Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

How was the immigration of José Antonio Ibarra supposed to make the average American better off?

by philg

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:

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End-stage civil rights movement: replace Black Americans with immigrants and their children

by philg

Here’s a meme that’s popular among Democrats:

Black Americans Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges took actions in 1955 and 1960 so that Kamala Harris, who apparently identifies as “Black”, could take an action in 2024. (Minor point: If we do want to ascribe a broad social trend to an individual, it was primarily Dwight Eisenhower, whose racial ID is unknown, who engineered the desegregation of the U.S. (via Supreme Court appointments and executive orders).)

I’m struggling to see how Kamala Harris’s ascendance to the Presidency is an example of continuity. Harvard economists find that a percentage of Black Americans lose their jobs and their freedom with every batch of low-skill immigrants who come across the border (see “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER 2007); note that these same immigrants provide a $500 billion/year (in pre-Biden dollars at pre-Biden immigration levels) wealth boost to the elite, e.g., those who own apartment buildings or pay wages to low-skill workers).

Isn’t the installation of a child of two immigrants in the White House an example of discontinuity, not continuity? Or maybe we can say that the natural end stage of the civil rights movement is for Black Americans to accept bit parts in a script written by immigrants and their kids?

As a thought experiment, let’s suppose that every position of power in the U.S. were taken by a dark-skinned immigrant or the child of dark-skinned immigrants. Would that be recognizable as the achievement of goals set forth by 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement leaders? If not, why would Kamala Harris taking over the #1 position of power in the U.S. be considered a civil rights movement achievement, as the above meme implies?

Related:

  • “Immigration restrictions helped lead to Martin Luther King’s success”: There is much to suggest that the 1924 immigration restrictions started processes that were an important contributor to the success of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in the ending of legalized segregation. … the lower immigration and tightened labor markets brought about economic changes that steadily increased the economic and political power of Black Americans and convinced more and more business leaders to shun segregation. The most visible result of reducing immigration was that northern industrialists could no longer fill all their extra jobs with new immigrants and had to finally open them up to the descendants of slavery in the South.
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New York Times: FEMA won’t help hurricane victims without documents

by philg

The New York Times reminds us that it is misinformation when Donald Trump says that our government spends money on migrants rather than on Americans who have suffered from natural disasters:

One part of the U.S. government welcomes the undocumented, e.g., with a few years of taxpayer-funded hotel rooms in New York City. (NYT, May 2024: “The average hotel room rate in the city is $301 a night, a record. A major reason: One of every five hotels is now a shelter, contributing to a shortage of tourist lodging. … Dozens of hotels, from once-grand facilities to more modest establishments, closed to tourists and began exclusively sheltering migrants, striking multimillion-dollar deals with the city.”)

According to the New York Times, a separate part of the government refuses to help native-born hurricane victims unless they can produce documents:

After the catastrophe, a FEMA official told him they could put him up in a hotel for four days if he could show them his driver’s license. But his license was in the river, along with the rest of his life. So, he moved in with a friend.

So it’s a lie when Donald Trump says that migrants get assistance ahead of native-born Americans and also it is true that native-born Americans can’t get assistance unless they jump through hurdles that migrants aren’t required to clear. Also, the native-born American gets 4 days of taxpayer-funded shelter while the migrant gets a lifetime of taxpayer-funded shelter?

The article overall is interesting. The NYT informs us that existing Americans don’t have enough money to build decent storm-resilient housing for themselves:

The answer to our problems, found elsewhere in the same newspaper, is an open border through which tens of millions of low-skill immigrants will stroll, each one of whom will need housing but won’t earn enough (or anything?) to pay for a house with a standard foundation.

From the FEMA web site, a report on FEMA’s expenditure of $641 million in taxpayer funds on migrant shelters:

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ChatGPT applies for asylum

by philg

The rules for obtaining asylum in the U.S. are fairly open-ended. “Biden administration reverses Trump-era asylum policies” (Politico 2021):

The Biden administration is reversing a series of Trump-era immigration rulings that narrowed asylum standards by denying protection to victims of domestic violence and those who said they were threatened by gangs in their home country.

From the Brennan Center for Justice:

What would happen if an asylum-seeking migrant spun a tale that had been written by ChatGPT?

The prompt:

I’m writing a book about an immigrant named Cruz who makes a difficult walking journey from Venezuela through the Darién Gap and onward by bus, freight train, and hitchhiking to the U.S. border. They is nonbinary. In a first person voice, write me the scene in which Cruz applies for asylum from a U.S. border official.

The result:

I step forward, my legs still aching from the journey that brought me here. The air feels thick, pressing down, but it’s nothing compared to the weight I’ve been carrying since I left home. When the officer finally calls me forward, I lift my chin and steady myself. This is the moment where everything I’ve been through—all the threats, the violence, the desperation—has to mean something.

“I’m here to seek asylum,” I say, my voice steady but tight. I’ve practiced these words so many times, they feel like a shield.

The officer watches me, pen poised above a sheet of paper. They don’t say anything, so I take a breath and start.

“I’m from Venezuela. I had to leave because being nonbinary there—it’s not just rejected; it’s punished.”

The memories flood back, clear and sharp. I remember the whispers, the long, unkind stares, and the way even casual encounters started to feel like traps. “I tried to keep a low profile,” I say, swallowing hard. “I cut my hair, dressed to blend in. But it didn’t matter. One day, after a protest, a police officer pulled me aside. He told me that people like me don’t belong and that if he saw me around again ‘looking like that,’ he’d make sure I disappeared.”

I go on, telling the officer how the threats got worse: neighbors, coworkers, even people I thought I could trust turned on me. They left threatening notes under my door—Maricón, we’re coming for you. Then they slashed my tires, threw a rock through my window. Every time I went to the police, they brushed me off, saying I should “watch how I look” if I wanted to avoid trouble.

The officer’s expression doesn’t change, but their eyes stay on me, listening. The words start coming faster, like they’ve been bottled up for too long. “I was attacked twice,” I say, and the memories flash like bruises that never quite healed. “The first time, it was a group of men. They saw me walking home from work, pushed me into an alley, and beat me until I couldn’t move. They kept shouting things at me—‘devil,’ ‘sick.’ One of them said if I looked at them ‘that way’ again, they’d make sure no one ever found me.”

I stop to take a shaky breath, my hands trembling. I press them to my sides to steady myself. “The second time, it was even worse. One of them was in uniform. I was leaving a market when he and his friends cornered me. They said I was ‘dirtying’ the country. They beat me, cracked my ribs. One of them pressed his boot into my neck and told me I had two choices: I could leave, or I’d end up in the river like others before me.”

The officer nods slightly, and I continue. “So I left. First, I crossed into Colombia, but it wasn’t safe there either, so I kept moving. When I heard about the Darién Gap…” The jungle rises in my mind, as terrifying now as it was then: the mud that sucked at my shoes, the hunger and thirst that felt like they would eat me alive. People died there—people I’d walked alongside only hours before. Their cries echoed in the dark, and then they were gone. But I kept going. I didn’t have a choice.”

“I crossed Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua. Every border felt like another wall closing in, like someone would see me and turn me back. In Guatemala, I started hitchhiking where I could. I rode freight trains, sleeping on open cars with strangers, all of us hoping for the same thing. I saw people fall off, disappear in the night. But I kept going,” I say, my voice barely a whisper now.

Finally, I look up and meet the officer’s gaze. “I don’t want to die,” I say. “I’m not a criminal. I just want to live.”

The officer’s pen pauses. I stand there, my whole being stretched between hope and fear, knowing that everything I’ve survived, all the truth I’ve shared, is all I have left to give.

How about Grok?

Here’s a first-person narrative from Cruz’s perspective during their asylum interview:

The air in the processing center was stale, a mix of desperation and hope that clung to every surface. I adjusted my backpack, feeling the weight of my journey in every muscle, every bone. The room was stark, with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, casting a cold glow over everything. I sat on a hard plastic chair, waiting, my heart pounding like a drum in my chest.

“Cruz?” A voice called out, and I looked up to see a border official standing in the doorway. She was younger than I expected, her eyes showing a mix of fatigue and something else—maybe empathy?

“I’m Officer Martinez,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her. Her office was small, cluttered with papers and a computer screen that flickered intermittently. She motioned to a chair in front of her desk. “Please, sit.”

I sank into the chair, feeling the exhaustion of months of travel. She looked at me, her eyes searching mine, perhaps trying to read my story before I even spoke.

“You’re from Venezuela,” she began, glancing at a file. “Can you tell me why you’re seeking asylum?”

I took a deep breath, the words I had rehearsed a hundred times in my head now felt like they were caught in my throat. “Yes,” I started, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, maybe because I had spoken so little English these past weeks. “I am nonbinary. In Venezuela, this… this identity is not just misunderstood; it’s dangerous. My family, they… could not accept me. I was threatened, not just with words, but with violence.”

Officer Martinez nodded, her pen moving across the paper. “Go on.”

“There was no future for me there,” I continued, my voice gaining strength as I spoke of the truth I had lived. “I was told by friends about others who made it here, who found safety. I had to try. The journey was… it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I had to escape.”

She paused, looking up at me. “Can you describe any specific incidents that led you to leave?”

I recounted the night when my own brother, driven by shame and anger, had beaten me badly, telling me I was bringing disgrace to our family. I told her about the local gangs who targeted those who didn’t fit into their rigid version of masculinity or femininity. Each word was a step back into that darkness, but now, under her gaze, it felt like a necessary catharsis.

“And you believe your life was in danger?” she asked, her tone neutral but her eyes softening.

“I know it was,” I replied firmly. “Every day was a risk. Here, I hope… I hope for a chance to live as myself, without fear.”

Officer Martinez leaned back, her chair creaking slightly. “We’ll need to verify your story, of course. But based on what you’ve told me, you might qualify for asylum under the persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Do you have any documents, any evidence of your claims?”

I pulled out a small, worn notebook from my backpack, where I had documented dates, names, and a few photographs taken secretly by a friend. “This is all I have,” I said, handing it over.

She took it, flipping through carefully. “This will help. We’ll need to process this, and you’ll have to stay in a holding facility while we do. It might take time.”

“I understand,” I said, though the thought of more waiting, more uncertainty, made my stomach churn.

She stood up, signaling the end of our interview. “Thank you for your story, Cruz. We’ll do our best to make this right for you.”

As I walked out, the weight of the unknown pressed down on me, but there was a sliver of hope now, a light at the end of my long, dark tunnel. Maybe, just maybe, this was the beginning of my new life.

This narrative captures Cruz’s emotional state, the formality of the asylum process, and the nuanced interaction with a border official who balances duty with empathy.

Claude.ai? (This one seems weak!)

I understand you’re looking for a first-person scene of Cruz, a nonbinary immigrant from Venezuela, applying for asylum at the U.S. border. I’ll create an original scene for you, being careful not to reproduce any copyrighted material. Here’s a draft of the scene:
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as I stood before the uniformed official. My feet ached from the long journey, and my heart raced with a mix of fear and hope.
“Name?” the official asked, not looking up from their computer.
“Cruz Martínez,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Gender?”
I hesitated for a moment. “Nonbinary,” I said, bracing myself for confusion or judgment.
The official paused, then simply typed something into the computer. “Date of birth?”
I answered their questions one by one, recounting the details of my journey from Venezuela. With each word, I relived the trek through the Darién Gap, the endless bus rides, clinging to the top of freight trains, and the kind strangers who offered rides along the way.
When asked why I was seeking asylum, I took a deep breath. “In Venezuela, I faced persecution for my gender identity. I couldn’t live openly, couldn’t find work. The economic situation made it impossible to survive.” My voice cracked as I added, “I just want to live without fear.”
The official’s eyes met mine for the first time. For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of empathy. But then their professional mask returned, and they continued with the procedural questions.
As I answered, I silently prayed that my words would be enough, that they would understand the desperation that had driven me thousands of miles to stand in this sterile room, pleading for a chance at a new life.

Gemini:

The room was cold, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The border official, a stern-faced woman with a clipped accent, sat behind a thick glass panel. She studied me, her eyes boring into my soul. I couldn’t look away, not when my entire future depended on her decision.

“Name?” she asked, her voice sharp.

“Cruz,” I replied, my voice barely a whisper.

“Country of origin?”

“Venezuela.”

She typed something into her computer, her fingers moving with practiced ease.

“Reason for seeking asylum?”

I hesitated. The words I had rehearsed in my mind seemed to slip away. “I… I fear for my safety,” I stammered.

“Why?” she pressed.

I took a deep breath. “Because I am nonbinary. In Venezuela, it is dangerous to be who I am.”

Her expression didn’t change. “Have you been persecuted?”

“Not yet, but I know it’s only a matter of time. People have been killed for being LGBTQ+ in my country.”

She nodded slowly. “Have you applied for asylum in any other country?”

“No.”

“Do you have any family in the United States?”

“No.”

She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on mine. “Do you understand that if

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Enriched by immigration on Indigenous Peoples’ Day

by philg

Native Americans tried and failed to defend their borders back in the 15th and 16th centuries. The result has been a fall from 100% of the population to about 1% (enrolled members of various tribes; the number grows to between 2% and 3% if we count Elizabeth Warren-style self-identification as Native American). The drop in percentage from 100% down to 1% certainly cannot be characterized as a “replacement” and, thus, for those who follow Science it must be an enrichment.

Let’s see how immigrants have enriched Native Americans on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

In one part of Florida today, a high-skill immigrant launched a spacecraft to Jupiter (not Jupiter, Florida!):

For the Science-minded Native American, perhaps this can be viewed as compensation for the loss of sovereignty.

In our part of Florida, an immigrant attempted to deliver Uber Eats to my mom’s senior fortress, a 150-unit building whose front door is marked by a massive fountain, big American flag on a 40′ poll (Ta-Nehisi Coates won’t want to move in!), and circular driveway. The Uber driver was unable to speak English and I was unable to speak Spanish. The map showed that he got pretty close to the building, but never went into the main driveway or parking lot. He eventually dumped the bag on the curb and drove away after sending the following photo:

Because our Spanish-only speaker didn’t include any building in the background, this could easily be in Miami, for example. We walked all around the building and never did find it. “Jayson” is now available to deliver food to any Native American in Palm Beach County (0.1% of the total population according to Google’s giant AI brain and 0.6% of the population if you look at census.gov with your own feeble mind; the page does have a 0.1% figure, but that’s for “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone”).

Below, a member of the credentialed elite at the New York Times reminds JD Vance that only migrants such as Jayson can read blueprints, juggle Makita, and build us the houses that we desperately need in order to shelter… the next crop of 30 million undocumented migrants (2016 numbers from Yale). I would love to see the house that someone at Jayson’s skill level builds!

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Should my friend apply to a Massachusetts town for permission to turn his house into a for-profit migrant shelter?

by philg

A friend owns a 6,000-square-foot house in our former suburb of Lincoln, Maskachusetts. Loyal readers might remember the 2019 post Harvard graduate discovers that the suburbs are packed with narrow-minded white heterosexuals:

The old white guy who led the First Parish church in our suburban town, a union of Congregational and Unitarian, retired. The Millionaires for Obama on the church hiring committee found Manish Mishra-Marzetti, a young Indian-American (Indian from India, not Indian like Elizabeth Warren) to become the new minister (in 2015). He, his husband, and their two adopted kids (characterized as “African American” in the video link below) moved into our midst.

On paper, at least, this guy is exactly the kind of person that the residents say that they want to assist and/or get to know better. He’s the child of immigrants. His skin is nearly as dark as a Virginia Democrat headed out for a party. He identifies as LGBTQIA. He organized trips to our southern border to assist migrants. He sermonized against the evils of Trump and Trump supporters.

I don’t think that I’ve written about it here, but some years ago there was a non-profit org that applied for zoning permission to turn a house in the town into a halfway house for, I think, mentally disabled adults. The halfway house would receive massive amounts of state funding for each person served. Democrats on the town discussion list went nuts. Each email started with praise for the idea of this kind of taxpayer-funded service and ended with the thought that it would make a lot more sense to operate such a house in some other town or city within Maskachusetts. If memory serves, the righteous managed to kill the proposal despite some sort of state law that ostensibly neuters local opposition.

My friend has a love of irony and he’ll soon be moving out of this house and into a tax-free Deplorable-rich state. Before he goes, though, I suggested that he have some fun by applying for zoning permission to operate a state-funded for-profit migrant shelter. His house would become home to four families of enrichers. As there is just one kitchen, the migrants would receive professionally cooked meals prepared in the central kitchen by paid staff. The migrants are undocumented and may not be able to get driver’s licenses and the town isn’t walkable. Thus, transportation would be provided by volunteers and also a paid service. Residents of Lincoln claim that they love Black people (cue the BLM signs on nearly every lawn that lasted at least until progressives transitioned to Queers for Palestine). Telegraph that the residents will be exclusively Haitian by including Haitian Creole-speaking wellness coaches and yoga instructors in the budget and asking the town for permission to have a 2’x4′ English/Haitian Creole sign in front.

Readers: What else could be added to this proposal to make it more expensive to taxpayers (yet still plausible and in line with what Maskachusetts taxpayers are currently paying for sheltered migrants) and more objectionable to the townsfolk who are the first to say that they love and support migrants and People of Color?

Based on “Massachusetts spending over $15k per month per family on migrant housing and transportation” (Fall River Reporter), my friend’s Lincoln Migrant Shelter would enjoy revenue of $60,000 per month ($720,000/year). Let’s assume that property tax is $30,000/year and two full-time people can do driving, shopping, cooking, and cleaning ($200,000/year). USDA says that the monthly cost of food on a “liberal plan” is about $400 per person so that’s another $60,000ish for the groceries (assume four “families” = 12 people). If we figure $40,000/year for maintenance and insurance, that’s about $400,000/year in gross profit for the enterprise. That’s a 20 percent return on investment if the house is worth $2 million.

Related:

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Why doesn’t the U.S. try to buy migrants from Europe?

by philg

We are informed that low-skill migrants make the native-born richer and that, therefore, a country’s borders should be mostly open (albeit never described as “open borders” because that is hate speech/conspiracy theory). We also informed that Europeans don’t want to be rich… ”Europe Grasps for Ways to Stop the Migrant Surge” (WSJ):

The biggest swing in sentiment has been in Germany, long a proponent of generous policies toward refugees. Pressure has been building in recent years as the nation absorbed millions of immigrants, weighing on the welfare system and municipal services. Migration was a key theme in Sunday’s closely watched regional election in Brandenburg, where the governing Social Democrats narrowly beat the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD.

Last week, the coalition government in Berlin reintroduced limited border checks to all neighboring countries, after a knife attack in late August by a failed asylum seeker killed three people in the city of Solingen during a festival to celebrate its 650th anniversary. The attacker was a 26-year-old Syrian with links to Islamic State who had evaded deportation for more than a year after losing his asylum case.

Since the pandemic ended, governments across the continent have struggled to cope with rising numbers of asylum seekers and are grasping for ways to stem the flow, from curbing taxpayer-funded benefits to asylum seekers to striking deals with non-EU countries to temporarily or permanently house would-be refugees.

Last year, a near-record 1.14 million people filed asylum claims in Europe, the highest number since the height of the 2015 migration crisis in Europe, when more than a million Syrians fleeing that country’s civil war entered the bloc.

An extra 1.14 million/ asylum seekers per year would moderately enrich the United States, both culturally and economically. In the pre-Biden years, we were enriched by approximately 22 million undocumented immigrants (Yale 2018) and at least another 10 million have come across the border during the Dr. Jill Biden-Kamala Harris administration.

For nearly everything else that has value in this world there is some kind of market. There is “a bid”, in other words, as the Wall Streeters say. Why hasn’t the U.S. bid to take all of the migrants that Europeans don’t want? We are told that migrants are precious. Why aren’t we offering, for example, to pay Germany $100,000 per migrant and also to pay each migrant $100,000 as a “welcome to America bonus” (on top of the means-tested public housing, means-tested health insurance, SNAP/EBT (“food stamps”), and Obamaphone to which migrants will be entitled)? And if we did offer $200,000 (total) per migrant, wouldn’t we expect to face competition from other countries that seek to be enriched?

Separately, here’s a Reuters story on a beachhead in Africa that Spain continues to hold (why?). My favorite line is “Moroccan nationals detained during the crossings are immediately sent back to Morocco unless they are underage or seeking asylum, [Cristina Perez, the Spanish government’s representative in Ceuta] said.” Unless the migrants are remarkably unintelligent, why wouldn’t they all claim to fall into one of these categories? Like the U.S. system, the European immigration system seems to be premised on the assumption that humans never lie.

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New York Times: After welcoming 50 million non-European migrants, Europe is poor and needs more government spending

by philg

“Europe’s ‘Reason for Being’ at Risk as Competitiveness Wanes, Report Warns” (New York Times, 9/9/2024):

Europe must increase public investment by nearly $900 billion a year in sectors like technology and defense, according to a long-awaited report published Monday in response to growing anxieties about the continent’s economy lagging behind that of the United States and China.

Mr. Draghi said that the European Union needed additional annual investment of up to 800 billion euros ($884 billion) to meet the objectives he laid out in his report. That is equivalent to about 4.5 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product last year. By comparison, investment under the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1951 was equivalent to about 1.5 percent of Europe’s economic output.

Conditions that contributed to the continent’s prosperity have changed substantially since the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Cheap Russian gas is no longer available, and energy prices have soared. Those prices have come off their peak, but European companies still pay two to three times more for electricity than U.S. companies, the report found.

We are informed that low-skill migrants make developed countries rich. Europe has welcomed nearly 50 million non-European migrants (source through 2020).

Why does Europe need more government spending, as a percentage of GDP, to become rich if it was already enriched by low-skill migrants?

Related:

  • “Our giant welfare state” (Washington Post, 2014), in which we learn that only the French spend a larger percentage of their GDP on government hand-outs
  • Heritage Foundation on Germany, finding that it spends 50 percent of GDP on government (higher than the U.S., but the U.S. percentage is distorted because we don’t include nominally “private” spending on health care (which is so regulated and mandated by the government that I think it should be included))
  • Heritage on France (60 percent of GDP spent by the government)
  • Heritage on Poland (45 percent of GDP spent by the government)
  • Heritage on Taiwan (18 percent of GDP spent by the government (and 82 percent by TSMC?))
  • Heritage on South Korea (26 percent of GDP spent by the government)
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Will the U.S. have to give up the First Amendment as a result of open borders?

by philg

A few months ago I wondered if the Second Amendment right to bear arms was compatible with mass immigration: How can a country have a right to bear arms and also an open border? (people with violent criminal histories can walk into the U.S. become citizens since we don’t have access to databases in all of the countries that are enriching us)

The U.K. doesn’t have a constitution, but the peasants there thought that they had a right to free speech until recently when they learned that opinions regarding mass immigration needed to be expressed within strict limits (example). This post is about whether the U.S. will need to formally repeal both the First and Second Amendments in order to create greater harmony in a country that is more densely packed with humans who have nothing in common other than not liking where they used to live.

We’ve already had to restrict the right to express disagreement with the state religion. See, for example, Adolfo Martinez’s 16-year prison sentence for taking a sacred Rainbow Flag off an Iowa church and burning it in the middle of the street (Reason describes it as a 15-year sentence, but maybe that is because of a confusion about credit for time served? Interestingly, the pastor of the purportedly “turn the other cheek” church was delighted with the heretic’s sentence, about what Attempted Murder might have gotten).

Elites and peasants have completely opposite financial interests when it comes to low-skill immigration (see the Harvard analysis in “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers” finding a $500 billion/year transfer from the working class to the elite at pre-Biden/Harris levels of immigration and in pre-Biden/Harris dollars). This division has been explicit in the U.K. where the peasants voted, via Brexit, to reduce low-skill immigration and the elites simply ignored them. From The Telegraph, August 22, 2024:

For nearly 30 years the public have voted for lower immigration, only for politicians of all stripes to raise it. Even after Brexit, when we finally regained control of our borders, the public were betrayed. Decisions taken in 2019 relaxed controls and sent net migration spiralling to historically unprecedented levels. Freedom of movement with Europe was replaced with a system so liberal it effectively amounted to freedom of movement with the rest of the world.

In the first quarter of this year, the government issued more family visas to the dependants and relatives of Somali nationals (269) than it did work visas to physicists, chemists and biologists from all other countries put together (198).

Despite the increase in spousal visas, Labour have already scrapped the plan to raise the minimum income requirement for family visas from £29,000 to £38,700. It’s a return to the type of low-skilled immigration that has burdened, not boosted, our economy.

I was chatting recently with a friend who Zooms it into a $500,000/year job from a multi-acre property in the Boston suburbs. She said, “I’m going to vote for Harris because we need more immigration. It is too difficult to find people to work on the house and yard at a reasonable price.” (She’s registered to vote in Maskachusetts so, of course, her vote won’t matter, but I found her reasoning interesting.) This explicit wish for lower market-clearing wages seems like the kind of expression that will need to be suppressed because it would inevitably lead to disharmony. On the other side, we would need to suppress “dangerous and false narratives” (MSNBC) that open borders are conducive to crime and drugs. If a narrative is “dangerous” then shouldn’t we want to prevent people from providing that narrative? I hope that we can all agree that danger is bad and safety is good. See also “Politicians’ talk of a border ‘invasion’ is speech that experts say has gotten people killed” (Ohio Capital Journal, April 2024). We don’t want people being killed merely because we can’t get rid of an outdated part of the Constitution that might have made sense when the U.S. was young, small, and socially cohesive.

From the United Nations:

“We all have to remember that hate crimes are preceded by hate speech.” This is how Adama Dieng, UN’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, starts the Stopping Hate Speech video. “We have to bear in mind that words kill. Words kill as bullets”, he continued.

If we want to prevent violence among the disparate groups that now reside in the U.S., won’t we need to prevent unauthorized speech?

Here are some folks who could use a cooling off in prison, for example:

(“Deport All Illegals” doesn’t make sense given our asylum laws that nobody proposes changing. As soon as a person says “I felt unsafe back home” he/she/ze/they is a legal asylum-seeker. The “Assimilate” sign also makes no sense. If we are offering immigration on the basis of a lack of safety in some other country there is no reason to believe that someone here to take us up on our offer of asylum has any affinity for what used to be considered American culture.)

Loosely related… Kamala Harris says that a muscular president can ban guns (or at least some types of guns) without amending the Constitution:

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Is everyone in the U.K. and Bangladesh now entitled to asylum in the U.S.?

by philg

Politicians from both parties say that they want to “control” the U.S. border, but nobody ever proposes changing U.S. law to eliminate the right to claim asylum. There are minor differences between politicians, e.g., “Biden administration reverses Trump-era asylum policies” (Politico, 2021), in which Joe Biden opened the door to people who claimed to have been a victim of domestic violence 10,000 miles away (good luck disproving one of those contentions!). But nobody has been willing to say “The world is too big, too crowded, and too connected for us to continue to offer this” or “We are shutting down asylum because it is impossible to build a cohesive society among people who have nothing in common other than they didn’t like where they used to live.”

Given the recent unrest in the U.K. and Bangladesh, I’m wondering if 100 percent of those countries’ populations could show up in the U.S. and claim asylum. Their fear of violence would certainly seem credible based on video clips. For example, “UK riots live: arrests pass 400 as police prepare for further riots; man in serious condition after suspected hate crime” (Guardian):

Wes Streeting told PA he condemned the “mindless thuggery” seen in the rioting and said that the government “will not tolerate” the continuation of violence that has spread through towns and cities across England over the last week.

Kenya and the United Arab Emirates have also warned their citizens in the UK to steer clear of the violent protests in England.

In an advisory issued on Tuesday, Kenya’s high commission in London said it was closely monitoring the unrest which it said was “primarily driven by far right and anti immigrant groups”

It added: “The violence has flared up across various towns and cities in the United Kingdom. Kenyans residing in or travelling to the United Kingdom are urged to stay away from the protest areas and should remain vigilant.

“Furthermore, the [UAE ministry of foreign affairs] warns UAE nationals against visiting areas witnessing riots and protests and to avoid crowded areas. UAE citizens must adhere to the warnings issued by the UAE Embassy in London and comply with all safety instructions.

The U.K. is now considered too violent by Nigerian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, and Australian standards (CNBC). Why aren’t these determinations sufficient to support an asylum claim here in the U.S.?

(What I find most surprising about the U.K. discord is the arrogance of the London-based elites. A typical outcome of a multi-ethic multi-religious society is civil war. Recent examples include Lebanon, Rwanda, Sudan, and various Eastern European countries. Why did the folks who set up the current UK imagine that it would be different if they set up a multi-ethnic multi-religious society in the British Isles?)

From the Daily Mail, for example:

The U.K. Prime Minister has threatened to imprison anyone who expresses ideas contrary to the government’s point of view on the merits of low-skill immigration (Independent; “Anyone who stokes this violence, whether on the internet or in person, can be prosecuted and face prison.” (“stokes this violence” to be interpreted by the government, of course!)). The civil unrest is geographically widespread within the U.K. (NYT):

Bangladesh, 2021: “Bangladesh’s Hindus living in fear following mob attacks” (BBC). If their fear was “credible” (and the BBC certainly seemed to think so) then perhaps Bangladeshi Hindus were entitled to US/UK asylum no later than 2021. The U.S. government now says that Bangladesh is too dangerous for anyone, regardless of religious affiliation: “US urges its citizens not to travel to Bangladesh” (Deccan Herald, August 6, 2024).

Bangladesh has a population of 175 million. The U.K. has a population of around 70 million, so that’s roughly 245 million people who gained the right (under our asylum laws) to become U.S. residents/citizens in just the past week.

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