83 Comments

I really would like to see more work on the Afghan refugees issues re. crime. For example that BBC report, based on German statistics, seems to disagree with your conclusions.

Punchline : "When it comes to violent crime, 10.4% of murder suspects and 11.9% of sexual offence suspects were asylum-seekers and refugees in 2017. This is despite their population representing just 2% of Germany as a whole".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45419466

It's certainly true that Europeans aren't keen on more Muslims coming in Europe. I'd like to point out that Muslims are maybe 8-10% of the French population and, regardless of whether the bulk of the integration problem is due to racist natives or to communitarian immigrants, the result is that we have a badly integrated Muslim minority and the issues that this situation creates don't seem to resolve over time.

I used to say it was very comparable to the problems generated by the Hispanic/Latin/Mexican immigration in the US at the height of the pushback of 90s/early 00s but that seems to have calmed down quite a bit - with Hispanics eventually integrating just like other immigrant waves before them.

We don't seem to be able to achieve that integration in Europe...

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Mar 28, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

I very much agreed with Noah’s post last year “Love It and Leave It”. I would add that travelling in other countries also gives us some perspective on our homeland that we would not otherwise have. Yesterday’s post made me think about what I have learned about my country and myself from immigrants I have known. When I was in grad school, one of my fellow students who was from a repressive nation said to me, “You Americans are so lucky to have your Bill of Rights.” I have to say that I had never given the Bill of Rights much thought; it was something I had to learn about in a high school government class. But, as my friend pointed out, I’ve never lived in a fascist country.

I have worked in the high tech field. One of my colleagues, from a European country, told me that she had inquired about a job in her home country and was told the job was for men only. When she told them that would be illegal in the United States, she was told she could return to the US. Another female colleague, a university professor, told me that in her country, the male members of her family practice professions such as medicine and engineering, while the women do not attend school past about the sixth grade. She told me how lucky I am to have been born here.

That said, I have to mention that in my experience issues such as sexual harassment have been more common when I have dealt with men from countries where women have a lower status than in the US. American men are either more enlightened or better socialized.

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Mar 28, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

A weird observation: The Brookings graphs coincidently match up with the double helix in Turchin's theory (extremes in 1910s and 1970s), AND the "what happened in 1971" about a change in social paradigm. Would US regress towards isolationism, like what they did about 11 decades ago?

https://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/

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Where will they live? We have no affordable housing and any supply response is absurdly slow.

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I think it helps that many Americans feel closer to Ukraine in terms of culture and identity. Many of us have worked with developers there. There is a sense that many Ukraines share more of our values and thus make it easier to imagine them assimilating well. Their sudden distress from a bully aggressor stirs a strong desire to offer help and assistance. We should bring in as many as want to come here IMO.

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I moved to Israel as an academic in 2000, shortly after a wave of Russian immigration had significantly changed the country's demographics. My language class had an entire back row named Boris, or at least it seemed that way. And at the university we had a new problem, as it appeared that the Russian students took cheating as just a fact of life, based on their experiences in their homeland. We don't hear that any more, although the Russian contribution to the culture has only increased. And the contribution to the main streams of the economy is significant. It just takes time.

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Regarding the superman clip -- when did this appear. Just curious. I strongly agree that we need to open up to immigrants. I believe that immigrants success is in part driven by their knowledge of how bad things can get; something far outside the imagination of most Americans.

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Finally time to unfollow Noah.

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Everyone knows there is huge IQ difference between a refugee from Somalia and a refugee from Europe. Absorbing huge low IQ population has catastrophic consequences. I wonder why Sweden and Denmark are not so happy getting more Syrian refugees if it works so well. People in Scandinavia used to be extremely tolerant.

This article is like the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe never happened. But it did.

Getting refugees from Ukraine is fine but I am not sure it is good for Ukraine itself which needs its citizens at home in the end of the war.

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Fuck Ukraine and fuck Poland. In fact, send back everyone with Slavic ancestry then drop nuclear bombs on Slavic countries

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I think part of the problem is the decline of mainstream religion and the rise of feminism. Back in the day mainstream denominations had an internationalist outlook, supporting the UN and Unicef, staffing the refugee resettlement NGO's, etc. And college-educated wives had the time to staff NGOs, whether refugee aid, League of Women Voters, or whatever. No longer. Society could coast on the inertia of the past, but Trump and the rising influence of evangelical religion in politics have derailed that train.

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You can see on these links how much the post-war migration boom changed Australia, yes we still had the shameful White Australia Policy, but at this time expanded the definition of 'White' to include Southern Europeans, ending the historic immigration rules that tried to keep all immigration to those from the British Isles only, this also helped lead within a few decades to Melbourne becoming the 2nd largest Greek Population city outside Athens (a fact we used when pitching for the Centenary Olympics in 1996, that was shamefully stolen from us by Atlanta)

Though we did continue to try to keep Australia as British as possible, with the famous 10 Pound Poms, where for 10 pounds you could get your transport to Australia by ship (this also led to Perth gaining a huge British population as it was the first stop of the ships on their way to Melbourne and Sydney, as each ship pulled into Port, hundreds of British immigrants would go to the docks and yell out to the ppl on the boat encouraging them to get off the ship and stay in Perth instead, telling them that it was superior to Sydney, which ended up being important in populating the empty west of the Continent

When looking at the reasons for this population push, it would be enough to make Matthew Yglesias sing, as the express reason given to the people by our politicians was that we could not defend ourselves against the Asian hordes (OK, he might not have liked that part) without filling up the Continent with ppl. One Billion Australians to coin a phrase

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/postwar-immigration-drive

Then came the end of the White Australia Policy with the Whitlam Govt in 1972 (which combined with counting Aboriginals in the census and giving them citizenship after the 1967 Referendum) saved Australia, right at the last second from being ostracised like Sth Africa.

Then after the Vietnam war the Liberal (we confusingly have a Conservative Party called the Liberal Party) Fraser Govt welcomed in the Vietnamese Boat ppl which again led to huge demographic change in the country & led to immigration being opened up to Asians as well as Europeans at long last. Which has led to the final massive change, Howard responded to the rise of the Nativist One Nation Party in the late 90s with our shameful treatment of mainly middle-eastern Refugees, with offshore processing of (mainly middle-easterners) arriving by boat on the northern coast, boat turn-backs, offshore detention and our current system where we lock ppl up who arrive by boat offshore in Nauru or Papua New Guinea with no time limit on how long ppl can be stuck in legal limbo

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/offshore-processing/

However, one thing has happened at the same time as this, that has led to the largest demographic change since the post-war southern european boom, while all the focus has been on 200-800 refugees who tried to arrive by boat being locked up in indefinite offshore detention, the rules Howard bought in to try & be racist without mentioning race backfired (backfired in the sense of what he wanted) & the tests ended up working out to give Chinese immigrants a real leg-up in being approved as immigrants, so in the last 20 years we have seen a huge influx of Chinese immigration that is noticeable on the streets, most suburbs now have Chinese as the highest minority group, with some areas like Rhodes, Box HIll and Burwood being almost totally Chinese.

There is a lesson though in the lack of backlash to the Chinese immigration, its happened at a time of huge political focus (really quite awful politics to be honest) about border security, but while that has been the focus actual legal immigration has expanded in number and demographically changed the colour of the country with little or no backlash from the broader public, which maybe suggests that if you can make people confident that the borders are secure, that the people who are entering the country followed the rules and went through the correct processes then the concerns ppl have about immigration can be assuaged while you bring in the population boost the country needs

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In practice this would mean near open borders, which I think is great, but you do not seem to think is great in other writings, but I think you should.

Depends how you define tyranny as well. I would consider the haitain government extremely and intolerably tyranical, but there is no active civil war going on so we dont seem to take in haitain refugees.

Similarly, I would consider the usa tyrannical in excessive drug punishments, and indeed the Norway court agrees with me, and refuses extradition to certain usa prisons.

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With our 11m+ job openings, we have plenty of capacity for immigrants who want to work

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Good post. I think we need to also ensure we establish a system where refugees are placed in communities in appropriate numbers. Some communities might not have the infrastructure to welcome thousands of people but imagine if small towns in say, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa or Missouri took in several families a piece from Ukraine. It would not overwhelm them and would also allow for the local communities to engage with the refugees on a more personal basis.

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I am curious what the average education level is for Ukrainians vs Afghans or Syrians. I have a feeling it is pretty different and lumping education level of all refugees doesnt seem fair.

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