Weekly Writers Round-Up: Hotel Subsidies, Merit-Based Immigration, and Common Ground for Conservatives and Vegans

Each week, we’ll be featuring the work of the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on how the program can help launch your career in writing, see here.

Grand Rapids Doesn’t Need Publicly Funded Hotels by Tyler Groenendal (Summer 2018) in Detroit News
Grand Rapids is a city on the rise. The downtown center is in the midst of a construction boom, particularly for new hotels. According to Experience Grand Rapids, six new hotels (with almost one thousand rooms between them) are set to open in downtown Grand Rapids within the next two years.

Despite this rapid new hotel construction, some are calling for more. The Grand Rapids-Kent County Convention and Arena Authority (CAA) is calling for a publicly owned and financed convention hotel in Grand Rapids at a cost of between $140 million and $180 million…

The Kosovo War at 20 by Gil Barndollar (Summer 2018) in The American Conservative
This is a year of major European milestones. In April, NATO turned 70, to subdued celebrations in Washington and questions about the alliance’s continued relevance. June will mark the centennial of the Treaty of Versailles, a rending of empires that provided only a brief respite from world war. November will see the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Lost in these commemorations is the 20th anniversary of a brief, minor war. NATO began dropping bombs on Serbian forces in Kosovo on March 24, 1999. This three-month bombing campaign in the Balkans is an afterthought to most Americans today, a distant memory after the last two decades of ceaseless war around the Greater Middle East…

Down with Farm Subsidies: Vegans and Conservatives, Unite! by Kelvey Vander Hart (Spring 2019) in The Washington Examiner
President Trump’s recent 2020 budget proposal includes a 15% cut to the Agriculture Department, drawn largely from farm subsidies. While this proposed cut has drawn the ire of farmers and the politicians they elect, there should be two groups uniting around this proposal: self-described ethical eaters and fiscal conservatives…

‘Merit-based’ Immigration Will Make America Poor Again by Sam Peak (Spring 2018) in The Orange County Register
If Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, David Perdue, R-Georgia, and Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, get their way, U.S. immigration rates will be sliced in half. They recently resurrected the RAISE Act, a bill instituting severe restrictions on both family sponsorship and refugee admissions. This law would move the United States toward a points-based immigration system, giving preference to immigrants with high-salary job offers, advanced degrees, and other attributes believed to constitute “merit.” While merit-based immigration might sound like a good idea, if enacted, the RAISE Act could have disastrous implications for the U.S. economy…