…. so long as they’re not going to live in Connecticut.
Here’s CT Senator Chris Murphy on immigration:
“President Trump’s so-called immigration framework is a total non-starter. It uses Connecticut Dreamers as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apart,” said Murphy. “It looks like President Trump has no intention of actually working on a bipartisan deal that protects Dreamers and makes sensible changes to our immigration laws. He’s trying to turn our nation against immigrants – preying on the worst kind of prejudice and ignoring the fact that immigration boosts our economy and grows jobs.”
And CT’s other Senator, Richard Blumenthal:
“This proposal is immigration hostage taking. Hundreds of thousands of young people are being held hostage in the name of the far right’s repulsive and repugnant anti-immigrant fantasy. The party of so-called family values has revealed itself to care more for its nativist political base than the actual families that would be cruelly ripped or kept apart under this proposal. One of its most heartless provisions would send refugee children back to the countries they have fled without even a fig leaf of due process – a proposal almost certain to send children to their deaths,” Blumenthal said.
Since these are the only two senators that the state has, it seems safe to infer that the majority of folks in Connecticut support the expansion of U.S. population via immigration. This support is not conditional on whether immigrants have work skills or have any practical chance of working (e.g., a 75-year-old chain migrant).
What if some of those new Americans want to live in Connecticut? “Town After Town, Residents Are Fighting Affordable Housing in Connecticut” (New York Times, today):
In the town of Fairfield, Conn., nearly 2,400 residents have signed a petition opposing a project proposed for downtown that could bring 19 units of affordable housing.
In nearby New Canaan, homeowners have raised about $84,000 for a legal fund to fight a proposed apartment complex downtown on Weed Street that would include 31 rent-restricted units for households with moderate incomes.
And in Greenwich, a developer recently withdrew an application to build a project that would include 58 apartments priced below market rate, after residents living in nearby luxury condominiums objected and said the buildings that would be demolished were historically significant.
Throughout Fairfield County, Conn., local residents and elected officials are seeking to block large housing projects that include units affordable to low- and moderate-income households, warning that the increased density could change the character of their towns. The 32-year-old law that enables such projects has always generated some pushback, but the opposition has grown more fierce as the number of proposals has increased in recent years.
The NYT article says that migrants might be welcome if they can afford $2.2 million for a house. How well is the U.S. set up for a population expansion, from an infrastructure perspective?
His daily commute on Interstate 95, while only 14 miles, “can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes,” he said. “That seat time takes its toll.”
It’s a “fact that immigration boosts our economy and grows jobs” (Senator Murphy, above) and yet the good citizens of Connecticut are fighting against the prospect of these beneficial immigrants living anywhere near them. Existing residents don’t want a boosted economy and more jobs, but they want to change federal law so that the economy and jobs can be boosted in other states?
From a 2009 helicopter trip (Los Angeles to Boston), a section of the Connecticut coast:
Related:
- “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065” (Pew, 2015)
- “What are the Latest Vaccine Mandate Rules for Businesses?” (ct.gov): All employees working for the State of Connecticut are required to be fully vaccinated.
- “COVID-19 vaccine for Connecticut” (ct.gov): All CT state employees and staff of childcare facilities and preK-12 schools are required to be vaccinated.
“Since these are the only two senators that the state has, it seems safe to infer that the majority of folks in Connecticut support the expansion of U.S.”
It assumes that these senators actually represent people, and not Diebold and Party apparatchik machinators.
Democracy is a scam invented to lower resistance of subjects to being ruled and exploited by plutocrats.
@averros: “Democracy is a scame invented to lower resistance of subjects….”
It’s fascinating to me that Britain is worried that the premature death of the Queen without an orderly transfer of power will destabilize their society. I thought the monarchy had long since been relegated to a “figurehead” role there. A kind of decorative froufrau that mean nothing and doesn’t wield any actual power, but serves a kind of emotional vacuum.
So why would anyone be worried that the Queen’s death will “unstabilize” their society? It’s a little like saying: “If our glorified dog catcher dies, everyone is going to freak out.” For a country that refers to itself as (ahem) ‘democratic’, why should the prospect of the Queen croaking be a potential calamity?
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/queens-health-fears-could-unstabilize-121814617.html
Sorry for the typos….inadvertantly funny with “scame” resembling “same.” Unintentional.
I guess Britain is a much more complex place than I was taught. They’ve got all these rich, noncontributory parasites at the top, and apparently if their Queen dies, they’re all in trouble.
> Existing residents don’t want a boosted economy and more jobs, but they want to change federal law so that the economy and jobs can be boosted in other states?
I think the ideal scheme is that the supervisor class resides in the North, and the production facilities where the BIPOC immigrants slave away are in the South. That way, both the virtual “economy” in the North and the real economy in the South are boosted.
People who oppose that scheme and actually live among blue collar workers are stoking “White Fear” and should be shunned (NYT):
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html
> immigration … grows jobs
Not all jobs are beneficial. It takes a income of about $120,000 for a family of 4 to be a net contributor (add $15k/yr school costs for each additional child). Any new job that pays less than that is actually net loss to society.
Anon: I think the Answer of the Righteous to this point is that the government should set a minimum “living wage” at $120,000 per year. Once that is done, everyone who works is a net contributor. Separately, a family of four qualified for subsidized housing in our old town up in Maskachusetts if the total income was less than $130,000 per year. But that was pre-Bidenflation.
I think it’s a travesty. CT — especially in the Hartford area — is suffering because all the restaurants are closed after 10-11pm. I drove near Hartford for almost an hour recently looking for a place – even a fast food chain – that was open for business. Nothing. Even places like Denny’s and KFC were closed with the lights off. This seems to be a pattern in CT and New Jersey, with lots of diners and restaurants that were previouly open 24/7 now running with restricted hours. I assume that’s due to Long Restaurant COVID.
Bring in a few thousand New Americans who are willing to work late while studying English as a Second Language during the down time, and we can have some sanity return to the restaurant business.
When Manny’s Texas Weiners is still closing under “Temporary Hours” at 8 PM, I can tell you that everyone is suffering, and I’m not joking! I know “Manny” personally but I haven’t had the chance to stop in and ask him: “My friend, what’s up with this early closing time?”
https://www.mannystexasweiners.com/
Alex: What you’re seeing IS sanity, from an Econ 101 point of view. When labor costs are higher, opening hours need to be cut. This is why restaurants in Chinatown were often open very late. They had low labor costs. Do you want to pay higher tax rates to fund infrastructure construction, housing, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, Obamaphone, and broadband for low-skill migrants (all of whom will qualify for at least one means-tested public assistance program) so that you can go to a Denny’s at 1 am? If so, at what level does the scheme of population expansion via low-skill immigration end? When the U.S. reaches the same population as China (1.4 billion)?
You can also pay a hidden tax of degraded lived experience, e.g., sitting in traffic jams, if the U.S. population expands via low-skill immigrants who don’t pay sufficient taxes to keep the infrastructure quality and per-capita quantity constant. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2017/04/12/how-much-would-an-immigrant-have-to-earn-to-defray-the-cost-of-added-infrastructure/
(I guess this actually is what Americans like. The hidden inflation tax and the hidden infrastructure degradation tax don’t seem to bother anyone until the rates skyrocket.)
@philg: I apologize. The way I wrote the post made it sound a little too much like I agree with the suggestions. I should have made it read more like a parody. However:
“You can also pay a hidden tax of degraded lived experience, e.g., sitting in traffic jams, if the U.S. population expands via low-skill immigrants who don’t pay sufficient taxes to keep the infrastructure quality and per-capita quantity constant. See…”
It seems that this is what the leadership (and also the voters!, because they elect those leaders) really DO want in NJ, MA, NY, etc. I have so many friends who still live in NJ and complain every day about the traffic and other things you cite as NJ becomes increasingly congested, etc., etc., but they won’t stop voting for the clowns who create the problems. For some reason, 10 or 15% of p***sed-off New Jerseyans are perfectly content to grumble, bitch and moan on social media but they would never pull the lever for anyone except the people who have done it to the Garden State. I confess that I have never understood this aspect of human nature as it relates to politics. Something is wrong with me.
It goes back to some connection with “herd behavior” and even “team behavior” when it comes to things like sports. I’ve never been very interested in team sports, particularly professional team sports, and I quit my little league team when I was a kid, to ride motorcycles instead. They just don’t make sense to me, and it’s been a huge detriment to my social life over the years. But I think people vote against their expressed interests and effusive complaints because their pals are doing it too, and they are terribly afraid of not being a “part of the team.”
Expressing no opinion on immigration (around here immigrants are prosperous building tract houses and medical practices).
We can’t blame the infra problem on them, USA highways and airports have been falling behind for many years. Voters don’t really oppose infrastructure but the professions and trades seem to have forgotten how to build anything regardless of how much funding is available.
My career was partly airport construction – we built the 1980 Atlanta terminal in TWO years, while the airport continued operating second only to O’Hare and is now the world’s busiest. I don’t see that kind of urgency today.
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2019/03/07/latinos-incomes-higher-than-before-great-recession-but-u-s-born-latinos-yet-to-recover/ says “the median income of Hispanics rose to $30,000 by 2017” (that’s for a mixture of immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics)
Even if we adjust upward for wage inflation from 2017-2022, $30,000 per year entitles an American to means-tested welfare benefits, not a title of “prosperous”.
You can’t blame the infrastructure problem on population growth, which is entirely due to immigration? (see https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/ ) Let us know if you think you’d still be sitting in the same traffic jams if the U.S. population were still 200 million (the 1970 number) rather than 333 million. (My personal experience in the parts of the U.S. where population is flat, e.g., Michigan, is that the highways are generally wide enough to accommodate the demand without the epic backups that you find in our growing cities and states.)