Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

Testing the religion of immigration

by philg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related:

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

What we’re losing as we say goodbye to Joe Biden

by philg

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

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

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

Government data via Newsweek:

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

A screen shot of the above article:

Full post, including comments

California proves Replacement Theory false

by philg

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

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

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

Full post, including comments

How’s the UK doing?

by philg

How’s the UK doing now that has been properly governed by the pro-Hamas Labour Party for half a year? On track for success?

The last 20 years or so don’t seem to have gone well for the Brits. “Young women are starting to leave men behind” (Financial Times, September 2024) was supposed to be a feel-good story about equity (defined as “victimhood group does better than oppressor group”), but mostly the data seem to show that young people of all gender IDs earn less today than they did in the 2000s (after adjusting for the inflation that the government says doesn’t exist):

Maybe it is better in immigrant-rich London than in the left-behind Brexit parts of the UK? The Financial Times data nerd says that Londoners have gotten rich… Londoners who are landlords. Most of the urban hamsters spin on their wheels: “Londoners’ higher salaries relative to the rest of the country are ~entirely consumed by higher housing costs. 15% higher household incomes become ~0% higher after mortgage, rent etc”

Low-skill immigrants make a country rich. The UK has been at record levels of low-skill immigration for about 20 years. Now that the correct party is in power, is the UK rich or getting rich?

Related:

Full post, including comments

All Muslims in China qualify for asylum, but we won’t pick them up?

by philg

Closing out 2024 with the most transformational trend of the year: immigration.

“Chinese Muslims, After Finding a Refuge in Queens, Now Fear Trump” (New York Times, today):

Then they managed to get out of China and reached the soil of the United States, many by trekking through the brutal jungle in Panama known as the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S. southern border.

They are Hui Muslims, a state-recognized ethnic minority group in China, where the government is determined to crack down on Islam.

Deportation could mean years in jail or labor camps.

Of the roughly 25 million Muslims in China, 11 million are Hui…

Most Chinese migrants entering the United States from the southern border are released on parole by immigration authorities. Then they can apply for asylum.

Simply being Muslim in China qualifies a migrant for asylum here in the U.S. (if that were not true, the people described in the article wouldn’t be “released on parole”, assuming that our laws and regulations are being enforced). But we won’t negotiate with the Chinese to arrange an airlift via Airbus A380 of all of the Chinese Muslims who wish to take up their birthrate of American citizenship.

The NYT describes the hardship of being a Muslim migrant to the U.S., even without Trump having resumed his dictatorship:

But Mr. Ma, the founder of the shelter, said Muslim migrants faced obstacles in making lives in America. Pork dishes, which many Muslims don’t eat, feature heavily in most Chinese restaurants.

Here’s someone who has two reasons for needing asylum:

“My mother told me to stay here,” said Yan, a single mother who came to the United States in July with her 10-year-old son, Masoud, through the Darién Gap. “‘If you come back,’” she quoted her own mother as saying, “‘there’ll be no good outcome for you. Who knows — they might even sentence you to life imprisonment.’”

“It would be lying if anyone says they are not scared,” said Yan, the single mother. “Everyone is on edge.” She said she would accept being deported but would make the painful decision to have someone adopt her son, who has problems learning, if it meant he could stay in the United States.

“My son has to stay here,” she said. “Going back would mean no chance of survival for him.”

We’re informed by the New York Times that is de facto illegal to be Muslim in China. As far as I know, it is de jure illegal to be a “single mother” in China (a pregnant person who chooses to have a child outside of marriage is not entitled to avail him/her/zir/theirself of state services, such as free schools and free health care; certainly there is no way to make a profit by having a baby without being married (the American Way)).

Every time I look at an article like this I’m more confused. Why do people have to walk to the U.S. in order to be eligible for U.S. residence/citizenship? If the abuse/danger level is the same, why is a person with the financial means and health required to do the walk more entitled to live here than someone who does not have these advantages?

Related:

Full post, including comments

When will there be a refugee swap between Europe and Syria as a result of the change in Syrian government?

by philg

Roughly 20 percent of Syrians now live in Europe (Politico), about 4.5 million people plus their descendants. They were entitled to EU residence based on a fear of persecution by the Assad regime, which has now been replaced by the other side (“another side”?). Will there now be a refugee swap? Everyone who was targeted by Assad can now safely return to Syria. Everything who was on Assad’s side will need to seek asylum in the European welfare system. When does the swap happen?

BBC:

Ten men, mostly Syrian refugees, have been found guilty over the gang rape of a woman outside a German nightclub.

The 2018 attack in the city of Freiburg fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment, with protests by the far right.

The lead defendant was sentenced to five and a half years for the attack – which lasted for more than two hours – while seven others received sentences of up to four years.

The victim, who was 18 at the time, had her drink spiked before being attacked in bushes outside the venue.

Eight of the men on trial were refugees from Syria, while the other three came from Iraq, Afghanistan and Germany.

From The Critic, 2024:

The Germany-wide statistics on sexual violence were also sobering. An internal study by the German federal law enforcement agency, leaked to a Zurich newspaper, revealed that asylum-seekers have committed some 7,000 sexual assaults (ranging from groping to gang-rape ) between 2015 and 2023. Although they make up only 2.5 per cent of the population, asylum-seekers made up 13.1 per cent of all sexual-assault suspects in 2021.

Same question about the U.S., though on a smaller scale. We have at least 100,000 Syrians and their children who were granted the right to live in the U.S. because of a fear of persecution by the Assad regime. Do they now go back to Syria so that their places in the U.S. can be taken by Assad loyalists? We are informed that the U.S. does not have unlimited capacity for hosting refugees. If so, shouldn’t all of our refugees be those who are actually at risk in their home nations?

Full post, including comments

Competition from non-natives

by philg

“Invasive Ecological Threat” (Florida Weekly, November 21, 2024):

A new invasive seagrass has been spotted off the waters of South Florida and scientists are working to see what danger it could pose for native seagrass and the plants, fish and marine animals they support.

The seagrass, called Halophila stipulacea, was discovered in a marina on Key Biscayne in Biscayne Bay. This is the first time it has been identified off the coast of the continental United States. The non-native species could be a threat, depending on whether or not the newcomer will compete with and displace our native seagrass species, said Justin Campbell, Florida International University marine scientist.

The invasive seagrass came from around the Red Sea and the Suez Canal area and is native to the Western Indian Ocean, Campbell said. It crossed the ocean, probably as part of boat passage from the Mediterranean, he said. It showed up in the Caribbean on the island of Granada around 2002. By 2017, it had spread to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. “And then now, very recently, it has showed up on our doorstep here in Florida,” Campbell said.

The invasive species doesn’t look like our native seagrass, which has long leaves and tall, grass-like canopies. The invasive species has short, tiny leaves, he said. Scientists believe it has been spreading through a process of fragmentation or asexual reproduction. The species fragments very easily, meaning that small pieces can break off, Campbell said. “Those small fragments have the capacity to float for a week, ten days, and then potentially resettle in a new area and start growing again.” It’s essentially a clone of the parent fragment, he said.

“It’s really hard to predict what the consequences of this is going to be,” said James Fourqurean, a co-author of the research paper and director of the Coastlines and Oceans Division in FIU’s Institute of Environment. “This is a species that can spread incredibly rapidly. The meadows that were just discovered this summer (in the bay) are too large to have grown in a single year. So we know that it’s been here for multiple years already,” he said. The invasive seagrass will eventually spread even to the Gulf of Mexico, though not directly from Biscayne Bay, he said. “There’s no biological reason that it won’t grow all around the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.”

Noted.

Related:

  • “Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History” (New York Times, Dec 11, 2024): Under President Biden, more than two million immigrants per year have entered, government data shows. The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people. [There’s a chart showing that 190,000 net immigrants/year arrived in the 1850s compared to more than 2 million/year during Biden-Harris, but the bars are as a percentage of population so it doesn’t look like 10X the rate.]
Full post, including comments

Low-skill immigration as a religion and parallels to Evolution-denial

by philg

Happy Native American Heritage Day to Elizabeth Warren and everyone else who celebrates.

As Native Americans have experienced some of the most dramatic effects of immigration, let’s look at an X post that compares Evolution-denial to denial that low-skill immigration can and will cause a country or society to evolve.

Excerpts:

Evolution deniers accept that “microevolution” happens. They also agree that different species exist. They just don’t think that a large number of small mutations over time can lead to a new species.

Both groups of deniers often demand to be shown direct evidence of transformation in progress. For example, “Show me the monkey turning into a human” or “Show me that California has turned into Mexico.” A snapshot may not clearly reveal an ongoing process, but that doesn’t mean the process isn’t taking place.

In general, people find it difficult to intuitively understand the impact of many small changes over time. This difficulty, combined with ideological beliefs that lead them to want to deny it, is why many otherwise sensible people deny that evolution takes place.

Also from X (immigration-loving New Yorker magazine), “Few forces have transformed our planet as thoroughly as the introduction of invasive species.”:

A bit of Science, from the local manatee lagoon, regarding the immigration of lionfish and some plants to South Florida:

From Joe “Open Borders” Biden, 2007:

Kamala Harris offers an accounting of the cost to taxpayers of being enriched by low-skill immigrants:

Full post, including comments

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

by philg

Let’s take a moment to remember Laken Riley. In a closed-border world she would in all likelihood be getting ready to enter the nursing profession, ideally here in Florida where population growth means that we’re always short of healthcare providers. Instead, she is gone, her murderer welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration in 2022.

Suppose that José Antonio Ibarra hadn’t killed Laken Riley or committed any other violent crimes. What was there in his educational or employment background that the U.S. needed? We are informed that diversity is our strength and that every immigrant enriches us culturally and economically. What was there about José Antonio Ibarra that made us want to welcome him to the U.S., pay for his housing and airfare from NYC to Georgia, etc.? What is the rationale for our open borders policy, in other words? Why wouldn’t it have made sense to screen out Mr. Ibarra even if we didn’t expect him to kill anyone?

Laken Riley was killed back in February, so I hope that it isn’t too soon to look at the economics of what happened. José Antonio Ibarra killed a universally liked young soul who would have earned about $86,000 per year (BLS) in 2024 dollars. If we assume a 40-year working career and don’t do a net-present value adjustment, that’s $3.44 million in GDP that will be lost (perhaps $1 million was invested in Laken Riley’s upbringing and education, so that investment was destroyed via opening our border to Mr. Ibarra).

What will it cost to imprison this 26-year-old migrant for the rest of his life? USA Facts says that there is a big variation from state to state, with Maskachusetts being the leader:

It’s tough to believe that Georgia is able to imprison the convicted at $30,000 per year when Massachusetts is spending over $307,000/year, but maybe this is correct. If Mr. Ibarra can live to 82, the life expectancy for Hispanics nationwide (due to systemic racism, apparently, more than 3 years longer than white Americans can expect to live), this will cost approximately $1.7 million in 2024 dollars (probably not accurate because prison costs should rise faster than inflation).

On the third hand, if imprisonment means that Mr. Ibarra is prevented from reproducing, the U.S. taxpayer may actually spend far less on him than we spend on the typical low-skill migrant because the typical low-skill migrant and his/her/zir/their descendants require multiple generations of public housing, free or subsidized health insurance (Medicaid), SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone.

Related:

Full post, including comments

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

by philg

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

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

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

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

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

Related:

  • “Immigration restrictions helped lead to Martin Luther King’s success”: There is much to suggest that the 1924 immigration restrictions started processes that were an important contributor to the success of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in the ending of legalized segregation. … the lower immigration and tightened labor markets brought about economic changes that steadily increased the economic and political power of Black Americans and convinced more and more business leaders to shun segregation. The most visible result of reducing immigration was that northern industrialists could no longer fill all their extra jobs with new immigrants and had to finally open them up to the descendants of slavery in the South.
Full post, including comments