An article in the Wall Street Journal this week overviews a bill two senators are preparing to introduce to help solve the U.S. housing crisis. The bill would give a residency visa to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 on houses in the United States.
Although the bill would not give work visas, this proposed immigration measure provokes the inevitable comparison to the immigration measures that currently prevent undocumented workers from obtaining visas. In addition, it also raises the point that with the amount of foreign investment, the United States is quickly becoming "owned" by other countries, such as China, Japan, and Brazil.
On the one hand, the bill would help the lagging U.S. housing market. If U.S. citizens cannot afford to buy houses, or are unwilling to take the risks of investing in a slumped market, why not provide foreign investors with incentives to invest? The bill is particularly attractive because it would not cost the federal government anything to implement. On the other hand, however, shouldn't the United States government be prioritizing its own citizen's needs? It is certainly a sign of a severely damaged economy when our government, seeing our reluctance to jump into the housing market to either buy or sell, is turning to the rest of the world for help on an issue it should be able to contain.
This proposal does seem unfair to those undocumented workers who are fighting to stay in this country to work. Is it right to allow a class of people to effectively buy their way into this country? We are in the era of globalization, of more and more immigrants living and setting up their own localities within the global city, but globalization never meant equality. Although it may seem unfair, the fact of the matter remains that international buyers already account for around $82 billion in U.S. residential real-estate sales. If we are already relying on foreign investors to help boost our housing market, it seems logical that we should also allow immigrants to live in the homes they purchase, especially if it will provide an incentive for further investment at such dire economic times.
The measure will get introduced on Thursday, and it remains to be seen where it will go from there.
- Ysabel Yates
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for sharing this information with us. Your material is up to date and quite informative, I would like to bookmark this page so I can come here to read this again, as you have done a wonderful job.
ReplyDeleteEb5 US