“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his,” said Ronald Reagan. I wonder if there is something similar going on with low-skill immigration. It was a minor, but certainly manageable, problem when millions of migrants walked across the southern border and settled into Texas to wait for the decades-long process of resolving an asylum claim (during which time multiple generations of U.S. citizens might be born to the asylum-seekers and their descendants). Any time that a bus full of migrants arrives in a Progressive neighborhood, on the other hand, it is a crisis. See Welcoming migrants in our nation’s capital and Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants… and, for a more recent example, “Seeking Asylum in Texas; Sent to New York to Make a Political Point” (NYT, August 6, 2022):
Gov. Greg Abbott chartered a bus to send a group of migrants to New York, where Mayor Eric Adams said asylum seekers were overwhelming the city’s homeless shelters.
Since April, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has been shipping newly arrived asylum seekers to immigrant-friendly Democratic cities on the East Coast to try to pressure the Biden administration into cracking down at the border. Mr. Abbott’s press office said the bus that arrived in Manhattan on Friday, which left Eagle Pass, Wednesday afternoon, held “the first group of migrants bused to New York City from Texas.”
Like Washington, New York is “the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement on Friday. “I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief.”
Last month, after the city violated the right-to-shelter law by failing to provide rooms for some people who had come to the family intake shelter in the Bronx, Mr. Adams blamed asylum seekers sent from Texas and Arizona.
(If anyone who is human has a legal right to shelter, why is the mayor of New York is “blaming” people for claiming this right?)
The Silicon Valley titans who control public discourse in the U.S. continue to support low-skill immigration into Texas and low-income neighborhoods around the U.S. I wonder what would happen if the rich Progressives were to personally encounter some low-skill migrants. “The billionaire famous for his early investment in Facebook wants America to build again—just not housing in his backyard” (Fortune):
In 2020, when the pandemic was going strong, billionaire Marc Andreessen turned heads by publishing an essay on his company website titled “It’s Time to Build.”
“I expect this essay to be the target of criticism,” he wrote while expressing a mindset that has come to be called YIMBY, for “yes in my backyard.”
“You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities,” he wrote. “We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future.” Then he expressed dissatisfaction with the state of urban architecture. “We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?”
Andreessen also lives in Atherton, California, America’s richest town,
Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is known for being an early investor in major tech companies including Meta, GitHub, Skype, and Twitter. In June, Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen wrote an email expressing their opposition to a proposal that would increase zoning capacity for multi-family home construction in Atherton.
“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” the two wrote in their email, signed by both, as reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.”
Previously, “the venture capitalist said any proposal to “choke off” immigration “makes me sick to my stomach” (from “Asked why he supports Clinton over Trump, Marc Andreessen responds: ‘Is that a serious question?’”). What would happen if a Greg Abbott caravan of migrants showed up in front of Mr. Andreessen’s house and asked for the housing that is their legal and moral right?
Separately, the robot geniuses behind Twitter and Facebook are showing me a lot of information about Beto O’Rourke, running to replace Governor Abbott in Texas. I’m wondering if real estate owners in Florida should be donating to Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign. What could possibly be better for Florida real estate values than a true believer in the tax-and-spend-and-lockdown religion taking power in Texas? Imagine if all of the California businesses that have moved to Austin, Dallas, and Houston (HP!) in the past few years had instead moved to Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. Here’s Mr. O’Rourke promising to spend more money on government programs that are already among the most expensive (Medicaid and unionized public schools) while farcically promising that taxes will be reduced at the same time that spending is increased.
Here’s Mx. O’Rourke’s 2021 demand to Follow Science by keeping Texas locked down:
Reportedly, Eric Schmidt also resides in Atherton, so Atherton should be a most welcoming place for migrants! Only Trump would reject migrants:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14450516/eric-schmidt-google-trump-immigration-ban-evil-things
“Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt told employees that Trump’s administration is going to do evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/06/atherton-california-wealthy-zip-code-zoning
“In a town of just over 7,100 residents, the population is 73% white.“