“Will America Stand Again With the World’s Refugees?” (nytimes) is by a guy who gets a paycheck for bringing refugees into the U.S. (He works for World Relief, a non-profit that paid employees up to $265,000 per year in 2016, according to their IRS Form 990.)
He says
This year, the United States is on track to resettle fewer refugees than Canada, which has a population roughly one-tenth that of the United States.
with the implication that a country should try to bring in refugees as a percentage of its population.
Why does this make sense? Suppose that refugees will provide a net boost to an economy. Wouldn’t it therefore make sense for the most thinly populated countries, such as Canada, to take in the most refugees? Imagine if Canada had a current population of only 1 person and its current land area that is larger than the U.S. The refugees will show up, take care of themselves, and boost the economy on both an aggregate and a per-capita basis. Canada could take in 36 million refugees, under that scenario, and be pretty much where they are today (except their economy would be larger because immigrants are better at working than native-born citizens).
What if the people who promote immigration in general and refugees in particular are lying to us? Refugees are, in fact, a net drag on an economy. Since every additional refugee will require existing residents of a country to work longer hours and pay higher taxes, then it would make sense for the most populated countries to take in the most refugees because there will be a larger base of current residents whose labor can be exploited to support those refugees, their children, and their grandchildren.
Readers: What am I missing in the above analysis? Is there a third possibility that I’ve overlooked?
I think refugees are a drag on the economy.
Toucan Sam: Since you think (erroneously, presumably, since your thoughts contradict the NYT) this way… how many refugees do you want to support via working extra hours and paying extra taxes? The answer can be a fraction less than 1, e.g., that you and a co-worker together want to support just 1 refugee. (Or, since this is a no-judgment zone, it could be a small number, e.g., 1/1000th of a refugee.)
I guess another way to look at this is “How many extra hours per week are you willing to work in order to assist refugees settling in the U.S.?”
“What am I missing in the above analysis?”
Total population is a terrible measure for a country’s capacity to accept refugees.
Accepting refugees in proportion to population seems like a strange policy to me. Either (A), you believe that refugees needs are genuine in which case you should be willing to accept as many as necessary for humanitarian reasons, or (B) you do not in which case they should be treated no differently from ordinary immigrants.
Benjamin: “As many as necessary”? Aren’t there at least 1.2 billion living in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty that would need to be admitted as refugees? Plus up to 100 percent of the population of any country having a civil war. Toucan Sam may believe that these 1.2+ billion folks have “genuine needs” and yet still be unwilling to pay for them to live in the U.S. He is a great guy, I’m sure, but perhaps not Christ-like in his willingness to self-sacrifice. But, if the organizations that promote refugees, and the NYT, are telling us the truth… these 1.2 billion new Americans will support themselves. So we can admit them without requiring Toucan Sam to increase his generosity level (and, actually, he will be better off with 1.2 billion new neighbors in a society with a higher per-capita income for all, so he can support unlimited refugees without being altruistic or generous at all).
Thus it matters tremendously whether these folks will generate their own economic boom!
Of course refugees are a drain on our economy. They cost us many billions of dollars.
Even if they were a benefit, then bringing them would be bad for all the reasons that the slave trade was bad. It would be abusing people for the short term economic benefit of some slavers, and for long term Democrat votes.
Phil, please put me down for 0 refugees to support.
The United States have no obligation to accept ANY refugee. The only question when it comes to accepting immigrants is whether it benefits the US economy and should be subjected to merit and security based vetting. Refugees should apply like every other immigrant and be subjected to the same standards. Whether this results in the US taking a lot of refugees or very few is irrelevant. If Canada or the UN does not like it, it’s too bad.
Toucan Sam: What about supporting some refugees to live comfortably at a Club Med in a foreign country? So they’ll never come to your neighborhood and exacerbate traffic jams, etc. Wouldn’t you be willing to support 1/150 millionth of a refugee? Then you and your fellow American workers can watch your refugee enjoying life by the pool every day. And how about we go from there to 1/150 millionth of a refugee to live in San Francisco and drink pour-over $5 coffees? Surely we can agree that San Francisco, which passionately desires all kinds of immigrants, should be able to have one refugee. At $150,000 per year, your cost of being a do-gooder is less than a penny per year!
If we really want to help refugees, every dollar we spend on them is at least 10x more cost effective in their native countries. So we can help 10x more people by providing food/shelter/medial aid in their native country, rather than allowing any to immigrate here. Of course we should allow compassionate exceptions for people whose lives are truly in danger like Christians in Egypt or white farmers in South Africa.
philg: Basically I’m saying that everyone draws a line somewhere. Where exactly the line gets drawn is irrelevant, if you think someone is a “genuine refugee” then it is basically a tautology that you should accept their petition to enter the country regardless of what the population of your country. If they are not a “genuine refugee” then they should be treated the same as any other immigrant.
Where exactly the line is drawn is totally irrelevant to my argument.
Benjamin: That doesn’t make sense to me. The “refugees” who come to the U.S. are not in the U.S. (the “asylees” such as the Tsarnaev brothers, I think, were in the U.S. before being granted Green Cards and citizenship). So if you find someone who is suffering in a foreign country and want to help him or her, would’t it make more sense to set that suffering person up in a country with a higher quality of life than the U.S.? (see https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/these-countries-have-the-highest-quality-of-life for a partial list) If your home is crummy, why invite someone to live in your home rather than go to a nice home?
If I sincerely wanted to help a suffering human, I would never buy him a house in the Boston suburbs where he can freeze all winter, waste 1000+ hours per year in traffic jams, etc. If I truly had his best interests at heart, I would set him up in St. Augustine, Florida or, even better, on a beach in Queensland, Australia.
I think part of it it is simple the “white man’s burden” to save brown people. Or pathological altruism.
I work for a refugee agency, or as Phil might put it, I’m “a guy who gets a paycheck for bringing refugees into the U.S.” (and to help refugees and asylum seekers in numerous countries around the world; U.S. resettlement is just part of what my agency does) and I must remind those who have or might opine here that “refugee” is not a generic term. It is a very specific legal status given to people who are able to prove that they’ve fled their homes due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Could be war or being on the wrong side of a tribal or political dispute or due to their sexual orientation. The law, which came about as a result of the Refugee Convention of 1951 in direct response to horrors of World War II and the Holocaust and has been signed by more than 160 countries, is intended to prevent those forced to flee from being sent back to in harm’s way.
Refugee status, which is given by UNHCR and is not automatic (you must make your case), is limited to those who have crossed an international border. Those who have not (for example fleeing from Eastern Ukraine for Western Ukraine) are “internally displaced persons.” Refugees should not be confused with economic migrants, illegal immigrants, green card lottery winners, etc.
In my work, I’ve met many, many refugees and I cannot sit by idly as some so glibly, casually disparage them (Club Med, that’s hysterical) or misuse the term. These are people like you and me, who through no fault of their own have come into unimaginably shitty situations. And I believe as human beings, as Americans and in my case as a Jew, with a refugee background myself, we have a responsibility to help as we can.
That doesn’t mean “taking all the refugees” but it can mean taking some. Since the US Refugee Resettlement Program was created in 1980, we’ve admitted an average of 96,000 refugees per year. it’s been a very successful program and until very recently enjoyed widespread bipartisan support. We can and should also do what we can to protect refugees in their country of first asylum (where they initially flee), insure that refugee camps are humane and that those stuck there have access to health care, education and change to earn a living.
Most of the refugees I’ve met want nothing more than to return home. They don’t see their status as a golden ticket to live in the US or some other developing country (and BTW, refugees who end up being offered resettlement generally do NOT get to choose which country they go to). But if you’ve been a refugee for 4 or 9 or 15 years and you’ve gone through your life savings, don’t have the right to work and your kids are not receiving a proper education, then resettlement, which is not easy, may seem like the best option.
Countries should take their fair share, but it is overly simplistic to resettle based on population alone. It think if you want to be fair, then try to come up with a formula that takes into consideration population density, habitable land area, economic health, job opportunity, past history/tradition of refugee resettlement and perhaps cultural diversity. But the US-Canada example you cited does point to the fact that our country is lagging behind our neighbor to the North with which we share many similar characteristics. The Trump administration’s recent cut to the annual resettlement cap (to 45,000 from 110,000 the year before) is based totally on politics and fear.
Can a country of 350 million absorb a few hundred thousand a year? Absolutely. We’ve done it before (see: Vietnamese in the 1970s and Soviet Jews in the late 1990s). Might we sacrifice a bit (i.e. will it cost something) in the short term, sure, but there’s plenty of evidence that over time, refugees succeed in the U.S., pay taxes and contribute to society and are not a “net drag” on the economy.
No more crass Club Med for refugees scenarios please.
Why is suggesting Club Med crass? Low-skill refugees are unlikely to have significant earnings. If they, their children, their parents, and their extended family (chain migration!) are going to be maintained at U.S. taxpayer expense, why not spend the same amount of $$ and house them at a fabulous beach resort instead of in a crowded American city that is plagued with bad weather? If this is all about helping people, why not actually help them to have a great life on a nice beach?
[Or, if you believe your last assertion about today’s refugees becoming big contributors to the U.S. economy, why should there be any limit on how many we welcome? Why not let in 1 billion folks tomorrow if they will, on average, be net contributors? What American wouldn’t like to become wealthier because he or she is surrounded by 4 hard-working refugees? Apple doesn’t say “We’re making such a great profit on the iPhone X that we should sell only 100,000 of them per year.”]
@Bill Swersey
What does the UNHCR say about the obligations of a country that receives an applicant for political asylum/refugee status after he has crossed land boundaries of at least 3 safe countries prior to applying?
Assuming this person is granted refugee status, and subsequently travels on vacation to his original country, what is the appropriate action of the government that granted refugee status, when they realize he is not afraid of the government of his home country?
#15 – Phil – Do you ever pause and look at what you’re writing before you press submit? There are not 1 billion refugees in the world, the figure is more like 22.5 million (with refugee status). Integration into a new society is not an instantaneous process. Suddenly dropping 1 billion or even 22.5 million or even a few hundred thousands on folks tomorrow is not recommended (at least not by me), but that doesn’t mean that we can not and should not resettle.
Spending time on this blog the past few days, I’m really floored at how you over and over again present nonsense extreme arguments. I know you enjoy this forum and perhaps your primary goal is to incite, but the answer to most of the complex questions you pose lies somewhere between all or nothing.
Based on what you’ve written, I’m assuming you have absolutely zero experience with real refugees. It’s easy to write fiction, but what is the point of your totally baseless pejorative hypothetical scenario: “low-skill” refugees, extended family “chain migration” (surprised you’ve fallen for this fallacy – it takes years, even decades to reunite even nuclear families and is totally at the discretion of Federal authorities), refugees who want to sit on the beach all day rather than work, see their children get educated and be a part of society – none of this jibes with what I’ve seen first-hand. How do you go from helping people to sending them on a permanent vacation?
@Viking, I have no idea what UNHCR would say about that, I’m not an expert in the legal aspects of applying for refugee status. Is a refugee going back to the country he/she fled for a vacation something that you believe happens often?
@Bill Swersey
Let me get this straight: You are working for a “refugee agency” and you have no idea about the basic rules about UN members responsibilities? Let me quote the relevant rule:
“11. According to this use of the concept, asylum-seekers/refugees may be returned to countries where they have, or could have, sought asylum and where their safety would not be jeopardized, whether in that country or through return there from to the country of origin.”
From: http://www.unhcr.org/excom/scip/3ae68ccec/background-note-safe-country-concept-refugee-status.html
” Is a refugee going back to the country he/she fled for a vacation something that you believe happens often?” Google is your friend my friend!
https://redice.tv/news/somali-refugee-demands-swedish-citizenship-to-go-on-holiday-to-somalia
Bill: Only 22.5 million people worldwide with refugee status? Why? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty says that 1.2 billion people are in “extreme poverty.” Why are they not as deserving of refuge as any of the 22.5 million folks you cite? Anyway, if I can become Supreme Emperor of the Entire World, I will grant refugee status to anyone who is in “extreme poverty”!
Returning to the country where oppression was severe enough to warrant asylum? The Tsarnaev brothers’ parents did just that! After getting asylum because they couldn’t be safe in jihad-hating Russia, they went right back to Russia after some scrapes with U.S. law enforcement. See https://nypost.com/2013/04/25/boston-bombers-father-returning-to-us-mother-claims-terror-attack-was-fake-says-blood-was-paint/
Anyway, regardless of who is entitled to refugee status, I still don’t get why we would settle any in the U.S. for humanitarian purposes. We are constantly told how violent the U.S. is. We are also constantly told that it is tough for anyone without a professional degree to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Why wouldn’t it make sense for refugees, whom you say have had it tough, to go to a more peaceful and more affordable country?
But if, on the other hand, we are taking in these refugees for selfish reasons (because they will lift the incomes of the folks who already live in the U.S.), then I don’t see the rationale for having limits other than perhaps a constraint related to how fast we can build apartment buildings. (If we use Chinese techniques, that’s not much of a limit; see https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-build-57-storey-skyscraper-19-days-timelapse-video )
The joy of multiculturalism:
https://nypost.com/2018/01/31/teen-hit-with-bottle-after-rejecting-gropers-advances/
Bill, many of us are convinced that (1) the USA takes in too many immigrants/refugees/migrants/illegals or whatever you want to call them; (2) this policy has no measurable benefit to the rest of the world, as there are far too many poor people wanting to come here; (3) the policies continue because of a corrupt bargain between low-wage employers, Democrat voting interests, and other traitors.
You act as if there is something noble about this modern slave trade. There isn’t.
@Bill Swersey
You wrote “surprised you’ve fallen for this fallacy – it takes years, even decades to reunite even nuclear families”
Really? Must be different in the US since in Germany one woman brought 40 “family members” from Syria in just two years. Just from her husband’s side of the family.
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article171879858/Christliche-Syrer-Die-Frau-die-40-Syrer-in-ein-kleines-bayrisches-Dorf-holte.html
I’m thinking the definition of refugee had been muddied over the last decade or two. I remember refugees as those on the losing side (the side with which the US sympathized) of a war or conflict. Now refugee seems to include anyone determined to be from an economically disadvantaged area.
I look at the Cambodian/ Vietnamese refugees from the 80’s, of which a large population ended up in the Lowell/ Lawrence MA area. I’ve had the privilege to meet and/or work with many of these people. Their stories from their previous lives are harrowing and sad, many had experienced great losses and seen things no one should ever see. But what most of the them have done and accomplished is astonishing. I’ve worked with some of these people, from non-skilled assemblers, to professional managers. All that I have worked with have impressed me with their work ethic, and desire to fit in and work in their new country. I’m sure most of them received assistance to get here and to get set up here because most of them just had the shirt on their back to start with. I believe that they were granted refugee status, but were brought in and placed by charitable agencies, such as Catholic Charities and many others. I believe they understood that they were expected to support themselves and for most, that’s exactly what they have done.
That seems to have changed now, with the likes of Tsarnaevs and Aunt Zeituni (may she RIP).
Personally I have no issue with a sane refugee and immigration policy. This open border madness must end. I’m conflicted about amnesty, but those illegals collecting benefits should be sent back to place from whence they came.
I am perfectly okay without being a do-good-er! I guess that is what makes me a deplorable! I will not pay for 1 penny a day for refugees. They can stay in their shit hole/or shit house countries and they won’t make my traffic bad. I would be okay if they moved to san francisco because that city is already a shit hole/house and I never go there! Some say this is mean and not following in Jesus’s example. It’s a good thing I am an atheist and would like to point out that Jesus did get nailed to a cross at the end of the day!
Andy (#23) what is the relevance of something that allegedly happened in Germany to the sudden outrage over “chain migration” in the U.S? I’m American, we’re discussing U.S. immigration/refugee policy. Phil brought up “chain migration” – a completely biased, recently made-up term for legitimate family reunification, which is controlled, slow and certainly not without limits under U.S. law despite what Stephen Miller would have you think. Why not cite an example from Zimbabwe or Estonia or Borneo to make your point?
Paul (#24), Those who use the term refugee to mean “anyone determined to be from an economically disadvantaged area” are wrong. Period. The term has specific, legal meaning and those who meet the criteria merit protection and rights.
Sadly, this trend has been greatly exacerbated by the purposeful spreading of fearful false narrative for political gain (Trump, Stephen Miller) and commercial gain (Fox News, Breitbart).
Some don’t think that’s important and they throw the term around as it suits their argument. Like you, I’ve met refugees and I think it is important.
Geroge (#22) – How do you possibly equate refugee resettlement with slave trade?
Toucan Sam: You are a deplorable indeed!
Folks who wonder about the significance of chain migration:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/25/a-white-house-chart-on-chain-migration-has-numbers-that-add-up-but-lacks-context/?utm_term=.7aa734056039
says it is 700,000 immigrants per year who show up via this process. That’s more than the populations of the City of Boston (i.e., not counting the suburbs), Washington, D.C., Detroit, Portland (OR), Las Vegas, or Kansas City. It is slightly less than the population of Seattle. As a mental picture, every year there is a Boston- or Seattle-sized new city within the U.S. populated entirely by chain migrants.
Separately, I think the longest waiting period is for those who have “anchor babies.” https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens/parents/bringing-parents-live-united-states-permanent-residents says that the U.S. citizen has to be 21 to sponsor an adult. Here’s a recent Facebook conversation on which I was shared:
The young mom went back south of the border to relax. She’ll be able to come back with a Green Card, sponsored by her child, in 21 years.
Viking (#19) – Yes, I work for a refugee agency (no quotes needed) and yes, I’m woefully ignorant of refugee law, but thanks for educating me it for me! You’re pretty good with the google.
And yes, I asked if “a refugee going back to the country he/she fled for a vacation something that you believe happens often?”
Often, not rarely, not once, but often.
of·ten
ˈôf(t)ən,ˈäf(t)ən
adverb
frequently; many times.
Oh, and thanks too for that one excellent example from that highly respected news site http://redice.tv.
Chain migration plus no-fault divorce:
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2018/01/31/worcester-man-charged-with-marrying-6-women-to-evade-immigration-laws
And
http://www.telegram.com/news/20180130/worcester-man-accused-of-6-fraudulent-marriages
See also
http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/04/29/au-pair-to-green-card/
For a story about how our various laws interact. (Chain migration plus violence against women)
Phil (#20) Poverty is a problem, but it is not the same as fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution. If you want to try to change that, be my guest, but as long as the definition of a refugee under international law does not change, let’s try to stay on topic, shall we?
Can you argue without getting hysterical? Citing the Tsarnayevs as representative of anything other than one disfunctional family is meaningless. It is also meaningless to hold up the example of one asylee returning to the country from which he/she fled as some sort of proof that refugee or asylum protection is not needed. Such status is not a life sentence.
“We are constantly told how violent the U.S. is.” We are? Violent crime has been on the decline in the U.S. for decades. I remember when the murder rate in NYC wasmore than 2000/year. Last year it was less than 300, the lowest in 70 years.
“We are also constantly told that it is tough for anyone without a professional degree to afford a comfortable lifestyle.” Who is constantly telling you this? Maybe you should consider watching a different channel.
@Bill Swersey
“what is the relevance of something that allegedly happened in Germany”
It’s the same discussion about exactly the same problem.
“Why not cite an example from Zimbabwe or Estonia or Borneo to make your point?”
Because the benefits in Zimbabwe compared to Germany or Sweden or the US create different incentives. People are not stupid and the Internet helps to compare.
“certainly not without limits under U.S. law”
I tried to find the limit but didn’t find a number. Can you tell me this elusive number?
If a factory can produce 100 cars a day with 50 workers, it should be able to produce 200 cars a day with 100 workers! If a restaurant can serve 25 people an hour with a staff of 12, it should be able to serve 50 people an hour with a staff of 24! If a hospital can care for 1000 people a day with a staff of 100, it should be able to care for 2000 with a staff of 200, or 3000 with a staff of 300, or, hell, 100000 with a staff of 10,000!
I’m not an economist, but I’d imagine someone has done work on intertemporality and the law of diminishing marginal returns. As with a firm, so with a country — in the short run. The concept is the same, it’s just a difference of scale.
To put it differently, there isn’t enough infrastructure, human and physical, for a country to absorb massive numbers of new people in a short period of time. New entrants have to be housed, fed, clothed, and educated etc before they are ready to be full contributors to society. Thus, the heuristic of % of existing population is perfectly reasonable. Surely this is obvious?
bub: Econ 101 and the concept of diminishing marginal returns suggests that a country with more population should take FEWER immigrants, as noted in the original posting, because there are already plenty of people to exploit the country’s natural resources such as farmland, water, etc. The 100th worker on a farm adds less value than the 10th. Thus if refugees are going to be productive workers it would make sense for the most thinly populated countries to take the most. It is only when refugees are considered dependents that it would make sense for a densely populated country to take more. That way each refugee can have a Toucan Sam to work for him/her (since he doesn’t want to work on behalf of a refugee, he will have to be coerced by politicians backed up by an armed police force, prisons, etc.).
[One could argue that natural resources are irrelevant to wealth in our 21st century world. Therefore there are no constraints on marginal returns to extra people because one can always build more infrastructure and the GDP is a result of people working on this built infrastructure (and the Chinese demonstrate that one can build infrastructure crazy fast). But I don’t think that this is true due to the two-dimensional nature of our built environment. Once population reaches a certain density, traffic becomes gridlocked no matter how many new roads are built and people stop working because they don’t want to commute (and, e.g., have savings or a working spouse or a welfare paycheck and therefore don’t need to work in order to survive).]
Andy (#31) – Different countries have different laws, Phil specifically brought up “Chain Migration” in a U.S. context and in the U.S. family reunification (as it is properly called) for refugees and asylum seekers is a regulated program with specific limits. It does NOT, as President Trump said in his State of The Union address on Tuesday night, allow those already here to bring in “virtually unlimited” numbers of relatives.
https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-refugees-asylees
“If you entered the United States as a refugee within the past 2 years or were granted asylee status within the past 2 years, you may petition for certain family members to obtain derivative refugee or asylee status. You May Petition for the Following Family Members:
– Spouse
– Child (unmarried and under 21 when you first applied for asylum or refugee status)”
Is that clear enough for you? If you want to read more: http://www.rcusa.org/blog/family-reunification-for-refugees-and-asylees
Also, petitioning only begins the process, applicants are subject to interview, vetting, medical exam, and can be rejected at any stage in the process.
Bill – This blog is some combination of the jerry springer and Da Ali G shows – so it’s real fun but I wouldn’t expect careful analysis or meaningful policy positions.
@Bill Swersey: I’m sure you are aware that during the Syrian ongoing war many refugees from Syria, Africa and Afghanistan crossed several countries to reach Germany for asylum? They could have asked for asylum in Greece or Italy or Turkey, the first and the least risky rout but they opted for Germany. Care to tell us why?
Also, before the Syrian war, there was no mass migration, to the scale that we see now, from Africa to Europe. Those from Africa are not migrating for fear of their life, but for economical reasons. They are not families, they are individuals.
For the record, I’m from Syria, who migrated, legally, to the USA back in 1981. I have close families in Aleppo and I know for fact they know that many from Syria who fled Syria wanted to land in Germany and no where else and many of them are young men, not families.
Yes, being a refugee is terrible and very miserableness and many families used all of their life saving and risk their lives for the journey. However, that is a small percentage of the overall refugee.
@George A.
“@Bill Swersey: I’m sure you are aware that during the Syrian ongoing war many refugees from Syria, Africa and Afghanistan crossed several countries to reach Germany for asylum? They could have asked for asylum in Greece or Italy or Turkey, the first and the least risky rout but they opted for Germany. Care to tell us why?”
It is clear that we (USA & Europe) consider Turkey a legitimate and safe country, since we allow them to be a NATO members, and we are not discussing interventions there. Thus, to be legitimate refugees, all those that came through Turkey had to apply for refugee status in Turkey.
The various immigration authorities across Europe and North America that do not use such information to disqualify known false refugees are indeed hurting their own country, because their paycheck matters more than the long term viability of the country as a liberal democracy and high trust society.
It is interesting that by Bill S.’s circular reasoning, any news source that point out the large abundance of false refugees is alt-right fake news, just saying something like that destroys the news outlet’s reputation:
“Oh, and thanks too for that one excellent example from that highly respected news site http://redice.tv.”
I follow Norwegian newspapers, and throughout the last decade, there have been numerous mentions of cases where so called refugees go back to their country of origin. In fact, my friend who is a Norwegian social worker confirms it is quite common that Somalis bring all their kids to Norway so they can be registered for benefits, and thereafter sent back to Somalia to live with relatives, as cost of living is much less.
philg – I just came across something in my notes that I should have shared earlier – researchers at Stanford are working on an algorithm to try to improve placement of resettled refugees so they have a better chance of finding decent jobs.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6373/325.full
“Data-driven refugee assignment – The continuing refugee crisis has made it necessary for governments to find ways to resettle individuals and families in host communities. Bansak et al. used a machine learning approach to develop an algorithm for geographically placing refugees to optimize their overall employment rate. The authors developed and tested the algorithm on segments of registry data from the United States and Switzerland. The algorithm improved the employment prospects of refugees in the United States by ∼40% and in Switzerland by ∼75%.”
I know you have a sincere interest in refugees being able to support themselves (other than the ones you want to send on permanent vacations to ClubMed), so perhaps this could be part of the solution to that concern.
It (obviously) seems that migration here was a factor of conditions elsewhere: lack of economic opportunity, famine, persecution. Historically, most migrants came without the expectation of government support. Now that a welfare state exists, and “rights” to claims against finite state resources exist to varying degrees, then it stands to reason that more scrutiny be paid to the prospective migrant’s requirements and expectations as well as resources, financial and otherwise (security issues aside.) High living standard countries, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as examples have unambiguous requirements of migrants: they want people who will be obvious net assets to the society, have salable and needed job skills, good health and are young enough to have a sufficient opportunity to pay taxes into the state treasury before drawing retirement and other benefits. They score applicants based on projected needs for specific worker skills and have a numerus clausus approach to granting work visas. If you don’t make the cut-off, tough luck. Apply next year. There appears to be a reluctance to impose similar discipline here, and there also appears to be a steady willingness to thwart efforts with dodges like “chain migration,” which appears to invite extended invitations to family of admitted persons for no better reason than they are related. The laws that require financial responsibility for family members brought here on compassionate grounds seem rarely enforced.
The proportion of migrants to existing population as a principle for limiting admissions does not seem particularly logical except as a means to cap potential demands on welfare support services made by new arrivals. It really doesn’t get to the need to select persons with necessary skills, education, or capital to invest in the country.
@George A.
“@Bill Swersey: I’m sure you are aware that during the Syrian ongoing war many refugees from Syria, Africa and Afghanistan crossed several countries to reach Germany for asylum? They could have asked for asylum in Greece or Italy or Turkey, the first and the least risky rout but they opted for Germany. Care to tell us why?”
I’m sorry, I cannot tell you exactly why some refugees from Syria, Africa and Afghanistan crossed several countries to reach Germany for asylum when they could have asked in another country. I can surmise that there was a sense among some that Germany was accepting refugees and that Greece and other countries were overwhelmed and that the wait for an asylum hearing was months or even years, but that’s just my guess and probably does not answer for all individuals who made decisions over a period of time.
“Also, before the Syrian war, there was no mass migration, to the scale that we see now, from Africa to Europe. Those from Africa are not migrating for fear of their life, but for economical reasons. They are not families, they are individuals.”
Yes, it is true there has been a significant increase in economic migrants seeking entry into Europe in recent years. And, correct, these are not refugees.
“For the record, I’m from Syria, who migrated, legally, to the USA back in 1981. I have close families in Aleppo and I know for fact they know that many from Syria who fled Syria wanted to land in Germany and no where else and many of them are young men, not families.”
Again, German has been the most welcoming country in Europe the past few years, so it is understandable that refugees would seek to go there. Historically, it has not been unusual for families to send their younger men ahead to find work, housing before calling for the rest of the family. It’s actually a logical approach. That’s how some in my family came to the United States 100+ years ago.
“Yes, being a refugee is terrible and very miserableness and many families used all of their life saving and risk their lives for the journey. However, that is a small percentage of the overall refugee.”
I don’t know where you get this information about “small percentage of the overall refugee.”
Should young, able-bodied men be in a refugee population? Shouldn’t they be fighting or building?
The issue with refugee status is that it is conflated with more common voluntary migrant status. Refugees re-locate presumably to avoid an immediate and pressing hardship so severe as to preclude survival in their home nation: war, insurmountable natural disaster, and persecution. No one presumes to restrict the refugee to a temporary status that requires eventual return to their home countries when improved conditions allow, permanent re-settlement appears to be the expected outcome.
In a welfare-state, the capacity to accept refugees or migrants is limited, and is also limited anywhere the capacity to obtain gainful work to enable self-support is limited.
A strategy for immediate relief on a humanitarian basis does not require re-settlement in the locale of the place of first safe landing. Resettlement elsewhere, depending on both willingness of the receiving nation and the refugee, but resettlement in one’s place of origin, provided safe conditions exist there, should also be available. None of those necessarily requires placement in numbers proportional to the accepting country’s native population size.
What keen insight! Why stop at barring entry to refugees? Time for some retroactive deresettlement of all the ancestors of immigrants, until our great nation is no longer blighted by the specter of supporting immigrants at all. Then THEY can build a beautiful impenetrable wall from the outside, and pay for it with their ill-gained wealth, sucked at the expense of others.
Some will ask, “How many hours am I willing to work to support immigrants?” I wonder if it’s appropriate to ask, “What has immigration ever done for me?”
Immigration has increased home prices and correspondingly property taxes, but depressed wages, so it’s reduced class mobility as you have to pretty much have money from relatives to come up with the multiple years of salary needed for a reasonable, non-FHA down payment. A lucky few can sell a house they or a relative bought ten or twenty years ago and buy in that way, but that’s not so common and getting less possible each year.
Those high property taxes haven’t improved the schools. Immigration has simply resulted in all the extra money flowing to ESL programs with low ratios and bilingual-bonus-salaried teachers while non-immigrant children have up to 40 kids per teacher. Voicing concerns about the spending priorities, is, of course, met with derision and dismissal by immigrant-friendly residents employed in things like refugee resettlement, bilingual provision of services to immigrants and also by immigrant-friendly residents who have no children of school age.
This is a small sample of what immigration has done for me lately.
#45 – Anecdotal at best, unless you can cite some stats from reputable sources.
Bill: Our Practical Conservative needs stats to support her Econ 101 assertion that more demand for housing increases prices and more supply of labor lowers wages? I guess that shows the low esteem in which Economics is held!
A quick Google search yields the following:
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/09/higher-prices-or-native-flight-how-immigrants-affect-housing/501845/ is titled “When Immigrants Push Up Housing Prices” and says “Immigrants are driving demand for housing” (just as they drive population growth)
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/gborjas/publications/popular/NR2016.pdf is from George Borjas (Google’s summary of the PDF: “Low-Skill Immigration Depresses Wages – Harvard University”)
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/the-great-immigration-data-debate/424230/ is a little more detailed and asks “How was it possible that immigration could stand as the sole exception to the usual laws of supply and demand?” One big factor according to the Atlantic author is “What if natives respond to immigrant competition by shifting out of the labor market entirely, by qualifying for disability pensions? The proportion of the population receiving disability pensions doubled between 1985 and 2005 and jumped by another 20 percent during the Great Recession. 14 million Americans now receive disability pensions. The evidence is compelling that disability applications rise when the job market weakens.”
So the Econ 101 rules can be suspended while native workers go on SSDI. But the Econ 101 rules can’t be eliminated entirely because eventually there will be some limit to how many Americans can be on SSDI and how lucrative those benefits are.
I interpreted the question “What has immigration ever done for me?” to be one about personal experience with the effects of immigration. That is, a request for anecdotes, good or bad.
Phil & Practical Conservative – I’d just like to know more about where this assertion comes from and more importantly if it is statistically significant.
If, as you assert, there’s a cost to those already here for every new immigrant or refugee who arrives, I’d like to know HOW MUCH? Is it a penny, a dollar, hundreds or thousands of dollars. And is it a one time cost, a recurring cost, does it increase or diminish over time? Is it offset at some point by the contributions these individuals make to our society?
As I’ve said before, the answers to these questions are rarely black and white.
For example, in the case of housing values, if new immigrants/refugees revitalize a neighborhood that has been in the dumps for decades (as they have in many cities), increase the value of property and pay more property taxes, isn’t that a good thing?
I’m sure a quick google search will tell all.
Bill: We’re hitting our 50-comment limit imposed by the Harvard software installation.
I’m not sure that this analysis is necessary. Immigration proponents say that every immigrant, even one who has been randomly selected and/or selected for being elderly and wheelchair-bound, will boost the U.S. economy to a sufficient extent that current citizens should support immigration unconditionally. So if the best minds of the U.S. media and politics have already figured this out, why do we have to work our comparatively tiny brains on the question of why Econ 101 can’t be applied? (the only question we’re left with, which I have raised above, is why we want to limit this boon to just 600,000 immigrants per year; why not 6, 60, or 600 million?)
For whatever reason the U.S. has decided to add a Boston every year via immigration and, also every year, a San Francisco + some suburbs via children of immigrants. Purely in terms of population density and competition for resources (i.e., ignoring the cultural and racial factors that are often the subject of media coverage), the country will not be recognizable to an American of my generation. Based on the split among young voters in 2016 (55/37 for Hillary/Trump), it seems that most young people do want a nation that is more like China or India. I’m not sure that they are doing this because they believe the forecast that this will increase per-capita income and wealth. Maybe the “immigration will make you rich” message is targeted at the 37 percent who expressed their opposition to a Chinese level of population density via their vote for Trump?
[Slogan ideas for the future U.S.: “More densely populated than Europe, but without the tradition and art”; “Packed in tighter than the Chinese, but with a lower average IQ”; “Crowded like a Nigerian ferry, but without the music and community spirit”; “Japanese density; Laotian infrastructure quality“]