"... has touched off Europe’s traditional fear of the Middle Eastern “other”."
OK, maybe it's because I'm European but that sentence annoyed the hell out of me! Oh, Americans turning against immigration is all common sensical and reality based but Europeans doing the same is just them reenacting their Dark Ages traumas...
We have many of the same problems America faces re. asylum seeking, with a lot more landmass a lot closer to the flashpoints and we're starting from a significantly higher base of uneducated third world immigrants. And we don't have the dynamic US economy that helps digest the extra labor force. And, yes, last point is likely cultural - we are less favorable to change and immigration hasn't the same foundational imagery it has in the USA. But that's a relatively minor point compared to everything else.
And so, yes, sure, those Pro Palestinian protests in Europe reminded us we have literally millions upon millions of badly integrated Muslims from North Africa and Turkey and Syria, quite willing to bring their problems and their identity issues to our streets. And we're not enamoured with that. Would you be?
Hmm, I didn't mean to make it sound like that; Americans obviously have our own longstanding prejudices and irrationalities as well, as evidenced by the cartoon at the top of the post!
And yes, I agree with the reasons why the immigration situation in Europe is different than in Amerrica.
Thanks. I think the real problem here is that when I write about American issues, I often imagine myself writing only for an American audience. I need to think more about my overseas readers, even when the post is about the U.S.!
I've followed your writing since you were a blogger before even your Bloomberg gig so I hope this will be taken as coming from a long time fan but I think you can also examine why that sentence looked good to you/flowed without you thinking twice.
Do you think Europeans are just more prejudiced, less capable of warm feelings towards immigrants than Americans? It may well be the case but I am not convinced. I think a lot of the difference in attitudes is driven by on-the-ground factors rather than Americans' better values.
You won't remember but we had a quick exchange some months ago re. Afghan refugees. You were arguing for more being allowed in the US and pointing out they were 10x less likely to commit crimes than natives. I pointed out that Afghans in Germany were 5x times more likely to commit crimes than Germans. Even equalizing for the fact that the US is 5x more violent than Germany, that still leaves the German-based Afghans being at least 2-4x more violent than the US-based Afghans.
Clearly, you're getting the better Afghans. By definition, if you keep increasing the amount of Afghans coming in, at some point, you're going to run out of quality ones and start importing problematic ones.
The point I'm driving at is simple. Some people, regardless of race, creed etc, are good people. Some, regardless of race, creed etc, are bad.
You don't choose the native population you get. You don't choose your institutional set up (2nd amendment etc). But you CAN choose your immigration policy.
And importing people you need (or, failing to match exactly supply and demand, defaulting to importing only good people) is going to be a superior strategy than "let's just open our borders pretty widely".
So that's all I am trying to say. It's not just tampering your enthusiasm for immigration to avoid a backlash, it's recognizing that immigration is a selfish act of one country trying to supplement the limitation of its native pop/institutional set up by importing either better people or the people who exactly match its economic needs.
Either way, being selfish is the right approach. Being generous tends to blow up in your face.
Yes. Noah, I love your writing, but as a European-born naturalized American, I have to say, that sentence irked me as well.
Immigration is great, but, at the risk of sounding hideously right-wing and all, I think a tacit quid pro quo should be involved:
In exchange for letting you immigrate to our country (which you must prefer to staying in your country of origin, otherwise why immigrate?), you agree to do at least some degree of cultural assimilation and respect your new country.
By assimilation, I don't mean discard all your traditions; by all means, keep practicing your religion and cooking traditional food and listening to traditional music and stuff. But at the minimum, you have to accept things like secularism, the rule of law, equal rights for women and LBGTQ people, etc.
I don’t think these issues are that relevant for US immigrants. The bulk of our immigrants aren’t from countries where women and LGBTQ people are persecuted. Many of our immigrants are from a large secular democracy called Mexico. You’re inadvertently proving that Europe has a different perspective on immigration based on its experience.
Latinos/Hispanics are far more conservative than Americans when it comes to stuff like that.
Which is why they were always a tempting target for the GOP, if the GOP could get its white base to stop being so blatantly racist.
But, look, Trump, purely on cultural vibes, is making inroads with Hispanics. How much better do you think a more pro-Hispanic GOP leader (even or especially without being more pro-immigration) might do?
That’s not true. Mexicans are naturally left wing economically and whites aren’t. Mexicans are even more pro lgbt than Anglo americans. California is left wing only Bc of Mexicans. Not a single state got more conservative Bc of them. Florida is red thanks to white Cubans also being socially conservative doesn’t mean being RW , blacks are likely not very woke (on race they are) yet very left wing
Copying my reply, which appeared in the wrong place:
Yes, but not more conservative in a way that is culturally or politically salient as it is for Muslim immigrants in Europe. A similar degree of cultural conservatism is true for native-born African-Americans and working class whites.
Isn't the real reason why Middle Eastern immigrants are so problematic because Middle Eastern cultures are very clannish (because there's so much paternal cousin marriage, splintering society into self-contained kin groups)?
This was one issue that hindered state-building in the Middle East, with the other being that Muslim reverence for the divine Sharia robbed Middle Eastern rulers of the ability to use law as a tool of institution-building.
“Asylum seeking” is an industry created by pols and judges for mostly political and economic reasons.
Has very little to do with refugees fleeing pogroms and persecution and the political actions taken have twisted terms like “asylum seekers” well beyond recognition.
I'm sure it started with the best of intents following WWII. Today's ability of population to move from, shall we say, less than great places to better ones muddy the picture between economic migration and asylum seeking.
We absolutely need an asylum policy and there exists one under international law. A political refugee can apply for asylum in the first country they flee to, or at a US consulate (or the consulate of any other country) in that first country. That country can put them up or richer countries can pay that country to put them up, pending adjucation, or richer countries can sign up to take certain numbers after a humanitarian crisis or pogrom and fly them directly over.
Europe has not done a good job in assimilating its immigrants. The US has its problems there too, having made the mistake of encouraging too much concentration of same ethnic group immigrants in specific places, which inhibits acquiring local customs and attitudes, but I think Europe has done worse.
Can you provide examples of the US “encouraging too much concentration of the the same ethnic group in specific places?” I’m not aware of any policies like this.
To what extent is the issue in Europe with the immigrants themselves, ie that Middle Easterners are inherently more difficult to integrate than Latin Americans?
Yes, never said otherwise. As I mentioned, I think the US economic vitality helps there coz a job and a future are two big factors for assimilation, I'd imagine.
Could we have had better policies regarding housing/ghettos? Sure, though I don't think that some areas being high % of new immigrants is the biggest differentiating factor between the US relative success and the EU relative failure.
Just a caveat - while it's true Sweden is experiencing serious security problems, the total number of murder for 2023 (as of September 2023) was 44. I believe it was 60-something in 2022.
That's for a population of 10.5M people.
Such numbers would (should) make Americans laugh. "You call that gun violence?! Come to Chicago or Atlanta"-type of jokes.
But, it's also true that, within the European context, this is a deterioration that is likely unprecedented. Sweden used to be top of the class and now "(...) the European average stands at 1.6 deaths per million people annually due to such attacks, Sweden has four deaths per million people."
And the are right about being upset. Immigration is supposed to be about attracting the people who will make the biggest contribution (and certainly not a negative contribution) to society. We need a way to massively speed up the processing of what are mostly bogus claims of asylum. ARA was the opportunity to spend a few billions paying for temporary asylum case hearers. It should not take too long for word to get out that bogus claims don't work; you get "heard" and deported pronto, losing the investment in the trip. Without reform of asylum processing, we can't turn our attention to the important issue of allowing entry and active recruiting high value immigrants.
100% agree. I am pro-immigrant and anti-illegal. We have the luxury (which we won't always have) of being an desirable immigration destination. So rather than importing a bunch of 3rd world laborers with sub-HS educations, let's let's import Canada's points based immigration system and go after quality instead of quantity.
On what are you basing "mostly bogus claims"? Just curious - I have never seen any study of this - and a lot of folks are fleeing horrible situations in Central America due to the drug lords/gangs.
And I think the historic immigration was largely not "high value" - but simply hard-working (think Ellis Island, etc).
Again, none of that addresses Noah's issue of how to deal with the politics and actual valid asylum seekers - just my reaction to your assertion
Here’s some data - in FY2022, 250,000 people applied for asylum, 25,000 were granted asylum, and 25,000 were denied asylum. But the people denied/granted asylum could have applied back in 2016 because of the backlog, so we just don’t know how many 2022 asylum applications were valid.
So optimistically, the bogus rate is 50%, and pessimistically the bogus rate is 90%.
Doesn't really answer that - the 200,000 might all be valid asylum seekers that haven't been processed yet. And you don't know whether the pre 2022 applicants were in the granted vs denied either....
So, it is possible that 50% are denied generally (whether they are bogus or not - from what I know, the process is pretty random about how carefully and consistently it is applied). But a 50% rate is far from what you claimed originally - and realistically the data we have here doesn't really answer that question.
It may be the best info we have, but when only 1/5 of the applicants (if that many) are processed - impossible to tell. It could also be that there was a massive influx of valid asylum seekers because of specific events in Central America.... So, it could be anything from 10% to 90% which is a fairly wide range.... 50% is the best guess based on that info, but that is far from anything close to a definitive study.
Another issue (very well explained) where Biden risks progressive backlash for doing what most Americans want. I hope he ignores early and meaningless polling and tries to do the right thing.
Yes- corporations get low wages and taxpayers get to spend $10k per year in public education per anchor baby or “dreamer”, $20k a year in family Medicaid and Schipp, $5k a year in food stamps, $12k a year in housing vouchers (following $50k a year in “temporary” housing) and $10k a year in “refundable” tax credits (often fraudulently overclaimed) and EITC, for a population of functional illiterates.
On balance, this doesn’t seem like a very good economic trade across the first several generations, but it helps the tycoons keep their pools clean.
So-called "immigration advocates" have been telling Americans for years that immigration is synonymous with border chaos created by drug trafficking cartels. What else are they supposed to think?
Americans are not anti-immigration (meaning controlled inflows of workers and future citizens, as decided by government policy). But if people insist on confusing the issue, by lumping in the disasters of illegal crossings, general border security, and asylum policy under the heading "immigration", then of course they will become anti-immigrant.
Without the number of people intentionally surrendering to Border Patrol this article lacks the most important data. As my high-school Biology teacher would have said, it is a worthless article.
But in fact, the US government decided in March 2020, to make the Border encounter data meaningless. Before then, encounters and expulsions were tabulated separately. Now the data is combined. Thus the data after March 2020 can't be compared to that prior, but the WSJ has done that and Noah accepted this therefore worthless graph.
However, it is interesting to look at the earlier peaks in the WSJ graph, 1987, 2000, on a per-capita basis. 1987 encounters were 0.67% of US population, 2000 0.61%, the recent peak in 2022 0.59%. The idea that there is some explosion in numbers is obviously incorrect to anyone who cares about numbers and data. Without the separate data on encounters and expulsions the WSJ graph is meaningless.
I don’t see a comment about housing in this. That’s one of the big issues Europeans and Americans are struggling with that’s related to immigration.
The homelessness we see in Los Angeles is driven by old, NIMBY policies that make even replacing blight and building on empty lots too expensive and slow.
Old people are terrified that increased residents means increased cars and increasing traffic jams are going to prevent them from getting to the hospital on time (I’ve literally heard this brought up at community meetings on development). And everyone is generally get pissed when they’re stuck in traffic.
But homelessness caused by higher rents and fewer units also drives people off the streets into their cars. And lack of local construction makes people drive to other neighborhoods, rather than walk around their own.
In LA we need to ignore the NIMBYs and speed up rezoning -- except NIMBYs traditionally vote more than YIMBYs for City Council seats, so council members may have to do this knowing they will not get re-elected, against the will of their constituents.
In the Netherlands there is a shortage of 400,000 homes and the pace of building can’t keep up with the net immigration. Europe has to keep a lot of its classic architecture. I’m not sure what rezoning could do -- or where to do it.
Rising interest rates and inflation are making construction expensive, too. This is where we need an economist like Noah to help us figure out how to proceed...
Coming from Canada this is the biggest issue. Our entire population increase at this stage is driven by immigration, and housing is just not able to keep up with the population increase. So if you want housing to keep up with the population increase, there are two ways to do it - build more houses, which Canada is trying to do, and also slow down the increases.
Trudeau here is facing major immigration backlash because people are having trouble finding housing and high rents, so they want to stop bringing in people that are partially the reason these costs continue to climb.
Maybe instead of not granting work permits, we require the people claiming asylum and awaiting court dates to work in the construction industry building apartments.
I think the construction industry will hire them. Not sure how much power the unions have to restrict this. I do know building is super expensive and slow here because of red tape and locals complaining all the time.
Nothing is more depressing and un-American to me than anti-immigrant sentiment. Democrats are complete cowards on this issue. They look weak and incompetent because they adopt defensive talking points in line with what the GOP says. It's similar to how Democrats refused to say the word "abortion" for decades.
The talking points should be "Immigration is the United States superpower. We dominate the world because we provide people opportunity. The smartest, hardest working people in the world line up to get into this country, so they can achieve their dreams. We welcome them, because we know they will make all of our lives better and our nation stronger."
Did you read the article? Noah *is* in favor of the kind of immigration that makes America stronger. He is not in favor of unlimited inflows of desperately poor people who take advantage of a loophole in asylum law and end up overtaxing the resources of border towns and blue cities like NYC.
When New Yorkers complain about not having enough housing for all these new asylum seekers, and you respond with "Immigration is the United States superpower," you just sound like you're completely missing the point.
Wasn’t attacking Noah. More of a rant. I agree with him that the pragmatic approach is to cut back on asylum, right now. But the long term strategy must be shifting views on immigrants and immigration so we aren’t forced to make crappy policy decisions as a reflexive defense.
If the US remains an economic superpower, there will always be more economically challenged people seeking to come here than US society can accommodate. Any system that allows unchecked migration, especially of only the poorest, least educated migrants, is guaranteed to generate backlash no matter how tolerant of a viewpoint people start from.
I don't think Republicans would vote for any "solution" to the border crisis. They like the current chaos because they're getting tremendous political gains from it. They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency in 2017 and 2018 and had campaigned on the border issue, but they didn't do much to solve it then, and they wouldn't now.
Yes. I think you and I agree. Solving the border crisis would be good policy. Not solving it is good politics for Republicans and bad politics for Democrats.
There can be no legislative “solution” when one party has chosen repeatedly and consistently not to enforce (in fact, actively undermines) current law.
Sustainable immigration...I like it. In addition to the areas Noah covered, I'm also concerned that terrorists have been sneaking into the country through our porous border.
The largest groups of asylum seekers come from Central America and Venezuela, and the Ukraine war added Ukrainian and Russian asylum seekers. It's not just immigrants from Mexico, as it may have mainly been before.
Here in Texas, you see many nationalities now. Our strong job market is causing migrants from other states (such as Florida) to move here. I wonder if that is adding to the anti-immigration stance here.
It was never just Mexico. The asylum industry favored Central Americans due to past designation by Congress (and Haitians, too, but they get tossed back by the Dems) so that process was made easier and more lucrative for the “refugees” by Obama and then broadened by Obama to children, which included Mexicans. And now anyone from anywhere is let in provisionally. Even after walking through half a dozen countries with US consulates
I agree with you that the system is broken, but based on the above it appears that it's the *Geneva convention* that is broken which would suggest that the only way to fix it would be to renegotiate the geneva convention. I don't see how that happens?
You also argue that it's the *process* that's upsetting Americans, but how do you know it isn't the *numbers* that are upsetting Americans? Suppose Biden managed to force the passage of new funding/government positions that could ensure the rapid processing of asylum claims and the expulsion of those who were judged ineligible for asylum. This would perhaps decrease the number entering some. But would American's really be satisfied if a smaller but still substantial number of people were successfully imigrating as *rule following* asylum seekers? I speculate not, as this wouldn't eliminate the demand on state services and support for the immigrants.
The sentiment of US immigrants themselves being upset about illegal immigration is difficult for a liberal like me to hear, but important nonetheless. The 538 podcast recently interviewed some Hispanic and Turkish immigrants in California who said they were leaning trump bc they were upset about the border and said he would manage immigration better. It seemed insane and self-contradictory but this article sheds some light on it, makes a little more sense now
It’s because you’re conflating rule-based legal immigration with unchecked, uncontrolled illegal immigration. Unfortunately the latter tends to sour people on the former. Especially people who worked within the lines of the legal system, so their views are not remotely confusing to me.
"... has touched off Europe’s traditional fear of the Middle Eastern “other”."
OK, maybe it's because I'm European but that sentence annoyed the hell out of me! Oh, Americans turning against immigration is all common sensical and reality based but Europeans doing the same is just them reenacting their Dark Ages traumas...
We have many of the same problems America faces re. asylum seeking, with a lot more landmass a lot closer to the flashpoints and we're starting from a significantly higher base of uneducated third world immigrants. And we don't have the dynamic US economy that helps digest the extra labor force. And, yes, last point is likely cultural - we are less favorable to change and immigration hasn't the same foundational imagery it has in the USA. But that's a relatively minor point compared to everything else.
And so, yes, sure, those Pro Palestinian protests in Europe reminded us we have literally millions upon millions of badly integrated Muslims from North Africa and Turkey and Syria, quite willing to bring their problems and their identity issues to our streets. And we're not enamoured with that. Would you be?
Hmm, I didn't mean to make it sound like that; Americans obviously have our own longstanding prejudices and irrationalities as well, as evidenced by the cartoon at the top of the post!
And yes, I agree with the reasons why the immigration situation in Europe is different than in Amerrica.
I know you didn't mean to but I just wanted to let you know how it came across... :)
Thanks. I think the real problem here is that when I write about American issues, I often imagine myself writing only for an American audience. I need to think more about my overseas readers, even when the post is about the U.S.!
I've followed your writing since you were a blogger before even your Bloomberg gig so I hope this will be taken as coming from a long time fan but I think you can also examine why that sentence looked good to you/flowed without you thinking twice.
Do you think Europeans are just more prejudiced, less capable of warm feelings towards immigrants than Americans? It may well be the case but I am not convinced. I think a lot of the difference in attitudes is driven by on-the-ground factors rather than Americans' better values.
You won't remember but we had a quick exchange some months ago re. Afghan refugees. You were arguing for more being allowed in the US and pointing out they were 10x less likely to commit crimes than natives. I pointed out that Afghans in Germany were 5x times more likely to commit crimes than Germans. Even equalizing for the fact that the US is 5x more violent than Germany, that still leaves the German-based Afghans being at least 2-4x more violent than the US-based Afghans.
Clearly, you're getting the better Afghans. By definition, if you keep increasing the amount of Afghans coming in, at some point, you're going to run out of quality ones and start importing problematic ones.
The point I'm driving at is simple. Some people, regardless of race, creed etc, are good people. Some, regardless of race, creed etc, are bad.
You don't choose the native population you get. You don't choose your institutional set up (2nd amendment etc). But you CAN choose your immigration policy.
And importing people you need (or, failing to match exactly supply and demand, defaulting to importing only good people) is going to be a superior strategy than "let's just open our borders pretty widely".
So that's all I am trying to say. It's not just tampering your enthusiasm for immigration to avoid a backlash, it's recognizing that immigration is a selfish act of one country trying to supplement the limitation of its native pop/institutional set up by importing either better people or the people who exactly match its economic needs.
Either way, being selfish is the right approach. Being generous tends to blow up in your face.
Yes. Noah, I love your writing, but as a European-born naturalized American, I have to say, that sentence irked me as well.
Immigration is great, but, at the risk of sounding hideously right-wing and all, I think a tacit quid pro quo should be involved:
In exchange for letting you immigrate to our country (which you must prefer to staying in your country of origin, otherwise why immigrate?), you agree to do at least some degree of cultural assimilation and respect your new country.
By assimilation, I don't mean discard all your traditions; by all means, keep practicing your religion and cooking traditional food and listening to traditional music and stuff. But at the minimum, you have to accept things like secularism, the rule of law, equal rights for women and LBGTQ people, etc.
I don’t think these issues are that relevant for US immigrants. The bulk of our immigrants aren’t from countries where women and LGBTQ people are persecuted. Many of our immigrants are from a large secular democracy called Mexico. You’re inadvertently proving that Europe has a different perspective on immigration based on its experience.
Latinos/Hispanics are far more conservative than Americans when it comes to stuff like that.
Which is why they were always a tempting target for the GOP, if the GOP could get its white base to stop being so blatantly racist.
But, look, Trump, purely on cultural vibes, is making inroads with Hispanics. How much better do you think a more pro-Hispanic GOP leader (even or especially without being more pro-immigration) might do?
That’s not true. Mexicans are naturally left wing economically and whites aren’t. Mexicans are even more pro lgbt than Anglo americans. California is left wing only Bc of Mexicans. Not a single state got more conservative Bc of them. Florida is red thanks to white Cubans also being socially conservative doesn’t mean being RW , blacks are likely not very woke (on race they are) yet very left wing
Copying my reply, which appeared in the wrong place:
Yes, but not more conservative in a way that is culturally or politically salient as it is for Muslim immigrants in Europe. A similar degree of cultural conservatism is true for native-born African-Americans and working class whites.
Isn't the real reason why Middle Eastern immigrants are so problematic because Middle Eastern cultures are very clannish (because there's so much paternal cousin marriage, splintering society into self-contained kin groups)?
This was one issue that hindered state-building in the Middle East, with the other being that Muslim reverence for the divine Sharia robbed Middle Eastern rulers of the ability to use law as a tool of institution-building.
“Asylum seeking” is an industry created by pols and judges for mostly political and economic reasons.
Has very little to do with refugees fleeing pogroms and persecution and the political actions taken have twisted terms like “asylum seekers” well beyond recognition.
I'm sure it started with the best of intents following WWII. Today's ability of population to move from, shall we say, less than great places to better ones muddy the picture between economic migration and asylum seeking.
We absolutely need an asylum policy and there exists one under international law. A political refugee can apply for asylum in the first country they flee to, or at a US consulate (or the consulate of any other country) in that first country. That country can put them up or richer countries can pay that country to put them up, pending adjucation, or richer countries can sign up to take certain numbers after a humanitarian crisis or pogrom and fly them directly over.
Europe has not done a good job in assimilating its immigrants. The US has its problems there too, having made the mistake of encouraging too much concentration of same ethnic group immigrants in specific places, which inhibits acquiring local customs and attitudes, but I think Europe has done worse.
Can you provide examples of the US “encouraging too much concentration of the the same ethnic group in specific places?” I’m not aware of any policies like this.
To what extent is the issue in Europe with the immigrants themselves, ie that Middle Easterners are inherently more difficult to integrate than Latin Americans?
Yes, never said otherwise. As I mentioned, I think the US economic vitality helps there coz a job and a future are two big factors for assimilation, I'd imagine.
Could we have had better policies regarding housing/ghettos? Sure, though I don't think that some areas being high % of new immigrants is the biggest differentiating factor between the US relative success and the EU relative failure.
Just a caveat - while it's true Sweden is experiencing serious security problems, the total number of murder for 2023 (as of September 2023) was 44. I believe it was 60-something in 2022.
That's for a population of 10.5M people.
Such numbers would (should) make Americans laugh. "You call that gun violence?! Come to Chicago or Atlanta"-type of jokes.
But, it's also true that, within the European context, this is a deterioration that is likely unprecedented. Sweden used to be top of the class and now "(...) the European average stands at 1.6 deaths per million people annually due to such attacks, Sweden has four deaths per million people."
Finally a short, sharp explanation on a thorny but important subject.
Noah, you know full well that results-oriented pragmatism is not allowed in politics.
Now pick an enemy and start yelling.
And the are right about being upset. Immigration is supposed to be about attracting the people who will make the biggest contribution (and certainly not a negative contribution) to society. We need a way to massively speed up the processing of what are mostly bogus claims of asylum. ARA was the opportunity to spend a few billions paying for temporary asylum case hearers. It should not take too long for word to get out that bogus claims don't work; you get "heard" and deported pronto, losing the investment in the trip. Without reform of asylum processing, we can't turn our attention to the important issue of allowing entry and active recruiting high value immigrants.
100% agree. I am pro-immigrant and anti-illegal. We have the luxury (which we won't always have) of being an desirable immigration destination. So rather than importing a bunch of 3rd world laborers with sub-HS educations, let's let's import Canada's points based immigration system and go after quality instead of quantity.
On what are you basing "mostly bogus claims"? Just curious - I have never seen any study of this - and a lot of folks are fleeing horrible situations in Central America due to the drug lords/gangs.
And I think the historic immigration was largely not "high value" - but simply hard-working (think Ellis Island, etc).
Again, none of that addresses Noah's issue of how to deal with the politics and actual valid asylum seekers - just my reaction to your assertion
Here’s some data - in FY2022, 250,000 people applied for asylum, 25,000 were granted asylum, and 25,000 were denied asylum. But the people denied/granted asylum could have applied back in 2016 because of the backlog, so we just don’t know how many 2022 asylum applications were valid.
So optimistically, the bogus rate is 50%, and pessimistically the bogus rate is 90%.
https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/about_data.html
Doesn't really answer that - the 200,000 might all be valid asylum seekers that haven't been processed yet. And you don't know whether the pre 2022 applicants were in the granted vs denied either....
So, it is possible that 50% are denied generally (whether they are bogus or not - from what I know, the process is pretty random about how carefully and consistently it is applied). But a 50% rate is far from what you claimed originally - and realistically the data we have here doesn't really answer that question.
It may be the best info we have, but when only 1/5 of the applicants (if that many) are processed - impossible to tell. It could also be that there was a massive influx of valid asylum seekers because of specific events in Central America.... So, it could be anything from 10% to 90% which is a fairly wide range.... 50% is the best guess based on that info, but that is far from anything close to a definitive study.
Another issue (very well explained) where Biden risks progressive backlash for doing what most Americans want. I hope he ignores early and meaningless polling and tries to do the right thing.
Backlash only works when the threat is to vote for the other party.
Illegal immigation keeps wages down and prices low for all the basic services rich Americans need.
Yes- corporations get low wages and taxpayers get to spend $10k per year in public education per anchor baby or “dreamer”, $20k a year in family Medicaid and Schipp, $5k a year in food stamps, $12k a year in housing vouchers (following $50k a year in “temporary” housing) and $10k a year in “refundable” tax credits (often fraudulently overclaimed) and EITC, for a population of functional illiterates.
On balance, this doesn’t seem like a very good economic trade across the first several generations, but it helps the tycoons keep their pools clean.
Shhh... Everyone knows this, but don't tell Noah. He likes his bubble.
So-called "immigration advocates" have been telling Americans for years that immigration is synonymous with border chaos created by drug trafficking cartels. What else are they supposed to think?
Americans are not anti-immigration (meaning controlled inflows of workers and future citizens, as decided by government policy). But if people insist on confusing the issue, by lumping in the disasters of illegal crossings, general border security, and asylum policy under the heading "immigration", then of course they will become anti-immigrant.
Without the number of people intentionally surrendering to Border Patrol this article lacks the most important data. As my high-school Biology teacher would have said, it is a worthless article.
But in fact, the US government decided in March 2020, to make the Border encounter data meaningless. Before then, encounters and expulsions were tabulated separately. Now the data is combined. Thus the data after March 2020 can't be compared to that prior, but the WSJ has done that and Noah accepted this therefore worthless graph.
However, it is interesting to look at the earlier peaks in the WSJ graph, 1987, 2000, on a per-capita basis. 1987 encounters were 0.67% of US population, 2000 0.61%, the recent peak in 2022 0.59%. The idea that there is some explosion in numbers is obviously incorrect to anyone who cares about numbers and data. Without the separate data on encounters and expulsions the WSJ graph is meaningless.
A missing part is that the conditions in many other regions have deteriorated, in many cases with the historic cause of US foreign policies.
Few people would just move for the sake of moving, most would just stay put with their families if the living conditions would not suck that much.
I don’t see a comment about housing in this. That’s one of the big issues Europeans and Americans are struggling with that’s related to immigration.
The homelessness we see in Los Angeles is driven by old, NIMBY policies that make even replacing blight and building on empty lots too expensive and slow.
Old people are terrified that increased residents means increased cars and increasing traffic jams are going to prevent them from getting to the hospital on time (I’ve literally heard this brought up at community meetings on development). And everyone is generally get pissed when they’re stuck in traffic.
But homelessness caused by higher rents and fewer units also drives people off the streets into their cars. And lack of local construction makes people drive to other neighborhoods, rather than walk around their own.
In LA we need to ignore the NIMBYs and speed up rezoning -- except NIMBYs traditionally vote more than YIMBYs for City Council seats, so council members may have to do this knowing they will not get re-elected, against the will of their constituents.
In the Netherlands there is a shortage of 400,000 homes and the pace of building can’t keep up with the net immigration. Europe has to keep a lot of its classic architecture. I’m not sure what rezoning could do -- or where to do it.
Rising interest rates and inflation are making construction expensive, too. This is where we need an economist like Noah to help us figure out how to proceed...
Coming from Canada this is the biggest issue. Our entire population increase at this stage is driven by immigration, and housing is just not able to keep up with the population increase. So if you want housing to keep up with the population increase, there are two ways to do it - build more houses, which Canada is trying to do, and also slow down the increases.
Trudeau here is facing major immigration backlash because people are having trouble finding housing and high rents, so they want to stop bringing in people that are partially the reason these costs continue to climb.
Maybe instead of not granting work permits, we require the people claiming asylum and awaiting court dates to work in the construction industry building apartments.
I think the construction industry will hire them. Not sure how much power the unions have to restrict this. I do know building is super expensive and slow here because of red tape and locals complaining all the time.
Nothing is more depressing and un-American to me than anti-immigrant sentiment. Democrats are complete cowards on this issue. They look weak and incompetent because they adopt defensive talking points in line with what the GOP says. It's similar to how Democrats refused to say the word "abortion" for decades.
The talking points should be "Immigration is the United States superpower. We dominate the world because we provide people opportunity. The smartest, hardest working people in the world line up to get into this country, so they can achieve their dreams. We welcome them, because we know they will make all of our lives better and our nation stronger."
Did you read the article? Noah *is* in favor of the kind of immigration that makes America stronger. He is not in favor of unlimited inflows of desperately poor people who take advantage of a loophole in asylum law and end up overtaxing the resources of border towns and blue cities like NYC.
When New Yorkers complain about not having enough housing for all these new asylum seekers, and you respond with "Immigration is the United States superpower," you just sound like you're completely missing the point.
Wasn’t attacking Noah. More of a rant. I agree with him that the pragmatic approach is to cut back on asylum, right now. But the long term strategy must be shifting views on immigrants and immigration so we aren’t forced to make crappy policy decisions as a reflexive defense.
If the US remains an economic superpower, there will always be more economically challenged people seeking to come here than US society can accommodate. Any system that allows unchecked migration, especially of only the poorest, least educated migrants, is guaranteed to generate backlash no matter how tolerant of a viewpoint people start from.
I don't think Republicans would vote for any "solution" to the border crisis. They like the current chaos because they're getting tremendous political gains from it. They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency in 2017 and 2018 and had campaigned on the border issue, but they didn't do much to solve it then, and they wouldn't now.
Republicans do not have to vote for anything. Biden with the 2021 trifecta could have headed this off.
Yes. I think you and I agree. Solving the border crisis would be good policy. Not solving it is good politics for Republicans and bad politics for Democrats.
Bc they can’t Bc a big chunk of the democrat base is pro open borders and that’s the fault of libs
If Congress had passed anything substantial, some left-wing activist judge would have shot it down as "unconstitutional" for some made-up reason.
There can be no legislative “solution” when one party has chosen repeatedly and consistently not to enforce (in fact, actively undermines) current law.
Trump’s “remain in mexico” policy and his exec orders reduced the size of the problem.
Biden’s deliberately expanded it.
Sustainable immigration...I like it. In addition to the areas Noah covered, I'm also concerned that terrorists have been sneaking into the country through our porous border.
Honduran fentanyl dealers employed by the cartel have helped revitalize Oakland and keep BART traffic up, at least.
Nothing will get done without mass deportations. Republicans will never agree for amnesty for the more than 10M illegals
The largest groups of asylum seekers come from Central America and Venezuela, and the Ukraine war added Ukrainian and Russian asylum seekers. It's not just immigrants from Mexico, as it may have mainly been before.
https://trac.syr.edu/reports/705/
Here in Texas, you see many nationalities now. Our strong job market is causing migrants from other states (such as Florida) to move here. I wonder if that is adding to the anti-immigration stance here.
I hope that no one votes for ex-President Trump because Biden has allowed in too many Ukrainian refugees!
It's the bogus asylum seekers that people are upset about.
It was never just Mexico. The asylum industry favored Central Americans due to past designation by Congress (and Haitians, too, but they get tossed back by the Dems) so that process was made easier and more lucrative for the “refugees” by Obama and then broadened by Obama to children, which included Mexicans. And now anyone from anywhere is let in provisionally. Even after walking through half a dozen countries with US consulates
You assert that it's *American's* asylum system that's broken, but isn't America simply following the Geneva convention? According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees#:~:text=The%20Convention%20Relating%20to%20the,of%20nations%20that%20grant%20asylum. article 32 forbids the expulsion of asylum seekers.
I agree with you that the system is broken, but based on the above it appears that it's the *Geneva convention* that is broken which would suggest that the only way to fix it would be to renegotiate the geneva convention. I don't see how that happens?
You also argue that it's the *process* that's upsetting Americans, but how do you know it isn't the *numbers* that are upsetting Americans? Suppose Biden managed to force the passage of new funding/government positions that could ensure the rapid processing of asylum claims and the expulsion of those who were judged ineligible for asylum. This would perhaps decrease the number entering some. But would American's really be satisfied if a smaller but still substantial number of people were successfully imigrating as *rule following* asylum seekers? I speculate not, as this wouldn't eliminate the demand on state services and support for the immigrants.
The sentiment of US immigrants themselves being upset about illegal immigration is difficult for a liberal like me to hear, but important nonetheless. The 538 podcast recently interviewed some Hispanic and Turkish immigrants in California who said they were leaning trump bc they were upset about the border and said he would manage immigration better. It seemed insane and self-contradictory but this article sheds some light on it, makes a little more sense now
It’s because you’re conflating rule-based legal immigration with unchecked, uncontrolled illegal immigration. Unfortunately the latter tends to sour people on the former. Especially people who worked within the lines of the legal system, so their views are not remotely confusing to me.