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Immigrants create new jobs
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Rick Snyder knows how the economy works. He was a top executive for the computer maker Gateway before heading a venture capital firm that invested in startup companies.
For the last three years he's been governor of Michigan, and like many conservative Republicans who actually have to run something, he's far more pragmatic than many of the blowhards in Washington who are unburdened by either experience or responsibility.
That practical streak led Snyder to propose an innovative idea: issue 50,000 special visas over five years to attract well-educated, highly motivated immigrants to a state battered by a declining manufacturing base.
"We graduate about 5,000 international students a year from Michigan universities," said Snyder. "But then what do we typically do after we've gone through the process of giving them a world-class education? We have a federal program that tells them to get out. How dumb is that? Shouldn't we welcome them?"
Snyder's proposal focuses on one particularly "dumb" element of our immigration system, which makes it very hard for graduates of our universities to stay and work here, to build businesses and create jobs. But he also makes a larger point that is directly relevant to a renewed debate over immigration policy, the only big issue where bipartisan progress seems possible this year.
Newcomers are good for the economy. They don't take jobs away from native-born Americans, they create jobs for everyone.
There are moral reasons for Republicans to help enact measures to legalize the 11 million undocumented immigrants now living here.
There are political reasons as well. Republicans who can do basic math understand their party must be able to attract a decent share of Hispanic and Asian voters – groups that backed Obama heavily in 2012.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it bluntly when speaking about Hispanics: “If you are against the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country, you and your party don't have a future.”
But the economic arguments in favor of immigration reform don't get enough attention. If Republicans believe their own rhetoric, if they truly want to be the party of growth and opportunity, if they really prize individual entrepreneurship and hard work, then supporting immigration reform is a no-brainer.
President Obama emphasized the economic argument in his State of the Union address when he said, "Independent economists say immigration reform will grow our economy and shrink our deficits by almost $1 trillion in the next two decades."
If Republicans don't trust the president, at least they should listen to Rick Snyder. As he points out, one-third of the high-tech businesses created in Michigan in the last decade were founded by immigrants. For every job that goes to an immigrant, 2.5 jobs are created for U.S.-born workers.
Rick Snyder is right. Our "dumb" immigration system must be replaced, and soon.
Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.

Where Did That Come From? - Cat Nap
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Well, I want to wish all my appreciated readers a happy St. Patrick's Day!

At my age, I feel like I need a cat nap every day!

Forms of this metaphoric expression have been used for 200 years to describe a short period of sleep during the day. Cats sleep long periods at a time, so it may seem strange to call it by this name. Some researchers say it started in Ancient Egypt when cats were sacred and Pharaohs began to emulate the way cats sleep. But there are no records to indicate that.

When cats sleep, they are sound asleep one minute and awake the next - there is no drowsy period trying to wake up; hence, the cat nap. The first use was actually 'cat's nap.' The earliest known citation is from The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale by James Fenimore Cooper, 1823, on page 156:

"Why d'ye see, Squire, the parson was very solemn, and I just closed my eyes in order to think the better with myself, just the same as you'd put in the dead lights to make all snug, and when I opened them ag'in I found the congregation were getting under weigh for home, so I calculated the ten minutes would cover the lee-way after the glass was out. It was only some such matter as a cat's nap."

Cooper used it the same way 2 years later in Lionel Lincoln, on page 111, 1825:

"Wine should never slumber on its lees until it has been well rolled in the trough of a sea for a few months; then, indeed, you may set it asleep and yourself by the side of it, if you like a cat's nap. As orthodox a direction for the ripening of wine ..."

It continued to be cited in books as cat's nap for the next ten years, then in 1835, Harper and Brothers in New York published Matilda Douglas' Blackbeard: A Page from the Colonial History of Philadelphia in which contained the following at the beginning of Chapter XIX, on page 225:

"Towards two of the morning, not long after the moon had gone down, Nero, who was sitting up for his master, was aroused from a cat-nap, into which he had insensibly fallen, by a subdued murmur of rough voices, and a heavy tramp of many men passing along Penn-street ..."

In the late 19th century three dictionaries were published listing 'cat-nap'. The first was Americanisms, Old and New, 1889, by John Stephen Farmer.

"Cat-nap. — This is given by Lowell as a short doze"

(Presumably famed American writer-poet John Russell Lowell)