policy-makers don’t invest political capital into communities that ostensibly offer little political return — especially when we so often divorce the economic impact Brown Immigrants have from the positive, rose-tinted vision of an inclusive community. To be clear, this does a disservice to us all.

Immigration policy has always impacted economic prosperity, but for too long, we have refused to frame the conversation that way. Instead, we offer sanctuary.

Even in progressive enclaves like Seattle, we aren’t free from this self-imposed limitation.

What this short-sighted homeowner suffering a mild dose of cognitive dissonance doesn’t understand is that their neighborhood’s property value is rising because immigrants are flocking to King County.

Prosperity isn’t a zero sum game. Power and wealth aren’t in spite of community and diversity; they’re derived from it.

Since 2000, nearly half of all new county residents were born in another country. In a very real way, just by sitting on their ass on a nice piece of property watching Brown Immigrants come in, the home owner’s economic value is growing in such a way that it makes it impossible for those responsible for the windfall to even live in their neighborhood.

By opposing upzoning — and by proxy, affordable, mixed-income neighborhoods — this homeowner is effectively declaring that “All Are Welcome Here (but only if you can afford an $800,000 craftsman that doesn’t in any way devalue my neighborhood’s white, property-owning history and character! Never mind that we probably stole the land from Japanese immigrants after we stole it from the Duwamish!).”

Within this novel mental backbend, the homeowner is aiming to protect their neighborhood from the very thing that makes it great.

Now recall that I used a brick through a window to get your attention, and somehow, we’ve arrived at the economics of the thing. Maybe, in your mind’s eye, you saw a frightened community afraid to report a crime committed against them, and you felt sympathy — for the bullied, for the vulnerable, for your fellow human in a state of suffering.

Good.

The world needs more of that. But I’d beg you consider that that mosque was also filled with small business owners, laborers, doctors, engineers, and teachers. These were employers and taxpayers. These are consumers and sellers.

More than half of startups valued at over a billion dollars were founded by immigrants; the one in four Americans who are immigrants or the children of immigrants fuel our growing labor market. That Mexicans are swimming the Rio Grande to steal your job is a Flat. Out. Lie. The Pakistani IT guy caricature isn’t the avatar for America’s decline. Brown Immigrants aren’t responsible for job losses in manufacturing and coal-mining (that would be automation and new energy sources — but that’s a different pod episode altogether).

Good immigration policy is good economic policy, and we have to finally reckon with just how inexorably linked they are. Inclusivity is a necessary part of a truly robust middle-out economy. We must acknowledge that both the top and bottom of our economy is dependent on immigrants.

Without us, the price of your fruit, vegetables, nearly every consumable good made in America would astronomically increase. It’s basic supply and demand economics: you still want your honey crisp apples but the supply becomes scarce because fewer (Brown) hands in America are picking them.

Additionally, a vast majority of immigrants are low- to middle-wage workers. This means our propensity to consume goods is high. Unlike the extremely wealthy, we don’t make enough money to save, which means we keep cash flowing in our local and national economies. We, generally, spend more on stuff, so we end up paying a greater percentage of what we earn to sales and income taxes while putting hard-earned, real dollars and cents into small business owners’ pockets.

When we talk about being a Welcoming City or the dangers of careless rhetoric, it isn’t strictly about creating an environment that doesn’t impeach the dignity of our neighbors who don’t look, talk, or love like us. It isn’t just about fairness. It’s about dollars and cents. It’s about improving the quality of life for all us.

The next time you discuss immigration, push beyond what’s Just and Good and Right for Brown Immigrants. Challenge yourself and your people to see beyond the humanitarian impulse. Look past the Kumbaya-singing utopian community where police and Brown people trust each other implicitly. Be emboldened by idea that if the most vulnerable among us do well, we all do well. Have that discussion. Reframe immigration as an economic issue. Do right by immigrants for all of us.

Oh, and listen to our latest of The Other Washington podcast. It’s a great way to start the conversation.