Obama’s Immigration Plan Could Shield Five Million
by
NOV. 19, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/us/politics/obamacare-unlikely-for-undocumented-immigrants.html?comments#permid=13387394
It is discouraging that Americans seem to be so backwards on so many issues. For many generations Americans have refused to join the civilized world and acknowledge that Universal Health Care is not just socially and ethically desirable, but economically necessary - it is no coincidence that Americans pay the most, on average, for health care and get some of the worst results for it. This has been a verifiable fact for many years, yet large segments of the population and, worse, political leaders, have chosen to remain ignorant.
"Illegal immigrants" is a similar issue - de facto North America allows (with a wink and head in the sand) movement of labor across borders - just as the EU does, but there it is a matter of policy. And the EU is learning, the hard way, but it is learning, how to handle the tradeoff between the desirable aspects of this free movement - getting skilled labor to where it is needed vs. just to take advantage of better social programs in richer countries. The recent European Court ruling is the latest step in this learning process: it allows for people who do not get work in the host country, indeed have never worked there, to be denied social services and shipped back to their country of origin.
In both health care and now "immigration", the Obama initiatives are severly flawed, by comparison with the rational European approaches, but by the standards of American politics, dominated as it is by stupidity and partisan malvolence, they are welcome steps.
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