How to protect against financial hardship and assist others who are struggling financially.
Topics covered include:
- Why are so many families leaving Central America and seeking to enter the United States.
- How have U.S. immigration patterns changed.
- Why immigration leads to higher economic growth.
- Why unsheltered homelessness is increasing around the world and what strategies have been effective in reducing homelessness.
- What can individuals do to assist the homeless and others who are in financial distress.
Podcast Episode
Show Notes
Note: The original audio file stated that “oftentimes they [the ayslum seekers] wouldn’t ever show up for their court case.” That is an inaccurate statement. Most asylum seekers attend their court hearing. The audio has been modified to remove the inaccuracy.
Ajo Station—U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Southwest Boarder Migration—U.S. Customs and Border Protection
The demise of America’s asylum system under Trump, explained By Nicole Narea—Vox
Key findings about U.S. immigrants by Jynnah Radford—Pew Research Center
Facts on U.S. Immigrants, 2017 by Jynnah Radfard and Luis Noe-Bustamante—Pew Research Center
After ICE Raids, a Reckoning in Mississippi’s Chicken Country by Richard Fausset—The New York Times
2019 AHAR: Part 1 – PIT Estimates of Homelessness in the U.S.—HUD Exchange
How to cut homelessness in the world’s priciest cities—The Economist
Episode Sponsors
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Related Episodes
113: Brexit and the Economics of Immigration
154: Do Homeowner Tax Breaks Cause Homelessness?
177: How Business Contributes To Income Inequality
181: Does Illegal Immigration Help or Hurt the Economy?
Transcript
Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it. I’m your host David Stein. Today is episode 284, it’s titled “We Are All Vulnerable.”
In the desert
Last week I spent several days backpacking with my son and daughter-in-law in Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona about 10 miles from the U.S. Mexico border. That particular area of Arizona is covered by the Ajo Station of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Their website points out that the area of responsibility encompasses over 52 miles along the international border, nearly 8,800 square-miles of operational area.
They write, “to affect an illegal entry within the Ajo area of responsibility, illegal aliens are often committing to several days in the remote desert with little to offer in relief. Rough rocky terrain, flat desert covered in cactus and brush, and numerous mountainous regions are predominant in the area and make travel even inaccessible areas difficult.”
We hiked 7 ½ miles up a rocky and sandy wash. We each brought 8 liters of water. As we walked there were a few empty containers, water jugs that were the shape of Clorox bleach bottles, but they were jet black.
About a mile from where we camped, we found the discarded items of someone who apparently had been apprehended, to use the phrase that Border Patrol uses. There was a pair of Levi’s jeans, socks, a camouflage vest with provisions, binoculars, packages of tuna in Spanish, a toothbrush, and a tube of Colgate triple action toothpaste with the lid undone. It looked as if this individual had been caught while brushing his teeth.
The border in that area is 81 miles to Gila Bena, AZ. 115 miles to the metro-Phoenix area. I can’t imagine anyone risking that long of a walk. There’s no way you could carry enough water to get there.
The impulse to move
In Ajo, AZ there is a store called Three Nations Market and Swap Meet and on the side of the brick building there’s a mural. It’s a picture of butterflies, monarch butterflies, and men with butterfly wings. And it says, “Migration for all living creatures is a move from scarcity toward plenty, from despair toward hope. Humans have their own migratory impulse based on the same fundamental desire coded within all living things. Survival.” People move when they feel financially vulnerable, where they feel like they don’t have any choice. And it’s always been that way.
Andrew Jackson Downing, he was a leading home architect in the early 19th century, was born in 1815 in New York state. He wrote, “We must look for a counterpoise to the greater tendency toward constant change and the restless of emigration which form part of our national character.”
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