According to the economic logic used by enthusiasts for low-skill immigration, even the lowest skill migrant makes Americans richer because he/she/ze/they causes some sort of bump in economic activity, thus increasing the aggregate GDP.
I wonder if Danilo/Danelo Cavalcante should win Migrant of the Year 2023. By escaping from a Pennsylvania Prison, he is responsible for at least 500 police officers receiving two weeks of overtime pay (timeline). He’s 34 and has been sentenced to life in prison, so that will boost the U.S. economy by at least $50,000 per year for the next 50 years or so (see “Pa. spends over $40k a year per inmate.” but remember that the $42,727 per year number is in pre-Biden dollars).
The dramatic encounter with Cavalcante, involving a helicopter, a lightning storm, a police dog and more than 20 tactical officers, led to his capture around 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, authorities said.
So the migrant can also take credit for some Jet A sales and the overhaul reserve for what was very likely a $3-6 million Eurocopter (helping the French and German economies too!).
Why is the U.S. criminal justice system so interested in this Migrant of the Year?
According to prosecutors, he stabbed Brandão 38 times in front of her two young children in Pennsylvania in April 2021. He was arrested several hours later in Virginia, and authorities said he was attempting to flee to Mexico and intended to later head to Brazil, his native country.
In addition, Cavalcante is also wanted in a 2017 homicide case in Brazil, a US Marshals Service official has said.
This page is a little confusing. It says “the program will help newly arrived asylum seekers.” But newly arrived asylum-seekers are not legally able to work in the U.S. (nytimes). Why aren’t migrants able to take care of their own children if they’re not at work?
After paying federal, state, and city income tax to fund this and other social justice programs, how much do working New Yorkers have left over for their own kids’ care? Not enough, says the NYT… “How Soaring Child Care Costs Are Crushing New Yorkers”:
All but the wealthiest New Yorkers — even the upper middle class and especially mothers — are scrambling to afford care that will allow them to keep their jobs.
A New York City family would have to make more than $300,000 a year to meet the federal standard for affordability — which recommends that child care take up no more than 7 percent of total household income — to pay for just one young child’s care. In reality, a typical city family is spending over a quarter of their income to pay for that care…
What solution does Science offer? What’s not affordable on an individual basis will become inexpensive as soon as it is 100-percent government-funded:
But experts say that none of those efforts have tackled the core issue of extremely low wages for child care employees. Beyond raising pay rates, they said, the city and state could fully fund child care for 3-year-olds, ensure that providers are paid on time and give them more training,
Separately, at a party in Norwalk, Connecticut last month I learned about a consultant paid by NYC parents to help get their kids into the selective preschools (a child who gets into the right preschool is set up to get into the elite elementary school and that sets him/her/zir/them up to get into the elite high school and that, plus a compelling essay on comparative victimhood, sets the child up to get into an elite college). She earns over $1 million per year.
The mayor of Woburn, where hotels are housing 150 migrant families, said the state’s 40-year-old right-to-shelter law “was not meant to cover what we’re seeing now.”
[photo caption: Volunteers [in a church] cooked for Haitian migrant families in need of food at the United Methodist Church in Woburn, Mass.]
On Aug. 31, [Governor] Healey authorized more than 200 National Guard members to assist the more than 2,500 families living in hotels, a step meant to address a shortage of social service agencies to help incoming migrants.
… the volunteers … chafed with frustration when meals for the families arrived late from a state-contracted company
Translating for several adults, including his father, the teenager said their most pressing concern was how to swiftly become authorized to work. Current rules delay asylum seekers’ ability to work legally; Ms. Healey and elected officials in other states have increased pressure on the federal government to revise those policies.
The migrants have skills that would delight any employer and they desperately want to work. In fact, they hate to be idle. They were so busy learning calculus, physics, and engineering before they crossed the border that they never learned how to cook, which is why untrained volunteers and/or state contractors must cook and serve?
From the same article:
In Massachusetts, the only state with a right-to-shelter law that guarantees every family with children a place to stay, the crisis has been accelerating, with more than 80 cities and towns receiving migrants to date. … Officials estimate that as many as half of currently sheltered families are recently arrived migrants from other countries; most have come from Haiti, drawn by word of mouth and the pull of the state’s well-established Haitian community.
According to the NYT, the guarantee of free housing forever is not what has drawn migrants in.
How long did Maskachusetts go without being in a state of emergency? Based on “the Healey-Driscoll Administration announced that the state’s COVID-19 public health emergency will end on May 11, 2023” (source), it looks like there was a three-month gap between emergencies.
The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has said an increase in migration would “destroy” the city, seemingly blaming the Biden administration for failing to provide federal support as much as the Republican governors who have sent asylum seekers north.
“Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this,” Adams said. “This issue will destroy New York City.”
More than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York since last year, Adams said, adding that governors of Republican states had bussed asylum seekers to the city without coordinating with New York officials. Adams seemed to specifically refer to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, who bussed immigrants to Democratic-led cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
“We’ve turned this city around in 20 months,” Adams said. “And then what happened? Started with a madman down in Texas, decided he wanted to bus people up to New York City: 110,000 migrants.”
Lawyers, accountants, consultants, cryptocurrency analysts and other professionals have racked up more than $700 million in fees since last year from the bankruptcies of five major crypto firms, including the digital currency exchange FTX, according to a New York Times analysis of court records. That sum is likely to grow significantly as the cases unfold over the coming months.
A man who arrived in New York City two months ago from Venezuela has randomly attacked at least three strangers and two cops, and gotten arrested – and released – six times on 14 different charges, police and sources said.
Daniel Hernandez Martinez, 29, arrived on June 27 and allegedly committed his first crime the following day.
On Aug. 21, he violently attacked a woman in Midtown, cops said. He “grabbed a stranger by the hair, dragged her across the floor and kicked her,” and smashed her phone on West 45th Street around 1 a.m., court documents show.
In a letter sent to parents on Tuesday, Rosemary Hills Elementary School principal Rebecca Irwin Kennedy said she made the move after ‘three or more individuals’ caught the virus in the last ten days.
She demanded students don thick N95 masks to ‘keep our school environment as safe as possible’, despite a recent study finding the mask may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.
And while even embattled medical guru Dr Anthony Fauci admits there is a lack of evidence the masks stop the spread of Covid, Kennedy told parents the N95s will only become optional after 10 days.
This is my old school district, as it happens, Montgomery County Public Schools. It’s interesting that there is no explanation of how SARS-CoV-2 will be stopped if the students remove their masks “while eating or drinking”. The letter from the principal doesn’t mention any changes to lunch procedures. So the kids all sit in the classroom together wearing masks and then they all sit together at lunch not wearing masks?
What the Maryland principal did, of course, would be illegal under Florida law. Not contrary to a governor’s order, but illegal under a statute passed by the legislature. Third graders in Florida could tell the fearful Fauci-denying adults where to put their N95 masks.
Dangerous heat continues to afflict major portions of the U.S., including migrant-rich areas in Texas. Here’s the latest map from the New York Times of where 125-degree Fahrenheit conditions might be encountered:
We’re able to keep our house at a furry golden retriever-approved 72 degrees (and the garage at 78) by paying Florida Power and Light about $450/month (also runs the pool pump, the hot water circulation pump, lights, fridge, etc.). Recent undocumented immigrants, however, may not enjoy the luxury of a comfortable air-conditioned home fed by a bomb-proof power grid and/or, due to the stinginess of Republicans, may not have $450/month to hand over to the electric company.
Politicians running sanctuary cities and states have previously complained about buses of asylum-seekers from, e.g., Texas, arriving to claim sanctuary (example: the New York righteous fight amongst themselves). But the same politicians who run sanctuary cities also talk about a “climate crisis” (NYC Mayor Eric Adams, for example).
Instead of waiting for Texans to send migrants out of what the NYT says is “Danger”, wouldn’t it make more sense for governors and mayors in California and the Northeast to send Climate Emergency Escape buses to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina? Anyone who can prove that he/she/ze/they is undocumented (by presenting documents?) would be invited to hop on the bus and escape to climate safety/sanctuary.
If we have an “emergency” (and/or “crisis”) and also “danger” why aren’t there evacuations for the most vulnerable?
“Boston protestors call on Gov. Maura Healey to lead the fight against climate change” (January 26, 2023): A group of activists advocating for climate justice are calling on Gov. Maura Healey to lead the fight against climate change. … “You cannot speak about climate without talking about poverty, without talking about racism, militarism, and everything that goes along with needing clean air,” said Savina Martin of the Massachusetts Poor People Campaign.
Cities can be miserable during heat waves. All that concrete and asphalt soaks up the sun’s rays, pushing temperatures up even further. Tall buildings can block cooling breezes. Exhaust from cars and air-conditioners just adds to the swelter.
This is known as the urban heat island effect: A large city’s built-up environment can make it 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding countryside during the day and up to 22 degrees warmer at night. That extra heat is becoming a serious public health problem.
More people means bigger cities and bigger cities inevitably will be hotter cities (humans moving around on pavement will never emit less heat than grass). You might think that the natural position for a climate alarmist, therefore, would be to oppose policies that drive population growth, e.g., low-skill immigration, government handouts conditional on having kids, etc. Yet the NYT consistently promotes population growth, especially via open borders. For example, a recent piece from the paper’s in-house Nobel laureate.. “How Immigrants Are Saving the Economy” (Professor Dr. Paul Krugman, Ph.D.):
There are surely multiple reasons. But you may not have heard about one ingredient in the economy’s special sauce: a sudden, salutary rebound in net immigration, which soared in 2022 to more than a million people, its highest level since 2017. We don’t know whether this rebound will last, but it has been really helpful. It’s an exaggeration, but one with some truth, to say that immigrants are saving the U.S. economy.
I’m not sure how net immigration is measured if the undocumented walk across the border and never talk to a Census Bureau worker, but Prof. Krugman is talking about a substantial new city of humans being created every year in the U.S. (for reference, the population of Phoenix per se is 1.6 million).
What about artisanal production of population growth? A June 2023 editorial says that we should ladle out more cash to “families” (usually “single parents”) who do minimal work and choose to have multiple kids. It looks like Americans respond to financial incentives. The middle class is being bred out of existence because they can’t afford family-size housing. Those who don’t work have plenty of kids because the (too-poor-to-have-kids) taxpayers provide them with family-size housing. The rich have kids, but there aren’t enough of them to make a difference in population statistics.
Via a forthcoming paper w/ @CSchmert. Here are differences in TFR across race-income groups. The expected 'u-shape' of TFR by income is clear regardless of race. Birth certs don't record HH income, but we show you how to estimate TFR using pop pyramids in the paper! Pretty cool! pic.twitter.com/UZsesZqzBG
Channeling the spirit of “If you don’t like seeing me naked, you should shop at a different Publix”.. “If you don’t like summer heat waves, why do you advocate for a larger U.S. population?”
I arrived in Pasadena, California last night. I disclosed my plan to walk to dinner to a gal at the front desk. She expressed surprise that anyone would be willing to walk for 10 minutes due to the heat (85 degrees and dry). Separately, after risking heat stroke and/or death, I found that the June 2023 official Pride markings on sidewalks, transformers, and stores (Rainbow-first retail) were all still up.
More photos to follow, but here’s a preview of how city property is decorated in case there is a merchant who does not do his/her/zir/their share:
Like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal has worked tirelessly to spread the Good News about the Miracle of Low-Skill Migration. An example from 2015… “Migrants Offer Hope for Aging German Workforce”:
By some estimates, Britain is on course to eclipse Germany as Europe’s biggest economy by 2030, thanks in part to its large numbers of young, energetic immigrants.
Germany “is going to be severely challenged” by demographics, said Peter Sutherland, the United Nations special representative for international migration. Managing the trends “requires a great deal of proactive thinking” and openness to immigration, he said.
About 20% of asylum seekers were from war-torn Syria—more than from any other country—and four out of five arriving Syrians are believed to be from “average or even well-off economic circumstances and have a good education,” the agency said.
In the 1950s, Italians and other Southern Europeans flooded in to help rebuild the country, contributing significantly to its fast postwar economic recovery. In the following decades, millions of Turks arrived and many ended up working in German industrial companies, helping its economy more.
Europe’s current predicament has been long in the making. An aging population with a preference for free time and job security over earnings ushered in years of lackluster economic and productivity growth.
Adjusted for inflation and purchasing power, wages have declined by about 3% since 2019 in Germany, by 3.5% in Italy and Spain and by 6% in Greece.
Karim Bouazza, a 33-year-old nurse [in Brussels] who was stocking up on half-price meat and fish for his wife and two children, complained that inflation means “you almost need to work a second job to pay for everything.”
The eurozone economy grew about 6% over the past 15 years, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund data. That has left the average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based independent think tank. If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the U.S. and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today, the report said.
Apparently, expert consensus is that there is no longer a connection between low-skill migration and economic vibrancy. The 2023 WSJ article does not contain any of the following words or phrases: “migrant”; “immigrant”; “refugee”; “asylum-seeker”.
Separately, here’s a luxury car in one of Europe’s richest countries, the Netherlands (photographed in Delft, July 6, 2023):
The Netherlands now contains 27 percent migrants and children of migrants and thus should be insanely rich if we believe the Wall Street Journal’s 2015 Science.
His conservative VVD party had been trying to limit the flow of asylum seekers, following a row last year about overcrowded migration centres.
This week Mr Rutte tried to force through a plan which included a cap on the number of relatives of war refugees allowed into the Netherlands at just 200 people per month.
But junior coalition partners the Christian Union, a pro-family party, and the socially liberal D66, were strongly opposed.
A compromise proposal, known as the “emergency brake”, which would only trigger the restrictions in the event of an excessively high influx of migrants, was not enough to save the government.
The proposed law seems unworkable. What’s “excessive”? Roughly 27 percent of people who live in the Netherlands aren’t “Dutch” (stats). There was never a popular vote asking for this level of immigration or any other level. The native-born people with whom I have spoken so far have said that the country is too crowded with both low-skill migrants and mass tourists and that their desired number of both would be 0. None of them was ever asked “In an ideal world, what percentage of your neighbors would be from Africa and the Middle East?”
How does it look on the ground? I’m staying in a college town (Delft), but have seen no coffee shops or stores practicing Rainbow-first Retail (examples from Bozeman, Montana), which would be likely to offend Islamic migrants. Any trip by public transit includes companions who don’t appear to share Western sexual mores. Near the center of The Hague, the third-largest Dutch city:
Here are a couple of neon sculptures by Eric Adams, the artist who now serves as New York City mayor, in the lobby of the Whitney museum, just above the ticket desk ($25 for an adult, though free for SNAP/EBT beneficiaries):
Our sanctuary cities are somewhat undersupplied with migrants due to a shortage of buses from the border in Texas. A neighbor who is a refugee from Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns said that he wanted to sponsor a bus, but there is no opportunity for a private citizen to do so. Is Texas leaving a lot of sponsorship money on the table? What would the donor get? His/her/zir/their name on the side of the bus? (in a digital sign so that a different sponsor could be recognized on subsequent trips) A photograph of the happy New Americans disembarking in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, or some other sanctuary city?
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is busing migrants who recently arrived in Denver from the southern U.S. border to other major cities. The Democratic governor’s move echoes actions by Republican governors in Texas and Florida that were labeled callous and cruel.
New York officials, who once condemned Texas leaders for busing migrants from the southern border, calling the treatment inhumane, are buying bus tickets for newcomers who want to go north and seek asylum in Canada.
New York City has been buying tickets for migrants who want to go to other cities to connect with family or friends for months, officials noted.
Roxham Road, where Canadian immigration officials greet migrants in a prefabricated barn, is a popular informal entry point for those who don’t want to be subjected to a law that requires asylum seekers to request protection in the first safe country they arrive in.
(Only one month later, the Canadians decided that they did not want to benefit from this influx of migrants. “U.S. and Canada Reach an Agreement on Diverting Asylum Seekers” (NYT, March 2023): “The deal … will allow Canada to turn back immigrants at Roxham Road”)
Readers: Would you sponsor a bus for migrants to use to reach their dream city? If so, to which city would you offer transportation and how much would you be willing to pay for the honor of sponsorship? What would you want for recognition?
