In his book Since Yesterday, The 1930s In America, author Frederick Lewis Allen alerted readers to an interesting statistic about immigration during the first half of the decade. From 1931 to 1936, “the number of aliens emigratingfrom the United States had been larger each year than the number immigrating.”
Allen's stat rates mention given the historical truth that the U.S. has nearly always been a magnet for outsiders. Except that this wasn't as true in the 1930s, and it similarly wasn't true from 2009 to 2014. The common denominator that ties to the two five-year timeframes together is that the U.S. economy was, at least by American standards, notably weak from 1931-36 and 2009-14. Let this be a lesson for lawmakers who promise to fight “recessions." For them to fight recessions is for them to prolong the pain. Recessions are the cure.
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