The Crossed Pond ? Immigrant-Friendly Cities

Posted by Brad @ 4:38 pm on July 25th 2012

While Arizona has gotten all the headlines, a number of other American locations ? mostly rust-belt cities ? have flung open their doors. Dayton, OH, Detroit, MI, and Chicago, IL, have notably explicitly invited immigrants, without particular concern for their legality. But the real welcome mat may have been laid out by Baltimore, MD, and its mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

In March, Rawlings-Blake signed an order prohibiting police and social agencies from asking anyone about immigration status. The order also says no city funds, resources, or personnel shall be used to investigate or arrest people solely for a civil violation of federal immigration law. And it asks U.S. immigration agents to tell people they arrest that they are from the federal government, not the city.

Incidentally, I love Baltimore. Great city ? I go there quite a bit.

But more to the point, I love this. I am, in most cases, a rule of law guy, but frankly our immigration laws are so f-ed up ? and so conducive to NOT coming in legally ? and our demagoguery is so revolting, that I find myself much more on Baltimore?s side than Arizona?s. Immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are so overwhelmingly good for the country that I don?t even know that it particularly merits a debate. For every politician in America, every immigration debate seems to start with ?you have to secure the border first?. I take a different tack. I think every immigration debate has to start with ?you have to drastically and immediately expand legal immigration opportunities?, and the first hint that most immigration debates do not revolve around law and order but in fact revolve around just plain old fashioned dislike of immigrants is that virtually nobody influential even broaches that topic.

Anyway, good for Baltimore.

Source: http://thecrossedpond.com/2012/07/25/immigrant-friendly-cities/

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