Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

Immigrants reproduce faster, so their population can overwhelm food sources before natives have a chance to recover.

by philg

I was doing some research on termite prevention for a friend who recently moved from Maskachusetts to Florida (he and his successful hard-working wife have waved goodbye to the new progressive personal income tax rates in Massachusetts and all of the wonderful progressive programs that it supports). It turns out that the $2000-ish Sentricon system may be a reasonable insurance buy due to Formosan termites, which immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s.

ChatGPT:

Formosan subterranean termites (Coptotermes formosanus) often outcompete native U.S. subterranean termites (Reticulitermes species) when they invade the same area. A Formosan colony can contain several million termites, whereas native subterranean termite colonies often have fewer than a million. They reproduce faster, so their population can overwhelm food sources before natives have a chance to recover.

Formosan termites have foraging territories up to 300 feet from the nest, much larger than that of native species. This gives them access to more food and nesting sites, putting pressure on native termite colonies.

They defend their territory aggressively, sometimes killing or driving out native termites. They consume wood more rapidly, reducing available resources for competing species.

Once they establish themselves, they tend to displace or severely reduce local native termite populations, especially in warm, humid climates like Florida, Hawaii, and the Gulf Coast.

ChatGPT provides a simple “yes” answer to “Would it be fair to say that Formosan termites are therefore replacing native termites?”

Yes — in areas where Coptotermes formosanus becomes well-established, it’s fair to say they are replacing native subterranean termites over time.

When asked “In Dayton, Ohio the total population of humans is decreasing but the immigrant human population is increasing. Would it be fair in that case to say that immigrants are replacing native-born Americans in Dayton?” however, the answer is long and nuanced! Here’s the end of the hemming and hawing:

It’s more accurate to say immigrants are increasing their share of the population as native-born numbers decline, without implying causation.

Loosely related, a restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan called “The Migrant Kitchen”:

Full post, including comments

Washington, D.C. is safe and also people from places that are safer are entitled to asylum

by philg

The righteous recently have complained that Donald Trump is trying to reduce crime in Washington, D.C. where the murder rate is only about 27 per 100,000 in the most recent statistics, down from 40 per 100,000 in 2023. That’s almost perfect safety, we are told, and therefore Trump is plainly motivated by a combination of racism (AP, below) and a grand plan to transition to full dictatorship.

The same people who say that D.C. is perfectly safe tell us that people from Colombia, Guatemala, South Sudan, Venezuela, El Salvador, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan are entitled to asylum in the U.S. (and four generations of welfare if they want it) because their home countries aren’t safe. What do their home countries have in common? All have murder rates lower than Washington, D.C.’s (Wikipedia).

Full post, including comments

Update on the Islamic Republic of Twin Falls, Idaho

by philg

Nine years ago in the Washington Post, “In Twin Falls, Idaho, co-dependency of whites and immigrants faces a test” (paywall-free-version):

Twin Falls is now a testing ground for whether the bitter cultural divisions intensified by this year’s presidential campaign [Good Hillary vs. Evil Trump] can recede in favor of the co-dependency that marks many communities with large white and immigrant populations. In this southern Idaho city of 45,000, the question surrounds a growing Muslim population.

The rancor in Twin Falls began to surface only over the past year and a half as concerns about domestic terrorism awakened a fierce and sudden debate about whether the local Muslim population represented a point of pride or a potential danger — an anxiety that Trump amplified during his campaign. For decades before, the refu­gee resettlement program run by a local community college had flourished with little opposition, with refugees filling open jobs on dairy farms and in cheese factories.

The headline reminds white readers that they’re “dependent” on the “local Muslim” immigrants and also that Muslims aren’t “white”. But the body of the article reveals that it is local business owners seeking cheap labor who are dependent on the imports. There is, apparently, no need to explain how a working-class native-born resident of Twin Falls is better off as a result of the new arrivals or how he/she/ze/they would suffer if the immigrants on which he/she/ze/they “depends” departed. The “local community college” is getting most of the federal cash, it seems, in exchange for facilitating the importation of humans (which is not “human trafficking”?).

The article goes on to remind readers that non-coastal Americans are stupid because they can’t distinguish among the various species of migrants:

A sexual assault took place in a local apartment complex, and rumors spread that the suspects were Syrian teens. “Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho,” read a headline on the Drudge Report. The case was sealed because it involved juveniles, including the victim, a 5-year-old girl. Still, Twin Falls police corrected a few facts, saying the suspects were from Sudan and Iraq.

The real issue with the sexual assault of a 5-year-old, according to the Washington Post, is that some natives of Twin Falls can’t tell the difference between a Syrian and an Iraqi.

What’s happening in Twin Falls circa 2025? As tourists wandering/biking around for three days we encountered Islamically covered women at least 4 or 5 times a day. No burqas with full face coverings, but always more than a hijab. The clothing was sharply at odds with the prevailing shorts and T-shirt fashion for the typical female out in the 80-90-degree dry heat. The elites live in a Muslim-free environment. We didn’t see any covered women at an upscale restaurant overlooking the canyon, on the trails leading to waterfalls, or in expensive neighborhoods (“expensive” = $600,000+ for a house). The Twin Falls Mosque is in a neighborhood of shabby $200,000+ houses.

We talked to some local high-school- and college-aged native-born kids. They expressed pride that their high school was “diverse”, but also noted that the Muslim immigrants formed an entirely separate society within the high school and that they themselves had never been friends with a Muslim student.

The local science museum explains that non-natives lead to environmental, ecological, economic, social, and human health impacts.

On our way out of town we were reminded that ecosystems can be destroyed by newcomers who “end up where they shouldn’t be”…

Note that all of Twin Falls is apparently considered a dumping ground by the elites of Boise, some of whom we met in Sun Valley. They all advised us to avoid even a brief stay in Twin Falls. The density of hijabs is lower in Boise, at least in the expensive downtown areas where we spent most of our time. That said, Google Maps shows a variety of mosques:

Full post, including comments

If Zohran Mamdani were Ugandan would that have made his claim to be “Black or African-American” more fair?

by philg

The New York Times, which said that anything negative about the Biden family was Russian disinformation, jumped immediately on a story regarding the progressive on track to be New York City’s next mayor: “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application”.

The implication of the article is that it would have been righteous for Zohran Mamdani to check the “I am Black” box for a race-based preference if he had actually been Ugandan rather than part of an immigrant population from India.

Today’s question is why it would have been fair for a recent immigrant from Uganda, even one with the correct skin color, to receive preference in college admissions or hiring. America’s race-based college admissions and jobs allocation systems were advertised as reparations for past discrimination and slavery. If someone who shows up in the U.S. five minutes ago scoops up these preferences doesn’t that prevent the preferences from going to the people for whom they were intended? What discrimination could an actual Black Ugandan who arrived in the U.S. yesterday, for example, have suffered at the hands of the bad people (i.e., white Americans)?

The idea of affirmative action (race-based discrimination by do-gooders or white-/Asian-haters, depending on your perspective) was started by President Lyndon Johnson via Executive Order 11246 in 1965. This was, coincidentally, at a point when immigrants weren’t a significant percentage of the U.S. population (Pew):

(Note that the open borders of the Biden-Harris administration made the above 2015 forecast inaccurate. The U.S. became 15.8 percent foreign-born in 2025 (CIS).)

Even though Donald Trump has gotten the federal government out of the race-based discrimination business we still have private corporations and universities engaging in it. The question for today: Why are race-based preferences available to immigrants?

Full post, including comments

Bridge the divides in American society by giving immigrants more free stuff

by philg

American Haters falsely assert that native-born Americans are being replaced by migrants and that migrants are enjoying taxpayer-funded housing, health care, education, food, and smartphones.

The progressives behind the Boise Art Museum came up with a plan to silence these haters. Membership is $60 for native-born Americans and free for immigrants. Dividing patrons into a group that must pay and a group that need not pay will “bridge perceived divides across cultures”.

What else goes on at the art museum? The sculpture park is nice! Note that admission is also free via reciprocity for those who are members of Florida’s Ringling museum.

We also checked into the Basque Museum, which explains how Basque men came to Idaho to raise sheep on free federal land. Fifteen of them would share a modest-size house (i.e., they did not receive the “dignity” that is a migrant’s right today in the form of a 1BR or 2BR apartment). According to the museum, as soon as the Feds shut down the offer of free land, the Basques stopped coming to the U.S.

One of the restaurants in the Warehouse Food Hall combines Basque and Vietnamese. I can’t figure out why. (We had some great food, conviviality, and Basque language instruction at Ansots (shared a table with a lady who runs the local Basque immersion preschool for 20 kids; two teachers come over every year for 13 months from the Basque part of Spain).)

It looks as though Boise has had at least one immigrant from San Francisco…

Also, Elizabeth Warren was visiting at the same time that we did:

Full post, including comments

Kilmar’s Pupusa and Margarita Café

by philg

A chain idea to appeal to roughly half of Americans: a Kilmar Armando Ábrego García-themed restaurant. The name: “Kilmar’s”. What should a restaurant named after this hero serve? 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.”

Obviously the menu must include the pupusas that Kilmar’s mom was making at home and that U.S. government employees had no trouble believing were a source of gang interest. The restaurant should offer margaritas just like the ones that Kilmar enjoyed with Maryland Senator Van Hollen and there should be a table with a fiberglass replica of Sen. Van Hollen so that customers can get pictures of themselves like the one below.

There should be a Chevy Suburban inside the restaurant that has been cut away to function as a table. The Suburban should be the same model year as the one that Kilmar was driving when pulled over in Tennessee.

Photos from a celebration of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García that we had in Sun Valley, Idaho last month:

Full post, including comments

The largest youth generation ever and human population collapse

by philg

The head of the UN points out that there are more young humans on Planet Earth than at any time in history.

At the same time, we are informed by the followers of Science that everyone must do his/her/zir/their share to avert population collapse, e.g., “Population Growth Isn’t a Progressive Issue. It Should Be” (New York Times, last year):

When populations decline, the average age of people in the population increases. This has several harmful consequences. Eventually, there are not enough young people to care for older people and to economically support them through contributions to social programs; to fuel economic growth, technological innovation and cultural progress; and to fund government services. … Fertility rates in the United States are below the level necessary for population replacement, and they are declining almost everywhere else. Contrary to the alarmism you sometimes hear about exponential population growth, experts say that the number of humans on Earth will peak before the end of this century and fall afterward.

It might seem that humans are inflicting so much harm through climate change that everyone and everything on Earth would be better off with fewer inhabitants. But climate change will remain a problem even if we allow the population to decline. We have to change our patterns of consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions — no matter how big or small our population.

There are some great ideas in the above. First, “experts” can predict how many children humans will choose to have in the year 2100. Second, humans cause climate change, but the scale of the damage is unrelated to the number of humans.

Pew offers some projections/guesses and calls them “facts”. “5 facts about how the world’s population is expected to change by 2100”:

  • don’t worry if you’re not getting enough phone calls about solar panels, home improvement, final expense insurance, Medicare benefits, etc.: “India is expected to continue growing until it peaks at 1.7 billion people in 2061.”
  • “Five countries are expected to contribute more than 60% of the world’s population growth by 2100: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania.”
  • don’t worry if you’re concerned that the “affordable housing crisis” in the U.S. will subside: “the U.S. population is expected to grow slowly and steadily to 421 million by 2100.”

The last projection/guess confuses me. U.S. immigration levels are determined by presidential whim, not by any law. As demonstrated by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a president can open or close the border. If Americans elect Democrats we could have at least 2.5 million new neighbors per year from 2029 through 2100, which would work out to a boost in population of 177 million (and perhaps quite a few more if asylum and welfare eligibility are expanded).

Full post, including comments

Turn golf courses in pro-immigration states into housing?

by philg

The U.S. population has been booming due to immigration (Pew):

Most of the migrants are low-skill and, therefore, don’t earn enough to fund the construction of an apartment, even if the land were made available for free (see City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion and a calculation that even two median earners in Maskachusetts don’t earn enough).

The “housing affordability crisis”, therefore, gets worse every year (Brookings) and it seems to be reasonably well correlated with immigration:

How about this idea: use eminent domain to take golf courses and turn them into housing. A typical golf course is reasonably close to jobs and about 170 acres in size. I previously calculated that Vatican City, about 109 acres in size, could hold 50,000 migrants if developed like a Chinese apartment complex (any migrant-loving pope, therefore, could take in 50,000 migrants if he chose to follow the advice that he gives to other nations). So each golf course certainly could house 50,000 people in high rises.

Golf courses tend to be enjoyed by the elite so this kind of taking would have the salutary effect of reducing inequality.

A reasonable objection to this plan is that not every American agrees on continued population expansion via low-skill immigration. To keep it fair, therefore, the plan would be implemented only in those states where a majority of voters selected the pro-immigration presidential candidate. Inequality-decrying elites in California, Maskachusetts, and New York, for example, would give up their golf courses in order to ensure affordable housing for migrants (with some spillover into the market for all housing) and continued enrichment by migrants (since migrants wouldn’t feel any pressure to move away).

Maybe Palo Alto, California, Stanford University, and Governor Gavin Newsom could cooperate on the first golf course->housing complex transformation starting with the Stanford Golf Course.

Related:

Full post, including comments

WSJ: Open borders make the U.S. rich and also Social Security is going broke faster than expected

by philg

Happy Independence Day for those who celebrate our traitorous rebellion against legitimate British rule and a total tax burden of 2 percent of income, not a penny of which the British ever spent outside of North America (the Brits spent a huge amount of treasure defending the white immigrants from Native Americans who objected to being replaced via white immigration).

Since a country is defined primarily by its people, let’s take a look at two perspectives on low-skill immigration today. Both perspectives are from the same newspaper, one from when Joe Biden was still running for reelection on the basis of what the media reported to be his perfectly sharp mind. The second is a recent piece, published during the Trump Dictatorship v2.0.

June 2024, Wall Street Journal:

Immigration Is Behind the Strong U.S. Economy

The U.S. population is aging, and millions of baby boomers retire each year. We can expect that absent immigration, we would have a decreasing working-age population and shrinking employment for decades to come—especially considering the low fertility rate. … immigrants help the economy in a few other ways. First, immigrants are more likely to be of working age than their U.S.-born counterparts, so they can help support American retirees through their labor and taxes. Second, immigrants bring innovation that helps the economy grow.

June 2025, Wall Street Journal:

Social Security’s Potential Insolvency Date Moves Up One Year

With an aging U.S. population and a smaller share of American workers who pay into it, Social Security could become unable to pay full retirement and disability benefits in 2034, one year earlier than reported last year, the program’s trustees said Wednesday. … The report also said that Medicare’s hospital-insurance trust fund would be able to pay 100% of benefits until 2033, three years earlier than projected in last year’s report. At that stage, the fund’s reserves would be depleted and the income going into the program would be able to pay 89% of total scheduled benefits.

We had four years of open borders under the Biden/Harris/WhoeverWasActuallyInCharge administration and at least 10 million migrants who enriched us economically as well as culturally. We had SARS-CoV-2, a virus that killed nearly 1 million over-65 Americans who were, according to #Science, otherwise in perfect health and would have been collecting Social Security and Medicare for 10 additional years. Despite these massive tailwinds, Social Security and Medicare are running out of money faster than expected?

I wonder if this changes the calculation of the optimum time to begin drawing on Social Security. Traditionally, healthy people are told to wait until age 70, three years beyond Full Retirement Age (67 for those born in 1960 or later), in order to maximize the payout. But if benefits are likely to be cut in 2034, it might be smarter for a 67-year-old in 2025 to begin taking Social Security right now.

See also “Immigration does not solve population decline” (Aporia):

The thing is: 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 good news for those who believe that working age migrants will solve all of our fiscal problems: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia brought back to US, appears in court on charges of smuggling migrants” (ABC). Also “Ohio man hid horrific role in 1994 Rwanda genocide to enter US, arrested after years on the run: DOJ” (New York Post). Imagine the taxes that Vincent Nzigiyimfura, admitted to the U.S. at age 49 and currently aged 65, will be paying after he serves the 30 years in prison that our wise government overlords are currently attempt to impose on him.

Loosely related, residents of Westfield, Maskachusetts who appear to have a personal stake in Social Security benefit levels hold a whites-only “No Kings” protest:

Also, it is never appropriate to conduct a fiscal analysis when considering immigration. If you’re not a hater you have to support open borders. Sticker on a mailbox outside a coffee shop in Boise, Idaho, yesterday:

Love has no borders.

Full post, including comments

Will California’s high-speed rail line be vulnerable to drone-based jihad?

by philg

Assuming that they can get their hands on $100 billion (or maybe $200 billion, or maybe $300 billion) in federal tax dollars, Californians will eventually have a high-speed rail line (the groundbreaking ceremony was 10.5 years ago). In light of recent drone attacks within Russia and Iran, the question for today is whether the fancy new train will be a sitting duck for jihadis. From the Wall Street Journal:

From the BBC:

Maybe anti-drone defense systems could be built around U.S. airports and an airplane should be safe from low-tech attack at 30,000′, but how would a 500-mile rail line conceivably be secured? California has already experienced jihad from Syed Rizwan Farook, born to immigrants from Pakistan, and Tashfeen Malik, a legal immigrant from Pakistan (they killed 14 of their neighbors/coworkers with guns and had hoped to kill more, but their pipe bombs failed to explode). By the time the high-speed rail is finally ready presumably the knowledge of how to build suicide drones will be far more widespread. A drone can fly from a few miles away, park itself on the ground between the rails a few minutes before the train is due, and detonate when its camera sees the train rolling over it, thus derailing the train. All of this can be fully automated with no need for radio communication back to an operator. The tracks don’t move so the lat/long of the landing spot can be preprogrammed. Nothing drives over these tracks except high-speed trains and, therefore, the “detect a train” logic need not be sophisticated.

(Of course, I continue to be mystified as to how Californians can simultaneously say (a) they hate inequality, and (b) they want all of this federal money rather than seeing it spent in poorer-than-average states. Why don’t they want federal money spent in ways that reduce inequality?)

Maybe the answer will be a grid of sensor-equipped poles arranged along the entire route? They can use radar and optical cameras to look for aerial drones and also drones that crawl over the ground. But given that a drone can pop up from a shipping crate just a minute before a train is due and land 30 seconds before a train is due to pass, how can surveillance alone be effective? Californians didn’t object to a year or two of lockdown and school closure in exchange for a perceived higher level of security from Covid so maybe they would also accept a security corridor for a few miles on either side of the track in which humans are forbidden to enter. On the other hand, a clever jihadi could perhaps make a drone that looks like an animal of some kind.

Note that the same question can be asked about a lot of U.S. infrastructure. We have open borders by design, including to people who say that they hate the United States (an application for asylum is based on a fear of being harmed in some other country, not on any kind of affection for or loyalty to the U.S.). What stops a foreign power from sending a few hundred soldiers over as asylum-seekers and having them quietly build attack drones? The foreign power could guarantee that their asylum application will be accepted by publishing a list of the soldiers’ names and saying “All of the people on this list are sentenced to death due to their political opinions.” Anyone under a definitive sentence of death for a political point of view meets U.S. asylum criteria, right? “Membership in a particular social group” is also a slam-dunk and “LGBTI” is considered a “group” so the foreign power could make sure that its army gets into the U.S. by publishing a list of soldiers’ names and saying “All of the men on this list were discovered at a gay bathhouse and, therefore, are sentenced to death if apprehended.” From a USCIS training document:

Full post, including comments