Where will Palestinian and other migrants who’ve settled in Vatican City move now that Pope Francis has died?

Pope Francis was celebrated by U.S. media primarily for two positions:

  • it is immoral for a country to refuse to accept welfare-dependent migrants
  • the fighting in Gaza is the only war to which anyone need pay attention and Israel is the evil aggressor behind the fighting (although any Pope is infallible, Israelis would probably take issue with this and point out that Arabs started the overall war in 1948 and the Gazans started the most recent battles by invading Israel and taking civilians hostage on October 7, 2023)

Presumably the Vatican, therefore, under Pope Francis’s direction, took in at least thousands of migrants with a special emphasis on Palestinians (built up with Chinese-style apartment blocks, Vatican City’s 121 acres should be able to hold at least 50,000 cherished migrants). Where will these folks go now that Pope Francis is gone and his replacement might not share Francis’s love for the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

The Catholic Church did not take sides in World War II (i.e., it was neutral regarding the policies and actions of Nazi Germany), but Pope Francis was quick to weigh in the Hamas side of the recent fighting in Gaza. Example from state-sponsored NPR:

See also this January 2025 Catholic World Report:

In a decree issued last month by the Holy See, the monetary sanctions and prison sentences for those who violate the strict security regulations of Vatican City have been considerably increased.

The document, signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, provides for monetary fines ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (about $10,200 to $25,700) and prison sentences ranging from one to four years.

These fines will apply especially to those who enter by means of violence, threats, or deception, bypassing border controls or security systems. In addition, those who enter with expired permits or do not meet the established requirements will receive administrative sanctions ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 euros (about $2,060 to $5,145).

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Is the government keeping Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s pupusa recipe secret?

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the noblest, most valuable, and most important resident of Maryland, made a pupusa-based asylum claim in 2019 (AP):

Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador, according to court documents filed in U.S. immigration court in 2019. His father was a former police officer. His mother, Cecilia, sold pupusas, the nation’s signature dish of flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese, beans or pork.

The entire family, including his two sisters and brother, ran the business from home, court records state. Abrego Garcia’s job was buying ingredients and making deliveries with his older brother, Cesar.

“Everyone in the town knew to get their pupusas from ‘Pupuseria Cecilia,’” his lawyers wrote.

A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the family for “rent money” and threatened to kill Cesar — or force him into their gang — if they weren’t paid, court documents state. The family complied but eventually sent Cesar to the U.S.

The vast U.S. immigration bureaucracy found the pupusa story credible. The home-based business made such great pupusas that it was ripe for extortion by a powerful gang. Presumably, no judge would have made this finding without having seen the recipe for the Abrego Garcia pupusas. Yet, as with the JFK assassination investigation files, there has been a massive coverup and the pupusa recipe hasn’t been released. Why not a Freedom of Information Act request to ICE to get the recipe so that every American who is passionate about due process can make pupusas every night until Mr. Abrego Garcia is free.

Here’s a Maryland Senator, Mr. Abrego Garcia, an interpreter, I think (why bother to learn English if you’re in the U.S. for only 15 years?), and margaritas (from X):

In the meantime, we have ChatGPT:

Here’s a basic pupusa recipe — traditional Salvadoran stuffed corn cakes — with just a few ingredients:

Ingredients:

For the dough:

  • 2 cups masa harina (corn flour, such as Maseca)
  • 1½ to 2 cups warm water
  • ½ tsp salt

Common fillings:

  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella (or Salvadoran quesillo if available)
  • Optional: refried beans, cooked pork (chicharrón), or loroco (a Central American edible flower)

Instructions:

  1. Make the dough:
    • In a large bowl, mix masa harina with salt.
    • Slowly add warm water and knead until you get a soft, pliable dough that doesn’t crack or stick to your hands. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
  2. Prepare fillings:
    • Mix cheese with beans or pork if using.
    • Divide the filling into about 6–8 portions.
  3. Form the pupusas:
    • Wet your hands and divide the dough into 6–8 equal balls.
    • Flatten a ball into a 4-inch disc, place a spoonful of filling in the center, then pinch the dough closed around it.
    • Flatten it gently into a thick disc, about 4–5 inches wide.
  4. Cook:
    • Heat a lightly oiled skillet or griddle over medium heat.
    • Cook each pupusa for about 2–3 minutes per side, until golden and slightly blistered.
  5. Serve:
    • Serve hot with curtido (a lightly fermented cabbage slaw) and tomato salsa.
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Federal government weighs in on a 15-year-old pupusa dispute (Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia)

Our energetic government employees have been vilified for inefficiency (most recently by the notorious DOGE), but the example of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia shows that federal workers can be very energetic indeed.

CNN:

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, entered the US illegally sometime around 2011, but an immigration judge in 2019, after reviewing evidence, withheld his removal. That meant he could not be deported to El Salvador but could be deported to another country. A gang in his native country, the immigration judge found, had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

(“could be deported to another country” is inconsistent with what Democrats on X and Facebook are saying, i.e., that the noble Abrego Garcia had the right to permanent residence in the U.S.)

ChatGPT, regarding the value (in 2025 dollars) at stake in this deadly dispute:

​In El Salvador, pupusas are a beloved and affordable staple. Typically, a standard pupusa costs between $0.25 and $1.00 USD, depending on factors like ingredients, size, and location.

A federal employee, in other words, determined that a gang member who didn’t like a pupusa ten years earlier (maybe the gang prefers panes rellenos?) was lying in wait for Mr. Abrego Garcia to return to El Salvador so that he could be executed. Therefore, Mr. Abrego Garcia could stay safe in the U.S.

(It’s unclear to me why Mr. Abrego Garcia is safer in Maryland than in El Salvador. The murder rates in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. are more than 20X higher than in El Salvador. The border was fully open for four years and any Salvadoran, including cornmeal-hating gang members, could enter the U.S. and stay permanently temporarily (latest extension by the Biden-Harris administration, oddly in conflict with the fact that the State Department rates El Salvador as safer for American travelers than France or my beloved Sweden (see below).

Additionally, Mr. Abrego Garcia would be at risk in Maryland from his wife, with whom he apparently has a history of physical violence (ABC). Suppose that she has availed herself of her 2nd Amendment rights during Mr. Abrego Garcia’s sojourn in El Salvador? He returns to Maryland as a hero to all Democrats and is promptly filled with lead by the wife.

Surely the United States is now home to far more non-imprisoned violent Salvadorans than El Salvador itself (which successfully exported nearly all of its violent criminals to the U.S. and then imprisoned the rest).)

I’m at a loss to understand how Americans imagine that our English-speaking government workers are capable of sorting out what happened in a pupusa exchange 15 years ago.

Separately, here’s a hero of climate change alarmism:

According to Maryland Sen. Van Hollen, we’re in a “climate crisis” exacerbated by a “climate emergency.” What’s the right thing to do in that situation? Tap into a lake of Jet A and fly roundtrip to El Salvador without first making any appointments (nytimes):

It wasn’t possible to meet via Zoom or phone?

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How is honor-system immigration supposed to work?

“Ex-Haitian mayor living in Mass. who lied about violent past convicted of U.S. visa fraud, feds say” (Boston 25, March 31):

A former Haitian mayor living in Massachusetts who committed “unspeakable acts of violence in Haiti” has been convicted of visa fraud for lying about his violent past to secure a green card to live in the United States, the U.S. Attorney said.

Prosecutors said Viliena “ordered and carried out brutal extrajudicial and political killings against the Haitian people” in Haiti. He later lied to immigration officials in 2008 to obtain a permanent resident card in the United States.

In another civil case two years ago, another jury at the US District Court in Boston found Viliena liable and ordered him to pay $15.5 million in damages to the victims and families of political opponents he allegedly killed and tortured in Haiti, the Globe reported. He is currently appealing that decision.

Foley said on June 3, 2008, Viliena went to the U.S. Embassy Consular Office in Port au Prince, Haiti, where he submitted an Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration, Form DS-230, Part II in order to gain entry to the United States.

The form specifically requires that each applicant state whether or not they are a member of any class of individuals that are excluded from admission into the United States, including those who have “ordered, carried out or materially assisted in extrajudicial and political killings and other acts of violence against the Haitian people.”

Viliena falsely responded that he was not. Viliena thereafter swore to, or affirmed, before a U.S. Consular Officer that the contents of the application were true and signed the application, Foley said.

Seventeen years and two federal court lawsuits later, justice has caught up with this enriching immigrant, a great result for attorneys who get paid to handle lawsuits, be judges, or be clerks for judges. What I find interesting is that U.S. immigration is based on the honor system. Mr. Viliena was asked “Are you guilty of extrajudicial and political killings?” and reasonably answered “No.” (It would be great to find out if in the entire history of the United States any prospective migrant has answered “Yes” to such a question!)

How did we expect this system to work and why is Mr. Viliena being prosecuted for lying? Wouldn’t it make more sense to prosecute for stupidity the Americans who set up the questionnaire?

Separately, let’s look at how Mr. Viliena enriched the United States:

Until his arrest two years ago, Viliena had been living in Malden and spent much of three years driving a school bus in the region, The Boston Globe reported.

He was one of the higher achievers in Haiti, mayor of a town of 23,000+, and here in the U.S. he was working at a job (driver) that will soon be automated at, no doubt, a salary that would have entitled him to taxpayer-subsidized housing, health care, etc. The majority of Americans seem to agree that we benefit from importing people who will be eligible for a lifetime of welfare.

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Robots that exterminate immigrant plants and animals?

We’re informed by Science that immigrant humans make life better/easier for natives (the enrichers and the enriched). Science also tells us that immigrant plants and animals make life extremely difficult if not impossible for natives. Examples from the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida:

What about robots that tirelessly hunt for immigrants that Science says we don’t want and that Californians characterize as “invaders”? They could catch Burmese pythons in the Everglades, for example. Sea robots could hunt lionfish in the Caribbean and Asian carp in the Great Lakes (folks in Illinois hate Asians almost as much as Harvard does!). The idea is already out there for immigrant plants (e.g., “Seeing Beneath the Trees: Using Robots and AI to Control Understory Invasive Plants” (UConn 2021)) and “weeds”. Maybe nobody wants to think about robots, such as Elon Musk’s Optimus, having the power to trap and gather live animals (or kill them).

This is my April Fools’ Day message. It can fit the theme of the day either because (1) we are all fools for not noticing the apparent contradiction in simultaneously believing that low-skill immigrant humans are hugely valuable and animal immigrants are hugely destruction, (2) the idea of robots roaming the Everglades and gathering up baskets of pythons is foolish.

Related… “Densely packed invasive anoles outcompete natives”:

Invasive brown anoles might outcompete their native cousins in the southeastern U.S. merely by living more densely.

Brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) inadvertently came to Florida in the 1800s by tagging along on cargo shipments. Since then, the invasive species have moved steadily northward in the state, often taking over territories occupied by native green anoles (Anolis carolinensis). Researchers know that over time, the invasive Cuban anoles change the native species’ habits. After moving in, the newcomer species typically occupies the ground and lower parts of plants and trees, while the green anoles occupy an ecological niche higher up on trees and bushes. The native anoles also become less common once the brown anoles have established themselves in the new territory.

Instead, she speculated that brown anoles in the wild might be outcompeting green anoles based on sheer numbers. Brown anoles may lay eggs more often than green anoles. The Cuban newcomers also tolerate much denser living conditions, while green anoles don’t. This allows the invasive species to take over more territory.

In short, anole migrants have a higher birth rate and don’t mind living in squalid conditions that native anoles would consider intolerable…

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Immigrant-poor Japan vs. immigrant-rich Germany

Pierre Poilievre, the potential replacement for Mx. Trudeau as Canada’s leader, recently highlighted this chart showing the stagnation of the Canadian economy from an individual’s perspective (the economy grew with the population, though, so politicians had more money to spend every year). Let’s look at Japan, a frequent example of a worst-case outcome for Population Doomsayers and Open Borders advocates:

Japan is right in the middle of this chart, with superior economic performance compared to immigrant-rich nations such as Canada, Germany, the UK, Australia, and France. In other words, Japan retained their language and culture, supported a growing fraction of the population that is elderly, and managed to achieve substantial per-capita GDP growth despite a falling percentage of the population being of working age.

There is a Scientific consensus that immigration is the only viable path to prosperity, especially for countries with low native birth rates and high median age. Yet the above chart, especially the bar for Japan, is completely inconsistent with Proven Science (TM).

Circling back to Canada, Aporia has some interesting charts on this best-case scenario for immigration.

Unlike in the US or Europe, where most immigrants are either illegals, refugees or persons brought in through family reunification, Canadian immigration is designed to be selective. Most permanent Canadian immigrants are granted that status through employment, while the (supposedly) temporary immigrants comprise about one-third students. I say “supposedly” because this group makes up a full 7.3% of the entire population of Canada, and there’s no plan or real mechanism to remove them from the country. Note that Canada has birthright citizenship, giving “temporary” immigrants an easy path to permanent residency and citizenship through anchor babies.

Unlike most countries, Canada has imported humans who do better on academic tasks than its natives do. Given the correlation between academic performance and later earnings, Canada’s economy should be doing quite well.

Canada chucked its culture, value system, and religion in hopes of achieving economic growth. What they achieved instead is a society of incel males living in apartments:

Despite the miracle of 2SLGBTQQIA+ Science, apparently it isn’t practical for an incel male to produce a baby:

Canada will thus have to double down on immigration in order to keep its politicians supplied with taxpayers. Support for this program is particularly confusing to me with respect to Quebec. The Québécois fought for two centuries to preserve their distinctive culture, religion, and language. In the past 10-20 years, though, they gave it all up because of their passion for open borders. Is there any scenario in which a Muslim from India would want to learn French, convert to Catholicism (punishable by death, traditionally, in Islam), and follow Québécois customs? If not, Quebec is guaranteed to lose its distinctive character and will become just another poorer-than-anywhere-in-the-US random assemblage of humans, cultures, and religions in which the English language is the only thing that people have in common.

Loosely related… a friend’s comment: “Canada will obliterate us in this kind of trade war because they are already poor and are happy staying that way.”

Related:

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Replacement Theory is false, New York City edition

Back in 2023, the New York Times did a story on how Black residents of NYC were gone and immigrants had moved in via a process of non-replacement (see Great Replacement Theory for Black Americans (from the NYT)).

Here’s the latest evidence that Replacement Theory is false (“debunked” according to Wokipedia), but this time expanded to people of all races… “After Pandemic Exodus, New York City’s Population Is Growing Again” (NYT, March 13, 2025):

Fewer people leaving the city and more foreign newcomers have helped erase pandemic losses, new census data shows.

In the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers packed up and fled, raising the possibility that the ravaged city had entered a long-term slide.

New York’s population has yet to fully recover, but new census data released on Thursday reveals that it is finally growing again after a steep drop. It reached 8.48 million in July 2024, up from 8.39 million in July 2023.

The city grew by about 1 percent, gaining 87,184 residents between 2023 and 2024 — largely because of a steady increase in newcomers from other countries — while at the same time fewer residents left for elsewhere, according to the census data.

Native-born Americans on net are continuing to leave New York City. Via a non-replacement process (since Replacement Theory has been proven false), their places have been taken by migrants.

Separately, trust the government’s numbers, unless you prefer some other numbers:

City officials had challenged [official U.S. Census Bureau] figures, saying the number of migrants and other people living in group settings like shelters had been underestimated. More than 200,000 migrants have passed though the city’s shelters since the spring of 2022.

From the NYT, August 2023:

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Testing the religion of immigration

We were told by the Biden-Harris administration and their media allies that reducing undocumented immigration would require PhDs in Migration Science, $118 billion in new laws and funding from Congress, and decades of hard work by properly credentialed people. We also needed a pathway to citizenship for the tens of millions of migrants already here (about 22 million in pre-Biden times). My 2019 idea, Why aren’t we paying the Mexicans to patrol our border?, was plainly unworkable. Yesterday, a little more than a month after the start of the second Trump dictatorship, the New York Times:

On the eve of President Trump’s deadline to impose tariffs on Mexico, one thing is hard to miss on the Mexican side of the border: The migrants are gone. … “All that is over,” said the Rev. William Morton, a missionary at a Ciudad Juárez cathedral that serves migrants free meals. “Nobody can cross.” … “We are going to wait to see if God touches Mr. Trump’s heart,” said a 26-year-old woman from Venezuela, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Maria Elena, as she sat eating with her 7-year-old son at the cathedral in Ciudad Juárez. … In response to Mr. Trump’s demands last month, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, dispatched 10,000 national guardsmen to the border

(I would love to see a heart-touching meeting between God and Trump! Maybe God would be angrier than Zelenskyy?)

The threat of tariffs rather than my proposed cash payments is a twist from what I proposed and, I think, unfair our Mexican brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters (they’re not the ones who created the world’s second largest welfare state, as a percentage of GDP (maybe we’re #1 now, since the French have run out of money due to their own passion for hosting economy-boosting migrants)). But it seems to be working better than anything that the U.S. has done internally over the past 100 years.

Even if Trump has been successful in eliminating undocumented immigration, we are still on track to receive at least 10 million legal immigrants, many of them low-skill, over the next decade. Let’s step back from today’s news and look at the assumptions behind our policy.

Americans who advocate for and oppose open borders and low-skill immigration both agree on two things:

  1. without immigration, demographics will make it difficult to keep our Ponzi schemes, such as Medicare and Social Security, going as the ration of taxpaying workers to beneficiaries shrinks (due to population aging)
  2. with immigration, the Ponzi schemes can be continued for many additional decades, if not forever

Nobody seems to question the two points above. The righteous point out that immigrants make us safer because they don’t commit crimes (see 2024 state-sponsored NPR story below) and they will boost the economy because they’re smarter and more energetic than native-born Americans (see Albert Einstein as a typical example of someone who walks across the southern border). Haters, as seen in Fox News, say that they don’t want to live with people from all of the world’s most violent, dysfunctional, and impoverished societies. But even Fox News doesn’t question the Sacred Two elements of dogma above.

What if both the righteous and the haters are working from incorrect assumptions? That’s the question asked and answered in “Immigration does not solve population decline” (Aporia):

most of the problems of population decline, like pensions bankrupting the state or less innovation and entrepreneurship, are actually problems of population aging. … immigrants age too. This means that while immigration can definitely reverse population decline, it can’t do much for population aging. Assuming immigrant age-structure and fertility remain constant, the difference in the working-age share of the population in 2060 between zero net migration and 2019 levels of migration in the United States is… 2% (57% vs 59%).

The picture for the European Union is similar. The difference in the old-age dependency ratio in 2016 between zero non-EU migration and the existing levels is tiny: 118:100 vs 114:100. By comparison, the 2015 level is 76:100. The total effect of all non-EU immigration on aging means that instead of this ratio increasing by 55% over 45 years, it will increase by “only” 50%.

In other words, if we accepted the full slate of New York Times assumptions about migrants, a best-case scenario, and we maintained the open borders of the Biden-Harris administration, we still would be on track to spend ourselves into either insolvency or hyperinflation. What are the assumptions of the Righteous?

  • migrants, despite not being able to speak English or having education beyond 7th grade, will earn about the same as native-born Americans
  • migrants never commit crime
  • migrants don’t reduce our quality of life by bringing an alien culture, e.g., one where female circumcision and honor killing are accepted and one where females running around with hair or bare skin showing is unacceptable
  • population growth via immigration does not reduce our quality of life by burdening infrastructure and creating congestion, e.g., massive traffic jams in every city other than Detroit, Baltimore, Buffalo, and the other write-off cities
  • immigrants and children of immigrants won’t clog up public housing and exacerbate homelessness (remember that public housing is a human right and also that a person might get put on a 10-year waiting list in order to receive this right; it’s the inequality factory for people who say that they hate inequality)

How did we get to a place where half of the country felt that it was time to open the borders?

Democracies naturally tend towards vote-buying, and paying off current voters with the earnings of future generations who cannot vote is a winning strategy. This creates a Ponzi scheme in which huge fractions of state budgets are redistributed from current workers to retirees in ways that require an ever-growing number of workers to be sustainable. Productivity gains don’t usually help, because the expected living standards of retirees, often enforced by law, rise with productivity.

What does this look like from the perspective of a peasant with a job? The author gives us a figure captioned “Change in real purchasing power by age group in Spain since 2008. Every group under 65 has gotten poorer; only pensioners’ living standards are improving”:

One blind spot in the article: no discussion of natural resources and the fact that a larger population means dividing the value of those resources by a larger number and, therefore, each individual has less natural resource wealth.

Bigger blind spot in the editing: much of the content in the article isn’t related to the central point of dependency ratio and, instead, talks about negative non-demographic effects of low-skill immigration (i.e., effects that immigration advocates deny). I think it would be more interesting and persuasive to have an article solely focused on the dependency ratio and demographics issues while accepting the assumptions of those who advocate for open borders. People who are pro-immigration will never be persuaded by facts and figures about how much low-skill migrants cost in welfare benefits. People who are anti-immigration don’t need these facts and figures because they never expected a Tren de Aragua member to pay a lot in federal personal income tax.

More: Read “Immigration does not solve population decline”.

Related:

  • “Immigration and the Aging Society” (CIS, 2021), which seems to be the author’s principal source for the interaction between immigration and population age structure: “In 2000, the average age of all immigrants — not just new arrivals — was 39.2 years. By 2019, it was 46 — a seven-year increase. Over the same period, the average age of native-born Americans increased only slightly, from 35.4 years to 38 years. … the relatively high and increasing average age of all immigrants is a good reminder that they grow old like everyone else, even if they do arrive when relatively young. … nder the Census Bureau’s current projections, there will be 2.5 working-age people per retiree in 2060. If the projected immigration rate were cut in half, there would be 2.3 workers per retiree. … to roughly maintain the working-age share of the population, immigration rates would have to increase five-fold over what the bureau currently foresees. This would create a total population of 706 million in 2060 … the average age of new immigrants, including illegal immigrants, is still much higher than it was in the past — increasing from 26 in 2000 to 31 in 2019. Perhaps even more surprising, the share of newly arrived immigrants who are 55 and older more than doubled, from 5 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2019. This means that one in nine new immigrants is arriving old enough to move directly into a retirement community. … U.S. citizens can sponsor their parents for permanent residence without numerical limits. Parents typically immigrate to the United States after age 50, meaning they tend to be at or near retirement age as soon as they arrive. … Immigrants are human beings, not just the idealized workers or child-bearers that some commentators imagine.”
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What we’re losing as we say goodbye to Joe Biden

From the New York Times, immediately before the election, “Biden Wanted to Fix Immigration, but Leaves Behind a System That Is Still Broken”:

President Biden’s legacy will largely be limited to his success in lowering border crossings. But his approach has drawn criticism, and some of his actions have moved the problem deeper into the country.

Today we can say goodbye to Joe Biden, the president who, according to the fair- and tough-minded journalists of the New York Times, was responsible for “lowering border crossings” (i.e., reducing undocumented migration compared to previous administrations). It isn’t clear why this is a “legacy” of which to be proud since we are reminded by the NYT that low-skill immigrants make us all better off. Why is it “success” to lower border crossing when diversity and immigration are our strength?

Government data via Newsweek:

Note that the number of encounters appears to have fallen from 2023 to 2024 in the chart below, but that may be because the 2024 bar is for only part of the year (through July 2024).

A screen shot of the above article:

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California proves Replacement Theory false

“California’s population is finally increasing — thanks to this demographic” (San Francisco Chronicle, December 2024):

After shrinking during the pandemic and then stagnating for several years, California’s population is finally growing — thanks to immigration from abroad.

Native-born Californians are moving out (“Net domestic migration”) and foreign-born immigrants are moving in, which is further evidence that the Great Replacement conspiracy theory is false.

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