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.
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?
Also notice that one of our greatest periods of unrest, 1965-1973, came when our foreign-born population was at its lowest ever. That suggests that the nativists are wrong about immigration driving social conflict.
A small possible counter: perhaps civic nativists (those that tolerate by values/faiths) and ethnic nativists (those that tolerate by skin color or skull shape) are two different demographics. The former makes sense in the Catholic-centrism in Northern US and Protestant-centrism in Southern. US, especially with the new-age conservatives. The latter is only justifiable if the imported migrants are exclusively or majoritarity those that prefers over-application of positive (welfare-esque) rights over the cultural default of negative (permissive) rights, which explains why radical right populism is dying down since ethnicity and cultural value selection has de-correlated. Now doesn't that sound "reactionary" to conditional changes?
The distinction would be more pronounced (compared to genetically adjacent Afghans) for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians or Latino Catholics (religiously aligned, ethnically divergent) and Western European Liberals (religiously divergent, ethnically similar). Civics prefer the former, Ethnics prefer the latter, even though both would agree that French North Africans (religious and ethnic divergent) are not preferred.
Turchin kind of scares me on an epistemological level... it's easy to get into the trap of turning his theory into an ideology. Like Strauss-Howe, it overfits the present, paves over a lot of the past to extrapolate the model into it, and presents a nice shiny theory with a bit too much confidence, despite the requisite lip service to self-doubt.
Unfortunately Turchin (and independently Ray Dalio) is planning to fit the same theory towards ancient history ala mSeshat, which will make or break this theory, either by prediction model conflicts, or by data residuals.
Housing cost is taken into account during resettlement. They tend to be steered places where there's a immigrant community but with a lower cost of living. For Afghans, the Bay Area got dropped from the list and Sacramento also downgraded unless they already have family here. They are, of course, welcome but it's not easy to establish a life even with assistance.
Chicago has a lot of Ukrainians and is much cheaper so I'm guessing a lot will go there. But refugees in particular have already endured tough conditions. They'll make it work wherever they end up and can also later move around the country for opportunities.
That still removes housing supply from an under-supplied market. If we want the population to welcome more immigration, it would be wise to first address valid economic concerns like housing inflation.
Of course we need to fix the supply issue. However, much of the country doesn't have the same crunch that California has and their housing prices have been dropping as they depopulate. Illinois has been depopulating significantly which is why I cited it (Chicago's population specifically has been flat.).
Yes, some places are worse than others. But in the current money-induced bout of inflation we are seeing housing costs rise sharply everywhere regardless of demographic trends, etc.
Mostly because housing has huge lags, but if there is increased demand, more houses will be built.
BTW, Buffalo had a median house price of $110K in 2021 and has taken in refugees. In fact, the only reason why Buffalo grew for the first time in 70 years according to the 2020 census is because of immigrants and refugees there.
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.
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.
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.
Point made perfectly. Been reading your column since you published on your own blog and it used to be a refreshing point of view. Was excited to see some of your columns get picked up by the Browser it the early days. No longer the same. Enjoy.
Nah, this is one of Noah's best posts. No punching left, no bootlicking, just a clear and extensive argument for doing the right thing. Ukrainian, Afghan, Syrian? Just admit the refugees.
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.
It sounds like a typical response to a kid saying "The emperor had no clothes". Your assumption that all members of all societies have similar potential as immigrants is not reasonable.
You might get a kick out of Clemens and Pritchett's paper "The New Economic Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment" (https://docs.iza.org/dp9730.pdf). It builds a simple model of "dynamically optimal migration" that explicitly includes differences in total factor productivity between immigrants and non-immigrants. Somalia is one of its example immigrant sources.
After estimating parameters and calibrating the model, the paper estimates that while Somalian-born workers in Somalia are only 1/6 as productive as US-born workers in the US with the same age, gender, and education, most of that productivity gap vanishes after Somalians move to the US. The paper's ballpark estimate of annual "optimal" Somalia-to-US migration is about 1.5% of the US's population, or 5,000,000 Somalians per year.
In other words, the first year of "optimal" Somalian migration would expand the US's Somalian-immigrant community by a factor of 30–140, depending on your number for the community's current size (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Americans#Demographics). Even rejecting any "assumption that all members of all societies have similar potential as immigrants" there's a purely economic case (never mind humanitarian and general freedom concerns) for MASSIVELY expanding Somalian immigration to the US.
The article doesn't discuss issues like terror and crime that made native residents of Malmo and other places in Europe scared. Living in a town where a girl can walk alone at night has a huge value and you lose it once you accept immigrants from some countries.
> The article doesn't discuss issues like terror and crime
Correct. I did not know that by "IQ" and "potential" you actually meant "terror and crime".
> that made native residents of Malmo and other places in Europe scared. Living in a town where a girl can walk alone at night has a huge value and you lose it once you accept immigrants from some countries.
Somalian and Syrian immigration may have increased terrorism in Europe (source?) but the frequency of European terrorism clearly remains very low. So in itself it's not an obvious basis for restricting Somalian/Syrian immigration — and one ought to account also for the terror that would-be immigrants experience in their origin countries when Europe strands them there.
As for crime in general, while immigrants — like native residents — commit crimes, I'm not aware of convincing evidence that they made crime in general spike in Germany and Sweden, which had large absolute/relative immigration inflows. See https://reason.com/2020/09/15/the-myth-of-europes-migrant-crisis/.
You allude to interpersonal offenses against girls and mention Malmö, a Swedish city. The Reason article also digs into Sweden's recorded sex crimes. To try to summarize that part concisely, reported rapes "increased by 34 per cent" from 2009 to 2018, but that increase is confounded with a 2013 expansion in the definition of rape; and sex-offense reports in general have fluctuated without a clear link to migrant populations.
If you ever had any contact with actual individuals you would know that the Somali are the product of intense selectionary pressures that as a population rank them among some of the most intelligent people on the planet. This is also reflected in their powers of memorisation proven in Q'uran recitation competitions and demonstrated problem solving facilities under conditions of stress. A high ranking State Department official at the Nairobi Embassy intimated as much to me when discussing the opening of the pipeline from camps in Kenya during the 1990s. They tend to bring economic vitality and prosperity to the new places where they settle, be it the transformed Eastleigh area of the Kenya capital, east side of London, or in the State of Maine. Your comment is either naive, very poorly informed, or simply racist.
most Somali-Americans remain at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Nearly 57 percent of Somalis live in poverty, according to the report, while 26 percent live in near-poverty. Other measures also show how many Somali-Americans are struggling, even compared to other minority groups in the state. Somalis currently have the lowest median household income among immigrant and minority groups in Minnesota, as well as the lowest rates of educational attainment and home ownership.
I am sure all these indicators are accurate enough, and your input is well taken. But they don't tell the whole story. This is an issue of integration (which is always a three generation process for non-English speakers) in circumstances where refugees from a war torn society have gathered in ethnic ghettoes. Although they are rich in networked connections, cultural endowment, and social capital, this can act as a constraint in general for pockets of settlement where ethnic communities clump together, like the Minneapolis area in the case of the article you posted. Their strong clan orientation is a behavioural liability in many contexts. But this is in no way an accurate indicator of intelligence. Many of the Somali professionals I know identified the problem in advance, and settled away from their people's ethnic enclaves when they came to the USA. Having spent a lot of time with these people and working with them across the Horn of Africa, I came to respect them for their resilience, good humour, courage, and equanimity under stress. They do not whine and bitch and complain like myself and my fellow Americans are prone to do when inconvenienced. In any case, you need to add comparative data for the large communities in Toronto, San Diego, Atlanta, the Gulf region in Arabia, and other places where they have migrated. I expect they will do well over the long run. In any event, they have already overachieved for a pastoralist community coming from one of the most forbidding and remote environments on the globe, where the starting point of their modern history is complicated by a series of negative political interventions over the past century.
The IQ you referred to is biased and irrelevant. For that matter, I have excelled in standardised tests and have a two discipline Ph.D. from a leading university, taught at Yale, etc etc, but remain in a low income category due to whatever culturally and ideological influenced choices I have made in the cause of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Regardless, the thesis articulated in this article stands up well.
> 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'll play along with that just for a moment and do some back-of-envelope math. Suppose we're talking about the US (population 330 million) adding the entire population of Somalia (population 16 million). Even assuming a "huge IQ difference" of 20 points between the US and Somalian population averages, the average US IQ would sink by...less than a point. Catastrophic?
> 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.
If by "2015 refugee crisis in Europe" you mean "discriminatory European politicians and institutions playing hot potato with refugees" then such a crisis did indeed happen. Simply allocating asylum seekers to European countries based on each European country's capacity was a better option on the table; it had majority popular support (https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/83226/1/Hangartner_Europeans%20support_2017.pdf).
> 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.
That is fine but I am not sure it is good for Ukrainian citizens if non-Ukrainians trap them in a war zone.
Claiming that IQ represents some fixed capacity is surely undermined by measuring it with a timed test given to someone who's busy thinking about how their family was killed in a war.
Of course, you didn't actually give any refugees an IQ test to determine this anyway.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
This was a profoundly personal piece. Immigration is such an interesting case because depending on what one has to lose, it can be spun either way.
The first thing to note is it's a signalling problem. The sort of people who immigrate are not well adjusted, rich, well educated people. Those are tourists. Immigrants tend to be psychologically and financially broken people fleeing some sort of disaster or repression. These are people who need a new country very badly.
Just like banks don't like customers who need loans too badly and women don't like suitors who need them too badly, countries don't like foreigners who need them that badly. I call it the over-interested signalling turnoff.
But as Noah clearly shows, immigration is extremely beneficial for countries. Unfortunately, the benefits take time to kick in but the costs are apparent from the getgo: human beings don't do well with these kind of dynamics even when the benefits far outweigh the costs. We are hyperbolic discounters.
The simple truth is immigrants don't just come with mouths. They come with hands and legs and brains. In addition, labour, as the economist Esther Duflo demonstrated, is 'sticky': simply because there are millions of refugees doesn't mean there will be millions of job displacements. Employers don't just hire who is available. They have their own criteria which very often favours natives, for good reasons and otherwise, in the first place.
Eventually, offshoring and technology does way more damage, but less visible damage, to blue collar workers than immigration.
At least immigrants spend what they earn and purchase what they need or want in the country they immigrated to, which of course means more people benefit. No such benefits of that kind for offshoring and robots.
I also think there are a lot of parallels between Nimbyism and anti immigration support. In fact, very deep parallels. They are wrong but not unreasonable. For the sake of brevity, I can't explore any of those parallels.
What's clear and worrying for the West is fertility rates are dropping in the West. What's more worrying is an anti-immigration nation is also a nation that successful immigrants don't want either - consider that a substantial proportion of scientists working on the Manhattan project were foreigners. An America where those people don't feel welcome is an America facing the prospects of them going elsewhere.
America got to where it is by being uniquely attractive to the best and brightest across the globe. In trying to stop one or two 'swine' (figuratively) from passing, Anti-immigration Americans and policies may guarantee that America also ends up losing out on thousands and thousands of pearls.
"Immigrants tend to be psychologically and financially broken people fleeing some sort of disaster or repression." <-- This is often true of refugees but not of most immigrants. Most immigrants are enterprising, hard-working, well-adjusted people looking to move up in the world.
Well, true. I appreciate the reply. But most immigrants don't leave when they are already doing really well in their native countries and many of them come from developing countries who often experience some kind of political or economic repression.
All-out disasters tend to produce refugees instesd which is a clarification I should have included.
Most immigrants to the U.S. are successful economically, they commit few crimes, and they tend to have stable family lives. They start successful businesses at many times the native rate.
You can leave a country where you are not wealthy ( my definition of not doing really well) and where there is some kind of repression and then partly because of a new, liberating environment, go on to be successful economically, commit few crimes, and start several businesses.
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.
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/
Also notice that one of our greatest periods of unrest, 1965-1973, came when our foreign-born population was at its lowest ever. That suggests that the nativists are wrong about immigration driving social conflict.
A small possible counter: perhaps civic nativists (those that tolerate by values/faiths) and ethnic nativists (those that tolerate by skin color or skull shape) are two different demographics. The former makes sense in the Catholic-centrism in Northern US and Protestant-centrism in Southern. US, especially with the new-age conservatives. The latter is only justifiable if the imported migrants are exclusively or majoritarity those that prefers over-application of positive (welfare-esque) rights over the cultural default of negative (permissive) rights, which explains why radical right populism is dying down since ethnicity and cultural value selection has de-correlated. Now doesn't that sound "reactionary" to conditional changes?
I'm not sure people are able to mentally distinguish the two of these. If Afghans were Christian, there's a good chance they'd be labeled "white".
The distinction would be more pronounced (compared to genetically adjacent Afghans) for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians or Latino Catholics (religiously aligned, ethnically divergent) and Western European Liberals (religiously divergent, ethnically similar). Civics prefer the former, Ethnics prefer the latter, even though both would agree that French North Africans (religious and ethnic divergent) are not preferred.
Turchin kind of scares me on an epistemological level... it's easy to get into the trap of turning his theory into an ideology. Like Strauss-Howe, it overfits the present, paves over a lot of the past to extrapolate the model into it, and presents a nice shiny theory with a bit too much confidence, despite the requisite lip service to self-doubt.
Yeah, those long-cycle theories never have enough data to empirically test.
Unfortunately Turchin (and independently Ray Dalio) is planning to fit the same theory towards ancient history ala mSeshat, which will make or break this theory, either by prediction model conflicts, or by data residuals.
Where will they live? We have no affordable housing and any supply response is absurdly slow.
We have a ton of declining half-full towns in this country. All but a few cities are losing population. We're emptying out!! Plenty of room.
How do we make the refugees stay there?
We don't, but dropping our country's population isn't a way to make SF and NYC cheaper. So let's not try that.
Housing cost is taken into account during resettlement. They tend to be steered places where there's a immigrant community but with a lower cost of living. For Afghans, the Bay Area got dropped from the list and Sacramento also downgraded unless they already have family here. They are, of course, welcome but it's not easy to establish a life even with assistance.
Chicago has a lot of Ukrainians and is much cheaper so I'm guessing a lot will go there. But refugees in particular have already endured tough conditions. They'll make it work wherever they end up and can also later move around the country for opportunities.
That still removes housing supply from an under-supplied market. If we want the population to welcome more immigration, it would be wise to first address valid economic concerns like housing inflation.
Of course we need to fix the supply issue. However, much of the country doesn't have the same crunch that California has and their housing prices have been dropping as they depopulate. Illinois has been depopulating significantly which is why I cited it (Chicago's population specifically has been flat.).
Yes, some places are worse than others. But in the current money-induced bout of inflation we are seeing housing costs rise sharply everywhere regardless of demographic trends, etc.
Mostly because housing has huge lags, but if there is increased demand, more houses will be built.
BTW, Buffalo had a median house price of $110K in 2021 and has taken in refugees. In fact, the only reason why Buffalo grew for the first time in 70 years according to the 2020 census is because of immigrants and refugees there.
That's why Bosnians went to St. Louis and Buffalo, and Somalis to Minnesota.
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.
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.
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.
Finally time to unfollow Noah.
Oh nooooo, whatever will I do
Point made perfectly. Been reading your column since you published on your own blog and it used to be a refreshing point of view. Was excited to see some of your columns get picked up by the Browser it the early days. No longer the same. Enjoy.
Yeah you totally read my old blog huh: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/02/no-we-dont-need-immigration-pause.html
This was one of my favorites. http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/redistribute-wealth-no-redistribute.html
Thanks! Did you see the recent follow-up? https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-respect-redistribution?s=w
Nah, this is one of Noah's best posts. No punching left, no bootlicking, just a clear and extensive argument for doing the right thing. Ukrainian, Afghan, Syrian? Just admit the refugees.
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.
Lolllll OK bro
It sounds like a typical response to a kid saying "The emperor had no clothes". Your assumption that all members of all societies have similar potential as immigrants is not reasonable.
You might get a kick out of Clemens and Pritchett's paper "The New Economic Case for Migration Restrictions: An Assessment" (https://docs.iza.org/dp9730.pdf). It builds a simple model of "dynamically optimal migration" that explicitly includes differences in total factor productivity between immigrants and non-immigrants. Somalia is one of its example immigrant sources.
After estimating parameters and calibrating the model, the paper estimates that while Somalian-born workers in Somalia are only 1/6 as productive as US-born workers in the US with the same age, gender, and education, most of that productivity gap vanishes after Somalians move to the US. The paper's ballpark estimate of annual "optimal" Somalia-to-US migration is about 1.5% of the US's population, or 5,000,000 Somalians per year.
In other words, the first year of "optimal" Somalian migration would expand the US's Somalian-immigrant community by a factor of 30–140, depending on your number for the community's current size (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Americans#Demographics). Even rejecting any "assumption that all members of all societies have similar potential as immigrants" there's a purely economic case (never mind humanitarian and general freedom concerns) for MASSIVELY expanding Somalian immigration to the US.
The article doesn't discuss issues like terror and crime that made native residents of Malmo and other places in Europe scared. Living in a town where a girl can walk alone at night has a huge value and you lose it once you accept immigrants from some countries.
> The article doesn't discuss issues like terror and crime
Correct. I did not know that by "IQ" and "potential" you actually meant "terror and crime".
> that made native residents of Malmo and other places in Europe scared. Living in a town where a girl can walk alone at night has a huge value and you lose it once you accept immigrants from some countries.
Somalian and Syrian immigration may have increased terrorism in Europe (source?) but the frequency of European terrorism clearly remains very low. So in itself it's not an obvious basis for restricting Somalian/Syrian immigration — and one ought to account also for the terror that would-be immigrants experience in their origin countries when Europe strands them there.
As for crime in general, while immigrants — like native residents — commit crimes, I'm not aware of convincing evidence that they made crime in general spike in Germany and Sweden, which had large absolute/relative immigration inflows. See https://reason.com/2020/09/15/the-myth-of-europes-migrant-crisis/.
You allude to interpersonal offenses against girls and mention Malmö, a Swedish city. The Reason article also digs into Sweden's recorded sex crimes. To try to summarize that part concisely, reported rapes "increased by 34 per cent" from 2009 to 2018, but that increase is confounded with a 2013 expansion in the definition of rape; and sex-offense reports in general have fluctuated without a clear link to migrant populations.
More recently, there was a cluster of Swedish femicides about a year ago (https://www.thelocal.se/20210420/swedens-party-leaders-to-discuss-measures-against-male-violence-after-five-women-killed/), but that seems to have been intimate-partner violence rather than the scenario you allude to (immigrant stranger surprising a girl alone on the street at night). Another incident, specifically in Malmö, doesn't fit your profile either: a week ago an 18-year-old killed two middle-aged female teachers at his high school (https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/student-confesses-to-killing-two-teachers-at-malmo-school-lawyer-says).
I still disagree, but I really appreciate the depth and seriousness of your answers and their added value.
If you ever had any contact with actual individuals you would know that the Somali are the product of intense selectionary pressures that as a population rank them among some of the most intelligent people on the planet. This is also reflected in their powers of memorisation proven in Q'uran recitation competitions and demonstrated problem solving facilities under conditions of stress. A high ranking State Department official at the Nairobi Embassy intimated as much to me when discussing the opening of the pipeline from camps in Kenya during the 1990s. They tend to bring economic vitality and prosperity to the new places where they settle, be it the transformed Eastleigh area of the Kenya capital, east side of London, or in the State of Maine. Your comment is either naive, very poorly informed, or simply racist.
most Somali-Americans remain at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Nearly 57 percent of Somalis live in poverty, according to the report, while 26 percent live in near-poverty. Other measures also show how many Somali-Americans are struggling, even compared to other minority groups in the state. Somalis currently have the lowest median household income among immigrant and minority groups in Minnesota, as well as the lowest rates of educational attainment and home ownership.
https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2017/08/complicated-reality-behind-story-somali-communitys-success-minnesota/
I am sure all these indicators are accurate enough, and your input is well taken. But they don't tell the whole story. This is an issue of integration (which is always a three generation process for non-English speakers) in circumstances where refugees from a war torn society have gathered in ethnic ghettoes. Although they are rich in networked connections, cultural endowment, and social capital, this can act as a constraint in general for pockets of settlement where ethnic communities clump together, like the Minneapolis area in the case of the article you posted. Their strong clan orientation is a behavioural liability in many contexts. But this is in no way an accurate indicator of intelligence. Many of the Somali professionals I know identified the problem in advance, and settled away from their people's ethnic enclaves when they came to the USA. Having spent a lot of time with these people and working with them across the Horn of Africa, I came to respect them for their resilience, good humour, courage, and equanimity under stress. They do not whine and bitch and complain like myself and my fellow Americans are prone to do when inconvenienced. In any case, you need to add comparative data for the large communities in Toronto, San Diego, Atlanta, the Gulf region in Arabia, and other places where they have migrated. I expect they will do well over the long run. In any event, they have already overachieved for a pastoralist community coming from one of the most forbidding and remote environments on the globe, where the starting point of their modern history is complicated by a series of negative political interventions over the past century.
The IQ you referred to is biased and irrelevant. For that matter, I have excelled in standardised tests and have a two discipline Ph.D. from a leading university, taught at Yale, etc etc, but remain in a low income category due to whatever culturally and ideological influenced choices I have made in the cause of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Regardless, the thesis articulated in this article stands up well.
> 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'll play along with that just for a moment and do some back-of-envelope math. Suppose we're talking about the US (population 330 million) adding the entire population of Somalia (population 16 million). Even assuming a "huge IQ difference" of 20 points between the US and Somalian population averages, the average US IQ would sink by...less than a point. Catastrophic?
> 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.
While you wonder, I've searched for actual survey data. Swedes gave more pro-refugee answers in 2016 than they did 20 years ago (https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/refugees-welcome-cross-european-public-opinion-on-asylum-seekers-following-the-2015-crisis/).
> This article is like the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe never happened. But it did.
If by "2015 refugee crisis in Europe" you mean "discriminatory European politicians and institutions playing hot potato with refugees" then such a crisis did indeed happen. Simply allocating asylum seekers to European countries based on each European country's capacity was a better option on the table; it had majority popular support (https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/83226/1/Hangartner_Europeans%20support_2017.pdf).
> 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.
That is fine but I am not sure it is good for Ukrainian citizens if non-Ukrainians trap them in a war zone.
Claiming that IQ represents some fixed capacity is surely undermined by measuring it with a timed test given to someone who's busy thinking about how their family was killed in a war.
Of course, you didn't actually give any refugees an IQ test to determine this anyway.
Fuck Ukraine and fuck Poland. In fact, send back everyone with Slavic ancestry then drop nuclear bombs on Slavic countries
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.
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
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.
With our 11m+ job openings, we have plenty of capacity for immigrants who want to work
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.
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.
This was a profoundly personal piece. Immigration is such an interesting case because depending on what one has to lose, it can be spun either way.
The first thing to note is it's a signalling problem. The sort of people who immigrate are not well adjusted, rich, well educated people. Those are tourists. Immigrants tend to be psychologically and financially broken people fleeing some sort of disaster or repression. These are people who need a new country very badly.
Just like banks don't like customers who need loans too badly and women don't like suitors who need them too badly, countries don't like foreigners who need them that badly. I call it the over-interested signalling turnoff.
But as Noah clearly shows, immigration is extremely beneficial for countries. Unfortunately, the benefits take time to kick in but the costs are apparent from the getgo: human beings don't do well with these kind of dynamics even when the benefits far outweigh the costs. We are hyperbolic discounters.
The simple truth is immigrants don't just come with mouths. They come with hands and legs and brains. In addition, labour, as the economist Esther Duflo demonstrated, is 'sticky': simply because there are millions of refugees doesn't mean there will be millions of job displacements. Employers don't just hire who is available. They have their own criteria which very often favours natives, for good reasons and otherwise, in the first place.
Eventually, offshoring and technology does way more damage, but less visible damage, to blue collar workers than immigration.
At least immigrants spend what they earn and purchase what they need or want in the country they immigrated to, which of course means more people benefit. No such benefits of that kind for offshoring and robots.
I also think there are a lot of parallels between Nimbyism and anti immigration support. In fact, very deep parallels. They are wrong but not unreasonable. For the sake of brevity, I can't explore any of those parallels.
What's clear and worrying for the West is fertility rates are dropping in the West. What's more worrying is an anti-immigration nation is also a nation that successful immigrants don't want either - consider that a substantial proportion of scientists working on the Manhattan project were foreigners. An America where those people don't feel welcome is an America facing the prospects of them going elsewhere.
America got to where it is by being uniquely attractive to the best and brightest across the globe. In trying to stop one or two 'swine' (figuratively) from passing, Anti-immigration Americans and policies may guarantee that America also ends up losing out on thousands and thousands of pearls.
"Immigrants tend to be psychologically and financially broken people fleeing some sort of disaster or repression." <-- This is often true of refugees but not of most immigrants. Most immigrants are enterprising, hard-working, well-adjusted people looking to move up in the world.
Well, true. I appreciate the reply. But most immigrants don't leave when they are already doing really well in their native countries and many of them come from developing countries who often experience some kind of political or economic repression.
All-out disasters tend to produce refugees instesd which is a clarification I should have included.
Most immigrants to the U.S. are successful economically, they commit few crimes, and they tend to have stable family lives. They start successful businesses at many times the native rate.
Yes, two things can be true at the same time.
You can leave a country where you are not wealthy ( my definition of not doing really well) and where there is some kind of repression and then partly because of a new, liberating environment, go on to be successful economically, commit few crimes, and start several businesses.
Indeed, this usually is the case.
Yep! But for most immigrants, it's about opportunity, not trauma. Refugees and asylum seekers are exceptions here...