Feb 20 2007
Immigration and Political Economy
Although the United States was founded on the rhetoric of “no representation, no taxation”, the political entitlement of tax payers has yet to be extended to immigrants. This is one of the most glaring hypocracy that I found very offensive personally. Even as the marginal weight of voting declines, high tax-paying immigrants (like I once was) are till excluded from participating in political life. They have no choice but have to take whatever was decided by those who benefited from their contribution but don’t represent their interests.
This is not just a matter of fairness. In fact, by so doing, the politicians are inflating the value of citizenship and give rise to jerks like Lou Dobbs, who built his entire nonsense on the assumption that citizenship has its own inherent price.
In fact, in a true market economy, the value of citizenship should mirror the coefficient in the political factor of national economy. In other words, it should reflect the “political economy factor”. For example, the price of citizenship should be higher in controlled economies, like China, and/or socialist regimes, like Western Europe, than in a free economy like that of the U.S.
Anyway, read this article online and wish I could influence the vote in the Big Apple.