De-Americanizer Ali Noorani wants lots more of what’s hurting Massachusetts
The Boston Globe’s Stephanie Ebbert has a brief but informative article about Massachusetts’ dire population situation, the fact that Americans are leaving the state while aliens, both legal and illegal, are pouring in. Last year the population actually decreased slightly, as Americans are leaving even faster than aliens are coming in.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on, especially since whites (that is, in this case, Americans) are growing in numbers in the suburbs, while they are abandoning the cities that immigrants move into. Americans in the Commonwealth not only face a stagnant labor market, they also have to burden increasing housing costs along with growing demand for government services, at the same time as their earning prospects are stalling out. Solution: Do the midnight ride out of the state, to locales where taxes are lower, housing cheaper, and aliens fewer (not that any of it is likely to last, but you can’t blame them for trying).
The only influx offsetting the trend is a boost in foreign immigration, [Paul E.] Harrington[, an economist at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies] said. They’re counted by the Census, but immigrants often don’t show up in job or unemployment data, he said, leading him to conclude that they are being paid under the table on construction sites, in restaurant kitchens, or on landscaping jobs.
“We’re creating labor market institutions in this state that we don’t want,” Harrington said. “I believe this tees up a long-term economic growth problem for us.”
It most certainly is.
Of course, immigration activists see it the other way around: Had it not been for the influx of poorly educated Latinos, the Bay State would have been depopoulated altogether:
Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said that immigrants have sustained Massachusetts’ population for the past 14 years.
He argued that the governor should take a leadership role in recruiting jobs for immigrants and in highlighting the vitality of the state’s immigrant communities.
“Undoubtedly, Massachusetts will continue to strengthen its role as a state of immigrants, but the immigrant community needs to be seen as the asset that it is,” he said. “The data that’s coming out now only solidifies that message.”
Color me awful, but I don’t think the governor has any business at all “recruiting jobs for immigrants.” It is also little more than cheap hackery to pretend that immigration is off-setting native flight, rather than driving it. The Rappaport Institute’s report on Greater Boston’s changing demographics tells you the story.
