Fiat Citizenship
11th August 2013
Steve Sailer lays out the economics of amnesty.
Even more than they love taxing and spending, politicians adore a giveaway that doesn’t show up in the budget. Stumped by how to get minorities to earn more money, for instance, George W. Bush announced at his 2002 White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership his plan for letting minorities borrow more money: Reduce requirements for down payments and documentation on mortgages. What could go wrong?
Even better from the modern Senator’s standpoint is frittering away the scarcity value of your citizenship on various ethnic and business lobbies. In part, that’s easy to do because the notion that American citizenship has a cash value is not a concept that comes readily to the minds of idealistic Americans.
It sure does to foreigners, however. Randall Burns calculated in 2005 from Indian-arranged marriage ads that an H-1B visa adds $50,000-$70,000 to dowries. The gold standard of citizenship is worth even more. Similarly, Chinese birth tourism websites are extremely informative about all the advantages that accrue from glomming onto birthright citizenship.