The referenced article — whose actual title is “Let Immigrants Save the Heartland” — was published on April 20 to the Washington Post website. WaPo, a supposed “newspaper of record” for the US, is headquartered deep in the Washington swamp and has never been an admirer of that heartland. Thus, it is no surprise that its editorial board should blithely suggest that cities and towns outside the elites’ coastal enclaves should be re-imagined as third-world colonies. After all, it’d be a win for everybody, wouldn’t it?
Many of those Rust Belt towns are already losing people, and, thanks to the Biden regime, the big cities — where WaPo’s heart is — are acquiring people they don’t want. So, let the big blue cities dump their unwanteds onto the declining red towns, helping everyone in the process (and no doubt turning the towns blue as well). With not so much as a nod to what this would do to the legacy towns culturally, the WaPo editorial board thinks that people are just people, and that legacy Americans can simply be replaced with illegal aliens from halfway across the world. After all, they bring labor, don’t they?
Well, yes, if they are skilled, which most aren’t and cannot even speak English. Just as importantant, there need to be jobs. Most of those towns are losing population because the jobs themselves have already fled — ironically, often to other countries. In almost an after-thought, the writers seem to realize this obvious problem with their plan:
Adding people might not revive beleaguered towns that have lost their economic rationale, however. If people have moved out, it’s largely because the jobs have gone, too.
Bingo. Yet the writers attempt to get around that problem by deftly changing which places are expected to benefit from their utopian scheme:
Still, for legacy industrial cities on the edge of decline, arresting population loss is imperative to avoid entering a downward spiral [Emphasis added]
Thus, their proposal wouldn’t help towns that have lost their “economic rationale;” it would likely apply only to those just on the “edge of decline.” But those towns would benefit, surely. For example, they would acquire illegal aliens who have just snuck into the country who could then help the old people left behind by doing stuff for them like shopping and cooking. As one expert, an immigrant himself, said, less than enthusiastically, “For a locality it might not be a bad bet.”
As for the migrants, it might be a very good bet. For one thing, they could take advantage of cheap housing. (These podunk towns have lots of abandoned trailers and such.) It’s true that getting started would require “an initial boost” from the government, shuttered schools would need to be refurbished, local services would be strained (compare Denver), but eventually. . . .
Eventually, the newcomers would be turned loose to scrap for any jobs that might be available. Which brings up the most important point of the editorial: somebody has to do something about those pesky laws restricting employment and citizenship. Here the writers get to the heart of their heartland solution: amnesty. Their editorial concludes:
A more expeditious asylum process is necessary, in any event, to deal with a backlog in immigration courts that has mushroomed to 3 million cases. If politicians made even rudimentary changes to the system, and if more localities recognized the opportunity in front of them, all parties — border communities, struggling Rust Belt towns, big cities swamped with asylum seekers — could win.
With a win like this, who needs losing?
For more, see the Washington Post.