The Problem Has Existed For Generations
But the other day I saw a news item that made me think things are changing:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order Friday to bolster protocols and support immigrant neighborhoods, including offering cash assistance, in response to raids by the Trump administration targeting those living in the United States illegally.
. . . In addition, Bass said a plan is being worked out to provide cash assistance to those affected by the enforcement operations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Cash cards with a "couple hundred" dollars on them will be distributed by immigrants' rights groups in about a week, Bass said.
The wording here is a tacit acknowledgement that there aren't just ethnically Mexican neighborhoods or barrios in California, which has always been the case, but specifically neighborhoods made up of illegal immigrants, a much newer concept, though by no means brand new. But the ICE raids in LA are drawing attention to the problem:
Amid ongoing ICE raids around here in Los Angeles, many immigrant communities are fearful about living their daily lives, like leaving their homes, showing up to work, shopping at local businesses. Freelance journalist Benjamin Gottlieb spent some time in the San Fernando Valley, one of the many hubs of Latino immigrant life in this city.
. . . When I was out reporting, I saw an unusually low number of people milling about, especially on Van Nuys Boulevard, which is this major street in this part of Los Angeles. It felt like a ghost town really. I spoke with about a dozen day laborers and street vendors. Many were happy to chat but fearful recorded or give any identifying information.
. . . Yeah, so it's not just the fact that there are ICE raids. Those happen in Los Angeles. But immigration advocates say more people are being deported in an expedited way. So they might get put on a plane before they have a chance to appeal to an immigration judge.
. . . I walked into a juice bar that Jonathan Reyes and his family owns in Van Nuys. He says people no longer feel safe to go out, and they're just not coming to buy juice.
What this says to me is that the ICE raids, beyond rounding up illegals, are damaging an enormous underground economy that was based on serving illegals, and once you take the illegals out of the equation -- not just by physically removing rhem, but by making them reluctant to go out and spend money -- you're damaging that underground economy. And this economy is huge. At the link above,
This is the largest county in the U.S., about 10 million people. Census data puts the immigrant population at about a third. And there are estimates that as many as 1 million people in LA County are in the country illegally.
So all of a sudden, something like a million people who support low-end ethnic restaurants, pushcart vendors, ethnic grocers, barbers, hairdressers, food trucks -- not to mention drug dealers -- are reluctant to go out and spend money. And if they don't go to work on off-the-books jobs, they won't have the money to spend. So Mayor Bass is going to give them all gift cards? Wait a moment. This is a cash economy. What are these people going to get with gift cards? And this is a million people. How are gift cards with a couple hundred bucks going to fill the gap? Beyond that,
The money will not come from city coffers, but from philanthropic partners, [Bass] said.
Really, how much money are we talking about here? If we're talking about enough to make up for a million people who are afraid to go out, and go to work, this isn't just a piddling amount, it's got to be billions. "Philanthropic partners" won't have pockets that deep.It also occurs to me that the illegals have in effect set up their own version of the Mexican "informal economy" that I linked to in a post a while ago:
An informal economy is made up of mostly small businesses that are not taxed or regulated, with workers who lack benefits such as health care and pensions. . . . In Mexico, the informal sector accounts for a staggering 24 percent of GDP and 55 percent of employment.
What's happening is that the ICE raids by the mere fact that they're taking place are pulling the rug out from under the California version of the Mexican informal economy. But with the additional funding for ICE and a changed policy direction, many more illegals are likely to be deported, also reducing the size of this informal economy:
President Donald Trump’s deputies have reversed the Democrats’ “catch and release” migration strategy and are now enforcing the federal law that requires migrants to be detained until their asylum claims are resolved.
. . . The ”catch and release” policy was created by the 2010 “Morton Memos” in President Barack Obama’s administration. The Obama policy flouted the federal law and allowed migrants to get jobs while they waited for their asylum hearings. The jobs allowed the migrants to pay off their smuggling debts to coyotes and cartels, regardless of how weak their asylum claims.
In turn, the policy greatly encouraged economic migration into Americans’ communities by reassuring would-be migrants that they would safely pay off the debts and upfront costs of hiring coyotes and cartels needed to get them into the United States.
. . . Trump’s 2025 policy will be an economic disaster for the [interest] group that profits from the cartel-managed migration.
In effect, it was the "informal economy" created by the illegal migrants that's financed the California Democrat machine. Mayor Bass's attempt to replace it with gift cards is a feckless effort on one hand, but it also shows the real damage the Trump policy changes are doing to the vested illegal immigration interests.