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FROM MY CORNER: My Immigration Plan

Howell Hurst 2020 Presidential Election, Economy & Finance, People Politics

FROM MY CORNER

My Immigration Plan

Let no one presume I propose I should replace Trump. The aggravations that fall to a sitting President of these Disunited States are not in my cards. The job belongs to some politically well-placed person. However . . . if I were the President, here is my Immigration Plan.

Recognizing that China and India with their large and growing populations are the two most formidable challengers to U.S. economic stability, I would diametrically alter Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.

I would firmly reverse them. America would announce to the world that our borders are open to all willing to live and work in our country: that all suffering the deprivations of irrational governments are welcome, so long as they embrace our long held fundamental customs of freedom and tolerance.

We would not do this idealistically because the Statue of Liberty says it is so. We would do it realistically because it makes economic sense.

Would it demand screening to separate the needy from the criminals? Would it require cautious appraisal of each new person? Would each require education into the ways of America?

Yes, indeed, all of that. However, it would be a job-creating venture less expensive and more rational than erecting a mindlessly conceived immigration embargo and an non-empathetic Mexican border wall.

I propose we execute a well-planned redistribution of the present American capitalist economic concentration of population and business from large cities into much of the rural country that is under populated, and poorly utilized.

To motivate this transformation, major tax and financial incentives should be provided to corporations who move portions of their work forces out of cities and into selectively empty acres of land constituting the majority of our country.

Only a relatively moderate fraction of Federal property would need to be made available via ownership to a now land-and-house-hungry population. Further, investments from already accumulated corporate profits would create thousands of smaller, specialized, industry-niche support manufacturing operations in the new small communities.

This redistribution of our population and industry would more equitably secure all citizens’ life-enhancing benefits. Opening up the modest quantities of land for personal ownership in smaller communities, for instance, would reduce the real estate market’s price-controlling blockage of longtime vitally-needed affordable housing for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

The ancient feudal argument that the Federal government should own most of the nation’s land to protect it from people is nonsensical. More people owning their own land would secure their loyalty in preserving our most valuable parks and wildlife.

Locally controlled land management, conforming to guidelines devised between Federal and local governments, could manage this quite well. Our present city-centered economy now benefits primarily the wealthy, enforcing low wages upon entrapped city residents desperate for income.

Major Federal tax and financial incentives should be offered to corporations who reduce the number of weekly hours employees work.  This would share more jobs with now underemployed Americans. Companies assuming the training of their new employees would earn incentives for their corporations.

The consequences would include a transfer of responsibilities from Federal to local states because of increased local manufacturing revenues. Many ghettoes would become reduced in size as residents acquired training and jobs through the process.

The reality is that America needs more international immigrants, not fewer. Creating small low cost niche industries would make us increasingly competitive in the international marketplace. Consequently, the world’s various displaced refugees are America’s most attractive new potential economic assets.

Would such a territorial economic transformation reduce restrictions the corporate wealthy now exercise over the lives of 330 million Americans? Yes. It would do so largely by creating the many thousands of new, locally-owned talent-specific support industries in the newly-established small communities.

It would mitigate the currently fascistic-tending, Federally-controlled oligarchical political disorder, returning increased democracy to our population. It would disprove the utterly false pretense of the wealthy as the legitimate leadership of America.

It would insure more Americans truly life-sustaining work and income. It would refresh the country closely akin to Thomas Jefferson’s original concept of diversifying America geographically into relatively small manageable villages.

Returning more autonomy to ourselves would certainly weaken corporations’ one-way online digital contracts. These now control most of our personal affairs – without providing us any input to their policies – which financially weakens most of us.

Removing from power the ideologically-motivated, religiously-fanatical, intellectually-inferior minds now running the country would retain, and indeed enhance, capitalism by expanding and diversifying the ownership of capital.

It would provide the means to financially empower many Americans now supporting Trump, those hoping illogically he will help them, when objective facts indicate that is most unlikely to be the result.

Do most Americans really want a restrictive, nationalistic, fascistic-tending government run by massively wealthy oligarchs? Polls indicate not. We need an intellectually world-aware perspective, appreciating science, art, and knowledge, while retaining practical vigilance over our defense and economic well being.

America is now sailing against the wind of human needs. It should re-navigate its course. Hopefully, a grassroots movement will enlarge between now and the 2020 election to produce and support a serious visionary candidate to replace our present irrational state with a degree of common sense.

Far-reaching humane planning of immigration and land use, with a defined focus on strengthening individual citizen finances, is key. It must be well integrated into an over-all national economic strategy based on a planet-wide marketing perspective.

How to wrest power from some narrow-minded, incompetent egomaniacs with more money than brains is our challenge. It’s going to take quite an awakening, quite a renaissance, quite a bit of guts and gumption to make it happen.

May the power be with us.

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