Hi, y’all.
I’m skipping the usual introduction to announce a small change to this newsletter. I’m going to go to more frequent, shorter emails for three reasons:
Substack has introduced a 7-day trial period for people to test drive new subscriptions before they commit. That’s very cool, but it hasn’t been useful to me, because my content has come out roughly once per week. After more than a year of doing this newsletter, I have a small number of very devoted readers, but not enough to make this newsletter cover the cost of the time and effort it takes to develop it, and that means that I have to make it more accessible to potential new members.
As you know, this isn’t my only responsibility. In addition to my Wise Economy Workshop writing and content, I am the Chief Operating Officer of Trep House. That role requires a lot of reactive work, in addition to work that I can plan out ahead of time. Finding long chunks of time to generate content hasn’t been easy lately, and I don’t expect that trend to reverse any time soon.
Between the original articles I’m referring to and my commentaries, the three pieces in each newsletter run long. Reeeely long. Like, I should give a medal to anyone who completes it long. I’d like to make them more of a read-while-you’re-going-through-your-emails and less of a read-when-you-have-a-ton-of-free-time-ha-ha-ha. One way to do that is to keep any individual email to a reasonable length, like 500 words.
So, I’m going to promise you three emails per week - roughly one every other day (roughly, because see #2 above). They’ll follow the same themes — Coming Soon, Local Learnings, Do Now. And when I have News from the Wise Economy Network, I’ll send you a fourth in the cycle.
You may also see more of this content show up in other contexts and formats. It will always be here first, though, and I hope you’ll realize that you’re making this content possible with your subscriptions.
Finally, please keep in mind that when you recommend to others that they read or subscribe to this newsletter, that carries a whole lot more weight than any of my clever words. If you’d like to give or donate a subscription, you’ll find links below. And if you want a special promotion deal to share with your readers, members or whoever, just let me know - they’re easy to whip up.
Thanks. I love doing this newsletter, and I’d like to build a community where we can discuss what we’re learning and thinking about. I hope you’ll continue to help me do that.
Here’s some buttons. After that, you’ll find an important Coming Soon about one of the overlooked powerhouses of our economic future.
Coming soon: We Need Immigrants. Lots of em. For Real.
This interview with American University sociology professor Ernesto Castañeda gives some useful facts about immigration, important to counter anti-immigrant rhetoric.
My research has tried to understand what happened in the past and what’s going on right now in the streets in order to try to improve our understanding about immigration. If you look at all types of data, there are way more opportunities born of migration than problems.
[O]nly around 3.5% of the world population lives in a different country than where they were born. There are as many people moving within China as through international borders. So, international migration is a very important phenomenon for immigrants themselves – we’re talking about the futures of many individuals and families. But in terms of the global population, it’s a very small proportion. And this is not because of immigration deterrence and border fences.
People may think that immigrants are more likely to commit crime, yet it is the opposite. Immigrants are much less likely to commit any crimes than the U.S.-born. They are also less likely to use drugs.
Interestingly, the interview does not cite one of the biggest reasons why I personally support as much immigration as possible: Immigrants are far more likely to start businesses than people born in the US. That’s been the case now for more than a decade, as this research from The New American Economy project indicates. Most of those new businesses aren’t just Google wannabes, they’re auto body shops and groceries and day cares and businesses that we need for our communities to work.
We in the U.S. are experiencing an upswing of business starts right now, a likely response to COVID tumult and difficult child care and an unsettled economic landscape. It’s hard to predict where that trend will go. And US immigration policy is still inane, making it almost impossible for most people who start these kinds of businesses to immigrate to the US (it’s a weird source, but this video from the Try Guys demonstrates how the U.S. immigration system doesn’t work better than any I’ve seen).
Given this, I’d encourage most US cities and states to lean into cultivating - and attracting - immigrant entrepreneurs. Even if they’re refugees, or even undocumented, helping your immigrants launch successful businesses looks like a strategy that pays off, hard. And of course, stepping up lobbying for an improved immigration system is important, too. I know that can seem a hard sell in the current political environment, but tides often turn faster than we think they will. Might as well try to get a little ahead of the wave.