Alternatives To A Wall--Raise Wages, Keep Factories And Housing Safe
As NYCO points out in a recent post, the last gasp solution (for both immigration opponents and our culture as a whole) is to build a wall to keep immigrants out.
Ivan Light, a sociologist at UCLA, points to other ways to manage immigration in a recent LA Times editorial entitled 'How L.A. kept out a million migrants'.
Between 1980 and 2000 the LA metropolitan area went from having 32% of all Mexican immigrants in the U.S. to only 17% of all Mexican immigrants--during a period when Mexican immigration increased by 120%. An estimated 1 million Mexican immigrants bypassed LA and settled elsewhere.
Professor Light cites public policy changes taken in California and Los Angeles that led to this deflection of the migration pattern from Mexico:
1) The state minimum wage was raised significantly during this time period, up to 122% of the federal level by 2000.
2) The city vigorously enforced existing laws on industrial safety and sweatshops after a 1995 case where Thai garment workers were held in virtual slavery.
3) The city also vigorously enforced housing safety and code violations in low income neighborhoods, closing down many unsafe tenement buildings.
Professor Light argues that this is the way metropolitan governments can regulate the flow of immigration, eliminating the fear of being inundated by immigrants fostered by anxious nativists and eliminating the need to do something so stupid as building a wall.
Ivan Light, a sociologist at UCLA, points to other ways to manage immigration in a recent LA Times editorial entitled 'How L.A. kept out a million migrants'.
Between 1980 and 2000 the LA metropolitan area went from having 32% of all Mexican immigrants in the U.S. to only 17% of all Mexican immigrants--during a period when Mexican immigration increased by 120%. An estimated 1 million Mexican immigrants bypassed LA and settled elsewhere.
Professor Light cites public policy changes taken in California and Los Angeles that led to this deflection of the migration pattern from Mexico:
1) The state minimum wage was raised significantly during this time period, up to 122% of the federal level by 2000.
2) The city vigorously enforced existing laws on industrial safety and sweatshops after a 1995 case where Thai garment workers were held in virtual slavery.
3) The city also vigorously enforced housing safety and code violations in low income neighborhoods, closing down many unsafe tenement buildings.
Professor Light argues that this is the way metropolitan governments can regulate the flow of immigration, eliminating the fear of being inundated by immigrants fostered by anxious nativists and eliminating the need to do something so stupid as building a wall.
