Another point of view to consider: Mass deportations would require that the government builds up a vast machine of oppression. Once it is in place and deportations have been successful (assuming this for the sake of argument), this machine will not be dismantled (which bureaucracy ever is?). So the deportation machine will be used for other purposes, which is likely to oppress other people (history tells us that there is always another minority one can find to oppress).
For one thing, basic decency. For another, the explicit lessons of the holocaust. For a third, illegal immigrants are not NEARLY as vulnerable as Jews were.
And note that the Holocaust began in the lands that were Stalin's share of the Molotov-Ribbentrop booty (the 3 Baltic states along with western Ukraine and Belarus).
The Nazis used Soviet atrocities to justify their own.
Beverly Gage argues that deportations of anarchists and communists during the First Red Scare (esp. 1919-1920) paved the way for the excesses of Hoover's FBI.
In fact, a young Hoover was involved in those early deportations and round-ups, including the notorious "Palmer raids," in which 6,000 people were arrested. As the name suggests, AG Palmer ended up taking the blame for that one.
So Hoover was able to rehabilitate his image, and within four years, he'd risen from being head of the Bureau's "General Intelligence Division" to being the Bureau's Director, a position he would hold for an astonishing 48 years.
If yes, then I want to say that you are a wonderful philosopher! I disagree with you because you are a moderate deontologist, I think. I am a Classical Utilitarian (similar to Bentham, Sidgwick, Singer, Radek, Rawlette, Sinhababu). But when it comes to political philosophy, I am a fan of mixed economy, social liberalism/social democracy these days.
Indeed. Though one theme of Gage's book is that Hoover didn't *just* blackmail his way to power. Generations of American leaders chose to keep Hoover in power because he was a useful ally -- and a national hero, at least in the eyes of the public.
Painting Hoover as a lone wolf may let the US off too easy.
Agreed about the kid gloves -- Nixon and Hoover were friends, and LBJ was friendlier with him than the Kennedys had been.
But Hoover did do LBJ some favors (Gage talks about this in a chapter called "All the Way with LBJ"). And LBJ did push Hoover around at times.
In 1964, LBJ needed support from MLK and other civil rights leaders to win his reelection, so he didn't let Hoover trash MLK in public. After the election, Hoover finally let loose, calling MLK the "most notorious liar" in the country, followed shortly by a threatening anonymous letter + kompromat. But by this point, MLK was beloved by a lot of the country, so his image didn't suffer as much as it might have otherwise. (Though King's mental health did take a blow.)
Anyway, I haven't spent much time in DC, so you probably have a better intuitive sense of how things work there!
America was oppressive in other ways in the 1950s. Jim Crow laws were still in place, there was widespread paranoia about communists, etc.
And, from Noah's description, it sounds like people suspected of being illegal immigrants did not receive due process. Just arresting people who look like they might be Mexican and deporting them requires less institutional machinery than proving that they are illegal immigrants, but it also establishes a system where law enforcement can't be expected to respect the rights of the people they interact with. Sounds pretty oppressive to me.
It could and did change eventually, with mass protests and decades of cultural shifts, but that's bad enough.
The institutional machinery to do it properly might be better in some ways -- law enforcement has more respect for the laws that constrain them -- but would involve increasing law enforcement's capacity to monitor and investigate people so they can identify all the illegal immigrants.
How much due process and bureaucracy is needed to determine who is allowed to be in the country? You have a citizenship / visa or you don't. Not much more complicated than a drivers license.
I know some people complain about "your papers please" in this context, but it's basically how we do things already in our society. If you get arrested without any form of ID, citizen or no, you're going to be in jail until they figure out who you are. Nobody is going to be accidentally deported because no country would accept them without proof documentation that it's their country of origin. And if you have that info, you can tell if they have a visa.
There are at least 5 more ways you can be in the U.S. legally. Some of them can overlap; some of them can expire. Documentation for those 7+ legal statuses is inconsistent. Some types of documentation can expire even if the underlying status doesn't. Documentation can be delayed, faulty, lost.
There is at the moment no quick and simple way to ascertain that someone is here illegally.
Checking is someone has a driver's licence or not is not actually trivial. There are at least 50 valid licence issuers and every state recognises all of them as valid, so even this is a nation-wide search across different databases held by different organisations that have not necessarily invested work into making this easy.
The situation with regards to citizenship is worse because there is no database or collection of databases that contains an exhaustive list of US citizens. Unlike driver's licences, US citizenship is in many circumstances granted automatically without necessarily generating a record in any specific database. For example, there are children born in the US to citizen parents that don't have birth certificates because their parents are part of a niche religious group ("cult") that rejects interacting with the government. This is not illegal, but even if it was I think it would strike most people as perverse to penalize the child here for their parent's failure - especially since in this case the penalty is presumably life imprisonment in immigration detention.
There is a term for what you describe: imperial boomerang or Foucault's boomerang (though Foucault himself denied coining it). It referred to the fascisms of the 20th century, when the twilight of the imperial age meant that a lot of military personnel and irregulars who learned brutality in the service of colonialism began applying those same tactics at home.
Now you are saying this, I remember that I came across this concept in a book by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_C%C3%A9saire ... Wikipedia confirms this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang ... it also reminds me of Cecil Rhodes' "In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets. ... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. "
I'm also reminded of how the Nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War (no doubt moulded by Spain's exploitative colonialist history) viewed their own working-class countrymen effectively as Untermenschen: as Franco's press officer Gonzalo de Aguirez Munro put it:
"Sewers caused all our troubles. The masses in this country are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. But we made the mistake of giving them modern housing in the cities where we have our factories. We put sewers in these cities, sewers which extend right down to the workers’ quarters. Not content with the work of God, we thus interfere with His Will. The result is that the slave stock increases. Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers.. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended for us. Sewers should reserved for those who deserve them, not the slave stock"
All it would take is for local police forces and prosecutors to cooperate with and inform ICE when they’ve got an illegal immigrant in jail. That infrastructure already exists. We have our own criminals and have no need to import new ones.
I agree that it seems highly unlikely that the Feds are going to be sending teams of people out to round up law abiding workers en masse, which would also be controversial and unpopular. I don’t think anyone would object, thought to their going down to SoMa and the Mission and rounding up a few dozen Honduran drug dealers.
Could one argue that the conclusion to be drawn from Covid is that "every country needs to be able to seal its borders, as doing so was massively beneficial to Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan"?
Well, George, what do those three countries have in common?
I also think the lesson drawn from Covid is that IF you are serious about closing borders, you need to understand that that means quarantining EVERYONE traveling -- including your own citizens.
Trump's China ban was worse than useless because he banned Chinese passport holders and only Chinese passport holders.
Respiratory viruses don't care about your passport -- they care if you breathe.
Now tell me how popular it would have been to tell American tourists returning from China, they would have to go through quarantine.
Obviously all three of those are island countries, plus (unlike the UK or Ireland for example) they didn't trade with other countries by trucks whose drivers could spread the virus. In the cases of Australia and New Zealand it's because they were geographically remote enough that it would be uneconomic (because the cost of paying a truck driver to babysit his cargo on a long sea voyage would outweigh any time saving at the ports) while in Taiwan's case it's because the only close-enough country was Taiwan's arch enemy (and too great a security risk for roll-on roll-off trade).
They traded only by container ships (whose loading/unloading is automated, and whose crews could be confined to their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be quarantined within the airport until they flew out again).
And if you're serious about closing borders, you really have to not just shut out your own citizens, but also shut out travel from the entire rest of the world. Most countries (even Trump's America and Boris Johnson's Britain) did a reasonable job in containing the infections introduced from China, only to fall victim to mass infection introduced from Italy.
"The overall effect on the cost of living should be relatively small, just like the overall effect on wages"
Overall, maybe, but for who specifically? The upper class is protected from the labor supply shock because laws against employing illegal immigrants are actually enforced for our jobs. So we benefit from the cost decreases while not experiencing the wage cuts. The working class is not so lucky. And at this time when inequality is straining social cohesion this is probably a bad move.
"reducing wages also reduces costs, which drives down the cost of living."
But only if those changes are exactly the same amount. And it is implausible that they would be. Labor costs are not the only costs of a product. So let's say that in a hypothetical economy labor costs account for overall 50% of the cost of living. If you have mass immigration that reduces labor costs by 50% the cost of living will drop by only 25%. So this is clearly bad for workers because their pay dropped by half but their cost of living only went down by 25%.
"it’ll probably make food and other goods more expensive nationwide thanks to the sudden shortage of workers."
Indeed it will. When I studied abroad in Denmark I noticed that the cost of living was much higher. Food, and in particular restaurants, was much more expensive than back home. But at the same time those workers at that restaurant were paid way more. You can make an argument that our way is better, but you are also not a restaurant worker.
"Certainly, big surges of immigration can put a strain on local government finances in the areas that receive them — witness what happened to New York City when red-state governors sent large numbers of asylum-seekers there, and the city struggled to house and care for them all"
True, but I would have said it another way: witness what happened to Texas when the blue-state based political elite sent large numbers of asylum-seekers there with their open borders policy, and the state struggled to house and care for them all"
"estimate that refugees, specifically, end up contributing about $21,000 more to the government than they take out, over their first 20 years in the country"
That's not very much. And the numbers are cherry picked. "Their first 20 years" is nicely designed to only account for only prime working years since these "refugees" tend to come young. That $21K positive contribution will be eaten up after only one year of Social Security and Medicare costs, so this person will clearly be a net fiscal negative over his lifetime. This is what Denmark found when they ran the numbers on it and I doubt that it would be different here: https://imgur.com/a/y2Kw9YC
"a policy where crossing the border illegally carries zero consequences isn’t quite the same thing as open borders"
The differ in only one thing. An actual open borders policy would, if nothing else, be honest.
I'm tired of the "all immigration is good" mantra. It's crap whether it's spewed by Kamala (a dishonest politician who will say anything to get elected) or Noah (an honest economist trying to understand a complex issue).
I think this is another issue that middle-class+ people simply can not wrap their brains around. A construction worker who struggles to find work, when he gets it has to speak Spanish, whose kid's school now has 7 languages in it, and whose neighborhood now looks like a barrio... and all of that happened in the last 30 years. No study declaring that "immigration is a net positive and has no effects on wages" will convince him. Nor should it. Economists would insist that's because he doesn't realize how much better his life is, how much cheaper his purchases are, because of illegals. And that makes sense when illegals only come into your neighborhood as your nannies and gardeners and roofers. But the experience is radically different when they live in your neighborhood and are your competition. I suspect they don't live in Noah's neighborhood, and if they did, he would move out. As you said, look what happened with blue-city mayors freaking out about a few hundred illegals being sent from Texas. Reality looks different than TV.
That's from England's Guardian newspaper today, but it crystalizes this completely. It is the "let them eat cake" school of immigration policy. Hopefully England changes course before we get to Marie Antionette level problems.
Of course mass deportations are inefficient. A far better way is national e-verify. However, having seen how the Left has turned the Patriot Act tools against its political dissidents, I have long term concerns about mandatory e-verify. But requiring proof of legal residence before any government service (car reg, license, unemployment, Medi-Cal, etc...) seems like a no-brainer. And yes, deportation. Every other country in the world does it.
Source on where Kamala said "All immigration is good"? It's something people like JD Vance or others who are more right wing keep saying she said, but there doesn't seem to be proof it it, yet people like you keep repeating it as truth....
There are some on both the left end of the spectrum and right end of the spectrum say that. But not many actual policy wonks or politicians are saying that. Please also tell me what "illegal" you are competing with in your neighborhood or which people you know that have lost a job to an illegal immigrant, I don't see anyone saying we should have unlimited illegal immigration. However the data shows that America is one of the strongest economies in the world because of immigration,. Noah's comments about how to stop illegal immigration starts with actually enforcing it amongst the companies that take advantage of the labor mostly.
Also, there is nothing wrong with a middle school or high school having 7 different language options for your kids to learn, that said it is an issue if that takes precedence over kids who need help learning that are from here. Further, did you read the Guardian article you linked? What is it you are trying to say regarding this article? It's an opinion article that is mostly talking about how immigration isn't the fault for all the issues that people in the UK have and it is right in that regard, people putting the blame at the feet of immigrants instead of the politicians they vote for and the politicians who gut public infrastructure, social programs and who don't invest in the future are a bigger problem. I still don't see anyone in the article where they are advocating for unlimited immigration, however I do have an issue with the way the author talks about "legitimate" concerns about immigration, fair or not when a not insignificant portion of your populace has concerns about something you should listen.
Finally, we already have deportations in the US, we could target more actual criminals and still support a one and done for anything that may count as a convicted felony would be a step further but I think most would probably support it. However your last 2 sentences make it seem like we aren't deporting people when that isn't the case.... Additionally, in Cali those are state run services and they still require proof of residence, I'm not sure if you are making the case that an illegal immigrant should also provide proof of citizenship status before paying or getting those additional benefits? Can you provide more context on that?
Philly, I'm just not going to get into "proving" to you that Democrats want open borders. If 4 years of Trump in which they declared borders to be racist and 4 years of Biden willfully refusing to enforce them aren't enough, my words will not matter. To Democrats, even calling them "illegal" is racist. Across the Western world, whether America, France, England, Italy (even under Meloni), and EU... the Left clearly favors mass immigration (dare I say it -- The Great Replacement) and in practice, this means open borders.
I attend a blue-collar church in a heavily agricultural area of CA and know many people whose livelihoods have been adversely affected by illegal immigrants competing in their industries. Some have had to change careers.
Since when is it bigotry to enforce illegal immigration? Why not just admit you want open borders, and believe the US is an economic zone rather than a country?
So if we’re being frank, this is mistaking symptom for cause. The replacement-level neighbor in these cases is not a middle class native born American; it’s an even poorer American who is downwardly, rather than upwardly, mobile - and hence likely criminal or mentally ill or just generally apathetic to the state of their lives.
You don’t like your neighborhood as a barrio? Well absent immigrants - legal or illegal - you’re not getting a suburb with picket fences, you’re getting a trailer park or section 8 housing, or perhaps even urban blight of the 1970’s - blocks of vacant apartment buildings, rampant arson, impossible to walk through these neighborhoods at night without getting robbed.
I understand why the median lower class American thinks that their neighborhood’s decline into barrio state is caused by the illegal immigrants, but the whole point of commenting on this blog is we know better.
Daniel, I don't think you intended it, but this comes across as extremely elitist and looking down on anyone below your own class.
It doesn't take white picket fences to have a functional neighborhood. It takes interpersonal trust. It takes a shared culture. It takes 3rd places and community institutions. All of these are made much harder in heterogeneous environments.
Go back and look at 1950's black neighborhoods. These people lived as second-class citizens in an overtly and legally racist society. But they still had functional communities.
Look if you want to impute meaning in my words (“looking down on anyone below your own class”???) go for it. Not my problem.
There’s much to be said about how backwards the proof from 1950’s black America is. As well as this notion that communal institutions simply cannot be formed in the absence of total uniformity (I too have never heard of minority religions and ethnicities developing communal institutions and trusting each other… wait what?)
But again you are simply not responding to my claim. My claim is that the neighborhoods where illegal immigrants are moving in would worst case be simply empty and derelict in their absence. Much harder to “build trust and community” with a vacant apartment building, or with the drug users who squat there.
Minority religions and ethnicities tend to develop communal institutions very well... because they tend to live in relatively homogenous ethnic and religious enclaves. But I doubt you would go for white-Anglo institutions that mirror the Chinese or Vietnamese or Latino ones that are so common. The problem is cultural heterogeneity.
Urban housing is ridiculously expensive in America precisely because there is a shortage of it. So no, I do not accept your premise that it would be derelict and vacant were it not for illegal immigrants. Even if I did though, it would still be a lousy idea to import a bunch of random, mostly uneducated people and keep them as second-class citizens just to fill up your vacant housing.
Yeah you’re just not very intelligent, possibly illiterate.
1) try to familiarize yourself with ethnic and religious minorities in real life urban America. All of NYC consists of heterogeneous neighborhoods with strong communal institutions.
2) I never claimed that I would or would not have a problem with “white-Anglo institutions”. And because unlike you I am an adult, I find no reason to form a broad judgment about these theoretical institutions.
3) I never claimed that this is a justification for importing anyone. I claimed that the argument from “but my neighborhood will be a barrio” is based on a false premise.
4) urban real estate in Detroit is not expensive. Urban real estate in St. Louis is not expensive. Urban real estate in the neighborhoods that are undergoing “barrio-ification” in expensive cities is not expensive. Again, familiarizing yourself with reality rather than overly broad generalization will help you make sense of the world.
Basically,you're saying these ppl are just your slave labor,who should work, but never receive the present value(econ term) of what their work is waged at....all because they are currently out of status .
Maybe peer deep into your own arsehole before you spout shit out of your mouth.
Your orifices are confusing grey matter with fecal matter.
You are making my case for me. The Left equates any opposition to immigration as bigotry. Like many other issues, they simply can not conceive of any principled opposition or practical motivation other than hatred.
If you have read my previous postings here, you would know that (like Noah) I am very strongly in favor of a skill-weighted, points-based immigration system. You know... like the one those hateful, racist Canadians have been using for decades.
As someone who thinks the vast majority of existing immigration is in fact good: I can’t point to specific claim or source, but the going line from the economists for the last two decades certainly has been that virtually all immigration is net good. Again, I sympathize with that view more than I don’t, but the problem is we’ve all done a bad job convincing our fellow Americans that that’s the case.
Most illegal immigrants come in legally..moron. ..on visas.
You want to slow down the rate at which they render themselves out of status ..I'd take a look at the efficacy of those visas.
Only bigoted shitheads like you think potential immigrants want to be illegal.
The visa awarding system is ridiculous,and a white trash,clueless piece of shit like you will never accept that..because that's the only way you prop up your loser self esteem through bigotry.
I'll go first. I favor a points-based system like Canada, with points given for language proficiency, cultural similarity, and necessary occupational skills. Some points should be awarded for direct familial connections (spouse or child in destination country), but not many.
Fundamentally, I want a system that puts the needs of existing Americans before the needs of the potential immigrant.
Then nobody other than asylum seekers will show up,bigot. My existence as a once upon a time immigrant had nothing, and should have nothing to do with a loser like you. Earn your way in life,you loser. Otherwise go get fucked by your white trash family member in your trailer.
I think what you mean is "desperate for cheap labor".
There's lots of labor available. The labor force participation rate is only about 65% if I remember right. But the other 35% requires higher pay than someone working under the table and living with 8 friends and relatives in a tiny hovel (that's still far better than the one he lived in back home.)
The interests of business (and the middle+ classes) have always trumped the interests of the poor.
Citation needed on the other 35% requiring “higher pay.” Within that block of unemployed people are huge swaths who are retired boomers, stay-at-home parents, ex-cons whom no one will hire, or the disabled. Meanwhile, in the white-collar world college graduates with technical training have trouble finding work because entry level jobs have vanished mostly and tech layoffs have been rough. A multivariate analysis is required on the labor participation rate, not some conjured up notions based on predisposed nativist conclusions.
Considering U.S.-born employment increased by about 740,000 in 2023, American natives are doing just fine finding the work they want to do. Anyone who has looked into the wages at plants from companies like Tyson will know that this labor is not always “cheap,” (i.e., competitive hourly wages) especially when tacking on the benefits specific to migrants such as child care, immigrant legal services, and ESL.
One of the basic tenants of economics is that almost anyone will work if the pay is high enough. So if you're having a problem finding (unskilled) workers, the solution is to offer to pay more not to import a bunch of second class citizens who will work for less.
That is precisely what the data show. Americans who want to work have no trouble finding jobs that pay their desired wages. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are added each quarter despite a historically low unemployment rate. The wage earnings gap between the working class and middle class has narrowed the most in decades. In theory, some arbitrary amount of money might convince people like stay-at-home parents and the disabled to work, but many would still not enter the workforce because spending time with family or raising kids is invaluable, etc. Also, “second class citizens”? Migrants by definition are not citizens. Condescending comment about them being “second class” while ignoring their work ethic is duly noted.
Deport them along with their US born kiddos, when these US citizens grow up they’ll bite you in the arse upon their return. Tackle the root causes; embargoes, one-sided trade agreements, US meddling in political affairs, foreign aid that goes to the Beltway bandits, etc.
"For who specifically?.....blah ...blah... inequality...blah.."
Almost all peer reviewed research suggests a slight negative income effect through substitution for high school dropouts, and mostly limited to specific industries.
For everyone else,it's positive.
Everyfuckin body else.
Its you that's doing the cherry picking.
Immigrants ..both illegal and legal act as compliments to labor for the most part.
"slight negative income effect through substitution for high school dropouts, and mostly limited to specific industries."
So by your own words, unchecked immigration leads to slightly lower per-capita income, and those income drops are concentrated in specific industries and among the native-born with the least education.
And yet you think this is a good idea. It hurts your fellow citizens, especially the poorest among them, and yet you still want it. Kind of says what you think of your fellow citizens doesn't it?
So.... if your fellow American citizens are being hurt by the importation of foreigners, it's their own fault for being too stupid or lazy to compete.
To most people, shared citizenship implies an obligation to put the interests of your fellow citizen before others: God, family, nation. You appear to have a different (or perhaps do not have at all) a hierarchy. This is certainly a valid view (a universal brotherhood of man) but it's pretty callous to your fellow Americans.
This is true, but we are talking about immigration policy. Noah is arguing that these immigrants should be allowed to stay, so I assume he is advocating for them to be made legal. (Although, even if they are not, their healthcare in old age will still fall on the taxpayer).
I think that one thing we can all agree on is that we shouldn't have this illegal underclass in our society. Immigrants should either be legal or removed. Our laws should be enforced. The compromise should be made on what number we allow and what selection criteria we use, not on how much we turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.
There are reasonable grey areas that, in the event of an actual compromise, could be figured out. For example, a permanent working visa: you can come and work and pay income taxes (excl. Medicare and SS), but you’re not entitled to the safety net and you can’t vote. Your kids can, because they’re born here and are citizens. If you don’t like it, well, you don’t have to take the deal if you don’t want to - you are here illegally after all.
The best idea? I don’t think so at all, but I advocate for naturalizing the people already here, opening up legal immigration, and putting an iron wall of enforcement on the border.
A reasonable compromise? Can’t see any obvious reasons why not.
"permanent working visa..but no entitlement benefits"
Assuming they're taxed similarly as citizens,under the rubric of income taxes and other taxes ..they don't get to have benefits that they contribute towards .by your logic.
BTW ..that's already happening now.
We are the recipient of largesse from illegal immigrants in terms of contributions to towards the Social Security Fund .
Just curious, is treating them as fellow citizens really that hard for you,given over 60 percent of that popn has been here over 15 yrs(source : National Academy of Sciences)?
Youre performing spectacular gymnastics in bending over backwards to rectum sniff your own bigotry and selling it to the world as shit that doesn't stink.
Since when is it bigotry to enforce illegal immigration? Why not just admit you want open borders, and believe the US is an economic zone rather than a country?
You characterize Trump/Republican party policies as a crackdown on "immigration." But even in the excepts you've included it clearly says *illegal* immigration in every reference. There is a HUGE difference. I'm by no means a Trump supporter, but you must add the appropriate context here. You are part of the problem. I don't think Republicans are, in general, against immigration. They are against illegal immigration. As is typical, your article radicalizes Republican positions.
I don't get this objection because Trump critcizes legal immigration too, specifically refugees and international students (although he said we would give students green cards recently so it's unclear).
Searching this Reuters article for anything that could perhaps restrict legal immigration:
> WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second four-year term on Nov. 5.
> Trump has said he would implement travel bans on people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, expanding on a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Trump previewed some parts of the world that could be subjected to a renewed travel ban in an October 2023 speech, pledging to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security."
> Trump said last June he would seek to block communists, Marxists and socialists from entering the United States.
> During his first term, Trump greatly reduced the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and has criticized Biden's decision to increase admissions. He would again suspend the resettlement program if elected, the New York Times reported in November 2023.
> Trump has said he would push for a "a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values." In his first term, he took steps to tighten access to some visa programs, including a suspension of many work visas during the COVID pandemic.
> Trump has vowed to end Biden "parole" programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants with U.S. sponsors to enter the U.S. and obtain work permits, including Ukrainians and Afghans. He has called Biden's programs an "outrageous abuse of parole authority."
> He would seek to roll back Temporary Protected Status designations, the New York Times reported, targeting another humanitarian program that offers deportation relief and work permits to hundreds of thousands.
Trump literally suspended the H1B visa what are you talking about? Unless republicans actually work towards better legal immigration pathways they should be assumed to be anti immigration in general. Republican positions are radical, stop pearl clutching over legality.
Moron.....most illegal immigrants came to this country legally,vetted,...on tourist visas etc.
Guess facts escape you. You are trying to use expired paperwork to castigate millions of ppl as pernicious .
If your issue is their legality,legalize them by updating their paperwork. Again..facts ...40-50 percent of illegal immigrants came to this country legally(National Academy of Science,CBP).
Pls feel free to crawl back into your sphinctoral cavity.
Bigots deserve assholes.
What's interesting is how wet your pussy gets for deporting ppl who need updated paperwork,but is frigid as fuck when it comes to your fellow white trash drinking and driving as an example.
There are far more white trash mothsrfuckers like your family members who deserve far more scrutiny than some individual with incomplete paperwork.
Source on the "cut by half" statistic? If this refers to 2020, that's pandemic-confounded. If you're referring to pre-2020, I don't think the statistic is true.
Many illegal immigrants are working at small businesses that are fine paying them under the table because they're lying about their taxes anyway. ~50% of small businesses in NYC are committing tax fraud of varying degrees. Enforce the existing tax code and create a culture where tax fraud is looked down upon because paying your taxes is the right thing to do. A series of small reforms like this would go a long way in helping the problem and be good for the country anyway.
The bottom line is that illegal immigration is 1) totally unfair to anyone who has come to America legally, 2) essentially gives the US zero clue about who’s entering, 3) causes immense costs for communities (schools etc.). It has to stop. Harris might say she’ll be “tough on the border” but i think that’s complete political BS. Biden might be saying similar things ( or those who prop him up) but also just political BS. Mass deportation? I guess the devil is in the details. A migrant committing any crime? First flight out in a cargo plane. NYC spending $500 a night on migrants while our own homeless citizens sleep in the subway? C’mon man.
It's just false to say that anyone is sleeping on the subway because of migrants. NYC has a right to shelter and provides beds for anyone. The people sleeping on the subway pretty much all suffer from mental illness and have refused services many times. It's a sad problem that needs to be addressed, but it's not related to migrants.
I believe there is a desire to equate immigrants across time; but the idea that past immigrants came here to "receive services" is surely a fantasy, as is the idea that something is a strain on the public purse only if it did or didn't affect homeless people. Cities used to be about more things than housing homeless people, on the street or no - but I suppose that's a subject for another day.
At least 40-50 percent of illegal immycame into this country legally,then overstayed(CBP)
They came in vetted,on visas.
As someone who came in legally, I hold zero grudges and don't consider it unfair to me or my family that immigrants lack paperwork and live here,or came in legally.
Calling everyone who disagrees with you a bigot is a large part of the reason that Trump won in 2016. Breaking laws is breaking laws, it doesn't matter if you came in legally. Learn how to speak in a civilized way or don't speak at all.
Again, speak in a civilized way, or don't speak at all. I'm sorry for whatever personal experience you have gone through, the same way I'm sorry for someone who gets in trouble for breaking the speed limit, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't get in trouble for breaking the speed limit.
If I am going 120 miles an hour on the local roads, I will get upset at no one but myself for getting a ticket. And right now, we have 8 million people going 400 miles per hour, and any police who arrests them is accused of racism by idiots like you who are upset that they got caught speeding.
2)And, I haven't gone through anything different a US citizen born here like you hasn't "gone through", so your presumptiveness is revealing of your bigotry right there.
3)Going 120 miles an hour is dangerous,and not the same as an illegal immigrant who lacks documentation, and considering 40-50 percent of them came here vetted on a visa, a significant portion entered legally.
4) The fact that you compare someone lacking in documentation to someone who drives recklessly is again revealing of your bigotry.
5) The reason I brought up the drunk driving example is to illustrate your cognitive dissonance.
If drunk driving laws were enforced,half the country would be in jail post Thanksgiving and Christmas,football game festivities. Many more are killed by white "patriotic" drunk drivers than illegal immigrants.
Apparently that doesn't eat at you as brown skinned ppl trying to better their lives,but lacking in paperwork.
6)You are a congnitively dissonant piece of shit bigot.
7)Again, motherfucker.... A speeding driver who puts other human beings at risk is different and way worse than a human being who's lacking in paperwork to affirm a geospatial notion of existence.
Interesting article. Devil’s advocate: over half the Mexican immigrants in your table have no high school diploma (net negative per the cited study) and over a quarter have nothing beyond a high school diploma (broadly neutral). Backing out some rough numbers does look like in aggregate it will be net negative. Difficult to see how illegals would contribute much to the tax purse if they’re stuck in the underground economy! I’d also be interested to see (a) the implications for violent crime rates specifically, (b) more recent data, given the surge seen since 2021 and (c) an attempt to quantify the broader societal implications of illegal immigration, difficult as it may be. I may have a look at (a) myself.
I came here to make that point about the tables, it definitely looks like Mexican/Central American immigration is economically negative, especially if you assume the undocumented portion of immigrants have lower average levels of education. That doesn't defeat the whole article but I'd love to see that point reformulated in that context.
Age Adjusted murder rate is 6.9 per 100K for Hispanics and 3.3 for whites.... so over twice the murder rate. Sure, they're in no way our most violent demographic but not exactly the direction we want to go as a country.
Crime committed by low-skilled immigrants is a far stronger argument for opposing MENA immigration to Europe, than it is for opposing Latino immigration to the US.
Some people will never be satisfied, until the border is turned into a landmine-laden DMZ. It still won't get them their cherished Volkstaat which has never existed to begin with.
"There are really only two important policy proposals: very high tariffs, and immigration restriction."
You left out "slashing taxes for the very wealthy and corporations, including slashing IRS enforcement to allow wealthy tax cheats to get away with criminal tax evasion." That seems to actually be their _number one_ priority, if you believe that actual enacated laws represent "revealed preference".
The thing that I like least about the right wing immigration agenda is its scapegoating and complete lack of ownership. The broken asylum process is OUR (America's) fault. An endless series of Congresses during the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden administrations have failed to close the asylum loopholes that have created this situation. It's not a Democratic or a Republican issue, it's an American issue, and Congress failing to pass the latest reform bill a few months ago is nothing new.
When I hear "mass deportation now!" what it means to me is "let's rip apart millions of migrant families as compensation for OUR inability to legislate effectively."
Isn't the broken asylum process more a result of flawed international treaties, which explains why most Western countries are having similar issues with asylum seekers?
Indeed! But government and/or Congress accept or decline these treaties. Either way the people "in charge" have allowed a situation where it's highly attractive for a migrant to take their chances at crossing into the country (not to mention that our phrase "The American Dream" is essentially a marketing slogan encouraging them to try). Pinning this entirely on the migrants themselves and wiping our hands of any responsibility is childish lunacy.
I'm guessing the scale of international migration was far smaller decades ago (most likely due to the much higher real cost of long-distance travel) when the relevant treaties (such as the New York Protocol of 1967) were signed.
You are making way too much sense Patrick... The voters and politicians don't want to take responsibility for this, they instead want to blame a group of people instead of actually funding DHS, and Border Patrol properly and they don't want to give ICE the tools to go after companies breaking the law because they are too afraid of their lobbyists. It's an entire clown show...
Is the problem that because immigrants are generally poor, the stuff which goes up in price due to greater demand is more likely to be things which blue collar Americans buy or spend a higher proportion of their income on - e.g. low cost housing, rents, every day necessities - whereas the stuff that goes down in price are things which blue collar workers can't afford / don't spend much on anyway - like gardeners and pool cleaners - or which they earn a living by providing - such as gardening and pool cleaning and other manual work? Both effects may net each other out in things like manufacturing of essentials. But in services blue collar workers probably lose earnings without gaining anything in terms of lower prices. This has always been my assumption, anyway. But maybe in aggregate it doesn't work out like that.
Demonizing illegal immigrants is probably the GOP's absolute favorite wedge angle, bar none. They love it even more than gay-bashing. Entirely hypocritical as well, as the dominant Business Wing of the party absolutely loves and craves illegal labor for their low cost and relative docility; but publicly pushes the "immigrant invasion" rhetoric almost entirely as a GOTV tool. GOP administrations like Trump's have always preferred to NOT solve illegal immigration in any meaningful way; preferring to keep it as a perennial campaign issue they can blame on the Dems. Trump's failure to build the wall during the first two years of his presidency--when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress--as well as his recent torpedoing of Lankford-Sinema, are proof of how much the GOP wants to keep the border unstable.
But since the economy is still running hot, the sheer number of illegals in key border states like TX, AZ, etc. are indeed a problem. Before the Mexico-California border was properly walled and patrolled in the late ;80's and early 90's there was a similar public backlash in liberal CA; one so severe it resulted in the successful passage of the anti-immigrant Prop 187. Maybe Lankford-Sinema can be revived by cooler heads once the election is over, for the good of the country.
Imo, there is currently an oversaturation of border crossers; especially in TX/AZ/NM. Which stresses local, state and national resources, including shelters and the courts. Before CA got its' own wall in the 90's from San Diego westwards to the AZ border, it too was oversaturated, causing political backlash. When the *volume* of crossers oversaturates integration capacity, it's a problem.
Before the border wall was finished here in CA, the nightly news was full of segments on crossers. The situation created a GOP-driven anti-immigrant backlash that resulted in the passage of Prop 187--in ultra-liberal California!
The wall was finished, and now crossers go instead to AZ, NM, TX.
Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Pretending there is no problem is not the answer, Aravind. Perpetuating the problem only fuels the rise of the Right and Far Right.
Historically,looking at CBP data....there isn't a problem that's commensurate with the narrative you seem to have accepted,or the narrative the GOP trots out by the minute.
Crossing are up significantly more than 50,000/month...but the economy is larger too,and we're just coming out of an exogenous supply suded shock as far as labor force dynamics (Covid).
Using these economic shocks as a prescriptive tool to villify irregular immigrants is misplaced factually.
The bill was all about amnesty , a road to citizenship (how about remain in Mexico, get in line and complete an application) and more incentives to break in. Qualify to get in based upon your merit regardless of your race - hard to see racism in that (unless you see racism in everything) .
Drag queens are male entertainers who dress as women while performing. As for why anyone should give a fuck, well, as far as I can tell there isn't any good reason!
You're most likely underestimating the economic costs of deporting even a small number of illegal immigrants. Consider the case of Georgia in 2011. That year, the state government started a program to deport all illegal immigrants who work in picking strawberries. The deportations of the illegal immigrants was so successful, $75 million worth of strawberry crop was never picked and therefore lost.
Further, as the state of Georgia tried various incentive plans to get native born Americans to pick strawberries, these failed and, the fear of deportation and raids resulted in fewer workers who wanted to pick other crops, which led to about a shortage of eleven thousand farm workers.
Consider this on a national level. 30% of all workers who work in slaughterhouses are in the country illegally. Mass deportations would likely result in large spikes of food inflation. Does the Trump administration and Republicans have a plan to attract native born Americans to these jobs? Most likely, they don't.
Well, picking strawberries is generally considered a very unpleasant job, so unless it pays significantly better than the alternatives, people aren't going to want to do it if they can get other work. You *can* get Americans to do almost anything if you pay them enough money, but in this case, "enough money" might be more than you can sell the strawberries for. :(
But if you don’t have raids that terrorize the out-group, what’s the point of being a conservative. Conservatives know they are the real-Americans, the good people, that’s the whole premise of Trumpism; joyously punishing everyone else is the whole point of their existence. Why support Trump if you don’t get liberal tears?
I would say non-citizens count as a valid out group. If you don't think so then you should really be advocating for more transfer of payment entitlements to the poorest people in the world.
We should do more to help poor people in other countries; in fact it’s the best way to reduce immigration from those countries. AND, you are forgetting that citizens that look like non-citizens get terrorized too. Papers please.
"terrorized" is being asked for your identification? How soft you are.
And yeah of course we could bankrupt our own country if we treat non-citizens as an in-group, as you have suggested, then there would be no reason for anyone to immigrate. You're simply moralizing and that's not a good basis for policy. Stop being so emotional.
Spoken by a white guy that can’t even imagine not being part of the privileged in-group. Probably not concerned with being pulled over by the police either, after all, what could happen? You should study police states, or at least watch Casablanca.
I live in Mexico and the police have in fact robbed money from my pockets. It's common here and it's not in the US. Try to study reality and not movies
My taxes probably(I'd say surely....) subsidize you. Almost surely. id prefer to subsidize someone else. Maybe self deport. That way I don't have to subsidize the loser you are. Your mom's pussy spat you out Stateside,and I'm still paying for your fucking ass. What a loser. At least if I'm subsidizing the actual global poor, there's the spillover benefit of increased marginal benefits....both to the US,and the world.
They’re not eligible for welfare or social security yet millions of noncitizen immigrants contribute payroll taxes that fund, among other things, social security and Medicare. Republicans literally want to gut the service labor sector and defund the very social safety programs most popular with their constituents.
Noah is a smart lib who loves to re-shape the statistics to his favor. No need for big deportation infrastructure, you simply stop the flow at the border. If you have a 6 inch hole in the boat, bailing out a cup of water isn't going to help much. The rest can go as they are caught. The demand to get in isn't going down, but allow highly educated or skilled only - think of deporting 2 Honduran gangster and importing 1 nurse (the opposite of Biden's prisoner swaps). Not sure where Noah lives, but here in Kamalfornia the schools are full of non-english speaking illegals, hospitals are overrun ...they all get free healthcare here. All those Lib Mayors sure complain alot about what Noah thinks is a great gift given them by our Border Czar.
"Noah is a smart lib who loves to re-shape the statistics to his favor."
In other words, he is advancing an argument. Smith has a PhD in economics, so he was literally educated to do the very thing you describe in order to earn his doctorate.
It's like being outraged that attorneys love to re-shape laws to their favor.
The illegals themselves are not eligible but their kids will be... and statistically they will be low-productivity, low educated types that are a net drain on the state coffers.
>The illegals themselves are not eligible but their kids will be... and statistically they will be low-productivity, low educated types that are a net drain on the state coffers.
If an immigrant has a kid born here, that means that their child is a citizen.... Additionally, as of right now... 45% of adult SNAP recipients were non-Hispanic white, 27% were Black, and 22% were Hispanic. For child recipients, 35.8% were Hispanic, 27% were Black, and 31.5% were non-Hispanic white. Or do you only care about brown people that are immigrants or forget about how many white people in America that are citizens that drain the coffers?
Historically and as of right now native-born Americans receive more welfare and entitlement benefits per capita than immigrants, especially for Medicare and Social Security. The only exception is elderly immigrants who receive more Medicaid per capita than elderly native-born Americans.
This is a complex topic, that you seem insistent throughout your comments on this thread to prove or just muddy the waters by saying immigrants are low educated types that drain state coffers and society. When the data keeps saying that isn't true.... You ignore the fact that children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers, regardless of when their parents came to the U.S. or which country they came from. That is insightful because to me it shows that they have an effort to prove to themselves, family and society that they need to work harder to be accepted as an American. People like you don't seem to speak in these types of generalities when it is your family member or a native born American that is 2nd, 3rd or 10th generation and they are still struggling like their ancestors, but seem to take it personally when they are a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant that may get a benefit.
Bro, i think you write some interesting stuff, but lately your getting way too leftist for my taste. Calling political candidates that you dont like "weird" is childish to say the least. And its especially ironic when you support people like "Tampon" Tim and Kamala Harris who think its completely normal for people males to compete in womans sports and use preferred pronouns and stuff.
Please stick to economics because there you at least make a little sense.
Why are conservatives so obsessed with trans people? Do they not realize that this is like the 1,000th most important item on the liberals' agenda? I *never* see this topic brought up by Democrats.
You do realize that Transgender Day of Visibility ALWAYS falls on March 31st and has since its inception in 2009, and Easter just HAPPENED to fall on March 31st in 2024? That he didn't declare all Easter Sundays hence forth to be Transgender Day of Visibility??
Considering you brought it up in the first place, I'm sure that you didn't actually realize that.
You're reading an article by a guy who is very open about being liberal and complaining that he leans too left? I think there's clearly conflict of interest here.
Not the most important thing to mention, but - I like the Woody Guthrie original of Deportee (Plane Crash at Los Gatos) but I love the Highwaymen with Johnny Rodriguez version.
Another point of view to consider: Mass deportations would require that the government builds up a vast machine of oppression. Once it is in place and deportations have been successful (assuming this for the sake of argument), this machine will not be dismantled (which bureaucracy ever is?). So the deportation machine will be used for other purposes, which is likely to oppress other people (history tells us that there is always another minority one can find to oppress).
Yep.
What's to stop said machine of oppression turning into gas chambers or firing squads, as happened in Europe in the 1930s & 40s?
Because the slippery slope isn’t always the case.
For one thing, basic decency. For another, the explicit lessons of the holocaust. For a third, illegal immigrants are not NEARLY as vulnerable as Jews were.
And note that the Holocaust began in the lands that were Stalin's share of the Molotov-Ribbentrop booty (the 3 Baltic states along with western Ukraine and Belarus).
The Nazis used Soviet atrocities to justify their own.
Did the mass deportations in the 1950s that Noah mentioned result in this?
Beverly Gage argues that deportations of anarchists and communists during the First Red Scare (esp. 1919-1920) paved the way for the excesses of Hoover's FBI.
In fact, a young Hoover was involved in those early deportations and round-ups, including the notorious "Palmer raids," in which 6,000 people were arrested. As the name suggests, AG Palmer ended up taking the blame for that one.
So Hoover was able to rehabilitate his image, and within four years, he'd risen from being head of the Bureau's "General Intelligence Division" to being the Bureau's Director, a position he would hold for an astonishing 48 years.
Is that from the book "G-Man - J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century"? Thanks for recommending ...
Yes - it's a phenomenal book!
Are you this Daniel Munoz? https://philpeople.org/profiles/daniel-munoz
If yes, then I want to say that you are a wonderful philosopher! I disagree with you because you are a moderate deontologist, I think. I am a Classical Utilitarian (similar to Bentham, Sidgwick, Singer, Radek, Rawlette, Sinhababu). But when it comes to political philosophy, I am a fan of mixed economy, social liberalism/social democracy these days.
That's me!
You are, indeed, a friendly social liberal. Thanks :)
It's not astonishing when you remember his FBI ignored civil rights and liked turning up blackmail material on politicians and celebrities.
Indeed. Though one theme of Gage's book is that Hoover didn't *just* blackmail his way to power. Generations of American leaders chose to keep Hoover in power because he was a useful ally -- and a national hero, at least in the eyes of the public.
Painting Hoover as a lone wolf may let the US off too easy.
I grew up in DC.
Not the DC of the rich and powerful but the DC of secretaries and postal workers and drunks.
Early on he may have been useful but LBJ and Nixon handled him with kid gloves and they were not men who owned a lot of kid gloves.
I haven't read Gage's book so my opinion may change.
Agreed about the kid gloves -- Nixon and Hoover were friends, and LBJ was friendlier with him than the Kennedys had been.
But Hoover did do LBJ some favors (Gage talks about this in a chapter called "All the Way with LBJ"). And LBJ did push Hoover around at times.
In 1964, LBJ needed support from MLK and other civil rights leaders to win his reelection, so he didn't let Hoover trash MLK in public. After the election, Hoover finally let loose, calling MLK the "most notorious liar" in the country, followed shortly by a threatening anonymous letter + kompromat. But by this point, MLK was beloved by a lot of the country, so his image didn't suffer as much as it might have otherwise. (Though King's mental health did take a blow.)
Anyway, I haven't spent much time in DC, so you probably have a better intuitive sense of how things work there!
America was oppressive in other ways in the 1950s. Jim Crow laws were still in place, there was widespread paranoia about communists, etc.
And, from Noah's description, it sounds like people suspected of being illegal immigrants did not receive due process. Just arresting people who look like they might be Mexican and deporting them requires less institutional machinery than proving that they are illegal immigrants, but it also establishes a system where law enforcement can't be expected to respect the rights of the people they interact with. Sounds pretty oppressive to me.
It could and did change eventually, with mass protests and decades of cultural shifts, but that's bad enough.
The institutional machinery to do it properly might be better in some ways -- law enforcement has more respect for the laws that constrain them -- but would involve increasing law enforcement's capacity to monitor and investigate people so they can identify all the illegal immigrants.
How much due process and bureaucracy is needed to determine who is allowed to be in the country? You have a citizenship / visa or you don't. Not much more complicated than a drivers license.
I know some people complain about "your papers please" in this context, but it's basically how we do things already in our society. If you get arrested without any form of ID, citizen or no, you're going to be in jail until they figure out who you are. Nobody is going to be accidentally deported because no country would accept them without proof documentation that it's their country of origin. And if you have that info, you can tell if they have a visa.
>You have a citizenship / visa or you don't.
There are at least 5 more ways you can be in the U.S. legally. Some of them can overlap; some of them can expire. Documentation for those 7+ legal statuses is inconsistent. Some types of documentation can expire even if the underlying status doesn't. Documentation can be delayed, faulty, lost.
There is at the moment no quick and simple way to ascertain that someone is here illegally.
Checking is someone has a driver's licence or not is not actually trivial. There are at least 50 valid licence issuers and every state recognises all of them as valid, so even this is a nation-wide search across different databases held by different organisations that have not necessarily invested work into making this easy.
The situation with regards to citizenship is worse because there is no database or collection of databases that contains an exhaustive list of US citizens. Unlike driver's licences, US citizenship is in many circumstances granted automatically without necessarily generating a record in any specific database. For example, there are children born in the US to citizen parents that don't have birth certificates because their parents are part of a niche religious group ("cult") that rejects interacting with the government. This is not illegal, but even if it was I think it would strike most people as perverse to penalize the child here for their parent's failure - especially since in this case the penalty is presumably life imprisonment in immigration detention.
There is a term for what you describe: imperial boomerang or Foucault's boomerang (though Foucault himself denied coining it). It referred to the fascisms of the 20th century, when the twilight of the imperial age meant that a lot of military personnel and irregulars who learned brutality in the service of colonialism began applying those same tactics at home.
Now you are saying this, I remember that I came across this concept in a book by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_C%C3%A9saire ... Wikipedia confirms this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang ... it also reminds me of Cecil Rhodes' "In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets. ... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. "
I'm also reminded of how the Nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War (no doubt moulded by Spain's exploitative colonialist history) viewed their own working-class countrymen effectively as Untermenschen: as Franco's press officer Gonzalo de Aguirez Munro put it:
"Sewers caused all our troubles. The masses in this country are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. But we made the mistake of giving them modern housing in the cities where we have our factories. We put sewers in these cities, sewers which extend right down to the workers’ quarters. Not content with the work of God, we thus interfere with His Will. The result is that the slave stock increases. Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers.. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended for us. Sewers should reserved for those who deserve them, not the slave stock"
All it would take is for local police forces and prosecutors to cooperate with and inform ICE when they’ve got an illegal immigrant in jail. That infrastructure already exists. We have our own criminals and have no need to import new ones.
I agree that it seems highly unlikely that the Feds are going to be sending teams of people out to round up law abiding workers en masse, which would also be controversial and unpopular. I don’t think anyone would object, thought to their going down to SoMa and the Mission and rounding up a few dozen Honduran drug dealers.
And will you be deporting the cops who take bribes from your Honduran drug dealers?
Because since illegals can still be arrested, if they're dealing drugs and they're not getting arrested, it's a different problem.
Yup, not an immigration problem but a police corruption problem.
You're assuming competency will trump dogma.
What part of the Covid response led you to that conclusion?
Could one argue that the conclusion to be drawn from Covid is that "every country needs to be able to seal its borders, as doing so was massively beneficial to Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan"?
Well, George, what do those three countries have in common?
I also think the lesson drawn from Covid is that IF you are serious about closing borders, you need to understand that that means quarantining EVERYONE traveling -- including your own citizens.
Trump's China ban was worse than useless because he banned Chinese passport holders and only Chinese passport holders.
Respiratory viruses don't care about your passport -- they care if you breathe.
Now tell me how popular it would have been to tell American tourists returning from China, they would have to go through quarantine.
Obviously all three of those are island countries, plus (unlike the UK or Ireland for example) they didn't trade with other countries by trucks whose drivers could spread the virus. In the cases of Australia and New Zealand it's because they were geographically remote enough that it would be uneconomic (because the cost of paying a truck driver to babysit his cargo on a long sea voyage would outweigh any time saving at the ports) while in Taiwan's case it's because the only close-enough country was Taiwan's arch enemy (and too great a security risk for roll-on roll-off trade).
They traded only by container ships (whose loading/unloading is automated, and whose crews could be confined to their vessels) or aircraft (whose crews could be quarantined within the airport until they flew out again).
And if you're serious about closing borders, you really have to not just shut out your own citizens, but also shut out travel from the entire rest of the world. Most countries (even Trump's America and Boris Johnson's Britain) did a reasonable job in containing the infections introduced from China, only to fall victim to mass infection introduced from Italy.
Precisely.
If we had taken it seriously, we would have been tracking travelers coming into every port and airport before the first case showed up here.
We could have done that. They did something like that with an ebola outbreak.
It would have been seen as an overreaction and it would have been incredibly disruptive in the short term.
But in the long term, it would have saved lives, companies and we could have been Australia.
I'm afraid no one learned that lesson.
Don’t they already have ‘vast machines of oppression’? Couldn’t you use the same logic to discredit the value of the entire criminal justice system?
"The overall effect on the cost of living should be relatively small, just like the overall effect on wages"
Overall, maybe, but for who specifically? The upper class is protected from the labor supply shock because laws against employing illegal immigrants are actually enforced for our jobs. So we benefit from the cost decreases while not experiencing the wage cuts. The working class is not so lucky. And at this time when inequality is straining social cohesion this is probably a bad move.
"reducing wages also reduces costs, which drives down the cost of living."
But only if those changes are exactly the same amount. And it is implausible that they would be. Labor costs are not the only costs of a product. So let's say that in a hypothetical economy labor costs account for overall 50% of the cost of living. If you have mass immigration that reduces labor costs by 50% the cost of living will drop by only 25%. So this is clearly bad for workers because their pay dropped by half but their cost of living only went down by 25%.
"it’ll probably make food and other goods more expensive nationwide thanks to the sudden shortage of workers."
Indeed it will. When I studied abroad in Denmark I noticed that the cost of living was much higher. Food, and in particular restaurants, was much more expensive than back home. But at the same time those workers at that restaurant were paid way more. You can make an argument that our way is better, but you are also not a restaurant worker.
"Certainly, big surges of immigration can put a strain on local government finances in the areas that receive them — witness what happened to New York City when red-state governors sent large numbers of asylum-seekers there, and the city struggled to house and care for them all"
True, but I would have said it another way: witness what happened to Texas when the blue-state based political elite sent large numbers of asylum-seekers there with their open borders policy, and the state struggled to house and care for them all"
"estimate that refugees, specifically, end up contributing about $21,000 more to the government than they take out, over their first 20 years in the country"
That's not very much. And the numbers are cherry picked. "Their first 20 years" is nicely designed to only account for only prime working years since these "refugees" tend to come young. That $21K positive contribution will be eaten up after only one year of Social Security and Medicare costs, so this person will clearly be a net fiscal negative over his lifetime. This is what Denmark found when they ran the numbers on it and I doubt that it would be different here: https://imgur.com/a/y2Kw9YC
"a policy where crossing the border illegally carries zero consequences isn’t quite the same thing as open borders"
The differ in only one thing. An actual open borders policy would, if nothing else, be honest.
I'm tired of the "all immigration is good" mantra. It's crap whether it's spewed by Kamala (a dishonest politician who will say anything to get elected) or Noah (an honest economist trying to understand a complex issue).
I think this is another issue that middle-class+ people simply can not wrap their brains around. A construction worker who struggles to find work, when he gets it has to speak Spanish, whose kid's school now has 7 languages in it, and whose neighborhood now looks like a barrio... and all of that happened in the last 30 years. No study declaring that "immigration is a net positive and has no effects on wages" will convince him. Nor should it. Economists would insist that's because he doesn't realize how much better his life is, how much cheaper his purchases are, because of illegals. And that makes sense when illegals only come into your neighborhood as your nannies and gardeners and roofers. But the experience is radically different when they live in your neighborhood and are your competition. I suspect they don't live in Noah's neighborhood, and if they did, he would move out. As you said, look what happened with blue-city mayors freaking out about a few hundred illegals being sent from Texas. Reality looks different than TV.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/13/immigration-immigrants-society-rich-labour-public
That's from England's Guardian newspaper today, but it crystalizes this completely. It is the "let them eat cake" school of immigration policy. Hopefully England changes course before we get to Marie Antionette level problems.
Of course mass deportations are inefficient. A far better way is national e-verify. However, having seen how the Left has turned the Patriot Act tools against its political dissidents, I have long term concerns about mandatory e-verify. But requiring proof of legal residence before any government service (car reg, license, unemployment, Medi-Cal, etc...) seems like a no-brainer. And yes, deportation. Every other country in the world does it.
Source on where Kamala said "All immigration is good"? It's something people like JD Vance or others who are more right wing keep saying she said, but there doesn't seem to be proof it it, yet people like you keep repeating it as truth....
There are some on both the left end of the spectrum and right end of the spectrum say that. But not many actual policy wonks or politicians are saying that. Please also tell me what "illegal" you are competing with in your neighborhood or which people you know that have lost a job to an illegal immigrant, I don't see anyone saying we should have unlimited illegal immigration. However the data shows that America is one of the strongest economies in the world because of immigration,. Noah's comments about how to stop illegal immigration starts with actually enforcing it amongst the companies that take advantage of the labor mostly.
Also, there is nothing wrong with a middle school or high school having 7 different language options for your kids to learn, that said it is an issue if that takes precedence over kids who need help learning that are from here. Further, did you read the Guardian article you linked? What is it you are trying to say regarding this article? It's an opinion article that is mostly talking about how immigration isn't the fault for all the issues that people in the UK have and it is right in that regard, people putting the blame at the feet of immigrants instead of the politicians they vote for and the politicians who gut public infrastructure, social programs and who don't invest in the future are a bigger problem. I still don't see anyone in the article where they are advocating for unlimited immigration, however I do have an issue with the way the author talks about "legitimate" concerns about immigration, fair or not when a not insignificant portion of your populace has concerns about something you should listen.
Finally, we already have deportations in the US, we could target more actual criminals and still support a one and done for anything that may count as a convicted felony would be a step further but I think most would probably support it. However your last 2 sentences make it seem like we aren't deporting people when that isn't the case.... Additionally, in Cali those are state run services and they still require proof of residence, I'm not sure if you are making the case that an illegal immigrant should also provide proof of citizenship status before paying or getting those additional benefits? Can you provide more context on that?
Philly, I'm just not going to get into "proving" to you that Democrats want open borders. If 4 years of Trump in which they declared borders to be racist and 4 years of Biden willfully refusing to enforce them aren't enough, my words will not matter. To Democrats, even calling them "illegal" is racist. Across the Western world, whether America, France, England, Italy (even under Meloni), and EU... the Left clearly favors mass immigration (dare I say it -- The Great Replacement) and in practice, this means open borders.
I attend a blue-collar church in a heavily agricultural area of CA and know many people whose livelihoods have been adversely affected by illegal immigrants competing in their industries. Some have had to change careers.
I'd say you should be writing fiction due to your amazing imagination, but I can see that you already are.
Since when is it bigotry to enforce illegal immigration? Why not just admit you want open borders, and believe the US is an economic zone rather than a country?
So if we’re being frank, this is mistaking symptom for cause. The replacement-level neighbor in these cases is not a middle class native born American; it’s an even poorer American who is downwardly, rather than upwardly, mobile - and hence likely criminal or mentally ill or just generally apathetic to the state of their lives.
You don’t like your neighborhood as a barrio? Well absent immigrants - legal or illegal - you’re not getting a suburb with picket fences, you’re getting a trailer park or section 8 housing, or perhaps even urban blight of the 1970’s - blocks of vacant apartment buildings, rampant arson, impossible to walk through these neighborhoods at night without getting robbed.
I understand why the median lower class American thinks that their neighborhood’s decline into barrio state is caused by the illegal immigrants, but the whole point of commenting on this blog is we know better.
Daniel, I don't think you intended it, but this comes across as extremely elitist and looking down on anyone below your own class.
It doesn't take white picket fences to have a functional neighborhood. It takes interpersonal trust. It takes a shared culture. It takes 3rd places and community institutions. All of these are made much harder in heterogeneous environments.
Go back and look at 1950's black neighborhoods. These people lived as second-class citizens in an overtly and legally racist society. But they still had functional communities.
Look if you want to impute meaning in my words (“looking down on anyone below your own class”???) go for it. Not my problem.
There’s much to be said about how backwards the proof from 1950’s black America is. As well as this notion that communal institutions simply cannot be formed in the absence of total uniformity (I too have never heard of minority religions and ethnicities developing communal institutions and trusting each other… wait what?)
But again you are simply not responding to my claim. My claim is that the neighborhoods where illegal immigrants are moving in would worst case be simply empty and derelict in their absence. Much harder to “build trust and community” with a vacant apartment building, or with the drug users who squat there.
Minority religions and ethnicities tend to develop communal institutions very well... because they tend to live in relatively homogenous ethnic and religious enclaves. But I doubt you would go for white-Anglo institutions that mirror the Chinese or Vietnamese or Latino ones that are so common. The problem is cultural heterogeneity.
Urban housing is ridiculously expensive in America precisely because there is a shortage of it. So no, I do not accept your premise that it would be derelict and vacant were it not for illegal immigrants. Even if I did though, it would still be a lousy idea to import a bunch of random, mostly uneducated people and keep them as second-class citizens just to fill up your vacant housing.
Yeah you’re just not very intelligent, possibly illiterate.
1) try to familiarize yourself with ethnic and religious minorities in real life urban America. All of NYC consists of heterogeneous neighborhoods with strong communal institutions.
2) I never claimed that I would or would not have a problem with “white-Anglo institutions”. And because unlike you I am an adult, I find no reason to form a broad judgment about these theoretical institutions.
3) I never claimed that this is a justification for importing anyone. I claimed that the argument from “but my neighborhood will be a barrio” is based on a false premise.
4) urban real estate in Detroit is not expensive. Urban real estate in St. Louis is not expensive. Urban real estate in the neighborhoods that are undergoing “barrio-ification” in expensive cities is not expensive. Again, familiarizing yourself with reality rather than overly broad generalization will help you make sense of the world.
"You don't like your neighborhood as a barrio...
I understand....barrio state"
I don't like my neighborhood as a white trash fuck hole either.
Deport your brethren, bigot motherfucker.
You can call it Incesty Trailer Trasheria.
I have no idea what you think you’re arguing against, but it definitely doesn’t sound like anything I wrote.
" you can come work..blah fucking blah......."
Basically,you're saying these ppl are just your slave labor,who should work, but never receive the present value(econ term) of what their work is waged at....all because they are currently out of status .
Maybe peer deep into your own arsehole before you spout shit out of your mouth.
Your orifices are confusing grey matter with fecal matter.
Wow this is some next level illiteracy. I regret responding at all.
" I understand where the ..."
Understand what?
If these individuals are high school dropouts...ok...
That's not most of America.
That's not even most of trailer trash land.
So what the fuck do you "understand"?
"i am tired...."
Nobody ever claimed that all immigrants,(legal or illegal)are perctly good.
That's how you spin it in your head, so you can rationalize being a bigot.
You are making my case for me. The Left equates any opposition to immigration as bigotry. Like many other issues, they simply can not conceive of any principled opposition or practical motivation other than hatred.
If you have read my previous postings here, you would know that (like Noah) I am very strongly in favor of a skill-weighted, points-based immigration system. You know... like the one those hateful, racist Canadians have been using for decades.
You are a bigot with no data to back your hypotheses,other than bending over backwards and rectum sniffing yourself....
I don't need to do a fucking thing.
Your principles are less than equivalent to my asshole's principles every morning that I flush down the toilet.
Actually lots of people claim that. Just go read some threads on r/ neoliberal.
Facts are independent of popularity contests. Then again, you're a fucking bigoted idiot.
As someone who thinks the vast majority of existing immigration is in fact good: I can’t point to specific claim or source, but the going line from the economists for the last two decades certainly has been that virtually all immigration is net good. Again, I sympathize with that view more than I don’t, but the problem is we’ve all done a bad job convincing our fellow Americans that that’s the case.
There is no arguing with people like that. Democrats genuinely believe these days it's racist to want to slow illegal immigration.
Most illegal immigrants come in legally..moron. ..on visas.
You want to slow down the rate at which they render themselves out of status ..I'd take a look at the efficacy of those visas.
Only bigoted shitheads like you think potential immigrants want to be illegal.
The visa awarding system is ridiculous,and a white trash,clueless piece of shit like you will never accept that..because that's the only way you prop up your loser self esteem through bigotry.
Of course not all immigration is good. The vast majority of it is though. 🤷🏻♂️
I agree. What basis should we use to evaluate it?
I'll go first. I favor a points-based system like Canada, with points given for language proficiency, cultural similarity, and necessary occupational skills. Some points should be awarded for direct familial connections (spouse or child in destination country), but not many.
Fundamentally, I want a system that puts the needs of existing Americans before the needs of the potential immigrant.
"Put the needs of existing ..."
Then nobody other than asylum seekers will show up,bigot. My existence as a once upon a time immigrant had nothing, and should have nothing to do with a loser like you. Earn your way in life,you loser. Otherwise go get fucked by your white trash family member in your trailer.
Don’t forget about the cities that are so desperate for labor they openly invite legal workers to come over.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-a-white-town-paid-for-a-class-called-hispanics-101/2018/03/07/ca37a44a-1cd1-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/migrant-farm-labor-national-security/
https://theconversation.com/underpaid-and-overlooked-migrant-labor-provides-backbone-of-maryland-eastern-shores-local-economy-209671
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-07/labor-shortage-forces-indiana-businesses-to-get-creative
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-urge-immigrants-stay-florida-fearing-new-laws-impact-1804640
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/business/economy/immigrants-maine-lobster-aging-workforce.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-11/without-immigrants-us-working-age-population-would-shrink
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/20/migrants-asylum-heartland-development/
Trump business https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/if-youre-a-good-worker-papers-dont-matter-how-a-trump-construction-crew-has-relied-on-immigrants-without-legal-status/2019/08/09/cf59014a-b3ab-11e9-8e94-71a35969e4d8_story.html
I think what you mean is "desperate for cheap labor".
There's lots of labor available. The labor force participation rate is only about 65% if I remember right. But the other 35% requires higher pay than someone working under the table and living with 8 friends and relatives in a tiny hovel (that's still far better than the one he lived in back home.)
The interests of business (and the middle+ classes) have always trumped the interests of the poor.
Citation needed on the other 35% requiring “higher pay.” Within that block of unemployed people are huge swaths who are retired boomers, stay-at-home parents, ex-cons whom no one will hire, or the disabled. Meanwhile, in the white-collar world college graduates with technical training have trouble finding work because entry level jobs have vanished mostly and tech layoffs have been rough. A multivariate analysis is required on the labor participation rate, not some conjured up notions based on predisposed nativist conclusions.
Considering U.S.-born employment increased by about 740,000 in 2023, American natives are doing just fine finding the work they want to do. Anyone who has looked into the wages at plants from companies like Tyson will know that this labor is not always “cheap,” (i.e., competitive hourly wages) especially when tacking on the benefits specific to migrants such as child care, immigrant legal services, and ESL.
One of the basic tenants of economics is that almost anyone will work if the pay is high enough. So if you're having a problem finding (unskilled) workers, the solution is to offer to pay more not to import a bunch of second class citizens who will work for less.
That is precisely what the data show. Americans who want to work have no trouble finding jobs that pay their desired wages. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are added each quarter despite a historically low unemployment rate. The wage earnings gap between the working class and middle class has narrowed the most in decades. In theory, some arbitrary amount of money might convince people like stay-at-home parents and the disabled to work, but many would still not enter the workforce because spending time with family or raising kids is invaluable, etc. Also, “second class citizens”? Migrants by definition are not citizens. Condescending comment about them being “second class” while ignoring their work ethic is duly noted.
Deport them along with their US born kiddos, when these US citizens grow up they’ll bite you in the arse upon their return. Tackle the root causes; embargoes, one-sided trade agreements, US meddling in political affairs, foreign aid that goes to the Beltway bandits, etc.
"and the numbers are cherry picked"
Says you. What's your source?
"For who specifically?.....blah ...blah... inequality...blah.."
Almost all peer reviewed research suggests a slight negative income effect through substitution for high school dropouts, and mostly limited to specific industries.
For everyone else,it's positive.
Everyfuckin body else.
Its you that's doing the cherry picking.
Immigrants ..both illegal and legal act as compliments to labor for the most part.
"slight negative income effect through substitution for high school dropouts, and mostly limited to specific industries."
So by your own words, unchecked immigration leads to slightly lower per-capita income, and those income drops are concentrated in specific industries and among the native-born with the least education.
And yet you think this is a good idea. It hurts your fellow citizens, especially the poorest among them, and yet you still want it. Kind of says what you think of your fellow citizens doesn't it?
Yes ,only for high school dropouts.
You don't seem to be able to read.
The US isn't predominantly a white trash, high school dropout economy.
They help the rest of us.
If you can't compete with an illegal immigrant,after being born here, you need to look in the mirror.
you may be a fuck up.
Please stay a fuck up.
So.... if your fellow American citizens are being hurt by the importation of foreigners, it's their own fault for being too stupid or lazy to compete.
To most people, shared citizenship implies an obligation to put the interests of your fellow citizen before others: God, family, nation. You appear to have a different (or perhaps do not have at all) a hierarchy. This is certainly a valid view (a universal brotherhood of man) but it's pretty callous to your fellow Americans.
"interests of their fellow citizens over theirs"...
My fellow citizens aren't being hurt.
They are benefitting from the popn of illegal immigrants in this country for the most part.
Only high school dropouts are affected a bit negatively.
And not by much that's statistically significant.
Most Americans are not high school dropouts.
There are more citizens affected positively by illegal immigration than those that are negatively affected. By a large margin.
Learn to read.
I've furnished you with information and primary sources that are unimpeachable.
So citizenship is now controlled by your educational level? Only high school graduates are citizens?
First step when in a hole, man... stop digging.
Ppl who live here for 15 years are my fellow citizens, whether they have papers or not.
Go crawl back into your mother's uterus.
This is the money comment.
Re that last sentence - it is the forced acceptance of the untruth that is how power is calibrated, as ever. Deceit is not precisely the point.
You've made numerous assumptions about Noah's opinion, and wound up in a spot that your argument does not (to my eyes) appear in good faith.
This is true, but we are talking about immigration policy. Noah is arguing that these immigrants should be allowed to stay, so I assume he is advocating for them to be made legal. (Although, even if they are not, their healthcare in old age will still fall on the taxpayer).
I think that one thing we can all agree on is that we shouldn't have this illegal underclass in our society. Immigrants should either be legal or removed. Our laws should be enforced. The compromise should be made on what number we allow and what selection criteria we use, not on how much we turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.
There are reasonable grey areas that, in the event of an actual compromise, could be figured out. For example, a permanent working visa: you can come and work and pay income taxes (excl. Medicare and SS), but you’re not entitled to the safety net and you can’t vote. Your kids can, because they’re born here and are citizens. If you don’t like it, well, you don’t have to take the deal if you don’t want to - you are here illegally after all.
The best idea? I don’t think so at all, but I advocate for naturalizing the people already here, opening up legal immigration, and putting an iron wall of enforcement on the border.
A reasonable compromise? Can’t see any obvious reasons why not.
"permanent working visa..but no entitlement benefits"
Assuming they're taxed similarly as citizens,under the rubric of income taxes and other taxes ..they don't get to have benefits that they contribute towards .by your logic.
BTW ..that's already happening now.
We are the recipient of largesse from illegal immigrants in terms of contributions to towards the Social Security Fund .
Just curious, is treating them as fellow citizens really that hard for you,given over 60 percent of that popn has been here over 15 yrs(source : National Academy of Sciences)?
Youre performing spectacular gymnastics in bending over backwards to rectum sniff your own bigotry and selling it to the world as shit that doesn't stink.
Since when is it bigotry to enforce illegal immigration? Why not just admit you want open borders, and believe the US is an economic zone rather than a country?
" Since when ...........to enforce illegal immigration"
Since white trash idiots like you didn't know how to write in grammatically correct sentences.
Not only that, if illegals are on payroll they pay into Social Security but will never be eligible to receive those benefits.
You characterize Trump/Republican party policies as a crackdown on "immigration." But even in the excepts you've included it clearly says *illegal* immigration in every reference. There is a HUGE difference. I'm by no means a Trump supporter, but you must add the appropriate context here. You are part of the problem. I don't think Republicans are, in general, against immigration. They are against illegal immigration. As is typical, your article radicalizes Republican positions.
I don't get this objection because Trump critcizes legal immigration too, specifically refugees and international students (although he said we would give students green cards recently so it's unclear).
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-would-crack-down-immigration-second-term-2023-11-14/
Searching this Reuters article for anything that could perhaps restrict legal immigration:
> WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second four-year term on Nov. 5.
> Trump has said he would implement travel bans on people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, expanding on a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Trump previewed some parts of the world that could be subjected to a renewed travel ban in an October 2023 speech, pledging to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security."
> Trump said last June he would seek to block communists, Marxists and socialists from entering the United States.
> During his first term, Trump greatly reduced the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and has criticized Biden's decision to increase admissions. He would again suspend the resettlement program if elected, the New York Times reported in November 2023.
> Trump has said he would push for a "a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values." In his first term, he took steps to tighten access to some visa programs, including a suspension of many work visas during the COVID pandemic.
> Trump has vowed to end Biden "parole" programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants with U.S. sponsors to enter the U.S. and obtain work permits, including Ukrainians and Afghans. He has called Biden's programs an "outrageous abuse of parole authority."
> He would seek to roll back Temporary Protected Status designations, the New York Times reported, targeting another humanitarian program that offers deportation relief and work permits to hundreds of thousands.
Trump literally suspended the H1B visa what are you talking about? Unless republicans actually work towards better legal immigration pathways they should be assumed to be anti immigration in general. Republican positions are radical, stop pearl clutching over legality.
Someone's lack of paperwork bothers you that much,give them papers.
Moron.....most illegal immigrants came to this country legally,vetted,...on tourist visas etc.
Guess facts escape you. You are trying to use expired paperwork to castigate millions of ppl as pernicious .
If your issue is their legality,legalize them by updating their paperwork. Again..facts ...40-50 percent of illegal immigrants came to this country legally(National Academy of Science,CBP).
Pls feel free to crawl back into your sphinctoral cavity.
Bigots deserve assholes.
What's interesting is how wet your pussy gets for deporting ppl who need updated paperwork,but is frigid as fuck when it comes to your fellow white trash drinking and driving as an example.
There are far more white trash mothsrfuckers like your family members who deserve far more scrutiny than some individual with incomplete paperwork.
Source on the "cut by half" statistic? If this refers to 2020, that's pandemic-confounded. If you're referring to pre-2020, I don't think the statistic is true.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2024#:~:text=In%20fiscal%20year%20(FY)%202022,of%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic.
Many illegal immigrants are working at small businesses that are fine paying them under the table because they're lying about their taxes anyway. ~50% of small businesses in NYC are committing tax fraud of varying degrees. Enforce the existing tax code and create a culture where tax fraud is looked down upon because paying your taxes is the right thing to do. A series of small reforms like this would go a long way in helping the problem and be good for the country anyway.
very funny, im sure you can morally shame people into parting with their money
The bottom line is that illegal immigration is 1) totally unfair to anyone who has come to America legally, 2) essentially gives the US zero clue about who’s entering, 3) causes immense costs for communities (schools etc.). It has to stop. Harris might say she’ll be “tough on the border” but i think that’s complete political BS. Biden might be saying similar things ( or those who prop him up) but also just political BS. Mass deportation? I guess the devil is in the details. A migrant committing any crime? First flight out in a cargo plane. NYC spending $500 a night on migrants while our own homeless citizens sleep in the subway? C’mon man.
It's just false to say that anyone is sleeping on the subway because of migrants. NYC has a right to shelter and provides beds for anyone. The people sleeping on the subway pretty much all suffer from mental illness and have refused services many times. It's a sad problem that needs to be addressed, but it's not related to migrants.
I believe there is a desire to equate immigrants across time; but the idea that past immigrants came here to "receive services" is surely a fantasy, as is the idea that something is a strain on the public purse only if it did or didn't affect homeless people. Cities used to be about more things than housing homeless people, on the street or no - but I suppose that's a subject for another day.
Moron.
At least 40-50 percent of illegal immycame into this country legally,then overstayed(CBP)
They came in vetted,on visas.
As someone who came in legally, I hold zero grudges and don't consider it unfair to me or my family that immigrants lack paperwork and live here,or came in legally.
Fuck off bigot.
Calling everyone who disagrees with you a bigot is a large part of the reason that Trump won in 2016. Breaking laws is breaking laws, it doesn't matter if you came in legally. Learn how to speak in a civilized way or don't speak at all.
You are a bigot.
Your proclivity towards other people's paperwork and the costs to their lives you want to impose is striking .
I'm sure you turn yourself in every time you exceed the speed limit.
Disappear up your own arsehole,please.
Again, speak in a civilized way, or don't speak at all. I'm sorry for whatever personal experience you have gone through, the same way I'm sorry for someone who gets in trouble for breaking the speed limit, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't get in trouble for breaking the speed limit.
If I am going 120 miles an hour on the local roads, I will get upset at no one but myself for getting a ticket. And right now, we have 8 million people going 400 miles per hour, and any police who arrests them is accused of racism by idiots like you who are upset that they got caught speeding.
1)You don't know me.
2)And, I haven't gone through anything different a US citizen born here like you hasn't "gone through", so your presumptiveness is revealing of your bigotry right there.
3)Going 120 miles an hour is dangerous,and not the same as an illegal immigrant who lacks documentation, and considering 40-50 percent of them came here vetted on a visa, a significant portion entered legally.
4) The fact that you compare someone lacking in documentation to someone who drives recklessly is again revealing of your bigotry.
5) The reason I brought up the drunk driving example is to illustrate your cognitive dissonance.
If drunk driving laws were enforced,half the country would be in jail post Thanksgiving and Christmas,football game festivities. Many more are killed by white "patriotic" drunk drivers than illegal immigrants.
Apparently that doesn't eat at you as brown skinned ppl trying to better their lives,but lacking in paperwork.
6)You are a congnitively dissonant piece of shit bigot.
7)Again, motherfucker.... A speeding driver who puts other human beings at risk is different and way worse than a human being who's lacking in paperwork to affirm a geospatial notion of existence.
8)Fuck off.
I'm not white. This has nothing to do with bigotry. Look up the definition of that word, maybe go for a walk, touch some grass, and then come talk.
I came in legally. Am a US citizen,and almost surely subsidize your white trash ass with my income.
I don't consider it unfair. Fuck off bigot. You don't speak for immigrants. You just speak on behalf of your asshole, shit spouting motherfucker.
Interesting article. Devil’s advocate: over half the Mexican immigrants in your table have no high school diploma (net negative per the cited study) and over a quarter have nothing beyond a high school diploma (broadly neutral). Backing out some rough numbers does look like in aggregate it will be net negative. Difficult to see how illegals would contribute much to the tax purse if they’re stuck in the underground economy! I’d also be interested to see (a) the implications for violent crime rates specifically, (b) more recent data, given the surge seen since 2021 and (c) an attempt to quantify the broader societal implications of illegal immigration, difficult as it may be. I may have a look at (a) myself.
I came here to make that point about the tables, it definitely looks like Mexican/Central American immigration is economically negative, especially if you assume the undocumented portion of immigrants have lower average levels of education. That doesn't defeat the whole article but I'd love to see that point reformulated in that context.
Hispanics aren’t especially criminal if you adjust for age demographics. About the same as whites.
Age Adjusted murder rate is 6.9 per 100K for Hispanics and 3.3 for whites.... so over twice the murder rate. Sure, they're in no way our most violent demographic but not exactly the direction we want to go as a country.
Crime committed by low-skilled immigrants is a far stronger argument for opposing MENA immigration to Europe, than it is for opposing Latino immigration to the US.
Apparently they'll all stay uneducated to satisfy your arsehole's version of devils advocate.
Maybe that's what the white trash in your family did,and do....,but that may not be what brown skinned immigrants do.
I hope that clears up some misunderstanding, motherfucker.
Your doctor prescribes those meds for a reason. Best for everyone if you can stick with them.
The doctor had prescribed an orgy with the women in your family.
Just got done.
You can clean them up.
You just want to hear your own voice about people's lives you know nothing about.
Maybe go fuck your wife,or something.
Some people will never be satisfied, until the border is turned into a landmine-laden DMZ. It still won't get them their cherished Volkstaat which has never existed to begin with.
"There are really only two important policy proposals: very high tariffs, and immigration restriction."
You left out "slashing taxes for the very wealthy and corporations, including slashing IRS enforcement to allow wealthy tax cheats to get away with criminal tax evasion." That seems to actually be their _number one_ priority, if you believe that actual enacated laws represent "revealed preference".
The thing that I like least about the right wing immigration agenda is its scapegoating and complete lack of ownership. The broken asylum process is OUR (America's) fault. An endless series of Congresses during the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden administrations have failed to close the asylum loopholes that have created this situation. It's not a Democratic or a Republican issue, it's an American issue, and Congress failing to pass the latest reform bill a few months ago is nothing new.
When I hear "mass deportation now!" what it means to me is "let's rip apart millions of migrant families as compensation for OUR inability to legislate effectively."
Isn't the broken asylum process more a result of flawed international treaties, which explains why most Western countries are having similar issues with asylum seekers?
Indeed! But government and/or Congress accept or decline these treaties. Either way the people "in charge" have allowed a situation where it's highly attractive for a migrant to take their chances at crossing into the country (not to mention that our phrase "The American Dream" is essentially a marketing slogan encouraging them to try). Pinning this entirely on the migrants themselves and wiping our hands of any responsibility is childish lunacy.
I'm guessing the scale of international migration was far smaller decades ago (most likely due to the much higher real cost of long-distance travel) when the relevant treaties (such as the New York Protocol of 1967) were signed.
You are making way too much sense Patrick... The voters and politicians don't want to take responsibility for this, they instead want to blame a group of people instead of actually funding DHS, and Border Patrol properly and they don't want to give ICE the tools to go after companies breaking the law because they are too afraid of their lobbyists. It's an entire clown show...
Is the problem that because immigrants are generally poor, the stuff which goes up in price due to greater demand is more likely to be things which blue collar Americans buy or spend a higher proportion of their income on - e.g. low cost housing, rents, every day necessities - whereas the stuff that goes down in price are things which blue collar workers can't afford / don't spend much on anyway - like gardeners and pool cleaners - or which they earn a living by providing - such as gardening and pool cleaning and other manual work? Both effects may net each other out in things like manufacturing of essentials. But in services blue collar workers probably lose earnings without gaining anything in terms of lower prices. This has always been my assumption, anyway. But maybe in aggregate it doesn't work out like that.
Demonizing illegal immigrants is probably the GOP's absolute favorite wedge angle, bar none. They love it even more than gay-bashing. Entirely hypocritical as well, as the dominant Business Wing of the party absolutely loves and craves illegal labor for their low cost and relative docility; but publicly pushes the "immigrant invasion" rhetoric almost entirely as a GOTV tool. GOP administrations like Trump's have always preferred to NOT solve illegal immigration in any meaningful way; preferring to keep it as a perennial campaign issue they can blame on the Dems. Trump's failure to build the wall during the first two years of his presidency--when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress--as well as his recent torpedoing of Lankford-Sinema, are proof of how much the GOP wants to keep the border unstable.
But since the economy is still running hot, the sheer number of illegals in key border states like TX, AZ, etc. are indeed a problem. Before the Mexico-California border was properly walled and patrolled in the late ;80's and early 90's there was a similar public backlash in liberal CA; one so severe it resulted in the successful passage of the anti-immigrant Prop 187. Maybe Lankford-Sinema can be revived by cooler heads once the election is over, for the good of the country.
If the economy is running "hot"..it means labor demand exceeds labor supply generally.
You then proceed to claim" number of illegals...is a problem".
You make no sense.
Imo, there is currently an oversaturation of border crossers; especially in TX/AZ/NM. Which stresses local, state and national resources, including shelters and the courts. Before CA got its' own wall in the 90's from San Diego westwards to the AZ border, it too was oversaturated, causing political backlash. When the *volume* of crossers oversaturates integration capacity, it's a problem.
"oversaturation"..
"imo"...
My arsehole has an oversaturated opinion sometimes in the morning that resembles your opinion.
I always flush it down the toilet .
Maybe,before you form an "opinion", learn to read stuff that's better than shit.
Before the border wall was finished here in CA, the nightly news was full of segments on crossers. The situation created a GOP-driven anti-immigrant backlash that resulted in the passage of Prop 187--in ultra-liberal California!
The wall was finished, and now crossers go instead to AZ, NM, TX.
Ignoring the problem won't make it go away. Pretending there is no problem is not the answer, Aravind. Perpetuating the problem only fuels the rise of the Right and Far Right.
Historically,looking at CBP data....there isn't a problem that's commensurate with the narrative you seem to have accepted,or the narrative the GOP trots out by the minute.
Crossing are up significantly more than 50,000/month...but the economy is larger too,and we're just coming out of an exogenous supply suded shock as far as labor force dynamics (Covid).
Using these economic shocks as a prescriptive tool to villify irregular immigrants is misplaced factually.
So, posture to yourself.
The facts don't substantiate your ad hoc bullshit
Who's vilifying illegal immigrants? Get your facts straight; unless your just trolling.
Don't kid yourself over the charade of the "bipartisan" amnesty act , no conservative will vote for it.
"conservative".
What is "conservative" about non-amnesty?
Substitute "racist xenophobe who engages in rubbernecking cruelty" for "conservative"
The bill was all about amnesty , a road to citizenship (how about remain in Mexico, get in line and complete an application) and more incentives to break in. Qualify to get in based upon your merit regardless of your race - hard to see racism in that (unless you see racism in everything) .
"how about..."
Your "how about"-ness makes less sense than the opinion my asshole has every morning that I flush down the toilet.
Define" merit"
Definitely be "merit".
Trans-bashing is gay-bashing. Drag queen-bashing is gay-bashing.
what the hell are drag queens anyway and why should anyone give a fuck
Drag queens are male entertainers who dress as women while performing. As for why anyone should give a fuck, well, as far as I can tell there isn't any good reason!
You're most likely underestimating the economic costs of deporting even a small number of illegal immigrants. Consider the case of Georgia in 2011. That year, the state government started a program to deport all illegal immigrants who work in picking strawberries. The deportations of the illegal immigrants was so successful, $75 million worth of strawberry crop was never picked and therefore lost.
Further, as the state of Georgia tried various incentive plans to get native born Americans to pick strawberries, these failed and, the fear of deportation and raids resulted in fewer workers who wanted to pick other crops, which led to about a shortage of eleven thousand farm workers.
Consider this on a national level. 30% of all workers who work in slaughterhouses are in the country illegally. Mass deportations would likely result in large spikes of food inflation. Does the Trump administration and Republicans have a plan to attract native born Americans to these jobs? Most likely, they don't.
Well, picking strawberries is generally considered a very unpleasant job, so unless it pays significantly better than the alternatives, people aren't going to want to do it if they can get other work. You *can* get Americans to do almost anything if you pay them enough money, but in this case, "enough money" might be more than you can sell the strawberries for. :(
But if you don’t have raids that terrorize the out-group, what’s the point of being a conservative. Conservatives know they are the real-Americans, the good people, that’s the whole premise of Trumpism; joyously punishing everyone else is the whole point of their existence. Why support Trump if you don’t get liberal tears?
I would say non-citizens count as a valid out group. If you don't think so then you should really be advocating for more transfer of payment entitlements to the poorest people in the world.
We should do more to help poor people in other countries; in fact it’s the best way to reduce immigration from those countries. AND, you are forgetting that citizens that look like non-citizens get terrorized too. Papers please.
"terrorized" is being asked for your identification? How soft you are.
And yeah of course we could bankrupt our own country if we treat non-citizens as an in-group, as you have suggested, then there would be no reason for anyone to immigrate. You're simply moralizing and that's not a good basis for policy. Stop being so emotional.
Spoken by a white guy that can’t even imagine not being part of the privileged in-group. Probably not concerned with being pulled over by the police either, after all, what could happen? You should study police states, or at least watch Casablanca.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-030-0780-28,_Krakau,_Razzia_von_deutscher_Ordnungspolizei.jpg
I live in Mexico and the police have in fact robbed money from my pockets. It's common here and it's not in the US. Try to study reality and not movies
My taxes probably(I'd say surely....) subsidize you. Almost surely. id prefer to subsidize someone else. Maybe self deport. That way I don't have to subsidize the loser you are. Your mom's pussy spat you out Stateside,and I'm still paying for your fucking ass. What a loser. At least if I'm subsidizing the actual global poor, there's the spillover benefit of increased marginal benefits....both to the US,and the world.
They’re not eligible for welfare or social security yet millions of noncitizen immigrants contribute payroll taxes that fund, among other things, social security and Medicare. Republicans literally want to gut the service labor sector and defund the very social safety programs most popular with their constituents.
Noah is a smart lib who loves to re-shape the statistics to his favor. No need for big deportation infrastructure, you simply stop the flow at the border. If you have a 6 inch hole in the boat, bailing out a cup of water isn't going to help much. The rest can go as they are caught. The demand to get in isn't going down, but allow highly educated or skilled only - think of deporting 2 Honduran gangster and importing 1 nurse (the opposite of Biden's prisoner swaps). Not sure where Noah lives, but here in Kamalfornia the schools are full of non-english speaking illegals, hospitals are overrun ...they all get free healthcare here. All those Lib Mayors sure complain alot about what Noah thinks is a great gift given them by our Border Czar.
"Noah is a smart lib who loves to re-shape the statistics to his favor."
In other words, he is advancing an argument. Smith has a PhD in economics, so he was literally educated to do the very thing you describe in order to earn his doctorate.
It's like being outraged that attorneys love to re-shape laws to their favor.
The illegals themselves are not eligible but their kids will be... and statistically they will be low-productivity, low educated types that are a net drain on the state coffers.
Source for this statement?
>The illegals themselves are not eligible but their kids will be... and statistically they will be low-productivity, low educated types that are a net drain on the state coffers.
If an immigrant has a kid born here, that means that their child is a citizen.... Additionally, as of right now... 45% of adult SNAP recipients were non-Hispanic white, 27% were Black, and 22% were Hispanic. For child recipients, 35.8% were Hispanic, 27% were Black, and 31.5% were non-Hispanic white. Or do you only care about brown people that are immigrants or forget about how many white people in America that are citizens that drain the coffers?
Sources:
https://www.cato.org/briefing-paper/immigrant-native-consumption-means-tested-welfare-entitlement-benefits-2020#conclusion
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/19/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-u-s/#:~:text=Non%2DHispanic%20White%20people%20accounted,and%2035.8%25%20of%20child%20recipients.
Historically and as of right now native-born Americans receive more welfare and entitlement benefits per capita than immigrants, especially for Medicare and Social Security. The only exception is elderly immigrants who receive more Medicaid per capita than elderly native-born Americans.
This is a complex topic, that you seem insistent throughout your comments on this thread to prove or just muddy the waters by saying immigrants are low educated types that drain state coffers and society. When the data keeps saying that isn't true.... You ignore the fact that children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers, regardless of when their parents came to the U.S. or which country they came from. That is insightful because to me it shows that they have an effort to prove to themselves, family and society that they need to work harder to be accepted as an American. People like you don't seem to speak in these types of generalities when it is your family member or a native born American that is 2nd, 3rd or 10th generation and they are still struggling like their ancestors, but seem to take it personally when they are a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant that may get a benefit.
Source: https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/intergenerational-mobility-of-immigrants-over-two-centuries/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/12/29/1221780712/more-states-extend-health-coverage-to-immigrants-even-as-issue-inflames-gop
Bro, i think you write some interesting stuff, but lately your getting way too leftist for my taste. Calling political candidates that you dont like "weird" is childish to say the least. And its especially ironic when you support people like "Tampon" Tim and Kamala Harris who think its completely normal for people males to compete in womans sports and use preferred pronouns and stuff.
Please stick to economics because there you at least make a little sense.
You're mad and called him childish for him using weird, but reflexively bust out Tampon Tim. Tell us how you really feel.
Why are conservatives so obsessed with trans people? Do they not realize that this is like the 1,000th most important item on the liberals' agenda? I *never* see this topic brought up by Democrats.
Not so sure .. Biden did recently declare Easter Sunday ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’. And there was this, for example:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/13/joe-biden-usa-transgender-rights-children-ban-surgery-florida/
You do realize that Transgender Day of Visibility ALWAYS falls on March 31st and has since its inception in 2009, and Easter just HAPPENED to fall on March 31st in 2024? That he didn't declare all Easter Sundays hence forth to be Transgender Day of Visibility??
Considering you brought it up in the first place, I'm sure that you didn't actually realize that.
about who ? Tampon Tim? Nomen est omen.
OK, weirdo. :)
Wtf could you speak English please, this is America
I can see that this is america since your too dumb to google a quite common latin phrase.
Why should I have to learn a different language in my own country? Go back to Latinia if you want to speak Latin so badly
You're reading an article by a guy who is very open about being liberal and complaining that he leans too left? I think there's clearly conflict of interest here.
Not the most important thing to mention, but - I like the Woody Guthrie original of Deportee (Plane Crash at Los Gatos) but I love the Highwaymen with Johnny Rodriguez version.