Let’s take a moment to remember Laken Riley. In a closed-border world she would in all likelihood be getting ready to enter the nursing profession, ideally here in Florida where population growth means that we’re always short of healthcare providers. Instead, she is gone, her murderer welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration in 2022.
Suppose that José Antonio Ibarra hadn’t killed Laken Riley or committed any other violent crimes. What was there in his educational or employment background that the U.S. needed? We are informed that diversity is our strength and that every immigrant enriches us culturally and economically. What was there about José Antonio Ibarra that made us want to welcome him to the U.S., pay for his housing and airfare from NYC to Georgia, etc.? What is the rationale for our open borders policy, in other words? Why wouldn’t it have made sense to screen out Mr. Ibarra even if we didn’t expect him to kill anyone?
Laken Riley was killed back in February, so I hope that it isn’t too soon to look at the economics of what happened. José Antonio Ibarra killed a universally liked young soul who would have earned about $86,000 per year (BLS) in 2024 dollars. If we assume a 40-year working career and don’t do a net-present value adjustment, that’s $3.44 million in GDP that will be lost (perhaps $1 million was invested in Laken Riley’s upbringing and education, so that investment was destroyed via opening our border to Mr. Ibarra).
What will it cost to imprison this 26-year-old migrant for the rest of his life? USA Facts says that there is a big variation from state to state, with Maskachusetts being the leader:
It’s tough to believe that Georgia is able to imprison the convicted at $30,000 per year when Massachusetts is spending over $307,000/year, but maybe this is correct. If Mr. Ibarra can live to 82, the life expectancy for Hispanics nationwide (due to systemic racism, apparently, more than 3 years longer than white Americans can expect to live), this will cost approximately $1.7 million in 2024 dollars (probably not accurate because prison costs should rise faster than inflation).
On the third hand, if imprisonment means that Mr. Ibarra is prevented from reproducing, the U.S. taxpayer may actually spend far less on him than we spend on the typical low-skill migrant because the typical low-skill migrant and his/her/zir/their descendants require multiple generations of public housing, free or subsidized health insurance (Medicaid), SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone.
Related:
- “Murder trial begins for man accused of killing Georgia student Laken Riley” (from state-sponsored NPR): “immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born people … no link between undocumented immigrants and a rise in violent or property crime in those communities” (our nation would be almost crime-free if we replaced everyone born in the U.S. with migrants)
- How was the immigration of Akayed Ullah supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
- How was the immigration of Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
- How was the immigration of Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa supposed to benefit an average Coloradan?
Bill Gates was right. A lot of present-day problems can be solved if we figure out — or, more accurately put, recall — how to factorize large prime numbers. In other words, a lot of present-day problems can be solved if we recall — and dare put to use — their trivial and straightforward past-day solutions.
Not all people deserve breathing oxygen on American soil.
Not all people on American soil deserve breathing oxygen.
OT, but 1 hour ago, a partially “Tuition-free MIT” was announced:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mit_undergraduates-with-family-income-below-200000-activity-7265105877336997890-h5uo
FB: Too little too late! Harvard got there 20 years ago, I think.
I’m really disappointed in your post, Phil. You chose to highlight the most unimportant reason (of many, many) that none of these illegal invaders should be here. They should all be deported, period. But rather than highlight an obvious and banal reason (economics), you might have highlighted the moral depravity of woke socialists in this country that allowed a sick sociopath to come here and then rape and murder a wonderful young woman (and she is one of thousands that have been horribly victimized in similar ways).
@Anonymous
I think it’s understood that there are potential criminals in any large group (e.g., one of the top members of the FBI Most Wanted list was a PhD mathematician!), i.e., we understand the worst case scenario.
Suppose that I were to travel to the UK to visit places where my ancestors lived. And while waiting for a table at Jeremy Clarkson’s pub I meet a beautiful pediatric nurse and her respectable family. A year later, after our wedding, our attorney files I-130 with USCIS. There is a HUGE UPSIDE here: I am likely to find a new sense of purpose and dramatically increase my earnings, the US gains a nurse, and perhaps we do our part to reverse the falling birth rate. If, years, later, she goes unexpectedly insane and does something evil, at least everyone involved can say “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
But Philip implicitly asks us to think about the *best* case scenario, which is basically “one more borderline employable, low-potential loser, of which we have far too many of the homegrown variety.” If the best case scenario is “pretty darn bad,” then why is this sort of immigration even remotely considered?
Percent of criminals is definitely larger in groups of people that include gang-bangers running from their native strongmen who are using military to crack down on their gangs, illegal drug and prostitution service providers and whose first steps include acts of purposely crossing borders illegally. Who believes that everyone just decides to translate and read US laws and regulations to dutifully obey them, after breaking pretty big immigration and border security laws on purpose? In addition there are many enemy spies and terrorists exploiting border weakness.
Nobody can defend a policy of completely open borders. The killing of Laken Riley would not have occurred if criminals like Ibarra had been stopped at the border. I would not be comfortable if members of Hamas moved into my neighborhood (or anywhere else). Without border controls, I do not see what would prevent that from happening.
I would make three observations about illegal immigration. First, it is impossible to stop completely. The wealth gap between the poorer parts of the world and the wealthier ones is simply too vast. Second, most illegal immigrants are very decent people; there are plenty of “Ibarras” among our native population as well. Finally, the criteria for determining who is a “good immigrant” cannot be based solely on economic considerations.
Immigration is a difficult issue. There are no absolute “solutions.” People can wish things were different (we all would like to live in a better world) but the reality is what it is. The best we can hope for is to manage the problem.
I have always loved this quote, attributed to Kant:
“For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”
Anon: I don’t understand it would work for “criminals like Ibarra” to be turned away. He did apparently commit at least one crime in the U.S. prior to attacking and killing Laken Riley. However, I don’t think there was anything to distinguish him from any other low-skill migrant strolling across the border into the waiting arms of a Biden administration asylum system bureaucrat. The original post is really about, as FB puts it above, a best-case scenario. In that scenario José Antonio Ibarra committed no crimes either before or after entering the U.S. How was his presence in NYC or Georgia supposed to help Americans?
I don’t think the “value” (presumably economic) of immigrants should be the only criterion for admission to the U.S. And most certainly, the case of a single individual cannot be used to deny entry to bona fide refugees. In 1942, the case of Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, accused of being a Nazi spy, was used to deny entry to thousands of Jews (some of whom were no doubt of little economic value to the U.S.) escaping the Nazis. I am against open borders, but I think this nation needs to admit refugees. Again, it is a complicated issue, no country can take millions of refugees no matter how valid their fears are.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/#:~:text=Most%20notoriously%2C%20in%20June%201939,quarter%20died%20in%20the%20Holocaust.
Anon: “I am against open borders, but I think this nation needs to admit refugees” combined with “no country can take millions of refugees” makes as much sense to me as public housing. Housing is a human right, which is why everyone who doesn’t work is entitled to taxpayer-funded housing. But at the same time we don’t want to provide free housing to everyone who doesn’t work so we will have a 10-year waiting list for free housing in Manhattan and San Francisco. Some people who don’t work will get a free apartment with a market value of $1 million. Others who are equally situated will get nothing other than a position on a waiting list.
If people who have turned their own country in an unlivable environment are entitled to enjoy a taxpayer-funded lifestyle here in the U.S. as refugees then we should accept 40 million from Haiti and Venezuela alone (and do the Biden-style “humanitarian parole” pickup at their local airport instead of making them trudge to our border). If you say that 40 million is too many then you’re saying we need some kind of victimhood ranking, maybe based on intersectionality and presided over by a Ph.D. in DEI.
I don’t disagree with you. It is not difficult to point out the many absurdities and contradictions of our immigration and social programs. We cannot help everyone in need, but we can help some, perhaps not the most deserving, and I’m sure we can make a difference for those. I believe that most of the people who have entered Western countries over the past decade will go on to become productive citizens.
“We cannot help everyone in need, but we can help some, perhaps not the most deserving, and I’m sure we can make a difference for those” — I don’t see that this leads to any limit on the number of migrants/refugees accepted. If we should let 1 person into the U.S. because it will help that person and “make a difference” for that person then the argument is just as strong for 1 billion new Americans.
“I believe that most of the people who have entered Western countries over the past decade will go on to become productive citizens.” — this is 100% at odds with what most of the open borders advocates say about AI. Only people with high levels of education and skill will, in the long run, be productive citizens and that’s why we need Universal Basic Income.
Final observation. I’m to contradicted myself to keep discussing immigration.
“This is 100% at odds with what most of the open borders advocates say about AI. Only people with high levels of education and skill will, in the long run, be productive citizens and that’s why we need Universal Basic Income.”
Many of the immigrants who arrived to America in the XIX century were less educated than the average US citizen of the time. Quite a few of their descendants have won Nobel prizes.
“Few of their children in the country learn English … The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages … Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious. ”
Benjamin Franklin
“The people of this country are too tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow it… After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us. ”
John Dos Passos
Anon: Your idea that the descendants of the unsuccessful and uneducated are likely to become successful and educated is contradicted by a UC Davis economics dept analysis presented in The Son Also Rises (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/01/15/son-also-rises/ ). But if we accept your premise, which of the six Nobels awarded each year do you think that José Antonio Ibarra’s descendants would have been on track to earn? Peace (like Obama!)? Physiology or Medicine because of Mr. Ibarra’s interest in head trauma? Literature because he can write a soul-wrenching story about how he escaped gang violence in Venezuela and suffered an arduous journey to taxpayer-funded sanctuary in NYC? Economics because, like all other noble immigrants without a degree, he is an expert on how to enrich an economy?
I’m not sure how far back you want to go to establish the humble origins of ancestors of Nobel winners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baker_(biochemist) won a Nobel this year. Wikipedia says “Baker was born into a Jewish family in Seattle, Washington on October 6, 1962, the son of physicist Marshall Baker and geophysicist Marcia (née Bourgin) Baker.” I can’t find parental biographies for other recent American Nobel winners but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Arnold won the Nobel in 2018 and Wikipedia says “Arnold is the daughter of Josephine Inman (née Routheau) and nuclear physicist William Howard Arnold, and the granddaughter of Lieutenant General William Howard Arnold”
A lot of American men who have a lot less propensity for crime, who have ancestors who served in wars, who registered for Selective Service, and have completed a lot more practical education (e.g., engineering degrees) feel worthless and unwanted and are constantly told “Nobody owes you a job! Nobody owes you anything!”
A view from the UK:
https://x.com/PositivFuturist/status/1821108014461472897
Andy – e/acc
@PositivFuturist
It’s incredible..
The narrative we’re being asked to swallow is that mass migration is good for the NHS – whilst the NHS crumbles.
It’s good for the economy – which is in never ending decline.
It’s good for culture – whilst we have armed ethnic gangs and riots.
There’s no 2 tier policing – whilst we know about Rotheram and see constant video evidence to the contrary.
This can’t carry on – you can’t hide in your bunker behind the BBC forever.. Reality will be heard.
4:55 AM · Aug 7, 2024
FB: I like the UK as an example because it shows that the First Amendment and Second Amendment both have to be abandoned once a certain level of immigration is attained. You can’t have free speech if there are no common cultural values. You can’t have private gun ownership if people don’t have any affinity for each other and if some of them come from parts of the world where waging jihad is traditional.
The answer is The Great Replacement Theory. Dems want to replace deplorables with reliable Democrat voters. Now that Hispanic men voted for Trump, they are somewhat in favor of closing the border, but not really, as Hispanic women are reliable Democrats.
Douglas Murray asks similar questions about adherents of the Religion of PeaceⓇ in the UK:
https://youtu.be/q9HuflNwqiA
FB: Thanks for that. Murray doesn’t suggest eliminating the UK’s provision of asylum and, therefore, I don’t see how any of his suggestions would have a significant effect on how many migrants come to the U.S. and how many stay. He proposes deporting a handful of people who are proven (by a bunch of white people who don’t speak Arabic) to be active members of Hamas or similar. That will have no effect on 99.99% of immigration to the UK except, perhaps, to get people who support Hamas/similar to keep quiet about it.
I completely agree that the current “asylum” system is effectively an open door.
This clip is only one small part of one single interview which addressed the main idea of the original post. Perhaps if we were to dive more deeply into his numerous books (_The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam_ 2017, _The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity_ 2019 and _The War on the West_ 2022) we could find him also suggesting massive transformation of the “asylum” system.
If diversity is strength and murderers are rare then making it easier for murderers to enter your country must be good. I’m sure the elites can figure out how to leverage their diversity. Perhaps as pilots who land things on high value targets. I mean that’s what makes Al Qaeda, so why not the USA/s