We Are All Immigrants Now

If you woke up in USA today, you may well believe you woke up in a foreign country, on your own, with nothing.  You left America, the land of the free and home of the brave, for a country where freedoms are much constricted,  you are much spied upon, the people are timorous and the economy has failed.  Look at your property, paycheck and pension, and imagine you left that behind, because it is as good as gone in USA today.  So what would you do?

You'd probably act like an immigrant.  You'll think "I have brains, hands, feet and I am good at (fill in the blank.)"  Say you are a good mechanic, then you'll find the best empty garage for the least money and cut a deal for part of your income in cash for rent.  You'll barter heavily, and save.  Or if you an cook, you'll make a restaurant where no one considered it before, and get folding tables and chairs from GoodWill to seat people.  You'll build from their, one bowl of pho, one taco plate at a time, and work your way up.

The whole time you are teaching your kids a valuable lesson, work hard, play fair, get ahead.  These parents know their kids will stand on their shoulders, and do better.  These kids mean old-age security and joy, when they become doctors and lawyers or better yet, businesspeople themselves.

Now, there is one more part of being an immigrant that may militate against you, since in fact you are an American.  Every single USA citizen is on welfare, of one sort or another. For example, I ship books at  the media rate, a 50% discount subsidized by taxpayers, for an organization, the USPS, that just announced it will shut down in November without billions in bail out money.  Most Americans look down on welfare, when in fact it is well woven into their lives, and lifestyle.  Roads, banks, government services, food, housing, clothing... all deeply reliant (and therefore misallocated) on welfare programs.  USA citizens may blanche at taking welfare, whereas an immigrant does not.  Every single USA citizen directly receives welfare from some source, whether they realize or not.  No one is ever dependent on welfare, we merely get used to it. If it went away, we'd adjust.

Let me broadly outline a cross-current.  In spite of being heavily welfare insinuated, yet disapproving of welfare, a US citizen's reputation is harmed if he is on welfare.  To his peers, something is wrong.  For an immigrant, there is no such harm to reputation among his peers.  An immigrant has not been socially conditioned against welfare, and his peers would hardly take a dim view on getting a helping hand.

A welfare-fraud investigator once told me "everyone on welfare is cheating, because no one can live on welfare.  It is just not enough."  Another one gave me a date and time to come to his ffice and sit in the parking lot, and observe the BMWs Mercedes Escalades driven by sharp dressed people, who come in for welfare.

The problem with my thought-experiment, that you woke up as an immigrant, is it does not address the social conditioning of our  conceit that we "play by the rules (generally)" ethic.  As a practical matter, being charged with welfare fraud does more damage on our psyche and emotions than it would on a immigrant, who is struggling to find his way anyway.  Prosecuting immigrants is an awful lot of work and expense, what with translators and little if any recovery.  Prosecuting a citizen carries no such costs, and the citizen can have certain future benefits, income, etc mulcted more easily.  With one's reputation on the line, a prosecutor can squeeze a lot for little effort.

Along with welfare fraud, which is minimal in the big picture anyway, is there is non-enforcement of rules and regs when it comes to immigrant businesses.  Now I have nothing to support this except I know the rules and regs, I see violations rampant where I would be shut down.  Now I am not complaining here, I very much believe anyone who is allowed to ignore pointless rules and regs, who is given a pass on taxes, should take it and exploit the advantage. Doesn't WalMart & Google do as much?  The result is the businesses offer better prices and standard quality, and I am glad to give them my business.

I noted this in Hong Kong, where Hong Kong managers who open factories in China are at a disadvantage to Chinese factory owners who open offices in Hong Kong.  The Hong Kong business people, constrained by reputation and with more to lose, have a hard time against business people whose reputation is outside of impact, and who have little to lose.  It is not to say good business cannot be done, it merely means it is harder.  they way to win in that case is charge a premium for superior management.

 I truly wish the powers that be extended such courtesies, not taxes and pointless rules and regs, to us all. Welfare could be eliminated if we did that, because there would be full employment, as in Hong Kong. 

 That would be freedom, and the powers that be attack us because they hate our freedom.

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