Pete Buttigieg's plan to use immigration to revitalize shrinking communities, explained

[babylonsister]

Pete Buttigieg’s plan to use immigration to revitalize shrinking communities, explained
Place-based visas could help America’s declining cities.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Aug 15, 2019, 9:00am EDT


South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg outside of a detention center for migrant children on June 28, 2019, in Homestead, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Many struggling American communities are, among other things, losing people. Meanwhile, many millions more people would like to move to the United States of America than the country is prepared to allow in.

Three economists have called for leveraging the latter into a solution for the former, allowing both communities and immigrants to opt into a special program that would allow communities experiencing population loss to issue temporary visas to skilled foreigners that would allow them to live and work in places that want more workers.

The economists, John Lettieri, Kenan Fikri, and Adam Ozimek, call them “heartland visas” or “place-based visas” in their original policy proposal for the Economic Innovation Group think tank. The idea has spread: South Bend, Indiana, mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s larger plan for rural America included them under the name Community Renewal Visas, and the US Conference of Mayors endorsed the concept in a resolution passed on a bipartisan basis earlier this summer.

This proposal is a significant departure from the way the American immigration system has traditionally operated. And there are a lot of questions about exactly how it would work.

But if it catches on, it could be a powerful tool to help address regional economic development issues without making unrealistic asks of thriving places. The visas could also make immigration a less toxic issue in national politics, reframing migration as a source of national strength that should be strategically deployed rather than as a burden to be avoided.

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https://www.vox.com/2019/8/15/20804284/place-based-visa-heartland-visa-community-revitalization

[msongs]

1. temporary visas that can be revocked any time? good luck finding people for that scam nt