Among all the ridiculous measures our politicians are proposing to deal with the economic crisis, the following really stood out to me because of its sheer ridiculousness:
Two Senators have come up with a plan to boost the moribund U.S. housing market: Give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 to buy a home in the U.S.
A report in The Wall Street Journal says Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) are preparing to introduce the idea as part of a larger package of immigration measures. The idea is to help make up for the lack of American buyers in the housing market, according to the report.
I can just imagine the joy that the Russian bandits will experience when they hear about this helpful policy. Until now, they’ve been hiding from the retribution for their crimes in London and Greece. How cool is it for them that now the US wants to open its doors hospitably to them? And how about all those drug overlords, mafia bosses, and corrupt politicians terrified that the justice system in their countries will catch up with them? This legislation will be a godsend for them because now they will be able to effectively buy themselves papers that will allow them to escape from justice in their countries. The influx of these criminals will do wonders for the United States.
A healthy alternative to this exercise in idiocy would be to distribute green cards to all people who completed their graduate degrees at US universities instead of kicking them out the second they graduate. Who needs all those smart high-earners, though? We can have criminals, mail order brides, lottery winners, and folks who managed to buy paperwork about how they have been religiously persecuted. Oh, this is so going to save the economy.
Do you think these senators are plain stupid, or are they being paid off by foreign criminals to promote this piece of legislation?
P.S. I just found a really wacky objection to this policy:
There’s an important caveat highlighted by Matt Yglesias: the housing visa doesn’t include a work visa. These new immigrants wouldn’t have the right to work here. Without jobs, what’s holding them here?
Yes, people who found a way to make half a million dollars in third world countries are really in a huge need of jobs. I can just imagine those criminals organizing their CVs and prepping for job interviews.
This is what happens when you project your own cultural hangups onto completely different cultures.
Clarissa's Blog 
But still, wouldn’t even for them the inability to open a private firm be a minus? If you can’t work, you can’t open a firm either, right?
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Why on Earth would the want to start companies in the US? That would mean they’d have to work, pay taxes, etc. What a drag! These are criminals, they don’t need boring stuff like that.
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I thought a company can be a great “roof” to hide illegal operations of numerous kinds.
Besides, may be the law makers thought about criminals too, but hope they’ll make money somewhere else, without hurting anybody (important) in US, and spend it in US. How would that hurt US interests?
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The real question should be why a US-educated extremely law-abiding quiet person with a PhD in Financial Statistics from a very prestigious American university who is destined to be a high earner and pay very good taxes needs to jump through hoops trying to prove he will not hurt the US when a criminal and a bandit doesn’t.
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The company could be created by people who do have the right to work, or by citizens. These criminals are better off precisely *not* being officially associated with that kind of “roof” themselves. Amazing people do not see this.
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I fail to see the logic in the senate proposal. If I, or any other criminal, wants to buy property in the US, we are free to do so. There is no residency or citizenship test of any kind for land purchase that I am aware of. I fail to see the incremental benefit of a non-work VISA to entice purchasing. The decision to purchase property will be based on the utility of the purchase. If it’s a bad deal, a VISA won’t change that fact.
If Diego is hovering about – perhaps he could comment. I’m sure he’ll have some intelligent insight in this area.
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For now, these criminal don’t go the US. They choose Greece, UK and increasingly Canada for the purposes of evading the law in their countries. The UK is fast becoming a cesspool of these bandits from Russia. I find a law that actually encourages criminals to come over to be extremely bizarre.
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Well, probably the framers of the senate proposal aren’t well enough informed. But, depending on what country you are from and who you are, you may or may not have an easy time getting a visa to come to US regularly and legally and stay a long time. Which is precisely why the proposal in the vague state it’s apparently in, to judge from what’s reported in this post, could be attractive precisely to the Russian bandits, I am guessing!
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Do you think this guy is onto something re. certain parallels between CCCP and CIIIA?
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I think that this comparison is a huge stretch. In order to have bandit wars like we had in the FSU in the 90ies, you need a very specific type of capitalism to be in place. FSU countries are past that stage now and have been so for the past 10 years. Whatever happens with combat veterans in the US will not be like anything we have seen in the FSU. The conditions within the society are too different.
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I think it is just a gimmick to save the high-end housing market from itself. At some point the McMansions should be converted to duplexes, or better, 4-unit-things, or demolished to make room for something rational.
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Good God. Este post hay que mandarlo a Dick Durbin, D-IL, tal cual para que vea.
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