Massachusetts Runs The Experiment

As we argue past each other on immigration, it's worth noting that Massachusetts, and the northeastern states generally, have run the experiment that the anti-immigrationists use for their horror of horrors. We have close to our shore a large population of Spanish speaking people, relatively poor and relatively less educated, who have a right to move freely into the Commonwealth and a right to receive immediately any welfare benefit available to those born in the United States. The trick, of course, is that this population was born in the United States -- in Puerto Rico. Nonetheless, Massachusetts boasts a per capita income higher than the US average and Puerto Ricans in Massachusetts, though they make, on average, less than other citizens in the Commonwealth, make much more than Puerto Ricans still on the island.