Just here for the job: Question of the Day

Part of Megan McArdle's response to Kerry Howley's excellent guest-worker article:

But mostly, I worry about having a large number of people in the country who are, definitionally, not planning to stay here. There's something corrosive about transience: witness the way college students treat their neighborhoods. (And don't tell me they're young; they're prime guest-worker age.) Civic bonds can withstand culture clash, but I'm not sure they can withstand pockets of people who are just there for the job.

To what extent - if any - does life in Washington DC support Megan's theory? What lessons, if any, might be extrapolated from Washington's experience with what amounts to a sort-of-kind-of guest worker programme? Discuss.

Comments

[Mike P]

The same could be said of a lot of major cities; I live in San Francisco and there is a very high turnover between people in the age range of say 22-35 or so.

[ben]

I wasn't aware that college students were such a malign presence in their neighbourhoods, really.

It's an interesting use of the word "transience". In San Francisco, certainly, the people who that word seems to evoke aren't all that transient. The homeless and down-and-out don't exactly flit to Aspen for the snow and Vermont for the leaves. They're don't make it off the same few street corners a lot of days, while college students and dot-commers and business owners come and go and flourish and fail.

[Josh]

The major difference between college students and guest workers is not age, but employment status. What a difference the need to be at work by 7:30 am makes.