Immigration Can Determine Where You Sleep

By Adam C. Kolasinski

The Virginia State Senate has just passed a bill that will allow Fairfax County to outlaw sleeping in any room of a house except the bedroom.

On the surface, such a measure seems rather odd. What do I care if my neighbor falls asleep in front of the TV? What harm have I done by allowing a friend with exceptionally poor apartment-hunting skills to crash on my couch for the past six months? (To be fair to my friend, I live in New York). What possible interest would the county have in regulating what room people sleep in, for heaven’s sake?

Well, apparently some people in Fairfax County have turned their homes into boarding houses, jamming scores of people into single-family residences. But why has this become a problem now, all of a sudden? Well, the laws of political correctness prevent anyone from coming right out and saying it, but there are clues in the AP report as to the “root cause.” A Republican opponent of the bill had this to say:

“What this bill does is make no distinction between 27 illegal aliens and a family of four trying to care for an ailing parent.”

Another clue is the fact that one of the most vocal groups lobbying against the bill happens to be the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Starting to get the picture?

Because of current immigration law, the vast majority of immigrants coming in to this country are poor Third-Worlders who just happen to have relatives here. Most come from countries where squalor and over-crowed living conditions are the norm. They have little money or skills with which to earn money. They naturally crash with their relatives. Since the relatives that sponsor them are not usually too well off themselves, they don’t have the extra bedrooms to accommodate all the cousins, aunts, uncles, adult siblings, and other extended family members that current law allows them to import.

The result: Scores of aliens crowding into small apartments or houses. The Republican cited above got only one thing wrong: the aliens are not always, or even usually, illegal.

Naturally, this sort of residential crowding has all kinds of negative externalities: poorer sanitation, scarcer parking, crowding in public places, and the like. So it is perfectly legitimate for Fairfax County to attempt to remedy the problem. Unfortunately, such a remedy will inevitably result in an abridgement of Americans’ liberties - illustrating yet again the stupidity of open-borders libertarians.

Adam C. Kolasinski

Republicans and the Minority Vote, by Adam C. Kolasinski

[Adam is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The views expressed herein are entirely his own and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or any entity within the Federal Reserve System. Adam can be reached at akolasinski@hotmail.com]

February 01, 2001