Category: Migration, Refugees, and Asylum

Is immigration killing native-born Americans via overcrowding in health care?

by philg

A friend’s daughter in NYC is soon to turn a disposable fetus into a precious baby. This transformation will cost her $5,000 out of pocket. She couldn’t find an ob-gyn in Manhattan without agreeing to the “concierge” plan and says that this is the direction of primary care in the city. In Maskachusetts it was difficult to find a primary care physician who was taking new patients and waiting times to see specialists were generally measured in months if not seasons. Florida is, if anything, even more stressed. Americans fleeing lockdowns have been disproportionately not doctors. A doctor who wanted to escape Andrew Cuomo would have had to get licensed in Florida, which is a complex process, and then build a practice here. Compare to a laptop-based worker who could pick up and move over a weekend.

Can waiting a few months to see a doctor result in death? Yes, concludes “Delayed Access to Health Care and Mortality” (2007):

Veterans who visited a VA medical center with facility-level wait times of 31 days or more had significantly higher odds of mortality (odds ratio = 1.21,p = 0.027) compared with veterans who visited a VA medical center with facility-level wait times of < 31 days.

“The U.S. Has Fewer Physicians and Hospital Beds Per Capita Than Italy and Other Countries Overwhelmed by COVID-19” (KFF, 2020) includes a chart with 2017 data:

Our World in Data shows that there was an upward trend from 1960 to 2004, as the U.S. became wealthier and medicine more advanced, but now we’re in a downward trend as our population expands via low-skill immigration.

Maybe the shortage of docs can be addressed via using non-doctors to do what doctors in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden do? The trade union for docs says this doesn’t work… “3-year study of NPs in the ED: Worse outcomes, higher costs” (AMA):

Nurse practitioners (NPs) delivering emergency care without physician supervision or collaboration in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) increase lengths of stay by 11% and raise 30-day preventable hospitalizations by 20% compared with emergency physicians, says a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Overall, the study shows that NPs increase the cost of ED care by 7%, or about $66 per patient. Increasing the number of NPs on duty to decrease wait times raised total health care spending by 15%, or $238 per case—not including the cost of additional NP salaries. In all, assigning 25% of emergency cases to NPs results in net costs of $74 million annually for the VHA.

They don’t bother to try to figure out whether the patients lived or died or what quality of life they might have experienced, but it seems safe to say that “preventable hospitalizations” are not beneficial.

Rich people can buy their way out of waiting to see primary care docs and, perhaps, a handful of specialists who are affiliated (or bribed?) by a concierge practice. A 50ish friend in Boston pays $8,000/year for this. But even the rich may experience a long wait if they need to see a specialist outside of their concierge network.

There have been some recent articles decrying a decline in U.S. life expectancy (example from the public health folks at Harvard, taking a rare break from their mask and COVID-19 vaccine advocacy). But none mention population growth combined with relative stagnation in the number of physicians.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Why is Florida chartering planes rather than buses to help migrants reach the promised land of California?

by philg

“Florida arranged migrant flights to California, where officials are considering legal action” (CBS):

Florida officials confirmed Tuesday that the state arranged the chartered flights that took migrants to Sacramento on Monday and last Friday, generating outrage from California authorities.

The statement from the Florida Division of Emergency Management came a day after California’s attorney general said he was considering legal action over the flights, which he said could amount to “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

The Florida Division of Emergency Management said in the statement that the state’s relocation program was voluntary, noting that there was verbal and written consent indicating the migrants wanted to go to California.

With thousands of migrants streaming over the border daily and California offering sanctuary, including a full array of welfare benefits, wouldn’t it be more sensible for Florida to charter buses rather than airplanes?

Full post, including comments

California: (a) Florida is not free, and (b) migrants are harmed by relocating to California

by philg

According to Governor French Laundry, Florida is one of the worst places on Planet Earth. Some examples… books are banned, speech is restricted, nobody can vote against Republicans, and “women” are criminalized:

abortion care for pregnant people is restricted:

2SLGBTQQIA+ people cannot get medical care in Florida:
What about a vulnerable person who wishes to live for four generations at taxpayer expense? According to this CATO report (in pre-Biden dollars, but the percentage figures in Table 4 should still be reasonably accurate), in the paradise of California he/she/ze/they will enjoy 96 percent of the spending power of someone who works full-time at the median wage. What about in the stingy hell of Florida? Only 41 percent (i.e., it might actually be rational to work).

Combining all of the above, it is tough to understand how anyone would choose oppression and/or poverty in Florida rather than freedom and material splendor in California.

Yet… “California investigating whether migrant flight came from Florida” (NBC):

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the migrants who were dropped off in Sacramento without any prior arrangements “were in possession of documentation purporting to be from the government of the State of Florida.”

“While this is still under investigation, we can confirm these individuals were in possession of documentation purporting to be from the government of the State of Florida,” he added. “While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice, it is immoral and disgusting.”

The Florida Legislature passed a bill in February that expanded DeSantis’ program enabling government officials to fly migrants to destinations in blue states that have sanctuary policies in place. The Republican-controlled Legislature gave the DeSantis administration $10 million for the program during a February special legislative session, and $12 million more during the recently concluded 2023 legislative session.

“Immoral and disgusting” to help a migrant enjoy the California lifestyle in which abortion care is available as part of standard reproductive care for any pregnant person? Immoral and disgusting to help a migrant who chooses not to work collect more than 2X the welfare benefits (housing, health care, food, smartphone, etc.) as a percent of median income? What is there about Florida that these noble defenders of migrants in Sacramento consider to be good? If everything about Florida is bad, how is it “kidnapping” to give someone a relocation ride on a private aircraft to California, where everything is good?

From the CATO analysis:

Full post, including comments

If New York City has a falling population, why doesn’t it have room for migrants?

by philg

“NYC lost 5.3% of its population — nearly a half-million people — since COVID, with most heading South” (New York Post, May 18):

The US Census Bureau revealed Thursday that the Big Apple’s population is 5.3% lower than it was when the novel coronavirus first hit the country. Over 468,200 people fled the city between April 2020 and July 2022.

“As Crisis Grows, All of New York’s Migrant Plans Are Met With Outrage” (New York Times, May 18):

First the city tried hotels, then tents, then a cruise ship terminal, then school gyms. As migrants have continued to cross the border, the mayor pleaded on Wednesday for understanding — and ideas.

Now, the daily stream of migrants feeding the crisis has doubled in size in recent weeks, city officials say. As many as 700 migrants are arriving each day in the city — up from less than half that number since the expiration last Thursday of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed immigration officials to expel some border crossers back to Mexico.

With no clear solutions at hand, the city turned to shelter some migrants in public school gyms starting last week. That plan, like many others before it, was almost immediately met with outrage — not only from activists and human rights groups, but also from public school parents and the ranks of everyday New Yorkers.

More than 67,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since the crisis began. Of those, 41,500 people are currently being cared for by the city, Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, said at a news conference on Wednesday. She said 4,300 people had arrived in just the past week.

Migrants are people as far as the U.S. Census Bureau is concerned. Therefore, New York City’s population is dropping dramatically despite the steady arrival of migrants. Why is it a challenge to find housing in a place with a constant number of buildings and a falling number of people?

Times Square was a little crowded on a Friday night earlier this month:

But courtyard near the Whitney was pretty empty considering the fine weather (mid-day Saturday):

Full post, including comments

End-of-Title-42 Robinson R44 trip from Los Angeles to the border

by philg

Today is the day that Donald Trump’s cruel Title 42 policy was supposed to end, enabling more than 7 billion humans to enter the U.S. and then live here for 10+ years as they await their first asylum court hearing. (CNN) (Trump’s immigration policy was intolerably racist, which is why the Biden administration has continued it for more than 2 years?) This post chronicles our May 2023 trip from Los Angeles to the border at El Paso, Texas.

A west-to-east trip along Interstate 10 began with a flight over the National Historic Landmark of Mar-a-Lago:

I could almost hear the questions of the children in Palm Beach who were pointing up:

  • “What’s JetBlue?”
  • “What’s a commercial airline?”
  • “You have to share your plane with other people?”

Our PBI-LAX route took us over the Florida Mountains, right next to Deming, New Mexico, where we would later stop:

(If no human is illegal, why does the Biden administration keep a balloon tethered near the border?)

Torrance, California is home to the Robinson Helicopter Company, which has zero Michelin stars, and Din Tai Fung, the proud bearer of one star (for the Hong Kong branch). We managed to catch a curbside Uber Black from LAX and thus avoid the dreaded one-hour wait for a regular Uber and arrived at Din Tai Fung just before closing. Angelenos on the airplane, in the restaurant, and working at the hotel were, by Florida standards, often masked. #COVIDisNotOver

The view from the DoubleTree reminds us that Californians are geniuses when it comes to sustainability and adapting to a dark climate future. When building apartments in an area famous for fires, make sure to use wood rather than concrete:

“Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same” (Bloomberg 2019) explains how this is legal:

Los Angeles architect Tim Smith was sitting on a Hawaiian beach, reading through the latest building code, as one does, when he noticed that it classified wood treated with fire retardant as noncombustible. That made wood eligible, he realized, for a building category—originally known as “ordinary masonry construction” but long since amended to require only that outer walls be made entirely of noncombustible material—that allowed for five stories with sprinklers.

By putting five wood stories over a one-story concrete podium and covering more of the one-acre lot than a high-rise could fill, Smith figured out how to get the 100 apartments at 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost.

the buildings have proved highly flammable before the sprinklers and walls go in. Dozens of major fires have broken out at mid-rise construction sites over the past five years. Of the 13 U.S. blazes that resulted in damages of $20 million or more in 2017, according to the National Fire Protection Association, six were at wood-frame apartment buildings under construction.

Our machine is ready on Robinson’s ramp at 0800:

The inspectors had found a slightly messed up decal above a static port and that was being addressed while we did our preflight inspection. Helicopters come out of the factory with exactly 4 flight test hours and then a fresh oil change.

Mid-morning traffic on the east side of Los Angeles wasn’t too bad:

The state that was the most thoroughly locked down for coronapanic celebrates “200 years of freedom, 1776-1976”:

(Would Native Americans and Black Americans agree that “freedom” arrived in 1776?)

The sprawl of Los Angeles continues almost to the Banning Pass, which we were able to get through easily at 3,500′:

If you’re accustomed to high-end FBOs, Blythe, California is best avoided. There is no 100LL truck. The “courtesy” car comes with a stern warning to return with a gasoline receipt or pay $20 (admittedly gasoline in California is over $5 per gallon, but nobody would use the crew car for more than a 12-mile round-trip into town). Some photos of Blythe and the Colorado River, which separates it from the comparatively free state of Arizona:

I-10 then climbs into Phoenix, a true master class on sprawl:

If you want to start an airline, a midnight visit to Pinal, Arizona (KMZJ) with a start cart would save a lot of money (note the Dreamlifter, resting after lifting its last dream):

We refueled in Tucson then headed across southern New Mexico as the sun waned. We landed at Million Air in El Paso where if you’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell, $200,000 for a custom (street legal) motorcycle from B.A.D. Visions will fill that prescription. My favorite is the one devoted to Elvis Presley:

The gal behind the counter said that her favorite was the one with the “suicide stick” for shifting (note bullet casings):

For more protection from the elements:

“I drive a Honda minivan,” I explained to the young front desk worker. She responded, “I give you a lot of credit for having the courage to put that on the road.”

In the morning, we fired up to check out the border.

Note that the Biden administration maintains roughly 700 miles of caring humanitarian “fence”, not to be confused with a hateful “wall”.

Our El Paso stop lasted 12 hours, so we were able to register only 732 new voters.

More about this trip in a follow-up post…

Readers: What are you doing to celebrate the end of Title 42? Who is changing the sheets in the guest bedroom so that the next 20 or 30 million migrants can be welcomed properly?

Related:

  • Pew Research 2015 demographic forecast: “… future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.”
Full post, including comments

Why can’t San Francisco turn vacant retail and office space into shelters for migrants and the unhoused?

by philg

Headlines are packed with stories about major retailers shutting down stores in San Francisco and distressed office towers. At the same time, we know that folks in the Bay Area are passionate about social justice and welcoming migrants (San Francisco has been a sanctuary city since 1989). See, for example, “Nordstrom is the latest retailer to leave San Francisco” (CNN) and “Office vacancies in San Francisco jump to a record 33%” (The Real Deal).

San Franciscans who say that they want to help the vulnerable and reduce inequality are still wealthy. Why won’t they vote to tax themselves so that the city can acquire the vacant retail and office buildings to turn into housing for migrants and those who are currently suffering from unhoused-ness? These buildings are already equipped with bathrooms and it wouldn’t cost a lot to add more showers. From the WSJ:

Full post, including comments

What will be the origin myths for our current wave of asylum-seekers?

by philg

Signs from Alabama’s Cheaha State Park, within the Talladega National Forest, explaining how Native Americans and Europeans came to be in the area:

“Native Americans were the first people to colonize the Cheaha Mountain area.” and “Europeans left an established life and journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean to pursue their dreams of freedom.”

Native Americans were “colonizers” and Europeans came to the slave state of Alabama because they cherished freedom, not for any economic motivation.

The U.S. already has cities that are more violent, statistically, than the countries from which migrants came here “fleeing violence” (the current origin myth). Suppose that this trend continues (U.S. becoming more violent; countries that enrich us with their surplus population becoming less violent). Will there be a new origin myth for our current wave of migrants? If so, what will it be?

Separately, Cheaha seems like the proper place for the Appalachian Trail (“AT”) to start (story: “The trail was originally imagined as spanning the entire length of the Appalachian Mountains, which would extend it into Alabama, but the Alabama leg never materialized”). As the U.S. population has grown, the AT should grow so that hikers aren’t on top of each other.

Full post, including comments

Politicians open the borders and then can’t figure out why residents of the U.S. don’t have a lot in common

by philg

Over the past 58 years, the U.S. has been gradually filled up with people from a wide range of cultures who had a wide range of reasons for wanting to come here, oftentimes because they did not like where they were and not because there was something about American culture that they liked. “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065” (Pew 2015):

Looking ahead, new Pew Research Center U.S. population projections show that if current demographic trends continue, future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.

A recent article from a U.S. senator and a Harvard lecturer, “We Have Put Individualism Ahead of the Common Good for Too Long” (TIME):

In America today, far too many of us are disconnected from each other, lonely, self-protective, or at each other’s throats. Sacrifice for the common good feels anachronistic.

Immigration is nowhere mentioned in the article. It is a curious blind spot, perhaps reflecting how detached American elites are from their subjects. Why would they expect a Hindu immigrant from India who had lost all of his possessions to Pakistani Muslims to feel connected to a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the U.S.? Why would an immigrant from Cambodia want to sacrifice to help an asylum-seeker from Haiti or Venezuela? Cambodians in Cambodia don’t sit around wondering what they can do to help Haitians and Venezuelans. If we transport Cambodians to the U.S., what would motivate them to suddenly want to sacrifice to help recently arrived Haitians and Venezuelans?

But suppose that a truly altruistic person were to exist in the U.S., someone who can measure up to the standards set forth in this article. He/she/ze/they actually wants to sacrifice to help a person whom he/she/ze/they has never met. Why does he/she/ze/they choose to help someone who is in the U.S. comfortably enrolled in means-tested public housing, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone? Why doesn’t he/she/ze/they be like Bill Gates and instead try to help the world’s poorest, nearly all of whom are found in very poor countries?

In short, once a country is sufficiently filled with immigrants, neither the selfish nor the altruistic will seek to sacrifice for the common good of other residents of that country. The selfish will concentrate on themselves and their families. The altruistic will sacrifice some of their time and money to help those humans who need the help the most.

Full post, including comments

Remembering when Vladimir Putin tried to help us

by philg

Today is the 10th anniversary of the jihad waged by successful asylum-seekers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the Boston Marathon. They lived at taxpayer expense in Cambridge, Maskachusetts after being granted permanent welfare entitlement in the U.S. on the grounds that Russia would not let them wage jihad in Russia. Dzhokhar studied diversity and tolerance at the Cambridge Public High School.

Tamerlan celebrated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by killing two Jews and a roommate in Waltham, Maskachusetts.

Aside from eliminating access to the U.S. for asylum-seekers, what could have been done to prevent the Waltham murders and the Boston Marathon jihad? We could have heeded the warning of Vladimir Putin’s government. From “Russia Told America To Detain Tamerlan Tsarnaev Years Ago” (Insider, March 2014):

NBC News said the Russian intelligence agency FSB cabled the FBI about its concerns in March 2011, warning that Tsarnaev was known to have associated with militant Islamists.

The network said the FBI opened an investigation of Tsarnaev that month conducted by a joint task force of federal, state and local authorities. Tsarnaev was interviewed in person, and a memo was sent to the Customs and Border Protection database called TECS that would trigger an alert whenever he left or re-entered the United States.

But the investigation was closed in June 2011 after finding Tsarnaev had no links to terrorism, NBC quoted the report as saying.

In September 2011, the FSB sent a cable to the CIA, restating the warnings of the first memo. NBC News quoted sources close to the congressional investigation as saying a second note about Tsarnaev was entered into the TECS system the next month, but spelled his name “Tsarnayev.”

So we can perhaps reflect today on a time when we had a better relationship with Russia.

Related:

IMG0045.PCD
Full post, including comments

Love for migrants correlated with having enough money to move away from them

by philg

From a political science professor in London (via a loyal reader; thanks!):

Like the good citizens of Martha’s Vineyard…. “White Remain voters … are less likely than white Brexiteers to say they prefer to move from their diverse neighbourhoods … But white Remain voters are more likely to actually move from diverse places than white Brexit voters (with many sociodemographic controls).”

Are Americans more likely to act on their expressed beliefs? The professor found that Americans who voted against Trump were just as likely to try to move to all-white neighborhoods as those who voted for anti-immigrant hate:

Of course, it also works if you espouse love for migrants and can get them removed to a far-away military base within hours of them showing up… “Migrants sent to Martha’s Vineyard are being rehoused on a base in Cape Cod” (from state-sponsored NPR):

Authorities in Massachusetts are moving the dozens of migrants who arrived earlier this week in Martha’s Vineyard to Cape Cod.

The office for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced Friday that the state’s emergency management agency relocated the migrants to Joint Base Cape Cod.

The migrants’ arrival in Martha’s Vineyard earlier this week was a surprise to local officials, who had no idea that they were coming

Since Wednesday, state and local organizations have scrambled to assist the new arrivals, many of whom speak little to no English.

Related:

Full post, including comments