Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Cato Institute has released a couple of studies recently showing that low-skill immigrants are valuable. (The papers lump together all immigrants, but the majority of immigration in recent decades was low-skill.)

“Immigrant and Native Consumption of Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2023” classifies Social Security as “welfare”. The Social Security Administration calculates a real rate of return on taxes paid into the system at 2-4 percent/year for a medium-wage worker and, thus, someone who invested in the S&P 500 and received a 6 percent/year real return would be a “welfare queen”.

“Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023” says that low skill immigrants are the reason that we can afford our magnificent government. Much of the study hinges on birthright citizenship. If a migrant has 10 U.S.-born children and each child costs the Treasury $3 million (public school education, public housing, Medicaid, etc.) the costs of those 10 kids are put into the “native” category. One fun part:

Indirect property tax revenue: The one semidynamic element that we incorporate into the NASEM model is the effect of immigration on housing values. By increasing the demand for housing, immigration increases the value of property, which increases property tax revenues.

In other words, one benefit of open borders is that the tens of millions of people who walk across will drive up the value of residential real estate and, thus, property tax revenue. I.e., contrary to other propaganda in which Econ 101 supply-demand curves don’t apply, the Cato nerds say that a migrant-expanded population drives up housing costs for native-born Americans.

(I don’t think that Cato is correct, incidentally, that more valuable real estate leads to more property tax revenue. The typical city has a budget and then sets a property tax rate sufficient to fund that budget given the total assessed value within the city. If Ayatollah Mamdani drove every successful person from NYC down to Florida and property values in Palm Beach County doubled, the county wouldn’t keep the rates the same and immediately double its spending.)

Cato used to believe in markets. This is plainly no longer true. They didn’t ask the obvious questions, e.g.,

• If low-skill immigrants are a gold mine, why won’t some other country pay us to send them the migrants whom we are deporting?
• Why don’t other countries compete with us for migrants, then? If we offer a green card via diversity lottery to a person in Mali, for example, why don’t Australia, Taiwan, Mexico, or Canada jump in and try to persuade that person to go elsewhere? Why don’t Japan and France have offices in northern Mexico offering to fly U.S.-destined migrants to their nations?

What kind of Scientists at Cato could do a study proving Scientifically that every low-skill migrant is worth $1 million despite the fact that no country anywhere in the world has offered to pay even $1 for one of our deported migrants?

The answer arrived via direct message. A rich Democrat who lives in the Boston area recently criticized me for referring to his state as “Maskachusetts” and noted that Science had proven (“data shows”) 500 million to 1 billion lives saved from people wearing their saliva-soaked face rags. How does this relate to Cato’s contrary-to-the-market conclusions regarding immigration?

Nobody right now will pay for Scientific proof that forcing 2-year-olds to wear cloth masks prevents an aerosol respiratory virus from spreading. The Scientists who did that research can now apply their nonbinary selves to proving that low-skill migrants from the world’s least successful and most violent societies are a huge plus for any country wise enough to welcome them.

State-sponsored NPR on the suffering of native-born Americans when their low-cost migrant laborers depart… “Reporter’s Notebook: He was my fruit vendor for years. I saw immigration agents take him”:

I love sliced fruit, and for seven years, my go-to vendor has been a man named Jesús. I could always find him under two large rainbow umbrellas next to a gas station in my Los Angeles neighborhood, Echo Park.

And that’s when I heard a scuffle. Two large, dark SUVs had rolled up, and I saw masked agents in Border Patrol vests chasing Jesús out from under his rainbow umbrella and across the gas station. He ran between the pumps. That’s where they grabbed and handcuffed him, while he was still wearing his black apron.

Despite sophisticated communications and IT infrastructure, the progressive insurgency couldn’t save this migrant from the Gestapo 2.0:

Within minutes, several activists showed up. They were with a group that tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Echo Park, and they told me a witness had reported it to a rapid-response phone number. As word spread, customers and friends of Jesús started showing up too.

Jorge Mejía, a longtime customer, told me he rushed over when he heard. He told me things I already knew — that Jesús cared about his customers and about quality, and that’s why people loved him.

“I feel helpless,” Mejía said, his eyes filling with tears, his voice breaking. “It angers me that this is happening to people just working and trying to get ahead.”

Undocumented migrants are such a high percentage of the Los Angeles population that small businesses can’t survive without them:

Ariel Padilla met Jesús on the day Padilla moved into the neighborhood a decade ago. It was a hot day and the cold fruit hit just right. Last summer, Padilla organized a fundraiser for Jesús when sales were slow because many of his immigrant customers were too afraid to go outside.

“He was a landmark of this part of the neighborhood,” Padilla told me after he rushed over when he heard the news. “Now I’m trying to think about: How can I help him?”

The neighborhood will never be the same now that people have to slice their own fruit (or pay a higher price to have fruit sliced for them by authorized immigrants; plainly paying for a native-born fruit slicer is not an option):

The next morning I learned, from Padilla, that Jesús had already been removed to Tijuana, Mexico. He had agreed to be deported because he feared languishing for months in LA’s notorious immigration detention center.

Since his arrest, I’ve driven by his corner and struggled to make sense of the fact that someone who brought so much simple joy to my neighborhood for almost 20 years had been whisked away before my eyes. That every time I pass I’ll picture that scene. And that that corner will never be the same.

The reporter won’t do the 2.5-hour drive to Tijuana to meet Jesús and find out if it is possible for a Mexican to live in Mexico (population 133 million)?

In other immigration news, folks on Martha’s Vineyard are reminding everyone that “All are welcome here”:

One initiative on the Island is a newly formed group called Martha’s Vineyard Fourth Amendment (MV 4A). It has created signage for local businesses to put on windows, is conducting constitutional rights training, and has amassed more than 60 volunteers in the past couple of months.

The signs are a neon green color, with bold black lettering, and can be seen in storefront windows at Cronig’s Market, Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, and Tisbury Printer, among others. The signs are available through their website. “All are welcome here,” the posters read. “We know our Fourth Amendment rights.” The Fourth Amendment is a part of the U.S. Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

“Putting up signage is a way for our community to come together. It’s a way to send a message to each other that we care about each other. It says what kind of a community we want to be,” Ladd said. “It also says that we know our Fourth Amendment rights, which in some ways can be a deterrent for somebody who wants to violate your Fourth Amendment rights.”

The MV Times article doesn’t mention that the 50 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard in September 2022 (the off season when tons of housing was available) by the Deplorable Ron DeSantis were immediately moved “voluntarily” by 125 military soldiers (National Guard was called up) to a fenced military base.

I chatted yesterday with an older Bay Area Democrat with orthodox political views. For example, he transitioned from supporting Obama to Hillary to Biden to Kamala without noticing that there was any difference in their political views or plans. He tries to be moderate and calm so, rather than describe his plans to #resist, his position regarding the civil unrest in Minneapolis is that ICE agents should have “better training” and that this would reduce the number of riots and also prevent a repeat of the Alex Pretti shooting. I pointed out that ICE’s job was to apprehend undocumented enrichers and send them home. There was no reason to expect that they’d be trained in crowd control, have the necessary horses and equipment, etc. Crowd control required a lot more officers and was usually the job of a city police force.

Based on the videos that are circulating, Minneapolis is home to daily street brawls. Progressives fight against ICE agents, sometimes just making a lot of noise but also sometimes there is shooting when armed combatants on opposing sides get too close to each other. While these confrontations in the filthy snow proceed on camera the local police aren’t in the frame. Are the Minneapolis police relaxing in warm donut shops miles away? Aren’t the police supposed to “keep the peace” even if it means getting out in the miserable weather and even if they’re told by their mayor and governor not to assist the federal government (other than by using day cares to prevent the feds from accumulating too much taxpayer cash)?

I guess we can presume that the street brawls aren’t happening in elite neighborhoods because the elites would then demand that the peace be kept. But the police in most cities will go out to stop a brawl even in a non-elite neighborhood.

(A neighbor here in Jupiter pocket-dialed 911 around 9 pm a couple of years ago and, despite telling the operator that she didn’t need any help, four police cars arrived to investigate/assist. I was walking Mindy the Crippler with a neighbor who has two golden retrievers and came upon the scene. I asked an officer who was standing by his car if there had been a golden retriever attack. If the cops had shown up to find a brawl between ICE and some other group, I have to believe that they’d have intervened and at least said “Why don’t you all go to Minneapolis where they don’t mind fighting in the streets?”)

Loosely related, Inspector Clouseau concentrates on the monkey license question while a bank robbery is in progress:

Finally, let’s not forget that the Minneapolis Police do sometimes take aggressive action, as when Mohamed Noor killed Justine Damond.