Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

The communal apartment comes to the U.S.

by philg

Comparisons of the current U.S. system of transferism to “Communism” don’t make sense to me. In the Soviet Union under “Communism” everyone had to work, the very opposite of the American system in which tens of millions of able-bodied people are relieved of the need to work either by having sex with an already married person (“child support”), a quickie marriage to a high-income person (“alimony” and/or “Amber Heard”), or via taxpayer-funded housing, taxpayer-funded health care (Medicaid), taxpayer-funded food (SNAP/EBT), taxpayer-funded smartphone (Obamaphone), and, recently added, taxpayer-funded broadband for the Xbox. Any non-disabled adult in the Soviet Union who tried to sit at home collecting child support, alimony, or government-provided services would have been labeled a “parasite” and subject to a range of punishments.

But a signature feature of the Soviet system seems to be becoming more widespread in the U.S.: the communal apartment. “Their Solution to the Housing Crisis? Living With Strangers.” (NYT, June 1):

Two facts are painfully clear to New Yorkers: The rent is too high, and it keeps getting higher. With the median one-bedroom apartment hovering around $3,500 a month, New York’s rents are officially among the most expensive in the country. Between 2009 and 2018, the city added 500,000 jobs but only 100,000 new housing units. The profound shortage in rental units has forced the city’s residents to figure out their own ways to live affordably.

Ingrid Sletten, 68, was paired with Stacey Stormo, 37, through a nonprofit that helps older adults find roommates. They share a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx and each pay $750.

Halima Muhammad, Sukanya Prasad, Ashleigh Genus and Prisca Hoffstaetter share a spacious four-bedroom apartment together on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. Two of the roommates pay about $950 a month (and have their own bathrooms), while the other two pay about $890.

Rina Sah and her husband, Ajit Kumar Sah, share their two-bedroom apartment in Elmhurst, Queens, with Babita Khanal, whom they found through a Facebook group for the Nepali community in New York. Babita pays them $900 a month, lowering the couple’s share to only $1,200.

Kazi, Amzad, Eliyas and a fourth roommate are all recent Bangladeshi immigrants who share a basement apartment in East New York, Brooklyn. They pay a combined $1,600 and live two to a bedroom.

Alexandra Marzella has lived with more than 90 people over the last decade in a six-bedroom loft in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her five current roommates also share the space with her 2-year-old daughter, Earth, who was born in the apartment’s bathtub in 2020. Each roommate pays between $1,000 and $1,300 in rent each month, including utilities.

Things must be easier up in the frozen north, right? Maybe not… “Asylum Seekers Overwhelm Shelters In Portland, Maine” (ZeroHedge):

Guthrie, a hands-on, frontline worker in the effort to feed, clothe, and house a continuous flow of foreign nationals arriving in Portland by airplane or bus from the U.S. southern border, told The Epoch Times, “Our family shelter facilities, our warming room, and even area hotel space is at capacity. We have maxed out our community resources.

The Portland Family Shelter is a complex of four rented buildings in various states of renovation located in the heart of downtown.

Some of the structures are gradually being converted into small apartments where up to four families will share a single kitchen and bathroom.

To accommodate the stream of new arrivals, the family shelter program has in recent months placed 309 families (1,091 people) in eight hotels located in five neighboring municipalities spread over three counties of southeastern Maine’s prime tourist and vacation region.

The vast majority of the new arrivals at the family shelter in Portland have come from Angola and the Congo in Africa, with some coming from Haiti in the Caribbean.

“A new arrival tells Border Patrol ‘I am here to seek asylum. If I go back home, I will be killed. I fear for my life.’ That’s the difference between an asylum seeker and an immigrant,” he said.

Those three short sentences guarantee a person’s admission for a lengthy stay in the United States as his or her claim [why only two gender IDs for migrants?] is adjudicated.

Most are given cell phones.

The shelter provides families with three meals a day, prepared off-site by “community partners.”

According to Guthrie, the cost per motel room is between $250 and $350 dollars per night and rising as the tourist season begins.

“Pregnancy is the families’ most urgent medical concern, and their most pressing medical need is OBGYN (obstetrics and gynecology) care,” he said.

Speaking through an interpreter provided by the shelter, and in the presence of shelter director Guthrie, Samantha, a young Angolan woman with a 10-month-old baby on her hip and a toddler in tow, was not shy about sharing her dissatisfaction.

“We endured a seven-month journey to come to this! We are not happy. Conditions are not good! We really need help.”

When asked if she felt welcome, Samantha said with a look of disbelief, “No! I do not feel welcome. Look at us. We are outside.”

Landry, a housepainter and electrician’s helper, brought his wife Sylvie, two-year-old daughter, and 12-month-old son to Portland from the Congo. … Sylvie said, “We came from Texas unprepared for this Maine weather. I am not happy for how I am living here. I don’t feel welcome!”

Climate change can’t happen soon enough for these folks! (Free housing, health care, smartphone, and three meals per day cooked by paid do-gooders isn’t enough to make people “feel welcome” given typical Maine weather.)

Housing is fundamental. So maybe it is fair to say that the U.S. is becoming “Communist” at least with respect to communal apartments.

Related:

  • “How Refugees Transformed a Dying Rust Belt Town” (NYT, June 3, 2022); after all of the employable native-born residents flee the city’s high taxes, incompetent government, and spectacular public employee pension obligations, Utica, NY imports replacements who come with Federal tax dollars attached. (This is not, however, evidence that the disproved Great Replacement Theory is in any way correct.)
  • “She sought an affordable housing voucher in 1993. This Chicago alderman just reached the top of the waitlist.” (Chicago Tribune, June 7, 2022) “In one of the richest cities in the world, we ain’t got a money issue. There’s no political will to make sure people are housed,” Taylor said. … At the end of 2021, there were 170,000 families on waitlists for public housing and project-based housing, … Aguilar said that wait times can range from six months to 25 years. Most properties on a CHA website show expected wait times of 10 years or more. … “CHA currently has 47,000 Housing Choice Vouchers that it receives from the federal government. The number allotted has not increased in many years,” he said. New families will receive vouchers when families currently in the program stop using them.
  • Regarding Chicago… “This Land Was Promised for Housing. Instead It’s Going to a Pro Soccer Team Owned by a Billionaire.” (ProPublica): More than 30,000 people wait for homes from the Chicago Housing Authority. Meanwhile, a site that’s gone undeveloped for two decades is set to become a Chicago Fire practice facility.
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Is the New York Times the primary promoter of white replacement theory?

by philg

“White Replacement Theory” is in the news as a potential motivation for the recent mass murder in Buffalo. After a decent interval to mourn the victims, perhaps it is worth asking “Who could be responsible for spreading this false narrative?”

“It Was a Terrifying Census for White Nationalists” (New York Times, August 2021):

The white power acolytes saw this train approaching from a distance — the browning of America, the shrinking of the white population and the explosion of the nonwhite — and they did everything they could to head it off.

They tried to clamp down on immigration, both unlawful and lawful. They waged a propaganda war against abortion, and they lobbied for “traditional family values” in the hopes of persuading more white women to have more babies. They orchestrated a system of mass incarceration that siphoned millions of young, marriage-age men, disproportionately Black and Hispanic, out of the free population.

On every level, in every way, these forces, whether wittingly or not, worked to prevent the nonwhite population from growing. And yet it did.

Meanwhile, the white population, in absolute numbers, declined for the first time in the history of the country.

“What the ‘Majority Minority’ Shift Really Means for America” (NYT, August 2021):

In 2015, the Census Bureau published a report projecting that by 2044, the United States’ white majority would become merely a white plurality: immigration and fertility trends would lead to America’s ethnic and racial minorities outnumbering its white population.

Because of the status white people retain in American society, a degree of privilege and belonging still awaits those who can claim it. People who identify as white hold disproportionate power and resources today, and this pernicious reality seems unlikely to change even if white people do become a 49 percent plurality in about two decades.

“Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States” (NYT, June 2018):

Deaths now outnumber births among white people in more than half the states in the country, demographers have found, signaling what could be a faster-than-expected transition to a future in which whites are no longer a majority of the American population.

The Census Bureau has projected that whites could drop below 50 percent of the population around 2045, a relatively slow-moving change that has been years in the making. But a new report this week found that whites are dying faster than they are being born now in 26 states, up from 17 just two years earlier, and demographers say that shift might come even sooner.

“Why the Announcement of a Looming White Minority Makes Demographers Nervous” (November 2018):

For white nationalists, it signifies a kind of doomsday clock counting down to the end of racial and cultural dominance. For progressives who seek an end to Republican power, the year points to inevitable political triumph, when they imagine voters of color will rise up and hand victories to the Democratic Party.

Of course, the mass shooting was a terrible event and directed against non-elites who had no role in creating our open borders nor the economic policies that have reduced fertility among working class whites. (chart source)

(According to the chart, the best times to have kids are when you’re on welfare and when you’re rich. Note that there are a lot more poor people than rich people and, therefore, the United States is becoming increasingly a society of the children of the poor. See The Son Also Rises: economics history with everyday applications and The Son Also Rises: Policy Implications for what that might mean.)

The New York Times blames “far-right online platforms” for spreading this “racist belief” (5/14/2022):

The idea that white people should fear being replaced by “others” has spread through far-right online platforms, shaping discussions among American white nationalists, The Times has reported.

Should the paper look at its own triumphalist articles?

Circling back to the tragedy in Buffalo, are there any lessons to be learned? Republicans are often blamed for insufficiently restrictive gun laws, but New York State is free of political influence by Republicans. The perpetrator was mentally ill, but we don’t have effective treatments for mental illness. Two years of school lockdowns and mask orders probably did not improve his mental condition (he reportedly wore a hazmat suit to school for a week). Maybe he would have been happier if his parents had moved him to Florida. I see a fair number of mixed-skin-color teenage voluntary gatherings. Black guys in their 20s and 30s here generally refer to me as “brother”. I have not determined whether it is acceptable to reciprocate.

Related:

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Migrant minors tested for age in Belgium

by philg

An article from Belgium, translated from French by The Google, “Eight objectives to streamline the approach to unaccompanied foreign minors”:

Today, 2670 young people are welcomed in the Fedasil network and by the communities, compared to 1029 in 2019. In 2021, Belgium saw a total of 3351 young people who declared themselves minors. The Guardianship Service of the FPS Justice carried out 2515 age tests to verify these declarations. In total, 2435 decisions were made: at the end of the test, 69% were declared major and 31% were declared minors.

If migrants are undocumented, how can an “age test” be performed?

(Based on the folks whom I’ve talked to, the U.S. doesn’t try to do this. A migrant who identifies him/her/zir/theirself as a minor is a minor.)

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Should we beg the Turks for advice on how to build affordable housing?

by philg

The U.S. features a growing population and a fixed supply of housing and thus has become a textbook Econ 101 example of how rising demand lifts prices. Who has figured out how to increase housing supply dramatically? “Turkey’s Plan to Draw Refugees Back to Syria: Homes for 1 Million” (New York Times, May 4):

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey will build homes, schools, hospitals and more in northern Syria, but experts question whether refugees will return willingly.

Mr. Erdogan’s announcement on Tuesday came amid a grave economic crisis that has hit the wallets of many Turks and fueled widespread anger toward the large number of people displaced from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere who now live in Turkey.

As the anger has grown, Turkish social media has lit up with furious posts about foreigners flying their flags in Turkish cities, enjoying themselves while Turks struggle to make ends meet and changing the cultural fabric of Turkish communities.

Mr. Erdogan’s announcement on Tuesday provided an update on those efforts and expanded their scope. So far, more than 57,000 out of 77,000 planned homes in Idlib Province in Syria’s northwest have been completed and now house 50,000 families, he said.

In the future, that number will grow to 100,000 homes, and a new project will be started, he said, to build enough homes for an additional 1 million Syrian refugees to move to other parts of northern Syria where Turkey holds sway.

In addition to homes, the project will provide schools, hospitals and “all the needs of daily life and self-sufficient economic infrastructure, from agriculture to industry,” Mr. Erdogan said.

All of the above happens to some extent in Florida, but the new houses are tough to characterize as “affordable.” Obviously, the Chinese have achieved dramatic results in building new cities, but the Chinese way of doing things doesn’t seem to work here (see Netflix: American Factory for example, unless you’ve desubscribed as I have!).

(Separately, we are informed that low-skill migrants make existing residents of a country wealthier. Yet the Turks are willing to spend whatever it costs to build hundreds of thousands of houses in order to rid themselves of migrants. It is a mystery!)

The backyard of a Turkish-built house that I visited in 2007:

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Now that Texas is sending migrants to D.C., are some humans illegal?

by philg

One of the reliable features of non-welfare neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. has been a “migrants welcome” sign in the typical front yard. Now that Texas is sending asylum-seekers directly to D.C., however, it seems that the formerly popular “No Matter, Where You Are From, We’re Glad You’re Our Neighbor” signs are gone. I didn’t see a single one. Some houses still had the Progressive Catechism signs, which include “No Human Being is Illegal,” but not nearly as many as on previous visits:

The alarm system signs are far more numerous than two years ago. BLM signs remain as or more popular than ever. Here’s a variation (“Black Fathers Matter”), presumably from someone who has never been to an American family court:

For those who subscribe to the heresy that white lives might matter, the city has helpfully put up signs from when Northeast D.C. was, apparently, a mostly-white neighborhood:

Some more yards. Note the alarm system signs and the signs calling for D.C. statehood.

Migrants from Spanish-speaking countries might nonetheless feel welcome because a high percentage of signs are presented in Spanish. Example:

Here’s a sign in four languages:

Perhaps because the flow of the undocumented has been reduced during coronapanic, crime in D.C. seems to be up (we are informed by the media that filling a city with low-skill migrants reduces crime). In addition to all of the alarm system signs, I noticed that a Best Buy in suburban Rockville, Maryland, had hired off duty police officers for continuous on-site protection against “smash-and-grab” looting.

The police cruiser was kept parked in front of the doors while the police officer was inside wearing body armor and a gun. This is in Montgomery County, Maryland, mind you, which is one of the richest places in the U.S. (government employment, government contracting, and lobbying are, apparently, lucrative!). A “face coverings are required by government order” sign was out front as well, though I believe that the order has actually expired.

Related:

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Science: travelers from zero-COVID China need medical testing, but undocumented migrants do not

by philg

Here’s the Science question of the day…

To protect the United States, which currently has 30,000 COVID “cases” per day and 600 COVID-tagged deaths per day., from COVID, our Science-following CDC requires that someone arriving with a passport from zero-COVID China undergo medical testing for COVID prior to travel. If he/she/ze/they is not a U.S. citizen, he/she/ze/they is required to also require proof of the Sacrament of Fauci (vaccination). (See CDC order of November 8, 2021.)

The Scientists at the Science-oriented CDC, on the other hand, have Scientifically determined that a migrant who says “I am under 18” can cross the border and stay permanently in the U.S. without either a COVID test or a COVID vaccine. The Science changed after a federal judge said that the Biden administration could not exempt people who said that they were minors from the Science. See “Biden administration says it will not expel migrant children following court order” (CBS):

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which first authorized the migrant expulsions in March 2020, terminated the government’s ability to expel children who enter U.S. border custody without their parents. U.S. border officials can still use the policy, known as Title 42, to expel single adult migrants and families traveling with children to Mexico or their home countries.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman said the administration could no longer exempt unaccompanied minors from Title 42, arguing that Texas, which challenged the exemption, was financially harmed by the placement of migrant children in the state due to medical and schooling costs.

In a notice Friday, CDC officials said they recognized the “unique vulnerabilities” of unaccompanied minors.

“In the current termination, CDC addresses the court’s concerns and has determined, after considering current public health conditions and recent developments, that expulsion of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not warranted to protect the public health,” the agency said.

In a separate 21-page order justifying the decision to end Title 42 for unaccompanied children, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky cited the recent nationwide decrease in COVID-19 cases, as well as increased vaccination rates in the U.S. and in the home countries of migrants who journey to the southern border.

Science dictates that the border will be completely open to all unvaccinated and untested migrants as of May (Politico), even those who don’t say “I am under 18,” thus adding approximately 1 million additional residents to the U.S. annually (2 million were expelled during the last two years, according to Politico). So don’t say “no” if you’re offered the opportunity to invest in a crony capitalist “affordable housing” scheme!

(See “The affordable majority: Three misconceptions about investment in affordable housing”:

… affordable housing targets the masses and serves the primary rental cohort in the United States, with about 72 percent of renters falling in the affordable-housing category. … Compared with market-rate apartments, affordable and workforce housing are, in a sense, recession-proof and provide downside protection to investors. … Because of this rising demand and diminishing supply, affordable-housing units experience little to no turnover and are almost always fully-occupied, consistently maintaining occupancy rates of about 98 percent. This differs significantly from market-rate apartments, which average about a 50 percent turnover rate.

Overall, “affordable” does not necessarily mean smaller returns. Investor portfolios in the affordable-housing sector tend to have stronger returns on investment, increased and stabilized cash flows, and provide investors with downside protection.

)

Circling back to the immigration policy that Science (via the CDC) has given the United States, how is it consistent with the documented traveler testing requirement policy that Science (via the CDC) has given the United States? How is a U.S. citizen returning from a zero-COVID country a higher COVID risk, thus requiring pre-departure testing, than an undocumented migrant who has traveled overland through multiple COVID-plagued countries?

Only loosely related, a hotel in China, November 2019, that already had the tables separated for COVID prevention…

(The double boiled pig’s lung soup was about $200 at the exchange rate of late 2019.)

Related:

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A $1.4 billion stadium for Afghans, Iraqis, and Somalis to watch American football

by philg

“After decades of decline, Buffalo boasts a ‘Refugee Renaissance.’ Can it last?” (Democrat and Chronicle, January 2022):

After reinventing itself as a haven for refugees, Buffalo seems poised for renewal. But with success comes higher rents.

Across the nation, the results of the 2020 census were the source of hand-wringing and political debate. But in Western New York, they were cause for unbridled celebration.

For the first time in 70 years, the city of Buffalo had grown.

The city’s modest 6% growth was trumpeted by officials as a pivotal triumph for a Rust Belt city that had become synonymous with loss. Hollowed out first by suburban flight and then the loss of manufacturing jobs, the onetime steel and iron powerhouse had hemorrhaged more than 50% of its population in the half-century since 1950. By the turn of the millennium, it also ranked among the most poverty-stricken in the nation.

The city’s turnaround came from a perhaps unlikely source: refugees from some of the most conflict-riven places in the world. After welcoming fewer immigrants than any city its size in the 2000 census, Buffalo has since re-imagined itself as a haven for new Americans from countries such as Myanmar (Burma), Somalia and Iraq.

Over the past two decades, more than a quarter of the refugees who came to the state of New York arrived in Buffalo’s Erie County, even as native Buffalonians continued to flee to greener economic pastures. Since 2002, more than 16,000 refugees have resettled in Buffalo.

Higher rents as the price of prosperity

West Side homes that used to sell for $40,000 might now go for hundreds of thousands, said Beehag at the International Institute, straining the resources of agencies trying to find housing for refugees who may need months to find jobs. To house the around 500 incoming Afghan evacuees, agencies are relying in part on churches and universities for short-term housing.

Poverty rates in Buffalo have barely budged even as other economic indicators trend upward — leaving both refugees and longtime residents alike in danger of displacement, according to a 2019 analysis led by Adelman.

What do impoverished refugees “from countries such as Myanmar (Burma), Somalia and Iraq [and Afghanistan]” need from taxpayers? “Buffalo Bills Strike Deal for Taxpayer-Funded $1.4 Billion Stadium” (New York Times, March 28, 2022):

New York State officials have reached a deal with the Buffalo Bills to use $850 million in public funds to help the team build a $1.4 billion stadium — the largest taxpayer contribution ever for a pro football facility.

Under the deal, the state would finance $600 million of the construction costs, while Erie County, where the stadium will be built adjacent to its current home, would cover $250 million. The remainder would be financed through a $200 million loan from the N.F.L. that was approved on Monday, plus $350 million from the team’s owners.

“Taxpayers To Be Billed a Billion Dollars for Buffalo Bills’ New Stadium” (reason.com):

as Field of Schemes blogger Neil deMause parses in his detailed rundown of the stadium deal, the actual public subsidies probably exceed $1 billion—and that doesn’t account for things like interest payments on the borrowing that the state and county will likely have to do to finance the agreement. The fine print of Monday’s announcement, deMause notes, puts the public on the hook for $6 million annually for the next 30 years to fund upgrades to the stadium and another $6.6 million for the next 15 years to fund “maintenance and repair.” All told, that’s an extra $160 million in taxpayer funds pledged to the project beyond the $850 million price tag.

Related:

  • “Sports, Jobs, & Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost?” (classic 1997 paper from Brookings)
  • “Sacking Taxpayers: How NFL Stadium Subsidies Waste Money And Fall Short On Their Promises Of Economic Development” (Heartland 2015): “Taxpayers funded more than half the construction cost of 12 stadiums from 1995-2013,” TPA says. “During that time, national median household income rose 0.3 percent across the United States, adjusted for inflation. In the dozen counties in which an NFL stadium was built using more than 50 percent public funds, however, median household income plummeted 5.7 percent during the same time. Twenty-six counties in America are home to an NFL stadium that received tax dollars between 1995 and 2013. In an astonishing 17 of those 26 counties, the median household income actually decreased in constant dollars after the stadium received public money for construction or renovation. Taxpayer-financed NFL stadiums didn’t just appear to decrease median income, they also apparently contributed to increasing the number of people living in poverty.”
  • “NFL owners approve sale of Bills to Pegulas” (2014): That payment would be for $1.4 billion. (i.e., if we don’t adjust for inflation, the cost to taxpayers, who will get nothing in return, will in the same ballpark (so to speak), as the cost to the owners)
  • “Celebrating Women’s History Month” (BuffaloBills.com), from a team that refuses to hire anyone identifying as a “woman” to be a player
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Refugees from Justin Trudeau’s Canada staying in Florida

by philg

We’ve been seeing cars with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick license plates here in Florida. A surprising number say that they won’t be going back to Canada unless forced to. They cite the Canadian government’s lockdowns, mask orders, vaccine coercion, and dissent suppression as reasons for staying in the Florida Free State. As with the Science-following states of the Northeast, Canada made it easy for taxpayers to leave. It was illegal to work or study in person, for example, and every possible activity that could be moved to Zoom was moved to Zoom. This allowed a Canadian we met to enroll in an athletic training program here in Florida while simultaneously continuing his Canadian college education via Zoom. His parents followed him to Florida so now they’ll all here, paying Florida’s 6 percent sales tax instead of Canada’s 15 percent and, indirectly (via rent), paying Florida property tax.

This is straight out of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970):

The basic concept is as follows: members of an organization, whether a business, a nation or any other form of human grouping, have essentially two possible responses when they perceive that the organization is demonstrating a decrease in quality or benefit to the member: they can exit (withdraw from the relationship); or, they can voice (attempt to repair or improve the relationship through communication of the complaint, grievance or proposal for change). For example, the citizens of a country may respond to increasing political repression in two ways: emigrate or protest.

If the northern border were as open as the southern border and Canadians could therefore migrate freely, I wonder how many would choose the comparative freedom of the U.S. states that remained mostly free during coronapanic (ranking).

Loosely related, some beachgoers on Sanibel Island who are as free as birds…

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CDC says that not-tested-for-COVID-19 migrants are a low risk while U.S. citizens who travel are a high risk

by philg

“CDC revokes U.S. authority to expel migrant children” (CBS/Yahoo, 3/12/2022):

The Biden administration announced late Friday it is ending a Trump-era border deportation policy as it pertains to unaccompanied migrant children in response to a court ruling that could’ve forced officials to expel those minors without an asylum screening.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which first authorized the migrant expulsions in March 2020, terminated the government’s ability to expel children who enter U.S. border custody without their parents. U.S. border officials can still use Title 42 to expel single adult migrants and families traveling with children to Mexico or their home countries.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman said the administration could no longer exempt unaccompanied children from Title 42, arguing that Texas, which challenged the exemption, was financially harmed by the placement of migrant children in the state due to medical and schooling costs.

In a notice Friday, CDC officials said they recognized the “unique vulnerabilities” of unaccompanied minors.

“In the current termination, CDC addresses the court’s concerns and has determined, after considering current public health conditions and recent developments, that expulsion of unaccompanied noncitizen children is not warranted to protect the public health,” the agency said.

(Note the headline. It is the Covidcrats who decide the size and composition of the U.S. population by determining immigration policy.)

The CDC (Science personified) says that an undocumented unmasked unvaccinated untested migrant who says “I am under 18” (by definition there is no way to verify such a claim since he/she/ze/they is undocumented) does not present a risk to public health. But the same agency tells us that U.S. citizens returning from the world’s most vaccinated countries, e.g., Portugal, are such high risks that they can’t legally begin a trip home without first getting a COVID-19 test and wearing a mask in the airports, airliner, Ubers, etc. (except while eating or drinking all of the food and beverages served by the airline, of course!)

Science is truly marvelous!

Speaking of Science, here’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s web site captured on 3/12/2022:

They say that they’re “following guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), New York State, and New York City” yet didn’t all of these experts on Science recently say that masks aren’t required? (except for kids in preschool)

How about the Getty in Los Angeles?

Vaccine papers are checked and masks are required because of the Department of Public Health’s Science-informed orders. Yet the referenced Department of Public Health ended its mask order on March 4. See “LA County’s indoor mask mandate ends as COVID metrics improve. Here’s what you need to know” (ABC):

Indoor mask-wearing will no longer be mandatory in Los Angeles County starting Friday thanks to revised data released by federal health officials showing a decreased impact of COVID-19 on the county’s health care system.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday officially moved the county out of its “high” virus activity category and into the “low” category. The CDC updates its county-level data every Thursday.

The CDC designations are based largely on the number of new virus-related hospital admissions and on the percentage of hospital beds being occupied by COVID-positive patients, along with a county’s overall rate of new COVID cases.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that given the CDC revision of the county’s classification, a new Health Officer Order will be issued that removes the county’s long-standing mandate for people to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status. That move will put the county in alignment with the state, which dropped its mask mandate on Tuesday.

It is possible to Follow the Science even while doing the opposite of what Science says to do.

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The Guardian promotes open borders and decries 40 percent rent inflation

by philg

“Renters across US face sharp increases – averaging up to 40% in some cities” (The Guardian):

According to an analysis conducted by RedFin, rents in the US jumped 14% in December 2021 to $1,877 a month, the largest rise in more than two years.

Some of the most affected cities included Austin, Texas, with a 40% increase in rental prices compared with a year previous, New York City at a 35% increase, and several metro areas in Florida exceeding over 30% increases in rental prices.

Members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community are the worst-afflicted, according to The Guardian:

His $1,500-a-month rent was already a struggle for him to pay, and if late on rent payments he incurs a $100 fee. With the latest rental increase of nearly $450, he worries about his future in Sarasota, a community he’s lived in and helped build as a promoter and organizer for LGBTQ events over the years.

“Now, I can’t even afford to live in the community that I helped to create,” added Beadle. “This is not OK, There needs to be an answer for the young, single people who are trying to survive and thrive. We can’t just be happy with being able to pay rent one more month not knowing if we will have a place to live next month.”

One week before his wedding in January 2022, Joey Texeira and his partner received a lease renewal from their landlord in New York City, with a 30% increase to rent of $750 a month for a one-year lease renewal or a 41% rent increase of $1,050 a month for a two-year lease renewal for an apartment they have lived in since December 2020. The lease renewal would start on 1 May.

“We’re very stressed and don’t know exactly what we plan to do yet,” said Texeira.

His husband was also unexpectedly laid off recently and their neighbors downstairs were recently priced out of the apartment building with a rental increase of $250 to $500 added to their monthly rent.

How is it possible that the market-clearing price for housing is going up? Let’s look at the demand curve:

Why does the demand curve rise? Partly this is due to the no-fault (“unilateral”) divorce revolution, which creates more households per capita (the typical U.S. state’s family law takes people out of the workforce (successful plaintiffs face a huge disincentive to work because W-2 wages might result in a reduction of the family court gravy train), which reduces GDP available to build housing). But mostly the demand growth is due to immigration: “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065” (Pew 2015).

A larger population might not result in a housing crisis if every new addition to the population had sufficient skills to earn enough to afford a new house, but even Americans at the median cannot afford to live in a new apartment (see City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion for some numbers).

Leading up to the shock and horror of the 40 percent rent increase story, The Guardian has been advocating for increased low-skill immigration to the U.S. Here’s an example explicitly calling for “open borders” … “Why Democrats should support open borders” (Reece Jones, February 2018):

… the Republican leadership has already settled on an extreme position that will substantially reduce all immigration to the United States. … In the face of this recalcitrance, the Democrats must rethink their current incoherent immigration policy and argue robustly for more open borders.

Open borders could have an enormous positive impact on GDP worldwide.

The concern that some citizens might lose jobs to immigrants is not supported by research. One study found migrant and native workers are employed in different sectors of the economy, another showed that migrants create 1.2 additional jobs beyond the job they do because they rent an apartment, buy a car, and frequent local businesses.

How many people would actually move if borders were open? A 2011 Gallop survey found that 14% of the world population would like to move to another country, with perhaps 100 million wanting to go to the US. These numbers may alarm some, but these movements would happen over years, or even decades.

… there is not a moral or ethical reason to justify restricting the movement of other human beings at borders.

I disagree with Professor Jones that there are only 100 million people who would want to come to the world’s 2nd most generous welfare state (measured by percentage of GDP devoted to welfare). The U.S. offers free unlimited health care via Medicaid and/or simply going into a hospital for “charity care.” Why wouldn’t anyone on Planet Earth who has a serious illness want to come to the U.S. for pull-out-all-the-stops treatment? The cruel National Health Service in the UK won’t spend money if the bureaucrats don’t think it is worth it (explanation). But if you’re 80 years old and think that you might benefit from some joint replacements, why not pop over from the UK to the US and get the $300,000 of surgery that the UK’s NHS is denying? Since the borders are open, it will always be possible to migrate back.

On the other hand, I agree with Professor Jones that, under the ethics and morality professed by a majority of Americans, there is no reason to deny people from the world’s poorest countries free housing, health care, food, and smartphone here in the U.S. If “housing is a human right” is our reason for providing taxpayer-funded housing to an American who chooses not to work, an undocumented migrant should be equally entitled to a free house since the migrant is equally human.

Maybe that “open borders” headline is an outlier? Let’s sample “opinion plus US immigration” in The Guardian. “The Biden administration has ended use of the phrase ‘illegal alien’. It’s about time” (Moustafa Bayoumi, April 2021):

Real immigration reform must follow. Paths to citizenship for the millions of undocumented people who are living in the shadows must be made into law. Unaccompanied minors must be afforded the same levels of safety and dignity we would want for our own children. And asylees must be admitted at far higher numbers than currently permitted.

Every asylum-seeker needs a place to live, presumably. And someone who claims to be an unaccompanied minor (there is no way to verify the age of an “undocumented” person since one cannot ask for his/her/zir/their passport) can’t have a safe and dignified lifestyle without a taxpayer-funded apartment.

“Calls to end inhumane border conditions aren’t enough. Ice must be abolished” (Natascha Elena Uhlmann, September 2019):

… where are we as a society if we cannot dream bigger? What does it mean that some of our most beloved writers – who have laboriously envisioned new and radical worlds – didn’t imagine a future that respects the right to human movement?

It is by refusing to concede to a rightwing vision of possibility that unimaginable prospects become reality.

With our imagination we can turn currently vacant land into 7 million houses/apartments for “extremely low-income renter households” (the “gap” as of March 2021).

“‘Australia’s loss is America’s gain’: the Nauru and Manus refugees starting anew in the US” (Anne Richard, January 2019):

Australia had stopped thousands of asylum seekers from reaching its shores and had arranged to detain them on islands in the South Pacific; the US had agreed to resettle some in America. … As the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration in the US, I had signed the deal in September 2016. Had our team said no to the Australians, it might have kept the pressure on them to change their policy, but reports about the dire conditions on the islands worried us and my sense was the refugees would be better off restarting their lives elsewhere as soon as possible.

I met Sri Lankan parents of three children – including a baby born under difficult circumstances in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru – who are now living on the US west coast, happy that their children will receive an education, have a good future and experience freedom. The father, however, fears the earnings from his job at an Indian restaurant will not be sufficient to pay the rent for a two-bedroom apartment and other bills.

… three young men told me they had fled their village in Pakistan … One is working the graveyard shift at a convenience store and another, who had earlier studied medicine, is now a landscaper.

(Would the profiled 2SLGBTQQIA+ folks afflicted with 30-40 percent rent increases have preferred to pay their old rent and pulled a few weeds themselves and perhaps waited until 7 am for the convenience store to reopen?)

“Ice is a tool of illegality. It must be abolished” (Zephyr Teachout, June 2018):

On Sunday, Trump doubled down and took direct aim at our constitutional order when he tweeted: “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

This is a direct affront to the most foundational principles of public morality and law. Our constitution insists that “no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. It should not need saying, but undocumented immigrants are persons.

“Why Trump thinks domestic violence victims don’t deserve asylum” (Jill Filipovic, June 2018):

What else, other than out-and-out hostility and a desire to hurt the most vulnerable, justifies Sessions’s decision to remove asylum protections from women suffering violence at the hands of their partners?

In other words, anyone willing to spin a tale of domestic suffering, which cannot possibly be verified from 1,000+ miles away, is entitled to live in the U.S. forever.

Going back to the happy days before the Trump dictatorship… “Bernie Sanders is wrong on open borders: they’d help boost the economy” (Cory Massimino, August 2015):

Bernie Sanders has come out against open borders, claiming they are a “right-wing proposal” that “would make everyone in America poorer.” He argues that, while we have a “moral responsibility” to “work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty… you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer.”

In other words, Bernie predicted, 6 years in advance, that non-immigrant Americans would become poor via rent increases! And some of the haters who comment here say that Comrade Bernie does not understand economics!

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