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'Buy a House, Get a Green Card,' Ayn Rand Boss Said

By Jeremy Rosenberg
April 2, 2009
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Last fall, TTLA traveled down to an office complex in Irvine and paid a visit to the Ayn Rand Institute.
During a free-wheeling conversation about, in great part, free enterprise and the ongoing financial crisis, ARI president Dr. Yaron Brook brought up an idea that has been popping up elsewhere since:
In short, that idea is summed up by Brook's suggested pitch: "Buy a house, get a green card."
From Brook, to TTLA, four or so months ago:

"Nobody's talking about the housing markets. They're bailing out banks, but they're not going to help the housing market. One easy way to [stimulate] the housing market would be to allow more immigration, open up the borders. Let people come here and buy houses. "I would even propose the slogan, 'Buy a house, get a green card.' Allow anybody in the world to buy a house in the United States and they automatically get a green card. You would have the entire excess housing capacity in the United States swallowed up within a couple of months, because people value green cards. "And in a sense, you'd be selling off green cards and that would be great. Who loses if you do that? Nobody loses and everybody gains. That's kind of a free market solution to some of the kinds of problems that we face."

Related: Google search results for "buy a house, get a green card" are here. ARC op-ed by Brook and a co-author is here.
Photo: Yaron Brook, at the ARI. Photo copyright and courtesy Jeremy Rosenberg 2008.

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