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.

A Scold for Holland, Too (Among Other Things)

As part of a few international communities on the "interwebs," I routinely have the opportunity to hear people talking smack about my first country, the US. The US in the international community is like the kid with crutches, braces, and red hair who is loved by the teachers and has nothing to say to other children: an easy target. As Anthony Bourdain recently mentioned on No Reservations, "I get tired of my country being the bad example."

Having left said country for one more suited to my own nature (yayy Holland), I'm often one of the bashers and as anyone who's read my blogs knows, I'm a big fan of the Netherlands. (I'm looking for the +1 button on the Dam.)

So it was with astonishment that I listened to a self-professed intelligent Spanish woman explain how all the problems in Spain, Italy and Greece are the result of retirees from the north. [In case you're American and haven't been informed, Greece, Spain and Italy are having financial problems which have been brought to light by the EU's refusal to allow its member countries to rack up and continue to sustain huge national debts.]

Since my conversation with the Spanish woman left me completely baffled, it was up to my Dutch friend to explain to me that the southern countries (read: warm), as a favorite retirement location for English, Dutch, German, etc. old people, have taken to blaming their multi-billion euro debts on the fact that people from the north retire there. Apparently, these retirees are rumored in those countries to show up penniless and without means of support on their doorsteps and then of course the poor southern countries have to spend all their money on feeding and housing the poor old people.

When it was mentioned to the Spanish woman that all of the northern countries (Holland, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, etc. all have a history of similar social programs) continue to pay retirement to and to insure their retirees no matter where they wander off to live, she simply said with complete confidence, "No they don't." She defended this statement as being her opinion. But enough about her and her lack of logic; she's not the point.

The point is that it cuts both ways. Yes this is me taking Holland to task. As ridiculous as you know such assertions by the populace of the south to be, the assertions by a handful of idiots (with their accompanying nods from the TV-watchers in the bars) that every ill in Holland is caused by the "massive" influx of population from the east is equally ignorant and lacking any basis in fact. (In fact the hiccups of all the European economies can largely be traced back to those wonderful worthless loans that the American banks bundled and sold as ordinary securities, ensuring that when they went down and started an economic crisis it will cost no less than a decade to fully recover from, they would take the rest of the world down with them. And their ability to do that can be traced back to trickle-down economics and the policies of deregulation. Why would we need to keep an eye on people who hold the country's welfare in their greedy little hands? How quickly we forget.)

But back to my story! The US came to a point in its history where there were irreconcilable disagreements over the policies and practices of the north and the south. They settled it at gunpoint. Europe won't do that, as membership in the European Union is a privilege, but it does cause concern about the new Chinese neighbors that northern Europe's going to have if it plays out without resolution and China eventually forecloses on its loans.

Don't laugh, Americans: The Chinese own $1 trillion of the US too.