immigration – CGW's Blog

Immigration creates a “lake society,” rather than a stagnant swamp

Immigrants are neither villains, nor victims.

The through put in any economy is where dynamism comes from to get a “lake society”, rather than a stagnant swamp.

More to the point, foreign workers tend to not be the same as native workers, and when that’s the case everyone benefits. So that should be the focus, less displacement and more a core component of how an economy thrives.

That’s from The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, a 2024 book written by Wharton School professor Zeke Hernandez.

In truth this pro-immigration stance is something of a straw man. Overall, even amid partisan American culture war, as I frequently report, high-skilled immigration is bipartisan— regardless of campaign rhetoric. It’s among the few things we agree on.

Instead, in many societies the question is what is the right level of immigration.

Below are my notes for future reference.

Keynote: The case for storytelling (for entrepreneur-led economic development)

Below are my notes, and video, from the keynote address I used to kickoff Technically Builders Conference. It informed this story we published on Technically. My slides are here.

Maria Romero has 90 days to find a job — or she gets deported.

In December, the Mexico City native completed her MBA in marketing analytics at Philadelphia’s Drexel University. She’s young, educated, with in-demand skills. The kind of immigrant Americans across the political spectrum say we want.

And yet: Maria is worried. It’s February 2025 when the Technical.ly newsroom first meets her — 30 days left, tick tock tick tock. Higher interest rates have ended the tech hiring boom. Volatility is everywhere. Her STEM degree and F1 visa gives her years to work like any American citizen — no quirky paperwork, not even modest immigrant sponsorship costs. But she’s nervous anti-immigrant rhetoric is making a tough hiring climate worse for her. Forget about paying bills, if she doesn’t get a job she’ll get kicked out of a city, out of a country, that she was ready to call home.

She applies to more than 500 jobs. She does coffee meetings, texts friends, has her story told by a news outlet and responds to inbound outreach. She also keeps on living — she walks her dog, she goes to restaurants she loves.

The thing we do before our life changes forever is almost always mundane.

Metro: Babette Josephs down on ‘Secure Communities’ initiaitve

A city-state-federal policing partnership criticized as threatening the civil rights of immigrant populations in Philadelphia was the focus of a short brief I had in today’s Metro, following a brief interview with state. Rep. Babette Josephs following a press conference in City Hall.

Read it here.

I wrote a fairly large profile of Josephs for the Inquirer last summer. Fair or not, a group of self-labeled reformers in Harrisburg called Josephs a mythological three-headed dog.

I was unable to include a brief interview I had with City Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez on the matter, portions of which you can see after the jump, in addition to quotes from Josephs that were cut, more from the Nutter administration, other sources and one interesting concept of the story that didn’t make it into the piece.

Continue reading Metro: Babette Josephs down on ‘Secure Communities’ initiaitve