Delaware Evicts Mississippians

This year, Delaware authorities withdrew the residence permits of 1,224 US citizens. In a year's time, this number climbed to over 2,000. The people involved have to leave the state. Under Interstate legislation, a state can decide to expel a person if they pose a burden to the social security system.

Within the US, the free movement of persons applies. However, it is stipulated that people moving to another state should also have the means to pay for their own living.

Since 2004, US states have the right to refuse certain citizens if these should pose "an unreasonable burden" on the state's social security system.

In Delaware, it goes like this: when a citizen has been receiving financial support from the social services for three months, the Delaware Immigration Department looks into the situation. If it turns out that the person in question abuses the system, the Delawarian state can ask them to leave the state. In a year's time, there have been over 2,000 of these cases. Counting from 1 January, there have been 1,224 new cases so far.

It's mostly immigrants from Mississippi who are asked to leave the state. The Mississippians are followed by citizens from Idaho, West Virginia, South Carolina and New Mexico.

Or not. In fact, this is a story about the EU member state Belgium monitoring citizens from other EU countries, published by Flanders News. But how different would the US look if states controlled interstate immigration more strongly than they already do? Maybe something good. Maybe something bad. We'll never know. Except that we get to watch how the EU plays out over time. 

The states were not chosen randomly: Delaware has the highest per capita GDP of the 50 official states of the US at $69,667 per person per year, while Mississippi has the lowest of the same group at $32,967 per year, according to US Government Revenue, as cited by the good folks at the Wiki (followed, as you might guess, by Idaho, West Virginia, South Carolina and New Mexico). 

Belgium at $42,630 per person per year has neither the highest nor the lowest per capita GDP in the EU. The highest EU per capita GDP annually award goes to Luxembourg at $108,832, but Luxembourg, with its tiny population, is an outlier in this category; the highest non-outlier is Denmark at $56,147. The lowest annual per capita GDP for a member state is Bulgaria at $6,334. All these numbers are from the Wiki, where they are cited from the International Monetary Fund. The EU, with vastly different economies in member states, generally reports GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Standards. By this calculation, Bulgaria has 45% of the EU average for purchasing power per person, while Luxembourg has 274% of the EU average purchasing power and Netherlands (#2) has 131%. These numbers are reported by Eurostat here. 

For comparison, Eurostat throws in the US and Japan here. They didn't do calculations per US state, but the US as a whole averages out to 148% in 2011, climbing from its low point in 2009 at 146%. Japan is on par with the EU average at 105%. But while the average for the US as a whole is high, the US also tolerates the highest internal income disparity: In Japan and Germany the ratio of pay for CEOs to pay for workers is 11:1 and 12:1, respectively. In the US, that number is 319:1, as reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, here.

Just things that make me ponder.