Here's a major financial impact where we live:
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Also, it's sadly common to see neighborhoods where immigrant families will pack in 15-20 people into a single small house, with as many as 5-10 cars per house parked in the street, driveway, and lawn. Those neighborhoods decline in value of course. I'll typically see about 20-30 guys hanging out in front of the 7-11 in the morning trying to get a job for the day. Or others just loitering around all day. I appreciate the guys trying to get work, but it doesn't help the image or value of those neighborhoods.
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I've seen this happen before, but wanted to share a completely different experience I had relatively recently. I don't live in the nicest part of town, but hey, it goes with my FIRE plan. Anyway, after the house near us had been sitting on the market for a while, it finally got sold. My new neighbors, who purchased the place via an LLC started moving in. It started out pretty much how I expected. 2 huge pickups, 3 box trucks, two sedans, one sports car. Dad, Mom, Son, Daughter, Daughter, Son, Sister-in-law, sister-in-law son, cousin, and a couple more. 2 Chihuahuas and a pitbull.
They tore up half of their front yard turning it into a dirt driveway, vehicles parked all over the place. It was bad. At this time, one of the houses up the street sold for something like $35K (yeah, that kind of bad neighborhood). Pretty much matched the stereotypes to the letter. However, about a month later, the house got painted, nice rocks got thrown down and the new driveway got graded. A new fence got built (not chain-link), and the front yard got landscaped. Suddenly their house looked better than mine. They put a gate from the alley in, and their vehicles were parked out of sight. As I got to know them, they all live in this house because they pretty much just sleep there (and play outside), and they said they can save all kinds of money on rent by splitting it 15(ish) ways (note: my house has an extra add-on, so it's a bit bigger...mortgage is around $550 for me). Talking to the dad, he runs his own business, and was in the process of getting legal status, even though not everyone in the house is legal. The son was flipping cars, no payments, and grossing about $4K twice/year. The small kids spend all of their time playing outside, catching bugs, playing with the dogs (theirs and mine), etc. Every weekend they setup a karaoke/band thing in the backyard and the entire family participates. They restore a bit of my faith in humanity, and always make me smile.
It was an unexpected, but ultimately awesome turn of events. Raised my property value by about 8% over the course of the year. After seeing what they did, we prettied up our stuff, then our neighbors did theirs, and the entire neighborhood has greatly improved. It's still not great, but better than before they lived there. It's anecdotal, but just thought I'd share this experience.
My opinion is that any advanced STEM degree should come with a green card.
I can't find the original article that brought it to my attention, but I've always thought it was strange that we have no issues letting people come for an education, but then send them home. I'll keep looking for the article, but it mentioned that we are essentially losing out on a huge amount of potential talent. Not sure why this is, but it might have something to do with fear and the hyper-sensitivity to anything related to jobs.
As far as the actual topic, I've only seen net positive benefits, especially in my neighborhood. I must admit though, that I have trouble thinking from a 'country' specific place. I've tried thinking on a global scale, and travelled quite a bit, so it's a difficult concept in general for me to really get my head around. I do get some of the viewpoints presented, but it's really hard for me to get motivated enough to truly look into it. Not sure if this makes me a bad person or not, but it's worked for me.