Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

Migrants to Nantucket?

by philg

The 50 asylum-seekers sent to Martha’s Vineyard have reached sanctuary in the middle of a military base in the middle of an off-island forest. Where can the next group of migrants who want to escape to a properly governed Science-following state land? Here’s an email that I received today from an airfare alert service:

Only $234 for a migrant to start enjoying his/her/zir/their best life amidst the “No Human is Illegal” sign forest of Massachusetts, entering via an island of vacant-through-May mansions. Given TSA rules, perhaps this would work only for undocumented migrants who have documents such as passports.

I wonder if there will be a sufficient supply, though. “Migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard have filed a lawsuit against Gov. DeSantis” (state-sponsored NPR):

Attorneys want DeSantis and his fellow defendants to be banned from “inducing immigrants to travel across state lines by fraud and misrepresentation,” as well as damages “for the harm suffered by the migrants.”

“Advocates for migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard sue Ron DeSantis” (Guardian):

According to the complaint, the Venezuelans, who are pursuing the proper channels for lawful immigration status in the US, “experienced cruelty akin to what they fled in their home country. Defendants manipulated them, stripped them of their dignity, deprived them of their liberty, bodily autonomy, due process, and equal protection under law, and impermissibly interfered with the federal government’s exclusive control over immigration in furtherance of an unlawful goal and a personal political agenda.”

If the cruelty here in the U.S., due to the existence of Republicans, makes life in the U.S. as bad as life Venezuela, why take the trouble to leave Venezuela? Or maybe the migrants will leave Venezuela, but stop and request asylum in one of the countries through which they would previously have simply passed?

  • “The Work versus Welfare Trade‐​Off: 2013” (CATO); Table 4 shows the dramatic superiority of being on welfare in Maskachusetts (spending power 1.2X what a worker at the median wage gets) compared to cruel Florida (only 0.4X the spending power of a median worker). The absolute dollar figures can be ignored because they are in pre-Biden money.
  • “Nantucket restaurant desperate to fill jobs, hiring 8th graders” (Fox Business, 2021)
  • a Massachusetts resident commenting in a chat group: “[folks on Martha’s Vineyard] have hundreds, maybe thousands, of empty beds and $9.8 million budget surplus in just one of the three towns alone to pay rental on those beds. What do they think other cities do? NYC pays $500 a night to house each person. They have the lowest tax rate of any town in the entire state and had tons of room to raise the property tax to replenish the surplus. Instead they called in a 125 person military response to remove them to an internment camp. So much for the yard sign virtue signaling. We need Martha’s Vineyard Airlift 2022 T shirts.” (the correct figure for empty beds on MVY is surely “thousands” not “hundreds” because the difference in in-season/off-season population is more than 50,000)
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Will Maskachusetts allow journalists into Camp DeSantis?

by philg

The arrival of one million migrants into Texas border towns is a minor issue. On the other hand, the arrival of 50 migrants into an island with vacant houses sufficient to hold 50,000 people (the summer population bump) was a crisis that required calling out the Maskachusetts National Guard. The 50 migrants are now off island in a concentration camp within a military base that is itself within a forest in the middle of Nowheresville, MA. Going forward, the only way that an elite Vineyard resident might encounter a migrant is if his/her/zir/their Gulfstream suffers a double-engine failure and crash-lands in the woods of the Inner Cape. Because the migrants arrived in Massachusetts originally on Air DeSantis, let’s call their final destination Camp DeSantis.

In order to disprove accusations of hypocrisy, if there is any access by journalists to Camp DeSantis, the images and reports will have to show that these are the best cared-for asylum-seekers in the history of humanity. On the other hand, if the Four Seasons-style rooms at Camp DeSantis and three-star catered meals are described and illustrated, people might begin to ask “Why isn’t this infrastructure used to care for the 18,000+ people in Massachusetts who are experiencing homelessness?”

What do readers think? Are we going to see regular reports on The Fifty and how great their lives are, courtesy of the open-hearted migrant-welcoming Democrats of Massachusetts? Something like the Theresienstadt documentary, but broken up into tweets?

Related:

  • Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants… (August 2022): …. who will live somewhere other than in Maine.
  • What it takes to welcome refugees and other immigrants (2018): How can a town survive with 10 percent of its population being unskilled unemployed refugees with four kids each? I wonder if the answer is harvesting federal subsidies. Our poorest cities often have sparkling new hospitals, built by mining elderly citizens for Medicare dollars. Could it be that Erie is mining refugees for the Federal Welfare that attaches to them? Each refugee is entitled to housing, health care, and food, all of which will be funded nationally, but purchased in the local economy.
  • “Yes, Florida allocated $12 million to transport migrants out of the state” (CBS): Florida’s Freedom First Budget included $12 million for a program to “transport unauthorized aliens” out of the state, including locations such as Martha’s Vineyard. (in other words, it is not completely fair to credit DeSantis with “Air DeSantis” because the money was appropriated by the legislature)
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The refugee-industrial complex on refugees as “trash”

by philg

How do people in the refugee-industrial complex think about their industry’s product? “DeSantis sending asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard divides Venezuelan Americans” (NBC):

After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planes of mostly Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, advertising executive Max Lefeld slammed the move as a political stunt.

“It’s like me taking my trash out and just driving to different areas where I live and just throwing my trash there,” said Lefeld, a Venezuelan American who’s a founding member of the Casa Venezuela Dallas foundation, which helps recent refugees.

Here’s the org’s page:

Given that there is no vaccination requirement for asylum-seekers and that vaccination has no effect on infection and transmission, why aren’t they wearing N95 masks?

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The Jews of Martha’s Vineyard stand with immigrants and refugees

by philg

From the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center:

“We stand with immigrants, with refugees,…” Should this be amended to “We stand with immigrants and refugees for up to 36 hours“? “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants” (Patch):

Gov. Charlie Baker will activate the National Guard to assist the 50 men, women and children shipped Wednesday to Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Baker said Friday morning the migrants will be transferred to a shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod in Buzzard’s Bay. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency will coordinate food and other services for them. About 125 National Guard members will assist, Baker said.

Joint Base Cape Cod has been used as an emergency shelter in the past, including during COVID-19 and after Hurricane Katrina.

DeSantis said the flights to Martha’s Vineyard were part of an effort to “transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations.” The Florida Legislature has earmarked $12 million to transport “unauthorized aliens” out of state.

I’m curious about the use of the word “emergency” to describe 50 migrants, out of more than 1 million asylum-seekers admitted recently (nytimes), appearing on an island that has a huge supply of vacant houses (the typical house on MVY is occupied only seasonally).

How much room is there for housing migrants on MVY through May 2023? From mvy.com:

The Vineyard is home to roughly 17,000 year-round residents. During the summer months, the population increases to nearly 200,000. Sixty-three percent of all homes on the Vineyard belong to seasonal residents.

From the Martha’s Vineyard Commission:

The summer population is five times the winter population, about 75,000 compared to about 15,000.

So it would be straightforward to shelter at least 50,000 migrants on MVY if folks on the island who have displayed “No Human Being is Illegal” signs in their yards wished to provide shelter. (It looks like 60,000 migrants could be sheltered, but there nearly 10,000 tourists who show up only for the day in the summer (like we used to!). If the goal was to shelter migrants with the same amount of space per person as enjoyed by the rich white progressives who come for summer vacation, the September-May capacity would be 50,000.)

Related:

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Migrants are welcome on the island of Martha’s Vineyard….

by philg

… but they need to be “off island”. “‘I Ended Up on This Little Island’: Migrants Land in Political Drama” (New York Times, today):

Ardenis Nazareth, newly arrived from Venezuela, was standing in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street from a San Antonio shelter a few days ago contemplating his next steps. … Then she made an enticing offer: a free flight to a “sanctuary,” he recalled, where there were people to help them get on their feet. The place was called Massachusetts. … he was surprised when he found himself on Martha’s Vineyard, a small, picturesque vacation destination in the Atlantic. “I thought I was coming to Boston,” he said. “I ended up on this little island.”

“I left my country to support my family,” said Mr. Nazareth, a 34-year-old construction worker. He said that since leaving his home country 18 months ago he had tried to make a living in Peru and Chile. But he could not make ends meet, and word spread among his friends that Venezuelans were managing to enter the United States, where jobs were plentiful.

On Thursday, Mr. Nazareth expressed gratitude for the warm reception that he and his brethren had received in Martha’s Vineyard. “They’re treating us super well,” he said.

“We’re getting food, clothing, all our needs met. I love Massachusetts!”

The migrants arrived just as the busy season ended and during one of the worst affordable housing shortages in the island’s history.

The church where they are staying is home to the sole homeless shelter on the island. St. Andrew’s sits in a quiet corner of Edgartown, off the main drag where summer visitors feast on dripping ice cream and oysters.

“We are meeting their needs for food, shelter, and we are definitely supplying them with a lot of love,” said Lisa Belcastro, the manager of the only homeless shelter on the island. “They need to be off island. Their immigration appointments are not here.”

Perhaps this need for migrants to “be off island” will abate if the Obamas begin work on a migrant shelter at their 29-acre Martha’s Vineyard estate. Given the number of seasonal houses on MVY, there should be immediate space for at least 50,000 migrants to live between now and May 2023. After that, Google Maps shows that there is plenty of undeveloped land near the MVY airport and to the south. Much of this land is actually owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and thus there would be no obstacle to building permanent housing for as many migrants as wish to settle in this exclusive vacation paradise.

Folks in Massachusetts who say that life in Texas and Florida is intolerable due to malgovernance, the lack of abortion care for pregnant people in reproductive health care settings, etc., now also say that migrants are being injured by being transported from Texas and Florida to Massachusetts. One friend on Facebook, regarding Air DeSantis:

State tax money should not be used to fund a politician primary [sic] at the expense of the lives of asylum seekers whose life’s [sic] are already miserable.

He implies that arriving by chartered jet to MVY is somehow a bad thing for asylum-seekers. If Florida and Texas are bad due to their respective infestations of Republicans, shouldn’t the Massachusetts Democrat be happy and relieved that a migrant has found his/her/zir/their way to Massachusetts? Gavin Newsom says that being given free transportation to a Democrat-governed Science-following state is “inhumane” and that the people who arrange this transportation should be prosecuted as kidnappers.

Not everyone sees this as criminal kidnapping:

Another strange aspect to Democrats’ response to the arrival of migrants in their own states and cities is the allegation that Ron DeSantis is wasting taxpayers’ money by chartering regional jets. Colleges can afford to charter regional jets to move sports teams around. If a state-funded college can afford to charter a regional jet, why can’t a state afford to charter a regional jet or Airbus A320? (Florida state government took in 21 percent more than was spent in the last fiscal year, resulting in a $22 billion surplus. If we assume per-passenger charter costs of $1,000 that’s enough to fund transportation for 22 million migrants.)

Update from Alex (comments below): “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants”. Rather than enjoy access to water, cash jobs from folks with “No Human Being is Illegal” signs on their front lawns, etc., the 50 migrants will be moved off the island at gunpoint by 125 soldiers and confined to an inland military base.

Related:

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Counting “undetected” undocumented immigrants

by philg

“Biden Administration Has Admitted One Million Migrants to Await Hearings” (New York Times, today):

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — At a modest hotel a few miles from the ocean here, most of the rooms have been occupied this summer by families from African countries seeking asylum — 192 adults and 119 children in all.

They are among the more than one million undocumented immigrants who have been allowed into the country temporarily after crossing the border during President Biden’s tenure, part of a record-breaking cascade of irregular migration around the world.

Distinct from the hundreds of thousands who have entered the country undetected during Mr. Biden’s term, many of the one million are hoping for asylum — a long shot — and will have to wait seven years on average before a decision on their case is reached because of the nation’s clogged immigration system.

It is the text that I have highlighted above that is the subject of this blog post. If the folks who have “entered the country undetected” were not detected, how can anyone purport to begin to estimate their number?

There are some less-interesting tidbits in the article:

The million who have been allowed in since Mr. Biden took office — a figure that comes from internal Homeland Security data and court filings — are from more than 150 countries around the globe. With few pathways to enter the United States legally, crossing the border without documentation is often the only option for those fleeing crime and economic despair.

The U.S. is bordered by only two countries, Canada and Mexico. How is the U.S. then the “only option” for people “from more than 150 countries”? If people have the right to claim asylum anywhere in the world, why is it a journalistic fact, not an opinion, that their only option to cross multiple borders before taking up residence in Portland, Maine?

“Since we can’t go back in time and convince Americans to have more babies, we’ll need immigrants to fill out the labor force,” said Amon Emeka, a sociology professor at Skidmore University. “It will be critical that immigrants be integrated in the U.S. labor market to make up labor shortfalls in the years to come.”

This is the opposite of the perspective that I heard in Oslo last week. Rather than additional migrants, Norwegians with whom I spoke said they would rather have open space and elbow room, even if it means counter-service restaurants (“Panera-style”) are destined to be the norm rather than table-service. It would not be an improvement, from their perspective, to grow Norway from 5 million population to 10 million, especially not with low-skill immigrants.

Who benefits when Metro Portland’s population is expanded and rents consequently go up? As predicted in this article by a Harvard professor, folks who own businesses and apartment buildings:

Ben Conniff, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Luke’s Lobster, said his business relies heavily on immigrants. About one-third of the employees at the company’s processing plant in Saco are asylum seekers, and he is desperate to hire more.

What’s the timeline?

Currently, it takes between five and seven years for asylum cases to be decided. If an application is denied, there are opportunities to appeal, adding more years to an immigrant’s time in the country.

If a child is born at the beginning of an asylum-seeker’s residence in the U.S., in other words, he/she/ze/they could be 18 years old before the end of the legal process and therefore able to get the rest of the family in via chain migration (the parents, e.g., will have an automatic right to a Green Card because the adult child is a U.S. citizen via birthright citizenship).

Maria Zombo, an Angolan asylum seeker and mother of six who lives outside of Portland, recently opened an African grocery store in the revitalized downtown of Biddeford. She came to the country on a tourist visa eight years ago, and has yet to receive an initial response to her application for asylum. She has started a business, purchased a home and had a child.

Her experience is not atypical, said Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a nonprofit.

“People are having their entire life here happen before they get an answer,” Ms. Cruz said.

In U.S. family courts, having even one child is considered a disabling condition for a plaintiff identifying as a “mother” with respect to the world of employment yet this mother of six is hard at work running a money transfer shop (photo: Kirsten Luce):

Maybe the folks who say that low-skill migrants are an economic boon are right? (Or possibly, the NYT happened to feature this migrant rather than hundreds who were not working?)

Circling back to the main topic of this post… how do we know how many migrants are in the U.S. if many are “undetected”? “Yale Study Finds Twice as Many Undocumented Immigrants as Previous Estimates” (2018) describes an attempt: “After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.”

Related:

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Residents of Connecticut welcome immigrants…

by philg

…. so long as they’re not going to live in Connecticut.

Here’s CT Senator Chris Murphy on immigration:

“President Trump’s so-called immigration framework is a total non-starter. It uses Connecticut Dreamers as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apart,” said Murphy. “It looks like President Trump has no intention of actually working on a bipartisan deal that protects Dreamers and makes sensible changes to our immigration laws. He’s trying to turn our nation against immigrants – preying on the worst kind of prejudice and ignoring the fact that immigration boosts our economy and grows jobs.”

And CT’s other Senator, Richard Blumenthal:

“This proposal is immigration hostage taking. Hundreds of thousands of young people are being held hostage in the name of the far right’s repulsive and repugnant anti-immigrant fantasy. The party of so-called family values has revealed itself to care more for its nativist political base than the actual families that would be cruelly ripped or kept apart under this proposal. One of its most heartless provisions would send refugee children back to the countries they have fled without even a fig leaf of due process – a proposal almost certain to send children to their deaths,” Blumenthal said.

Since these are the only two senators that the state has, it seems safe to infer that the majority of folks in Connecticut support the expansion of U.S. population via immigration. This support is not conditional on whether immigrants have work skills or have any practical chance of working (e.g., a 75-year-old chain migrant).

What if some of those new Americans want to live in Connecticut? “Town After Town, Residents Are Fighting Affordable Housing in Connecticut” (New York Times, today):

In the town of Fairfield, Conn., nearly 2,400 residents have signed a petition opposing a project proposed for downtown that could bring 19 units of affordable housing.

In nearby New Canaan, homeowners have raised about $84,000 for a legal fund to fight a proposed apartment complex downtown on Weed Street that would include 31 rent-restricted units for households with moderate incomes.

And in Greenwich, a developer recently withdrew an application to build a project that would include 58 apartments priced below market rate, after residents living in nearby luxury condominiums objected and said the buildings that would be demolished were historically significant.

Throughout Fairfield County, Conn., local residents and elected officials are seeking to block large housing projects that include units affordable to low- and moderate-income households, warning that the increased density could change the character of their towns. The 32-year-old law that enables such projects has always generated some pushback, but the opposition has grown more fierce as the number of proposals has increased in recent years.

The NYT article says that migrants might be welcome if they can afford $2.2 million for a house. How well is the U.S. set up for a population expansion, from an infrastructure perspective?

His daily commute on Interstate 95, while only 14 miles, “can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes,” he said. “That seat time takes its toll.”

It’s a “fact that immigration boosts our economy and grows jobs” (Senator Murphy, above) and yet the good citizens of Connecticut are fighting against the prospect of these beneficial immigrants living anywhere near them. Existing residents don’t want a boosted economy and more jobs, but they want to change federal law so that the economy and jobs can be boosted in other states?

From a 2009 helicopter trip (Los Angeles to Boston), a section of the Connecticut coast:

Related:

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8 million Progressives welcome 4,900 asylum-seekers

by philg

“A Migrant Wave Tests New York City’s Identity as the World’s Sanctuary“ (New York Times, August 20):

New York wants to welcome new immigrants. Its economy and vibrancy depend on them. But an influx has strained a social safety net already on the brink.

The influx of migrants to the city this spring and summer, most fleeing crime and cratering economies in Central and South America, has tested New York’s reputation as a world sanctuary. And it shows no sign of slowing, thanks in part to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, whose decision to send busload after busload to Washington and New York to goad Democrats on border policy has helped turn the normal north-flowing river of humanity into a wave.

New York City has long been powered to a large extent by the sweat and toil of immigrants, but its ability to help them get on their feet has been increasingly strained.

The delivery of 129 migrants to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Wednesday was the biggest one-day total so far in Mr. Abbott’s campaign. But it was just part of the larger migration of thousands: According to the city, the shelter system now houses 4,900 asylum seekers.

Never mentioned in this article: New York City is home to more than 8 million people, nearly all of whom evince a Progressive political point of view, which includes #NoHumanIsIllegal. If we consider the metro area, the total size of the welcoming committee is 20 million. Given the above numbers, there should be roughly 5,000 New Yorkers assisting each asylum-seeker. How do the 4,900 compare to the overall flow across the border? Here are the numbers for the subset of migrants who are apprehended by La Migra:

The Progressives of New York City, in other words, are currently hosting 1/400th of the total quantity of apprehended migrants so far in FY2022.

Department of possibly low skill, but certainly not low intelligence:

“Imagine that we came all this way walking,” said Carolina Flores, 31, who fled Venezuela with her husband and four children and has settled with them at a shelter in Brooklyn. “Everything is very good, a hotel and house for free — that is something that would never happen in our country.”

The above comment raises a question: Why did she and her children have to walk? If we are are eager to provide asylum to those who need it, why do we insist that the asylees and refugees be fit enough to walk to the U.S.? Why not send a daily Airbus A380 to Caracas to pick up those who say that they need asylum? Mkm, a reader from NYC, asked the same question in a comment:

Why not just run free flights from Central America to JFK. Cut out all the misery in between.

From a reader in Harvard Square:

It seems much of the ire aimed at illegal immigrants is their getting something for free and straining local economies. Interesting that no one comments on the true freeloaders: the wealthy who proportionally pay significantly less in taxes than the middle class and the working class. But their venality is camouflaged by propaganda.

Wonder what all those taxes could do to repair our infrastructure and to create a safety net that serves all who deserve aid. No one seems to complain about the skimming done by the 10 percent. But give a poor person a break, and people scream.

If only the rich would pay their fair share, all of our dreams would come true and, also, all of the dreams of every non-working migrant who chooses to come through our open borders. But what stops New York City from being a shining example of fair taxation? Even many of the richest New Yorkers identify as Progressive and espouse Progressive political points of view. There are no Republicans in positions of power in NYC. Nothing would stop New York City voters from imposing higher property taxes, higher income tax rates, and/or a straight-up wealth tax. (Same question for San Francisco! With no Republicans in the way, what stops the implementation of every Progressive dream, including universal housing and health care?)

Circling back to the “unrich” (as our kids say), employers in New York City depend on migrants to keep wages low:

The city’s desire to absorb these migrants as it has earlier waves reflects the fundamental fact that New York has always relied on immigrants in every sector of the work force, from restaurants and health care to the arts, technology and finance. When New Yorkers move away, immigrants take their places, often working essential low-wage jobs that others do not want.

Progressives claim to follow Rainbow Flagism, but have neglected to build housing specifically for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ migrant community:

The newcomers’ reviews of the shelter system have been unenthusiastic. “I don’t feel good at the shelter because I’m gay,” said Pedro Gutierrez, 30, who arrived from Venezuela on Aug. 4 and was assigned to a shelter on Wards Island. “Some people there are saying bad things about me, harassing me.”

From the reader comments, Lucia Gutiérrez of New Jersey:

I work in a domestic violence shelter and now refugee women from South America are coming more and more frequently to use ours services and we are straying from our original mission to help true survivors of domestic violence. As a member of the middle class and wife to a legal immigrant, whom we had to wait 2 years for the whole process to proceed, it’s frustrating to see all these people shamelessly coming through the border and asking for services, like subsidized housing, free school supplies, free healthcare, etc., all at tax payers’ expense. The worst part of all is that they lie about their employment status. Many do work but for cash, which makes it easy to hide their income, and hence qualify for services. As a person who’s always followed the rules, it’s so unfair. The worst part of all is that if we even mention any hint of criticisms towards these migrants, we are viewed as racists and non compassionate.

Meena, from California:

I cannot believe I am agreeing with Trump era policies.

Hazelmom:

Welcome to our reality in Texas! I can’t believe y’all are whining about a measly few thousand migrants-some months we get 60K crossing the border. Good to share the burden.

Sue from NJ:

But wait, I’ve heard time and again that migrants don’t cost American taxpayers anything. And yet now NY is saying they need federal dollars to house, feed, provide medical care for the influx. Oh, and also need to find room for 1,000 kids (so far) to enter the school system.

A physician echoes Milton Friedman on whether a open borders and a welfare state are compatible:

I run a mid size ICU in Iowa currently. 2-10% of our ICU patients are undocumented. … every hospitalization runs between $15,000 -$250,000. … The cost is passed on the paying patients. The labor & Delivery dept. also has its share of undocumented who deliver newly minted US citizens who qualify instantly for Medicaid. In New York, the hospitals rent apartments to keep patients who cannot be discharged home( strokes, brain injury)and Nursinghomes wont take these non citizens. They stay in the apartments indefinitely. … can we sustain this welfare state model?

From Nevada:

The spend per student in NYC public schools is $25,000 and even more for special needs and ESL students as most of these students will be. The cost of the hotel room or apartment is at least $4k per month. The cost of health care is at least $25K for a family (even if they don’t have actual insurance they do get cared for and that care costs money). So a family with 3 kids creates a minimum $150K public spend. No amount of labor will ever pay this back. And the tragedy is $150K per year could provide basic education health care and and housing for an entire village in Guatemala or El Salvador. This does not make sense.

Gulf Coast Cynic:

The only change I would make to Abbott’s policy is having the busses unload at the front door of the New York Times & Washington Post.

From Gotham:

In 1986, we were promised that if we accepted a ONE TIME ONLT amnesty, immigration issues would be effectively addressed with workable, humane legislation, strict enforcement with sufficient BP staff and a robust employer verification system. Well, we got the amnesty but none of the rest.

(The above is unfair, in my opinion. The U.S. welfare state, as it has evolved since the mid-1980s, made the employer verification system irrelevant because there is no longer any need for a migrant to work or, certainly, to work a non-cash job.)

Joe (from Arizona) and I can team up:

I would be willing to pay for the airfare to fly an immigrant family of four back to their own (country of origin) or to any sanctuary city in the USA.

(He will pay for transportation to the sanctuary city and I will pay for food from Costco for any migrant family that a Progressive homeowner wishes to host in his or her home for at least one year.)

From a variety of commenters:

Why aren’t New Yorkers sending their own buses down to Texas to pick up more immigrants?

I’m unclear as to why we have immigration laws.

A poem on a statue is not a reason to keep expanding our society beyond carrying capacity.

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When will Governor Abbott send buses full of migrants to Atherton, Californa?

by philg

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his,” said Ronald Reagan. I wonder if there is something similar going on with low-skill immigration. It was a minor, but certainly manageable, problem when millions of migrants walked across the southern border and settled into Texas to wait for the decades-long process of resolving an asylum claim (during which time multiple generations of U.S. citizens might be born to the asylum-seekers and their descendants). Any time that a bus full of migrants arrives in a Progressive neighborhood, on the other hand, it is a crisis. See Welcoming migrants in our nation’s capital and Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants… and, for a more recent example, “Seeking Asylum in Texas; Sent to New York to Make a Political Point” (NYT, August 6, 2022):

Gov. Greg Abbott chartered a bus to send a group of migrants to New York, where Mayor Eric Adams said asylum seekers were overwhelming the city’s homeless shelters.

Since April, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has been shipping newly arrived asylum seekers to immigrant-friendly Democratic cities on the East Coast to try to pressure the Biden administration into cracking down at the border. Mr. Abbott’s press office said the bus that arrived in Manhattan on Friday, which left Eagle Pass, Wednesday afternoon, held “the first group of migrants bused to New York City from Texas.”

Like Washington, New York is “the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement on Friday. “I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief.”

Last month, after the city violated the right-to-shelter law by failing to provide rooms for some people who had come to the family intake shelter in the Bronx, Mr. Adams blamed asylum seekers sent from Texas and Arizona.

(If anyone who is human has a legal right to shelter, why is the mayor of New York is “blaming” people for claiming this right?)

The Silicon Valley titans who control public discourse in the U.S. continue to support low-skill immigration into Texas and low-income neighborhoods around the U.S. I wonder what would happen if the rich Progressives were to personally encounter some low-skill migrants. “The billionaire famous for his early investment in Facebook wants America to build again—just not housing in his backyard” (Fortune):

In 2020, when the pandemic was going strong, billionaire Marc Andreessen turned heads by publishing an essay on his company website titled “It’s Time to Build.”

“I expect this essay to be the target of criticism,” he wrote while expressing a mindset that has come to be called YIMBY, for “yes in my backyard.”

“You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities,” he wrote. “We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future.” Then he expressed dissatisfaction with the state of urban architecture. “We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?”

Andreessen also lives in Atherton, California, America’s richest town,

Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is known for being an early investor in major tech companies including Meta, GitHub, Skype, and Twitter. In June, Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen wrote an email expressing their opposition to a proposal that would increase zoning capacity for multi-family home construction in Atherton.

“I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton,” the two wrote in their email, signed by both, as reported by The Atlantic’s Jerusalem Demsas. “Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY increase the noise pollution and traffic.”

Previously, “the venture capitalist said any proposal to “choke off” immigration “makes me sick to my stomach” (from “Asked why he supports Clinton over Trump, Marc Andreessen responds: ‘Is that a serious question?’”). What would happen if a Greg Abbott caravan of migrants showed up in front of Mr. Andreessen’s house and asked for the housing that is their legal and moral right?

Separately, the robot geniuses behind Twitter and Facebook are showing me a lot of information about Beto O’Rourke, running to replace Governor Abbott in Texas. I’m wondering if real estate owners in Florida should be donating to Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign. What could possibly be better for Florida real estate values than a true believer in the tax-and-spend-and-lockdown religion taking power in Texas? Imagine if all of the California businesses that have moved to Austin, Dallas, and Houston (HP!) in the past few years had instead moved to Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. Here’s Mr. O’Rourke promising to spend more money on government programs that are already among the most expensive (Medicaid and unionized public schools) while farcically promising that taxes will be reduced at the same time that spending is increased.

Here’s Mx. O’Rourke’s 2021 demand to Follow Science by keeping Texas locked down:

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Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants…

by philg

…. who will live somewhere other than in Maine. “Maine’s open door for refugees meets a housing shortage” (Christian Science Monitor):

Yet the city [Portland, Maine] that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they are not allowed to work for a living as their appeals for asylum slowly crawl through the system.

Its shelter filled, the city has put them up in motels while COVID-19 and winter created vacancies. But now the innkeepers want their rooms back for tourists, and Portland has no place to put them.

And still they keep coming.

Portland’s city health director took the extraordinary step in May of emailing agencies working on the southern U.S. border, telling them that immigrants “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival” in the city. The adjoining municipality of South Portland sent a similar message, and 79 local aid organizations followed with letters to the state of Maine and the federal government saying they were stretched too thin.

Judging by real estate prices, Portland has never been wealthier. Apartments and single-family houses have been bid up to a median price of over $500,000 (Zillow). What stops people rich enough to pay $500,000 for an apartment from paying up to house their refugee brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters?

… most pushback is framed in terms of the cost of services to newcomers at a time of inflation and rising expenses, says Ms. West, the city manager. “When you increase taxes, that’s really difficult for a lot of people in Portland to handle,” she says.

Aha! As with California Progressives, housing is a human right, but so is a Progressive’s right to save Mother Earth by buying a new Tesla rather than funding housing for the unhoused (whose right to housing remains undiminished by their lack of housing).

Related:

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