Jonah Goldberg regularly says, "My position on immigration policy is that we should have one." and that really sums up the most important bit. I'm pretty thoroughly inclined toward basically limitless immigration, but fighting over just where to set the dial is way way secondary to the need to actually have a dial you can adjust, rather than simply, as Matt points to, leaving it up to how effectively the lawyers can manipulate the asylum system in lieu of actual policy.
I agree with the sentiment, but I’d think that the first chart Matt shared is actually a bit of a cautionary tale. I’m pro-immigration and think we could stand to double or triple current numbers of legal immigrants with a skills-based program.
But it would be a near-impossible challenge to build the physical infrastructure needed to allow 12 million (3.5% of the population) to move here annually without sending the housing markets into a frenzy that would harm lots of ordinary people. Canada is experiencing precisely that problem according to folks I’ve talked to there; 3.5% is simply too high to be sustainable under modern political constraints and expectations regarding standard of living and housing quality.
Yes. Relatedly, Matt argues that “Canada is massively underpopulated relative to its vast land area and natural resources,” but while I think this statement is silly for a number of reasons[1], it’s kind of moot in its entirety if the immigrants in question aren’t moving to “Canada” at large so much as “Toronto and Vancouver near-exclusively,” which kind of radically changes the import of that 3.5% country-wide number because the *local* relative population increase is much higher (in housing markets that have by all accounts been insane for years already). Basically the difference between force and pressure
[1] To even make the claim you’d need to argue there’s a specific optimum population-to-land ratio on a country-wide basis, which seems like something that’s kind of intrinsically bold to claim, runs somewhat contrary to Matt’s YIMBY stance, and also presumably implies that, say, Singapore is *over*populated relative to its land and natural resources, which is a claim that few people, let alone Matt, seem likely to make.
There's no particular point in arguing about how many people a given plot of land should contain in the abstract, lol. No possible objective vision can give you an answer and no priors/ideology-driven paradigm can be "proven correct."
The questions basically boil down to the following, in order of importance:
1. Is immigration good for the people who already live here?
2. Is immigration good for immigrants?
3. How much immigration is good, which is to say, how much can we accommodate and does immigration stop being good at some point?
and a very distant 4. Is immigration good for the rest of the world?
Those questions can be answered, within wide uncertainty ranges, empirically.
And we reach the conclusion that the answers for 1, 2, and 4 are "yes, when well-regulated," "yes, period," and "mostly yes, surprisingly," which solidifies the moral case handily.
3... is the hard bit. How much housing and infrastructure can we crank out annually, can we direct immigration preferentially to "underutilized" metros, how much does shifting immigration flows towards high-skilled and professional class immigrants pump up aggregate demand for working-class labor, how much do immigrants contribute to US technological and economic leadership, how many can we allow in such that we can assimilate them or their kids to the culture?
My read is that we can probably physically and socially integrate about 3-4 million a year (more if we can offer place-based preferences to refill some empty metros and reduce the amount of new-build housing required), and that if two-thirds are skilled, professional-class immigrants, it will go a long way towards both alleviating skills shortages plaguing our new industrial policy attempts *and* provide natural redress to inequality as the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labor skyrockets.
As a super minor nit just so we’re on the same page, my footnote [1] was largely *agreeing* with your first paragraph, which is why I was saying Matt’s initial normative claim was conceptually silly even if the local-versus global flow issue didn’t basically render it irrelevant in any event.
Substantively I think this rubric largely makes sense, although I would say that I think the analysis of (1) is oftentimes a bit glib in The Discourse beause I think it’s a fairly high-dimensional space that’s often reduced to an fairly low-dimensional one (“do immigrants increase GDP?”). But I think that’s compatible with the “wide uncertainty ranges” claim.
Legally I think advocates would do well to think about how to effectively implement place-based preferences in a way thar doesn’t violate the Commerce Clause / Dormant Commerce Clause or internal freedom of movement given that immigration is and will be administered by the Feds. I strongly suspect there are a lot of legally-supportable carrot approaches (eg VT paying cash for people to relocate there and work remotely) but a lot of the easy stick-based approaches (eg locality-conditioned visas) seem kind of suspect. Not sure if eg a place- rather than employer-based H-1B analog would pass constitutional muster, but maybe?
My understanding of (1) is rooted in a having ties to working-class friends and family who do have a real case for saying they're harmed by our current immigration policy. Immigration helps everyone if the flow of immigrants is balanced by socioeconomic status in rough proportion to what exists already in the country, avoiding glutting any particular sector or oversupplying low-skilled workers and reducing their wage growth and bargaining power. The combination of 2000's-era mass immigration of low-skilled workers and 2010's demand-deficit overhang materially harmed the working class in this country. Going forward we should be aiming to hold low- and semi-skilled immigration to no more than a third of immigration flows for at least a decade, maybe two, and bring millions of well-educated people who are going to have high demand for services, construction, and manufactured goods like cars and furniture.
As for place-based preferences, one mechanism I've heard of would be to make most of our new high-skilled immigrants the recipients of work visas rather than green cards, with a decade-long path to LPR status, and then give states a fast-track green card quota they can use to entice folks to put down roots. Once they're LPR's or citizens there's nothing we can do to force them to stay in a given place, but I have no doubt that it'll make a dent at the margins and we'll end up with more immigrants settling in places like Louisville, Cincinnati, or Baton Rouge than would otherwise be the case.
Hmmm. Intriguing, so kind of de-Federalizing parts of the immigration system in practice by delegating limited forms of immigration authority to the states?
"it’s kind of moot in its entirety if the immigrants in question aren’t moving to “Canada” at large so much as “Toronto and Vancouver near-exclusively"
I don't think this claim is true. 1/3rd of all immigrants come in under provincial sponsorship. In 2022, 44% of immigrants went to a province other than Ontario or British Columbia. Quebec had more immigrants than BC.
And BC's immigration totals are largely in line with their population. They make up 14% of Canada's population and accepted 14% of immigrants. The real outlier is Ontario but even that isn't especially egregious -- Ontario is 38% of the population and accepted 42% of the immigrants.
You could argue that half of immigrants going to Ontario and BC is a problem -- but they are the biggest provinces so that's exactly what you'd expect.
Canada has failed to build any meaningful Second Cities in those provinces. Vancouver is the largest city in BC with 2.4 million people. The second largest city is Victoria at 363,000 and then third is Kelowna at 181,000.
Where else would immigrants go for jobs in BC, especially if they actually have skills? Do you think the immigrants enjoy paying Vancouver's high real estate prices and are just there for fun?
Histrionics like claiming they are exclusively going to Toronto and Vancouver just makes it look like you are out of touch with reality.
Your numbers regarding provincial ingress and sponsorship are informative and a welcome corrective, although I think you are rather misusing the term "histrionics."
I would say I find your second- and third-to-last paragraphs to be odd takes: generally the building of cities (second or otherwise) is considered an emergent phenomenon of growing populations and limited land and/or availability of trade and industry - the existence of Chicago or San Francisco (or even Sacramento) isn't a matter of U.S. federal or state fiat and it seems odd to maintain that "failure to establish a second City" is on Canada rather than on immigrants (or internally migratory Canadians). Relatedly, I don't believe I suggested that there was a moral dimension to this as seems to be at least suggested by your allusion to immigrants paying high rents in Vancouver - rather, it appears that the phenomena of no second cities and immigrants moving to Vancouver despite high rents are related: superstar cities in the modern era basically act as industry- and job-vacuums by creating returns to human capital that are so relatively high that immigrants flock there despite much of that return being sucked away by high rents.
So under present conditions we should either expect superstar cities to eclipse everywhere in a country as population sinks in perpetuity, or else for rents to climb dramatically more in order until an equiilibrium is reached between population ingress due to agglomeration effects and egress (e.g. to second cities or farther afield) due to rent extraction.
The Vancouver metro area is hemmed in on the south by the US, on the north by tall pointy mountains, and on the west by water. The only directions it could "stand to grow" are a) upward (expensive to build) and b) eastward along the Fraser River Valley (which is already getting crowded as it is).
I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying, growing Vancouver is not a simple task.
It looks like there's still plenty of open land on the southern edge of the Vancouver metro area, even before you get to the US border, and a good amount of flat land to the east as well:
There's a number of ways in which the Vancouver metro area is using scarce land inefficiently. Restrictions on height and floor space, minimum lot size, minimum setbacks. A striking example: https://morehousing.ca/senakw
I think the bigger problem is regulatory - we have people who want to live here and other people who want to build housing for them, but it's very slow and difficult to get approval, so our housing supply is completely inelastic. Which means that when demand increases, whether due to population growth or per-capita demand growth (Covid => more remote work => more demand for space at home), prices go way up, forcing people out. https://morehousing.ca/cmhc-wedge
While it is true Vancouver still has land available to build, the building takes time, skilled trades, raw materials and infrastructure to support that growth. No other country have ever attempted to immigrate as many people (as a percentage of population) as this CDN gov’t has done and it is clear that we don’t have the capacity to support that growth.
There are plenty of immigrants in Victoria, Calgary and Montreal. I’ve eaten excellent Indian food in Regina, Saskatoon and Courtnay(BC). The rural areas don’t have many immigrants, but most cities of 50k plus are pretty cosmopolitan
It would be interesting to compare Canada to the northeast/pacific coast states in the US. Canada doesn’t have Arizona/Texas/Florida/North Carolina or even really a rust belt, that keep the average down in the US.
Yea. Australia seems to have a less severe version of the same issue, but in either case if left to fester this is obviously going to poison the well politically.
Canada would have to at least double, probably closer to triple, its current housing output to deal with a 3.5% annual increase in population. NIMBY is the current limiting factor but there are a lot of other roadblocks that they'd hit before they could go from 300k annually to 600-800k.
Likewise, if the US were to try to admit 12 million immigrants a year, we'd need to construct a minimum of 4 million units of housing across single- and multi-family to accommodate. Not even vaguely possible, even if we just tossed the zoning, approvals, public engagement, and environmental review processes entirely.
EDIT: In all honestly, 4 million is incredibly charitable, the real figure is probably 7 million.
There must be some sort of data error somewhere, because there is *no way* that Canada's natural population increase added 2.5% onto that, which is what Matt's first chart implies.
“Canada welcomed 145,417 immigrants in the first quarter, the highest for a single quarter for which comparable data are available and a record first quarter across all provinces,” said StatCan in the release. “The country also saw net gains of 155,300 non-permanent residents in the first quarter, thanks in part to an increase in the number of work permit holders.”
If those ratios hold up, then Canada is admitting closer to 600k immigrants per year starting this year, and its definition of immigrant excludes half of the people who are actually entering, for a total of 1.2 million.
For the first half, I agree that there is some room to grow. As I said though, I think 4 million is a more reasonable target.
It's more in line with our historic capacity to socially integrate people, and even with underutilized urban centers at our disposal, there is just not sufficient construction capacity to build or rehabilitate the 4-5 million units of housing (across all types) that we'd need to accommodate 8 million newcomers each year. The industry cannot possibly grow into that need in anything less than a decade or two.
I was just in Canada, and I was shocked by how basically everyone I talked to (including people who seemed fairly left-wing) agreed that Canada's current pace of immigration is undesirable.
The rate of immigration seems like it would strain even a place building housing under a permitting and regulatory regime run by rabid YIMBYs.
The question is why, given that they have a functioning dial, did they decide to set it to 3.5%; surely they knew it would strain the housing supply. There is certainly room for flattening the curve.
I think of this a little like the US response to crime. First (in the 1960s) we take some broad steps to increase individual rights (both civilly but also broad-based criminal justice reforms and judicial rulings such as Miranda and basically the Warren Court), then we pivot and over the course of several decades get mass incarceration. We decide this is suboptimal and in a very short period of time (say 2014 to say 2021) we do justice reinvestment, defund the police and then have some significant civil unrest. If you look at homicides you can see a trend beginning to increase around 2014 to 2016 (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate). Justice Reinvestment "began" in the 2000s and started to really peak after 2010 to 2014. My take is that it was probably a good idea initially but due to diminishing returns became a bad idea later as it expanded from interesting ideas like drug courts into absurd ideas like treated illegal firearms possessions as a status offense (and basically trying to ignore violent crime).
Things link homicide start trending up and then spike massively in 2020-2021. The spike may have saved us from repeating history because it seemed to introduce a pause and allow us to rethink our policy options.
I suspect Canada is going through the same process but with immigration. This will likely result in less immigration than they now but more than they would have otherwise. So hopefully it is a good thing. I believe it is hard to calibrate these type of issues and people do not realized that most policy outcome curves are not straight but are likely U shaped. Sometimes a radical change, even if it leads to bad outcomes in the short term, allows us to see issues with our policies that would go unnoticed if allowed to progress at a slow point. Kind of like the boiling frog analogy.
To support the unsustainable growth in housing prices. Canada’s third largest GDP driver is real estate, and immigrants, especially skilled ones, bring outside money that can make them afford homes that are unaffordable on an income basis. Our mortgages are non-dischargeable and renew on a 1-5 year term. Meaning our interest rates are not locked for 25 years, and if you default on a debt, you are still responsible for the difference between the sale price and the mortgage loan. About 25% of mortgage holders are non-amortizing due to the astronomical increase in interest rates, meaning they are not paying down any of their principle and in some cases are actually increasing their debt load because they can’t even pay the full interest amount.
Any type of sustained housing decline would destroy so much wealth in the Canadian economy.
"A very big door with a very strong lock" is a way that I've heard it explained somewhere, although I can't recall where I heard it and Google is no help. Maybe for the purposes of this article it should be a "very big door with a well-designed lock", but yeah, I agree.
I've noticed a trend lately in your writing, as well as some other places recently, that is kind of an anti-legalistic turn.
Seems like the broad pattern is that starting in the 70s, both progressives and conservatives embraced legal battles as a way to short-circuit Congress and impose unpopular policies. The result is that now policy is shaped almost entirely by esoteric legal rulings and politicians are reduced to griping about it or playing dumb constitutional games to try and get their way.
I hope this trend in critique holds. I think it would be tremendously helpful to get back to a world where elected officials are the main drivers of policy change, not judges and lawyers.
It's something I've noticed with some of our newer managers at work, too. We hold monthly meetings with HR exploring various aspects of company policy. There is a torturous, never-ending need for them to have HR explain every possible corner case, no matter how obscure or unlikely in practice. That way, I guess, the manager is freed from ever having to actually *make a decision*--they can just tap the sign.
Without fail, the meeting only ends when one of the more senior managers uses their outside voice to explain, as if to a child, that this is why you get paid more now! Because you need to make hard decisions and exercise your best judgment on a case-by-case basis.
As a lawyer, I agree. The number of meetings where people turn to me and ask, essentially, 'what's the legal answer to this question' and I say 'all of the options you've come up with are legal, if you came up with an illegal option, I would say so, you have to make the choice which to choose,' is a bit painful. Though it has gone down some since the pandemic.
The firm I work for often says "I have given you my opinion on your legal options but your course of action is fundamentally a business decision, which is yours to make"
More policymakers on the Democratic side need a healthy understanding of the limits of the law, of the kinds of questions the law can and can't answer for you. Perhaps I'm biased by who I follow on Twitter, but what I see is people losing faith in the law in some sort of total philosophical sense when the law comes up short (Supreme Court makes politically motivated ruling --> "the law is just a smokescreen covering for powerful interests!") rather than recognizing that the law is and always has been limited.
I am of two minds on this. There is a bunch of horrible red tape in the way caused by legalism, but predictability and a rules based order are incredibly valuable compared to "the executive [or even the legislature] just gets a ton of discretion".
Personally, I think the right answer is fewer and simpler rules, but still rigorously enforced by lawyers and judges.
“Courts can quickly and flexibly generate guidance on how to handle edge cases and novel circumstances” has long been considered a feature of common law legal systems. We’re increasingly seeing that it may also be a bug.
My hunch is this evolved in part because congress is so disfunctional. There are things that need to get done in the world. There just are. If congress cannot do the, maybe we can get the courts to.
I think of it as, we got this huge glut of lawyers, and they went and entrepreneurially expanded the range of things that should be subject to legal review. And now we’re stuck with a whole bunch of stuff that hears “mmm actually have you considered whether that’s appropriate, ya know, legally?” as a good thing rather than a problem.
The following is politically realistic and would fix most of the asylum problem:
1) Asylum is available only to those who enter at a regular port of entry and request asylum the day they enter
2) Asylum seekers are detained until their claims are heard. Conditions are austere but better than a typical jail, Im thinking college dorm rooms or super 8 motels with some outdoor space and a fence around them.
3) All applications are adjudicated within 21 days of entry, witnesses in foreign countries can testify via zoom or webex
4) Temporary administrative judgeships are created until the backlog is cleared. Retired/former JAG officers, state prosecutors and state level magistrates would be perfect.
Under the status quo, many people with marginal claims come to take advantage of the delay in adjudication. Many never show up for their hearing. Legalism can’t function without judges and prompt hearings.
I think that (3) may risk placing unrealistic demands on applicants rather than or in addition to the judicial system. Prompt hearings are a laudable goal (and I think swifter adjudication in general is something U.S. tribunals could stand a lot more of), but AIUI 21 days can pose a difficulty as far as just compiling corroborative basic documentation, let alone a comprehensive asylum package. Maybe 90 or 120? Or else relax documentary requirements (but maybe that itself risks making “convincing liar with potentially hired witness-accomplices” a more attractive irregular-flow sidechannel?)
There are 10 or 20 wanna be economic migrants for every legitimate asylum seeker. A system that just denied all the claims would get the right result 90-95% of the time.
I don’t really see why waiting months for a birth certificate is worth it. It’s easy enough to determine where the person first caught a plane. Anyone who comes to the US by boat is probably cuban if they speak spanish, haitian if they speak french creole.
Also, asylum seekers should apply in the first country they get to. Asylum is not about seeking prosperity or reuniting with relatives, it’s about avoiding prison or death
The number of people terrorized by gangs, militias and corrupt governments is actually quite high. Personally, I would rather have a system that errs on letting people with credible claims in than making it more likely that denying asylum will be an inadvertent death sentence. It’s the same reasoning as a presumption of innocence. It is better for a guilty person to go free than an innocent be incarcerated.
Yes we need high walls and big gates, but we also need some sense of rule of law and mercy. Not an easy balance, but I am more willing to tolerate some level of inadvertent/illegal immigration to save more lives.
The number of people terrorized by gangs, militias and corrupt governments is actually a significant fraction of the world's population. Should we let them all stay here, as long as they can get here? If you're making a moral case, why stop there? Why not charter flights to corrupt places and load everyone who wants to come onto the plane?
Thousands of children die of diarrhea every day. If we really want to help suffering people, we should subsidize low cost life saving interventions abroad
“There are 10 or 20 wanna be economic migrants for every legitimate asylum seeker.”
This is a laughably ridiculous claim, but if you have evidence I’m really keen to see it.
“Also, asylum seekers should apply in the first country they get to.”
If a first (assuming you mean “safe” too) country approach is the policy the US wants to pursue, then it should also involve building regional partnerships to support asylum seekers across borders and ensure asylum seekers can continue to move if they are still at risk in an intermediary country.
The fact that 50% to 70% of claims are denied by a cohort of DOJ bureaucrats is neither evidence that these claims are ‘not legitimate’ nor is it evidence that they are ‘economic migrants.’
Once you (legitimately) are granted asylum, your status is essentially that of a refugee. If it’s better for you to be somewhere else, you should follow the rules for refugee resettlement
I mean, David's point about a surge in judges is the critical one, because someone is going to be exercising judgement.
Corroborative documentation? Asylum isn't and can't ever be like doing your taxes. The cartel's squad of death goons doesn't send you a DOJ-style target letter informing you that you should expect to soon be indicted for snitchin'.
By “corroborative documentation” I mostly meant stuff like birth certificates or other official residence/citizenship documentation (although I believe that things like human rights group / NGO reports on conditions on a country also are often good to include in a package, but those are quicker to get ahold of.)
I am befuddled. How is something like a birth certificate even remotely relevant in establishing whether someone is legitimately fleeing their country with credible fear for their safety?
You can't just layer on extra steps until the Legal Flowchart self-adjudicates each and every case. The reason judges are held in high esteem in our society and culture is that we recognize that they need to make hard, unprovable and unfalsifiable decisions based on limit information (we could call them "judgements").
The obvious answer to your first question would be to prove (well, corroborate, really) that someone is, in fact, fleeing from unstable country A rather than stable country B, assuming both claimants from A and B have strong economic incentives to migrate (but only A-ers have legitimate asylum claims.)
Prove? Do these countries even have birth certificates? Seems a bit first-worldy to me.
I have trouble with the evidentiary and confidence standard that some seem to unconsciously apply to the question of asylum seekers.
It starts to sound an awful lot like innocent until proven guilty (months! to build your case), whereas I feel like the appropriate standard is, if anything, closer to a very serious and sober job interview.
This seems like it would be very expensive. Housing someone (even under austere circumstances) costs a lot more money than saying "come back here on this date".
3 weeks of housing may not be that expensive, but that means hiring enough judges to adjudicate claims that quickly. That's expensive too.
I think the expense is worth it but I'm not convinced that it is politically realistic to be spending that kind of money housing people.
What is the current alternative for most asylum seekers? I would assume most have relatively scant resources, are we relying on private actors to house and feed them in the interim?
Yes. In my state, Catholic Charities does 90% of the work to house asylees and asylum seekers. They are the ones who met them at the plane, get them shelter and clothing, and transport them to hearings etc. The State has little to no funds or infrastructure to handle this.
Great link. But this suggests that David Abbot's recommendation is even more pressing. If the choice is between short term housing by the government vs having them be dependent on private charity or be homeless, I would think we should emphasize resolving the issue quickly.
This seems broadly correct but I’m missing the next step. Are Canadian levels of immigration, even if mostly of skilled/educated workers, socially sustainable ? And if so, under what *cultural* policies? Let me put it differently: how do you maintain a national ethos and national solidarity in this manner? To use stark examples: can you maintain national solidarity levels that will allow the country to function well in a war scenario (I hope Ukraine has disillusioned those who think this worry is in the past)?
Another example: how does one maintain the unique values of western countries (eg gender and lgbt equality )?
My worry is that American born upper middle clsss people such as MY, are specially insular in their understanding of the world (much more than their European peer btw). They think they know “diversity” but actually have very little familiarity with real cultural gaps and the challenges they pose. Too few of them lived abroad or speak a foreign language. They also seem to seriously under appreciate the challenges of great power competition that will require social cohesion in addition to ecocnomic power.
All this is *not* to say high level immigration is bad (on the contrary it’s probably necessary) but rather that the debate has to broaden to include social and cultural concerns and how to address them.
"My worry is that American born upper middle clsss people such as MY, are specially insular in their understanding of the world (much more than their European peer btw). They think they know “diversity” but actually have very little familiarity with real cultural gaps and the challenges they pose. Too few of them lived abroad or speak a foreign language. They also seem to seriously under appreciate the challenges of great power competition that will require social cohesion in addition to economic power."
Odd then that the US has much less trouble with poorly assimilated immigrants than the EU does with their amazing supposedly nuanced view of culture.
EU countries, esp Germany, have a well-earned chip on their shoulder (to say the least) however their experiences with mass immigration of “normal” people who neither share their values nor wish to is creating fast disillusionment. US has benefitted from so far having immigration mostly from the culturally similar Latin America.
That's because those countries all have roots have ethnostates, while the US is and always has been an idea. I don't necessarily blame those countries for being more racist than the US is, but that's the fact of the matter. They are a lot worse at handling these "social cohesion" issues because their societies begin from a place of weakness relative to ours.
You’re not wrong there. US is a nation of immigrants since the native population was largely killed/kicked off and the remainder totally marginalized. However even so US still needs some biding narrative (“an idea”) and some consensus on social behavior. In other words you still need some assimilation/melting pot mechanism. seems to me today’s us has less of that than it used to.
The assimilation mechanism is asking: Do you want to work hard to make some money? If you do, then you naturally understand the culture. And the process of getting here tends to self-select for that characteristic.
Isn't the natural conclusion then that if the Left succeeded in drastically expanding the social safety net and in opening the borders then we'd lose our unifying culture?
Yep, some on here will say that cultural/social concerns are irrelevant and we should simply let in as many people as possible, no questions asked (or, for some, as long as they are skilled). Even leaving my strong disagreement aside though, these things matter to a lot of people - folks don't want to feel like a stranger in their own country, and thus those sorts of proposals are politically DOA. My own view on this is that we should figure out how many immigrants we can reasonably assimilate at once, and that should serve as a key upper bound on determining the immigration level. America is a nation, not just an economy.
Anyone who has ever traveled radially with respect to the nearest city (ie, a city dweller going to the suburbs or country, or a rural person going to the suburbs or city, or a suburbanite going either direction) has felt like a stranger without even leaving their state.
>Are Canadian levels of immigration, even if mostly of skilled/educated workers, socially sustainable ?<
I guess we (and Canadians) will find out. Herb Stein's law, etc. I regularly hear things suggesting it isn't (politically) sustainable, but that could just be Canadian rightists making noise on the internet (most people who are fine with the status quo—any status quo—are less inclined to complain online than the disgruntled).
They do need to get their act together on housing, though. It's a bit of a head-scratcher: Trudeau has a working majority, and he (and his ministers) can't possibly be stupid enough not to realize that country has a rendez-vous with a pissed off electorate if they don't start building more housing, and soon. And they've got next to no veto points compared to us. Maybe after next election they'll do housing deregulation?
The Liberals have an unhealthy relationship with suburban boomers who have 80% to 90% of their wealth tied up in the value of their home. Fixing the housing crisis would mean taking a notch out of their bases retirement plan. Poor people don't vote liberal, they vote NDP.
As a pro-housing federal Liberal, I'd put it like this: housing is an issue that cuts across the usual left-right divide. On the left, new housing is popular with younger people, unpopular with the environmentally-minded; on the right, new housing is popular with business, unpopular with older people. https://morehousing.substack.com/p/liberal-convention
I think David Eby and the BC NDP are doing the best job of pushing municipalities to allow more housing. If persuasion, compromise, and threats are the three elements of diplomacy, they're also the three elements of intergovernmental relations in Canada, and Eby is using all three in combination. https://morehousing.substack.com/p/bc-update
Exhibit A is that the first thing anyone thinks of now when they talk about Canada is that we're friendly and like hockey. A more benign national character I am sure is not in existence. We are "bound" together by the least offensive common denominators known to man and virtually no one in this country actually knows what it means to be Canadian. Maybe that's fine... I don't know if its ever worked anywhere else in the history of the world though...
Many Canadians fought and quite a few died in WWI and WWII. This was, presumably, at least in part because of a lingering affinity they still then felt to Europe generally and Britain especially.
What are Canadians willing to fight for today? How long can this "vacation from history" model last (aka how will Canadian society cope when some real challenge eventually comes?), and can it be applied to any country not totally dependent on a benign powerful neighbor for its security?
That last part is maybe the most important. We're like an obnoxious teenager living in his parent's house (the USA) and rolling his eyes at the sort of shit his dad does. It's this bizarre situation where we get lots of the perks of basically being a vassal with none of the responsibilities. Not sure if there's historical precedent for that. Would be curious.
1: This generally seems to a non-issue for skilled migrants. Highly-educated people worldwide share a great deal of cosmopolitan cultural context and are generally more similar to each other than they are to their countrymen. This seems to be even more true for their children, who, with a bit of a push from their parents, usually strive to succeed in educational institutions and tend to internalize their values (politically, my high school and college classmates with highly-educated immigrant parents had political views that were similar to or more liberal than their American-parented peers’.)
2: Even for less skilled workers, the US’s prestige and global cultural hegemony has done quite a bit to ‘pre-digest’ would-be immigrants. Pretty much anybody who lives in an urban area in a middle-income country grew up watching American TV and movies, and many of those people (including quite a few less-educated ones) speak English fairly well. Almost nobody immigrating to the US today would be nearly as out-of-place as say, the peasant migrants who came to the country from southern Italy and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century were. I think there are a bunch of good economic and logistical reasons why the US shouldn’t permit unlimited low-skill immigration, but our capacity to assimilate people is pretty strong.
you're seeing the assimilation of the skilled and esp their kids because their numbers are quite small still and no immigrant community is large enough to dominate whole parts of the country. American elite institutions esp. are still incredibly numerically dominated by the American born, esp. at the undergraduate levels. With American natives outnumbering all the internationals put together many times over, and the international themselves divided into a dozen or more of even the major countries, no wonder there appears to be pretty smooth assimilation. But what happens if in some schools 25% are immigrants or 1st gen of the very same country of origin? Is assimilation going to run as smoothly?
About 20% of my high school’s class were Chinese-born or had Chinese-born parents. That’s not uncommon at magnet schools or at selective universities that don’t discriminate against Asians (ie: UC Berkeley). And it was pretty much a non-issue; the Chinese kids formed a lot of friendships and romantic relationships across national origin lines and generally grew up to be at least as prosocial/civic as their classmates with American-born parents.
>Another example: how does one maintain the unique values of western countries (eg gender and lgbt equality )?
well not even all westerners agree that those are good values, and i think you will run into some obvious issues if you are trying to screen non Americans for "correct" American political beliefs.
I'm not asking for immigrants to pledge support for gay marriage. I'm asking that we screen out those with outrageous views like gays should be stoned and sharia should be the law of the land. I'm a Republican, trust me I have no interest in screening out people who would be on the right's side of the culture wars, that's stupid (even though I think many current culture wars are stupid altogether). This is about things that are completely outside the Overton window except for the dumbest of twitter frogs. Likewise, I also strongly support the fact we don't let avowed communists naturalize. Freedom doesn't defend itself.
You’ve making a ton of assumptions about MY or the rest of us, right? Like it turns out I do know plenty of people I have to cross a big “cultural gap” to interact with. It’s not really a huge problem, and by the time it’s their kids’ generation those issues have disappeared.
My impressions of MY are based in several years of reading his writing on almost a daily basis, my generalizations about a certain class of Americans are based on many years living in this country (in several different cities and suburbs), observing the lifestyle etc and occasionally discussing these issues with the locals. My concerns are based on many more years living in and reading about what’s going on in other countries. What I would like to see is someone seriously addressing my concerns. Explaining why it won’t ever be relevant here or some
such. Saying “nah it’s fine” isn’t reassuring to me.
P.S.
What I’m saying basically is that mass migration in Europe caused a lot of problems, many of which exacerbated in the 2nd or 3rd generation. At least in large part as reaction to this the far right is resurgent in many of those countries. There are many reasons why these problems happened there and not in the us (so far). MY even touched on this a bit once or twice. What I’d like to see in any proposal for mass overhaul in the ways us does immigration is an explicit discussion of those risks and a reassurance how to keep the us “exceptional” in these regards. What I see instead is typical American liberals being quite ignorant of the situation in Europe which leads them to dismiss the whole thing as right wing propaganda/xenophobia and an implicit confidence in the continued success of assimilation in America as if it were a law of nature/divine providence and not a result of specific factors that might change in certain scenarios.
I don’t think that’s quite right and especially might not be right in sufficient numbers that will shift the balance of power. But at least you address the issue and basically suggest keeping the immigration mostly to the educated since you believe educated people all hold liberal values. Again, I think your premise is wrong, but at least you engage with the problem. I only wish the debate generally was like that.
The immigration debate makes me realize that despite all the discourse, very few people out there actually clearly state their policy preferences.
Personally, I think anyone who speaks English, cares about western/liberal values (e.g., women and racial and sexual minorities are not second class citizens, freedom of speech is important, etc.), will pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, and (most importantly) *wants* to be an American should be able to come here legally and easily.
What are your all's policy preferences on the matter?
I'm definitely a "give me your poor and huddled masses" guy. I think immigrants make us a better country. We also have a strong history of assimilation that I think we should embrace as one of our country's most powerful advantages.
I think a common limiting principle is when it would overwhelm the host country's institutions or culture. For example I wouldn't support letting in 2x or 1x the country's current population all at once. But I think our history shows that we can successfully assimilate very large flows of immigration over time, several times what we currently accept.
I don't know that I have a specific limiting principle, but I agree with Matt's basic point that it should be a dial we control rather than a chaotic and uncontrolled process. My ideal I guess would be to accept the largest number that proves to be politically tolerable. With the note that you should actually try to work and solve problems people have. So if we want to focus on "high-skill" immigration, that's fine with me. Or if we want to take action to spread immigrants out geographically, that seems like a reasonable policy to me.
something like half of unicorn startups are founded by first or second generation immigrants -- and our insanely successful tech sector is one of the reasons we're a lot richer than other developed countries
So skilled immigrants in specific sectors (overwhelmingly coming form specific cultural+class backgrounds). Hardly immigrants per se. Your original claim is far too generalizing.
[Btw it’s not clear from your example that it’s necessarily so (perhaps without those immigrants more native born would have had the chance to do those things?) - but I leave that aside. ]
> (perhaps without those immigrants more native born would have had the chance to do those things?
This is, as they say, "not even wrong." There isn't a bucket of trillion-dollar tech companies that we are dispensing to qualified applicants.
Further down the thread, asking if Larry might have met someone besides Sergey to create Google with instead is like asking if John Lennon had met someone else besides Paul McCartney, could they have just had the Beatles with a different name?
I’m not sure if that’s the case but you can easily imagine one. Larry page was born in the us He attended u Michigan and Stanford. Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and immigrated to us. He attended u Maryland and Stanford. What if there is some John or Jane doe, American born, who would have gotten Brin’a place in either school (both highly selective), what if he/she then had the opportunities Brin had and partners up with Page to found Google? Can we be sure that Google , or something quite similar, would have never happened without Brin?
I’ll tell you, and for some reason it makes me feel awful to say it. I work in manufacturing, and at the entry, production floor level it’s almost impossible to find native born people who will show up on time for work every day, and do the (typically quite simple) thing that is being asked of them. Most of the facilities I’m in, I don’t know how they’d function without the people, many of whom speak no English, who actually do the work every day.
Occasionally as low as $18/hour, but new facilities are having to open at $22-25/hour to be competitive (these numbers have jumped a lot in the last two years). This is in the south, mind you. I do some work in other regions, but haven’t paid attention to entry level wages. And yes, seeing the same problem at the next several levels above that.
Greta point ! Why is it, you think, that working class Americans are less likely to be reliable? Why can’t they do it? I would say that this is evidence that the American education system and society generally is failing it’s native born (or at least the more disadvantaged among them). Isn’t it then the case that immigration is an excuse for the continuation of this neglect ? For turning a blind eye rather than trying to fix this failure of the country towards its own citizens?
Let me give an analogy: elite schools like boasting “diversity” eg of black people by accepting upper middle class black children of immigrants- which understandably tend to be better prepared - rather than facing the problem of lingering gaps and generational disadvantages in much of the native-born African American descendant of slaves. Immigration helps paper over and ignore the root problems and injustices in the country.
No, people with American citizenship and fluent English have access to more jobs than people lacking one or both of those things, so they have more opportunities to opt for more pleasant or better-paying jobs.
First - we're not the US without immigrants. The United States of America is literally build on immigrants. Were your ancestors in the US 500 years ago? If not, then you and 99% of the people here are better off because of immigrants.
Second - immigration selects for people who are willing to strive and take more risk in order to improve life. This is a very valuable trait for our citizens.
Third - our people and the world are better of with more people who have American ideals. If there is a choice between Europe, China, India or America being the dominant country/market, we're better off with it being America. The best way to do that, is increase the number of Americans. Particularly, people who love America. Fourth - Citizen immigrants have higher opinions of the US than natives, are more patriotic, are less ashamed of the US. You may disagree, but I think all of these are good for the country.
I could go on, but if you are not convinced, you probably won't be.
1. Not only is it debatable that all immigrants are better off (is the average Norwegian American today better off than the average citizen of norway?) more importantly it doesn’t follow that immigrants benenfit from their own immigration will subsequently benefit from
The next one. Perhaps they will in fact be worse off? At best you have moral argument here not a utilitarian one.
2.perhaps, but it selects for much else. For example right now it is selecting for people who live in the American continent south of us, and for people able and willing to romantically attach and marry Americans. Is this good? Bad? Could there be a better way? Questions worth asking.
3. Perhaps. But how do you keep American ideals the same. Might not mass immigration change them?
4. Whatever traits immigrants have today have a lot to do with todays immigration regime , state of the country and a thisand other factors. It doesn’t follow that immigrants will always have these traits and hence isn’t an argument for immigration in genral.
Finally, it’s funny that you assume I’m against immigration. I’m general for more liberal immigration policies and would also personally benefit from them (I’m not American but my life will be dramatically easier if I were!). All I’m saying it’s a complex problem requiring broader considerations.
1) I'm not sure what you are saying with this? Should we not have accepted Norwegians then or Guatemalans now because in a hundred years their country of origin might get its act together and become a pleasant place? Or are you saying that we as a country would be better of it we hadn't allow Norwegians to come? What groups who have immigrated to the US in the past would you highlight as groups we would be better of not having?
2) Could there be a better way - sure. But I would highlight that even among the poor impoverished of humanity, most default into NOT immigrating. I submit there is something very American about picking yourself up and being willing to move thousands of miles and change cultures in order to improve your and your children's lives.
3) American ideals have changed radically through our history. Attempting to stop things from changing is futile. However, there are certain key components of the American culture that have been very resilient and I think will continue to be. Which is why people who are scared about culture changing are so foolish to me - either you believe in the American ideals to triumph, or you are simply trying to delay their obsolescence.
4) History demonstrates that immigrants influence our culture, but within a couple of generations we absorb them quite well. I'm good with that.
I don't assume you are against immigration. You asked a question, I tried to answer and provide some reasons for that answer. I view immigration as a general good (like freedom) though agree that good implementation can be complex.
I've given my unpopular stance before but I think we should let in everyone who wants to come.
We don't require that native born citizens speak English, have liberal values, pay more taxes than benefits, or want to be American. Those seem like nice-to-haves, not requirements.
So no shared langiage no shared values and not even a minimum economic skill? May I ask what’s your understanding of how a society actually functions ? Esp a free one?
At some distant margins there are tradeoffs between liberalism and democracy though.
If you let in enough of the developing world and allow them to vote, then maybe homophobic stoning wouldn't stay illegal (but thank goodness for our undemocratic supreme court who would not allow that)
Of course, but just look at certain European countries with much looser immigration policies than ours to see how many immigrants have brought these activities with them from the third world to the first world. The grooming gangs in England and the concerningly high level of support for ISIS (I think it was around 1 in 5 according to polls?) among French Muslims back when ISIS was big come to mind.
Fair enough - I’m in favor of not stoning people for any reason, and especially not for being gay - but I’m wondering why “immigrants” are necessarily more likely to be homophobic than the millions of native-born Americans who already are.
This falls in the category of "technically true but practically false." English is the de facto official language, being used by the government, schools, businesses, and social organizations for almost everything. English is spoken exclusively by a significant majority of the population and spoken competently by the vast majority. A non-anglophone in the US is at a huge disadvantage in almost all areas of life.
We do enforce a language requirement on native borns, though?
It isn't an official "Speak English or we will fine you / put you in jail" requirement but there are huge swaths of life that are impossible to live without either knowing English, or having a translator to assist you. To say nothing about things like "graduating from school", which itself gates a massive number of important activities.
You can claim that isn't technically a requirement, but that claim has about as much merit as the claim for most mobile games that they are "free to play".
Two things about that. people in say Europe, can claim to be living abroad when they haven't moved half the distance my last two moves involved. I just moved back to the East Coast from the Midwest, just about the distance from London to Kyiv. I think European insularity within such small distances not our homogeneity is the less desirable status.
As to language, yes more of us could learn to speak a second language, but which one would really add any efficacy? Of the first 5 friends, colleagues, or neighbors I can think of who speak a language other than English, learning a second language would only allow me to speak to one of them in something other than English.
Until you’ve lived in a different country with a different laws different culture , different facial expression and tones of voice, even, you are, frankly, dangerously close to being blind to a whole dimension of human existence. Learning a foreign language is a small slice of that which is great but frankly neither necessary nor sufficient. Moving to the uk or Ireland will probably be sufficient to get that point across which moving within one country , no matter how geographically vast, simply could not, at least not to nearly enough extent. The point is to discover difference in things you didn’t even realize you took for granted.
I actually find Canada depressingly heterogenous. No cohesion, unlike in the US. When I visited Niagara Falls, frankly the American side felt like a country and the Canadian side felt like an international airport terminal, despite similar levels of racial/ethnic diversity on both sides.
The society we have has taken in virtually all of either us or our ancestors and shaped them it into the society we have. All the arguments I hear now: they don't speak the language, they don't share our values, they worship a different God, are exactly the things that were said about my great and great, great grandparents.
Me, I believe in the overwhelming power of both our power to assimilate and the correctness and attraction of our ideals. I fully believe that people who come here and are welcomed into our society will be fairly easily persuaded to adopt our values. It's not like we sprang from the ground fully formed in our current attitudes.
You’re wrong to assume a passive unidirectional model (“ society we have has taken in virtually all of either us or our ancestors and shaped them”). It’s a two way street. Previous immigration waves did in fact change American society nor are our current values set in stone by a Mandate of Heaven nor is it true that arch of history necessarily bends towards Justice. The future hasn’t been written, no victory is irreversible and that’s true with or without immigration but it’s reasonable to assume that high levels of immigration would be culturally and socially destabilizing. If you like things the way they are or the way they’re tending you should be concenrend by such scenario. Unless of course you simply believe everything will turn out fine thanks to divine providence that loves the us of a irrespective of the choices we make.
The only politically valid “we” is “we the people” ie the citizens taken and a whole. The question is how to improve “us”. One way is by adding more good people to become part of “us”. The question is how to select them and then integrate them so as to make “us” better. I don’t see any paradox.
No. Native born children do not bring a separate culture with them, and they are de facto inculcated in our culture from birth. They will be steeped in our values and learn how we are expected to behave in their most tender and formative years. Society is set up to ensure every possible avenue leads children to embrace our values. Whereas someone from another culture has already undergone this process somewhere else. This comparison is silly.
The answer to this is that humans broadly consider it morally acceptable for a nation to choose immigrants, but not morally acceptable for a nation to engage in eugenics.
My god, that would be a horror show for anyone who values liberty, tolerance, and gay people not being beaten. (Not ascribing this position to you ofc, just commentary on its outcomes)
I don't find this persuasive. First, we pretty much have to take what we get with regard to people born in the US, there's not a practical way to deny citizenship. And second, we make an effort while they're children to teach them English and at least instill some liberal values and patriotism.
I would love to screen people born in the US for English proficiency, liberal values, and so on, but this is not possible.
First, the US Constitution explicitly grants citizenship based on birth in the US.
Second, even if we shredded the Constitution a situation in which there is some large internal group of stateless people is not feasible.
By contrast, prospective immigrants aren't already here, so we get to pick and choose who we admit. It makes a whole lot of sense to admit people who will improve the US and deny people who will not.
I get the idea that you're coming from the idea that it's basically unfair that some people are born in safe, wealthy countries and some people are born in unsafe, poor countries. Yes, it's unfair.
Actually, it's really comfortable unless you drown yourself in sophistry, and no other nation in the world considers it unfair to treat native citizens differently than non citizens. You might consider that evidence against your argument here.
Pretty close to you, except I'd swap out the "will pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits" with "willing to work an available job", as that's the goal we and they are looking to end, and would simultaneously handle the tax issue you mention, as people pay payroll/income taxes from what they earn from their labor, not to mention sales taxes directly from purchases, and property taxes indirectly from rent payment. I'd also strike an English requirement as long as the job doesn't require it, and I think it's something that solves itself in the end as immigrants want to participate in parts of America beyond their job. Technology may also make this easier than it was before, too.
1. Admit people described in your second paragraph, with throttling mechanisms to target a rate of about 1.5% of American population per year AND with source diversity. Citizenship for people after they're in the US working for ten years with minimal use of public funds (other than public schools for their children).
2. Strict enforcement of immigration laws; crossing the border illegally or overstaying an entry should result in immediate removal and be a strike against the offender ever entering the US under #1.
3. Asylum process should not be available to anyone in or attempting to enter the US illegally. Asylum applicants should be processed quickly. Detention may not be practical, but failing to report for asylum hearings should result in immediate denial and a prohibition on ever entering the US again.
4. Only grant birthright citizenship to people born in the US to at least one parent holding some kind of legal status in the US.
5. Vastly trim family and chain migration. Create some kind of "grandparent's visa" for foreign citizens 65+ with several children/grandchildren in the US as citizens or in #1.
I wouldn't limit it to those who can speak English. Anyone who profiles as being able to easily become proficient in English should be included too. There are a lot of people who are capable of learning pretty quickly.
A lot of our pro-immigration leanings are a reaction to how traditional and assimilationist our imports from the south are. Most work very hard, just want to raise a family and try to learn English (I’m around lots and lots of immigrants in manufacturing and these are just my anecdotal observations). If we were importing a large population of, say, religious fundamentalists who have no interest in assimilating then I think we would look at this very differently.
oh I'm totally sure of that. We could use proxies like education for earning potential and tests to gauge alignment with American values, but it would be very far from perfect as well as being administratively difficult.
My sense is that we should probably bar Western European immigrants. Y'all can't seem to get with the program on immigration, too rooted in your history, culture, and the attendant blood-and-soil nationalism.
Funny you say this, I actually know a French guy who came here specifically because he hated that in France you're effectively totally banned from working more than 48 hours a week (or whatever the cap is) even if you want to. He's came up in the trades and loves the sweet sweet overtime pay. He's in his 50s or 60s now and came over in his 20s, when France was even more overregulated than nowadays.
Being able to pick and choose our immigrants is very good!
I'm less worried about that and more worried about them, you know, degrading our capacity to assimilate immigrants into something akin to Germany's or, god forbid, France's.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. They think immigrants are uncultured, unwashed, illiberal people, and thus five generations later their descendants are at least illiberal, if not uncultured and unwashed.
That's the last thing we should want native-born Americans to start believing. So let's keep the social contagion out and confine the French and Germans to tourist status.
yeah but if you asked them questions to gauge willingness to accept American values (e.g. is freedom of speech good, are westerners evil infidels, who won the super bowl last year, etc.) they may not have passed that test
Human beings generally have a right to pursue happiness and shouldn’t be kept imprisoned in the place they happened to be born.
There should be an orderly process to screen out special cases such as violent criminals but outside of pretty narrow special cases no country should be able to forcibly control its population flows.
Forcibly keeping someone somewhere he or she doesn’t want to be seems to be per se immoral and if you or I did it no one would doubt that. States shouldn’t be able to do it either.
Since debates are usually about allowing people in rather than allowing people to leave I am not sure this analogy really works here.
When you are imprisoned you are not allowed to leave a certain place. If a state denies you entry they are not saying you can't leave where you are, they are saying you can't come here.
It's less, "I've locked you in my basement" than it is, "I am not allowing you to enter my house".
I am more supportive of open borders than most but I am not sure that the argument that states shouldn't be able to control their borders is likely to gain a lot of purchase.
It's inconsistent to think that people have a right to pursue happiness/live wherever regardless of where they're born and also oppose rich people in droves moving to Hawaii or Fiji or the Maldives or wherever. (Not saying OP believes this, but it's a common view on the left that moving from central america to the states is good and just but moving to hawaii is settler colonialism).
I super don’t believe that. I believe where you’re born is a random fact about you and it is no more moral to legislate who can buy a home or work somewhere based on it than it is to say Jews can’t buy property or blacks should be subject to lynching.
Should you be able to decide to live in whatever house or neighborhood you want whether or not you can afford it? The housing you're born in is also a random fact about you
One wonders what is the maximum size of group that is allowed to restrict the entry of others. I assume everyone in this comment section locks their front door at night, so one house is okay.
If you live in a row of townhomes and you really like and trust your neighbor, are you allowed to lock your front door, but install a lock-free door on your shared wall? How about neighbors on both sides?
There are weird questions about how property is even justified, but private property is a different thing from national borders. If someone can afford a residence, it’s weird to put an extra restriction saying that they need to have been born in the right place to rent that residence.
I mean it’s worse but at an abstract level it’s the same principle. Your rights are determined by random factors impossible to change or very hard to change ones like religion.
I don’t think it will but controlling individuals based on something random like birth seems as bad as any of the other kinds of exclusionary discrimination and is as bad as racial or religious or any other once common practice.
“Imagine theirs no countries, it’s easy if you try”. No, John, it’s actually easy only if you don’t try. If you actually think about it seriously, how exactly can your world function without countries, and what are countries without borders ? I’ve yet to hear a serious theoretical model let alone an empirical example!
Wasn’t this pretty close to the 19th century US? I mean there were some marginal restrictions but come on in what’s our default posture and it worked out pretty well.
You said “ no country should be able to forcibly control its population flows.” that’s never been the case in the us- only in failed states. The US *chose* a liberal immigration policy for a while. It was quite orderly, to my knowledge, had pros and cons, and eventually changed with evolving politics and circumstances. My beef with you is qualitative not quantitative. It’s about the principle of sovereignty. Allowing many people into your home is far more similar to allowing few people than it is to saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to decide and that in fact your home is everyone’s home
If we had had a welfare state during that time, and travel had been as easy as it is now, I guarantee that there would have been strong border controls.
I'm not sure that would have been feasible. We struggle to enforce borders now, the ability to have strong border controls on a nation the size of the US in 1880 would have been very, very difficult.
What if the next wave of immigrants all came from places where people are incredibly opposed to LGBT rights and enough of them settled in your area that it changed who got elected?
This concerns always seem kind of concern-trolly but to take it a face value.
If those people came, became citizens, and voted then the laws would change. Screening potential immigrants by political values seems sort messy. People voting for things we don't like sucks but that is kind of part of democracy.
That's a normal part of democracy, but if we really are letting in "anyone who wants to come" we're talking about tens of millions of people from places were homosexuality is still a capital crime because that's what the populace wants.
And there's clear differences in voting by county of origin. Venezuelans are a Trump-and-GOP-supporting group. If 10 million were allowed to settle here next year, that could easily swing elections.
Hand-waving these kind of societal changes away is sort of a mirror image of "concern-trolling". It feels like you're not seriously engaging with the potential risks of an open border proposal if you're not thinking about them
Is it actually true that we might have tens of millions of people coming to the US from countries where homosexuality is a capital crime? How many people live in such places now and how many do we think would immigrate?
Most of the world is homophonic by us standards, regardless of the legal situation in their country. Here’s a nice example involving literal caucasians (to all those pro open brides people hasting to imply racism!):
People who don’t take these concerns seriously are usually: 1. Straight 2. Not following the situation in Europe (including the uk). It doesn’t even have to be about the vote and the law. It starts with just making the streets unsafe again. What to do about the concern is a second order question. The first step is to admit that we have a problem.
Are there places in Europe that are rolling back Gay Rights? Is homophobic crime globally going to increase if more people are able to come to countries where it is illegal?
In reality, I agree- it's a bit concern trolly. But based off of the hypothetical Andrew presents, I think it's a legitimate counter. Andrew has put forth a policy whereby the US adopts an immigration policy that essentially says "if you come to the US and want to live here then you have to be allowed to do so and you can become a citizen." The People's Republic of China has over a billion people. What's to stop them simply sending 400 million of them to the US in a political invasion and thereby legitimately electing a congress and President that is now beholden to the PRC? It's obviously a ridiculous concern in real life, but it highlights how absurd such a policy would be in practice. Not to mention that even smaller scale actions could have serious impacts- geopolitical enemies can make widespread forced immigration in targeted ways and towards targeted communities to disrupt the American political system. Don't like California's environmental policies? Movie large numbers of voters into highly progressive communities to tip the balance of power within the state.
Sure, it's a silly thing to be worried about, but it's a silly policy that Andrew is putting forth, so might as well have some fun with it :)
"Don't like California's environmental policies? Movie large numbers of voters into highly progressive communities to tip the balance of power within the state."
I mean you can do that within states already. Get a few hundred thousand friends and flip the Dakotas and Montana.
If the People's Republic of China wants to send us 400 million new Americans I think that would work out less well for them than they were hoping.
I think you're underestimating the difference between an individual citizen living in the US who wishes California's politics were different and an autocratic government that can forcibly order large groups of their own citizens to relocate for political gains. The PRC has a little bit more control over its citizens than I do over the actions and lives of a few hundred thousand of my like minded fellow citizens.
Another example to highlight the absurdity- instead of the US, lets say Ukraine had adopted this immigration policy. Which do you think would have been easier- Russia to have invaded Ukraine with huge numbers of soldiers or Russia to have bussed huge numbers of individuals across the border for the length of time necessary to elect the government of its choosing?
Canada would disintegrate if we didn’t have strict border controls. Even the boost in immigration numbers is beginning to create strains in the normally welcoming attitude.
Stop to think for a second here, the obvious answer is that a world without nation states would not be a moral garden of eden utopia. It would be a world where people banded together in other social groups (let's call them "tribes") and did immoral things.
Somalia and a few other failed states / very remote, off the grid areas, like the highlands off Papua New Guinea, are the areas that are following your model
Extreme "no I actually DO mean defund the police" vibes from one side of this conversation.
Great, now all the rich people have private goon squads and live behind their own walls, and all the poor people are just this teeming soup. But it's PRINCIPLED, so that's okay!
What other random happenstances should we reduce people’s freedom for? Everyone agrees that it would be super bad to have a policy that Catholics can’t come here in any country. You can stop being Catholic. It is worse to keep someone from going where they want to because they were born in Burundi (to pick a random place).
Because 'reduce freedom' is ridiculously nebulous.
You seem to be trying to reduce humanity to some kind of atomized soup of individuals, but it is not (and I think will never be) such a thing. Just as I don't let people come into my house unasked, we don't have to let people come into our country without our permission.
Yes that’s exactly my goal. Atomized individuals with strong global human rights that apply without any special circumstances and no need for intermediary smaller organizations for basic rights.
You allow your children to live in your house and eat your food. Why is okay to not allow someone else's child (me) to live in your house and eat your food? Are you just depriving me of freedom because I happen to be born to someone else?
I would go all for only skills based immigration with some for refugees, but only for people in iminent danger or who are mass-displaced by war or natural disaster. Many people I know came to the US as students and I think this is a great pathway to select for young, smart industrious people. It does seem slightly silly to outsource the job of deciding who gets in to college/grad school admissions committees, but they’re looking at it from a self-interested lens of who will benefit them by doing a good job as a student, and isn’t that basically what we as a country want?
I'm fairly restrictionist, but not an absolutist. I also very much like that America is much less dense than Europe and have no desire to reach One Billion Americans. 400-500 million seems like a reasonable place to end up at eventually. Immigration policy should be geared toward two aims:
1. Maximizing the well-being of American workers
2. Getting the best and brightest from around the world
No diversity lotteries, cut way down on chain migration, no using H1B as a way to undercut American prevailing wages (I'd restrict it to only focus on true outstanding talent - no more companies just using it for mass cheap hiring of junior devs). Stop other abuses as well like the abuse of J1 visas as a way to get cheap seasonal labor. Create a seasonal farmworker program like the old Bracero Program that has no path to citizenship.
Require immigrants to speak English well, and ensure immigrants line up well with American values - they aren't bringing third world values of clannishness, honor killings, violence toward women, and the like. This will be more of a problem in some regions of the world than others, but I don't care, life ain't fair. I am very much a Fortuynist on this issue.
Adjust the national immigration quota upwards during boom times and downwards during bust times, instead of a rigid fixed quota.
We should also figure out how many immigrants we can assimilate at once, and use that as an upper bound on the immigration level. I'd guess that would be no more than 125% of the current level.
"I also very much like that America is much less dense than Europe and have no desire to reach One Billion Americans."
There will still be huge low-density areas in a 1BA scenario. A population of one billion spread across the land area of the contiguous forty-eight states is only 338 people per square mile, which less dense than Florida or New York State are currently.
NY's density is more concentrated, so upstate feels pretty empty. Yes, the FL panhandle is pretty empty, but 3/4 of its landmass is the peninsula, which is basically the definition of sprawl hell.
The fact that people will be concentrated in certain places while others are nearly empty is exactly the point. In a 1BA scenario there will still be large low-density areas in the US, just as there are right now in the FL Panhandle and Upstate NY.
Is it relevant where they are coming from and whether they are in iminent danger of harm? A refugee from Venezuela that has travelwd through Mexico to get to the United States would seem to have a poor case by that standard, since they were most recently in Mexico, not Venezuela, and were therefore no longer in iminent danger.
Yes, and that gets at the heart of why the asylum claims are an abuse of the international system. In the last SB post Dara and Matt used an example of an LGBT person in South America who might not find any of the intervening countries welcoming, or a person threatened by cartels in El Salvador who is pursued into Mexico.
I don't think they bought these argument, they were just using them as examples of the kinds of thing that may be argued. But I thought they went to show how bad that line of reasoning is. Of course there are places that are more or less welcoming to LGBT in Latin America, just like there are here! And if drug cartels are using their small number of international links to pursue someone internationally, chances are that person is an actual cartel member that double-crossed them. Most of these gangs are local and they aren't going to waste their time pursuing the average citizen threatened with extortion across international borders.
Legally I don't know, but factually I think you'd have to know first whether Mexico's asylum system is fair and actually can be relied on grant asylum to people whose claims are meritorious.
I believe I saw a Pew study that shows Mexico is one of the CoI tries that has a more negative appraisal of illegal immigrants than the US. I bet their asylum something is a large part of not stopping people going to the US.
The Texas busing to Chicago has been super effective at raising the salience of the boarder crisis around here. My parents are talking about it. It's great politics. Lightfoot just declared a "state of emergency". It perfectly exposes the hypocrisy of the "Sanctuary City" Trump-era rhetoric. It's all fun and games until facilities are overrun -- and what do you think is happening in Texas right now? I hope Abbott keeps it up and it pushes the democrats to police / close the illegal boarder flow.
Totally agree. It's really backed these progressive states into a corner and they all sound like hypocrites. Lightfoot said the migrants in Chicago "suffer under the humanitarian crisis you have created." *YOU*! As if Abbott had anything to do with this. Adams said the city "is being destroyed by the migrant crisis." Are you kidding me? You're now dealing with like 1/10th the scale of the problem Texas is dealing with and this is your reaction as a "Sanctuary City". I believe this Biden's weakest position vs. Trump. Trump really did build his wall. Biden really did halt it. I think immigration is gonna be the #1 issue here.
Agree. But we're 6 quarters away from the election and while inflation might continue to come down the looming credit crisis in commercial real estate and corp. debt has me worried the broader economy has a steeper landing coming.
EDIT: Also shoot ... The Fed just pumped in $300B in emergency lending and no one seems to be talking about this.
If you dig a little deeper, you'll find the right's position is also incoherent, while maintaining their status of being bad. They'll claim to uphold American values, but don't want to be a nation of immigrants, in the land of opportunity. They'll claim it's about jobs, but don't want to reduce any of the incentives for employers using an illegal work force with no bargaining power. Then they'll complain the labor market's too tight, and the wage increases are driving inflation. Then they'll claim it's about preserving judeo-christian values, then still seek to restrict folks from majority catholic countries. There's even more when they start to consider who should or should not receive citizenship.
In all of this, the easy way to make sense of it is, both partisan abstractions are formed of a variety of people and institutions, and expecting absolute coherence is more of a user problem, than a practical way to resolve anything.
Don't get me wrong, the right's immigration position is light years worse than the left's. But even a super racist "only let in white immigrants from Norway" policy is *coherent*.
The left's position seems to be that they're opposed to open borders, but also opposed to any enforcement or deportation. The political faction that's closest to an immigration policy that's both good and coherent is the libertarians.
Is the right's position "only let in white immigrants from Norway" because that's way more coherent than I've ever heard from an elected republican.
I think you're picking very specific examples to form very specific partners to shadowbox with, because now you've actually articulated a very coherent immigration policy from the left. (I'd gripe that "the left" are usually portrayed to want "open borders" but maybe we're tuning into different news sources.)
And if anything, Libertarians are hardly coherent about anything. Are you talking about the Mises Caucus? Or the Marginal Revolution cohort? Or the Caplan cohort? Or the Ron Paul cohort? Or the Cato Institute?
That seems like confirmation no one's ever said "only let in white immigrants from Norway."
It also seems like confirmation that right wing immigration policy is more incoherent, because, surprise, the US does take in people from places like Norway.
"they'll claim it's about preserving judeo-christian values, then still seek to restrict folks from majority catholic countries"
People on the right don't want to openly say it, but they are really concerned about letting riff-raff into America. They think that immigrants have screwed up governing their own ['shithole'] countries and are fleeing elsewhere. They are frightened the cycle will repeat in the US if too many are let in. That's what it boils down to.
I think much lower asylum claims and more >>controlled<< immigration would reduce crankiness on the right.
Both Republicans and Democrats believe in "demographics is destiny," and both believe that increasing immigration will deliver eternal, unchecked power to Democrats. Which is why Democrats want open borders and amnesty and Republicans want a wall and mass deportations.
This is pretty new stuff, though. For a long time, immigration split both parties, with pro-business vs. nationalists on one side, and internationalists vs. labor rights on the other. I wonder how long the current polarization will last, and if we'll ever see some sort of reversion to what it was before.
If 20 years old is pretty new, then sure. The Emerging Democratic Majority was published in like 2004. I'm more interested how the movement of Hispanics in to the Republican Party affects this dynamic.
1. Useful to think about where the majority of our migrants come from. By a wide margin it’s New Zealand, followed by the UK and Western Europe (China and India round out the top 5).
2. Australia (like the US) considers itself a nation of immigrants and the country has been notably changed by different waves of migration. Polish migration post WWI, mass British and Italian migration post WWII and mass Vietnamese migration after the war.
3. There has definitely been backlash to migration - see the reasonably successful ‘One Nation’ party.
4. There’s been bipartisan support for what is a quite inhumane system of offshore detention.
5. Most migration is skills based and works on a points system.
I'm surprised New Zealanders even really considered immigrants in Australia. My impression was that due to very close cultures and legal freedom of movement between AUS/NZ, they're fundamentally "different" even from people coming from somewhere like the UK.
Yeah. Even similar people moving en mass can create tension (see how people in other states respond to Californians) but I think its less intense--they drive the housing prices up but that’s about it.
Assuming we accept this premise it seems like the question becomes, given that we do have a large southern border, is there a good, humane, cost effective way to control the flow of people so that we can get support for immigration that we do want?
Deterrence methods and obstacles seem like they may increase the danger and enforcement by border agents or law enforcement seems like a tough area.
A working e-verify system and general enforcement of immigration rules on the employment side would go a long way and I think would matter more to economic migrants than a wall. There is a loss of freedom with such rules, though I think the bigger problem is needing to tie it to some sort of [amnesty] deal for the 11 million or so without papers that are integrated into American society.
[Update: I originally referred to an asylum deal, but that was the wrong word. Thanks to Ethics Gradient for that note. By amnesty, I mean any of a range of possible residency or citizenship deals in the style of past such amnesties and tied to e-verify and other enforcement measures to credibly address the attack of "won't there just be another amnesty in a few decades?"]
Why? Why should people who willingly came here illegally (ie as adults) be rewarded? Exceptions aside we should aspire to get them all to leave, and sanction them for their crimes (eg kick them to “the back of the line” for visas)?
Because they've lived here for years (10 years is a standard cut off), have contributed to our society in a range of ways, typically have strong family ties, and and we can set criteria on good behavior.
Grandfather clauses are common when making large shifts because even if a new policy is a better arrangement all around, enforcing a new equilibrium on the past is often massively disruptive. Such clauses also reflect that we can judge what has already worked in retrospect. Many of the ancestors of people born in this country came at a time when there were no real restrictions on immigration or strictly racially based ones. The choice made by our elected representatives to not enforce a meaningful e-verify system was in no small part a conscious decision to accept a grey-zone labor force that would work for cheap. I think that's a bad equilibrium, but people that broke the rules but have been in the country for a decade have generally paid harsh dues in other ways and any amnesty deal would likely be conditioned on that.
I didn’t say they should be rounded up. But rewarding them with citizenship isn’t a solution either. Make everify totallly universal. Make the unemployable and ineligible for any welfare. Then give them some small carrot if they leave (eg they’ll be eligible to apply to enter legally after 10 years). Make humanitarian exceptions that will get permission to stay but no path to citizenship (eg the elederly). Replace all the deported with legal immigrants who waited patiently and followed the rules. Do all this and then you could naturalize the “dreamers” without incentivizing further illegal immigration.
P.S.
Basically we should follow the following principle: illegal immigrants broke the law and jumped the line. They’ve *already* been rewarded by living in a higher gdp country all these years while those following the legal path languished in their home countries and were relatively disadvantaged. A just solution would fully force them to pay back this entire gap of wealth+some fine for breaking the law. The solution I proposed would in fact be more lenient than that and in many cases reward them in the net, but to a far less egregious scale than commonly proposed.
Not sure what #1 means. #2 is even more true for family than country. Far more so in fact. What follows ? I’m all for social democratic redistribution policies. But I’m not a communist. I don’t believe in abolishing the family and abolishing countries and abolishing the very legal systems all of which Marx calls for in the manifesto. Do you?
I agree with your broader point, but will note that Plyler v Doe was a 5v4 decision. I think if this was in front of the court today, it wouldn't reach the same result (the majority did have 4 concurrences, so unsurprising there).
Will also note, the law was struck down because the court overruled the legislature on whether there was a "compelling state interest." This is the type of jurisprudence that progressives loved when they held sway on the court, but now decry with conservatives gaining a sizeable majority.
You are correct that e-verify (in addition to long visa processing times) are major reasons Canada avoids an illegal immigration problem. I think the problem at this point is that internal enforcement is totally unworkable; people who have lived here 15 years, have US citizen kids, legal resident spouse, etc have a far stronger moral claim against deportation than the new asylum seekers Biden welcomed in a year ago. But how do you differentiate that with internal deportation and employment verification? You can't. The same problem applies with awarding asylum to a more deserving unauthorized immigrant who arrived a decade ago vs one who arrived last year.
That's a large part of why I suspect legal immigration is in political trouble. Everyone increasingly agrees the wall is a shtick, and internal enforcement under both parties controlling the White House hasn't peaked since Obama's first term (over a decade ago!) If Yglesias's imagined Democratic party of immigration prudence could promise staunch internal enforcement to deliver with expanded legal immigration, then it would exist. It can't, and accordingly it doesn't. The party has made the recent asylum seeker problem much worse. So with no amnesty (unfair with recent arrivals) and no harsher internal enforcement (unfair with older arrivals) on the table, I suspect RAISE is closer to what's left. Cutting overall visas is a certainly a one way to reduce the number of visa overstays, even if it's not ideally the best way.
My stylized fact understanding is that the total undocumented population has been steady for some time. That makes it a lot easier to set a decade cut off as a practical matter.
What would make it politically viable is a set of champions from the Hispanic American community that reflect the larger makeup of that often socially conservative demographic. There are deeply pragmatic parts of the Democratic coalition, but there is a justified reticence to impose solutions originating from leaders without strong ties to most affected communities.
Minor point of order: I think you mean “residency deal” or “citizenship deal” rather than “asylum deal” - asylum is a specific extra-ordinary immigration channel, generally in practice based on membership in a particular (disfavored or discriminated against in country of origin) social group (there are other bases on which to aoply but they apply with less frequency). I would tentatively assume that the majority of the 11 million in question woulnd’t qualify as having valid asylum claims.
Because asylum is both intrinsically hospital to irregular means of entry (rather than, say, requiring a visa) and not numbers-limited, it’s become a very attractive avenue for migrants of all stripes to invoke a basis for non-removal (and release into the interior of the U.S., and also generally entitlement to a work permit after 150 days without a determination since it doesn’t really do anyone any good to preclude participation in the regular labor market by those awaiting an asylum determination.). This is the basis of the concern Matt is invoking above, but a key takeaway is that “being in the U.S. without authorization” isn’t really the basis nor the crux of asylum claims - it’s much more about flows and the conditions of entry (as an immigration policy matter) or else the conditions in an asylum claiman’t country of origin (as a matter of adjudication.)
honestly I would like more people to evaluate "Wall" as a serious policy. I took a good long look at it and my analysis was that it's an incredible effort that will make very little difference. People already go right over the chunks of wall that they have! And they build tunnels under! And walling off the Rio Grande is difficult and a real loss for the people who currently have access.
I'm just not convinced people who have made it through the Darién Gap are going to make it to one final 30 foot wall and be like "nope, THAT is the final obstacle that's too hard to pass. Let's turn around."
This seems like defeatism. If we simply annex Mexico and also, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama we could have a much more manageable southern border.
"If we simply annex Mexico and also, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama we could have a much more manageable southern border."
I know you're sort-of joking, but my takeaway from visiting Panama and learning a lot about its history was that the US should have just annexed Panama and given it statehood around 1900. The benefits to the US (make the canal a domestic rather than international issue) and Panama (access to the US, investment, stability, security) would have been huge.
I actually think it'd be interesting and worthwhile to offer Panama statehood today. Chinese influence has been on the rise there. This would be a win-win for us and Panama, if they're interested. They get economic development, we get the canal. Perhaps Costa Rica too, though I doubt they'd be interested.
"Identitarian ideas inherent in Manifest Destiny suggested that Mexicans, as nonwhites, would present a threat to white racial integrity and so were not qualified to become US citizens"
So, absent a wall/fence, how do you stop illegal immigration? (BTW, I'm not anti-immigration. I'd love to see 10X the legal immigration we have today.)
Walls do work. Look at how well the Berlin Wall kept East Germans from emigrating.
Two relatively short walls (just 27 miles in Berlin) creating a zone in between (the "death strip") that had landmines, attack dogs, and snipers ready to shoot on sight. Yucky business... Takes us into "are we the baddies?" territory in my opinion.
So at the Berlin Wall, it's not so much that people couldn't get over the wall itself, but that they shot the people who tried. That was a powerful incentive. As a thought experiment, are you willing to do that at our Southern border? I am not - my mind recoils from the thought.
I take the question of how to control population flow at the border seriously, but I am not sure how effective it can be. That has never been a closed border, you know? It's the 10th longest land border in the entire world and includes the busiest land crossing in the world.
I'm just a guy writing comments though. I would appreciate some genuine policy insight on how border enforcement could be made more effective. Right now the discourse is weak because many Republicans are fixated on a simplistic & ineffective Wall idea, but Democrats do not want to engage with helpful ideas on "you know what would REALLY stop immigrants?" It's a real policy vacuum IMHO.
Not that I endorse shooting anyone but there's a big category difference between restricting people from leaving your country vs restricting people from entering it. (It's not weird for you to not let me in your house, it is weird for you to not let me leave mine).
I have a relative who works at the upper middle range of immigration policy, and has done so both in and out of government. I mentioned to her once that I had told some anti-immigrant friends that unless we're willing to machine gun them at the border, they're coming. Her response was we would need to machine gun them all and not miss. Because if word gets back to the terrible little village or barrio that someone got through, more will come.
"And while Ron DeSantis’ weird stunt of flying people to Martha’s Vineyard mostly backfired..."
Did it? This stunt completely dominated the media for several days. Plenty of people got huge satisfaction at seeing the absolute pandemonium caused by delivering a mere ~50 asylum seekers to a location associated with wealthy leftists.
I think it backfired because Martha's Vineyard is not a realistic place of settlement. DeSantis is just really awkward and makes his publicity stunts look dopey (or Dopey, given his spat with Disney).
The migrants being moved off MV quickly under massive media coverage was more feature than bug for RDS. Fair or not, the rapid relocation of migrants away from the second homes of wealthy liberals was gleefully seen by a lot of Republican voters as an example of liberal hypocrisy.
It seemed like an excellent application of #4 and #6 from "Rules for Radicals."
Another point: I think america functioned well in the recent past -both generally and esp as a nation of immigrants- because of a strong ethos of respect for the law. Whereas other countries attempted to entice compliance with seat belt by stressing the benefits, in America you could have a slogan like “buckle up it’s the law”. But there is a sense of growing lawlessness and chaos. At the top you have a former President (and presidential candidate) doubly indicted. At the bottom you have homeless encampments taking over more and more public spaces, people urinating in broad daylight or smoking in public transport with impunity. It’s not nostalgia- it really didn’t use to be like that (in living memory) and it’s not sustainable. We need to go back to enforce the laws, both in terms of the police and party discipline (ie kick out politicians who deviate from norms a fortiori laws)
This is the hardest political issue, because the normal, rational, practical person in me agrees wholeheartedly with the sensible reforms outlined here and in the comments (tougher asylum policy and a more orderly legal process), but on a deeper, darker level I feel like anything short of open borders is basically morally indefensible.
What does the US owe non-citizens? Nothing? Well, no, the premise of the international asylum regime is that we do have some obligation towards them simply as fellow humans under some circumstances. It’s not just charity; it’s something we owe.
But the problem is that no matter how you define the specifics, admitting that we owe *something* opens the door to other things. (Why should a wealthy Venezuelan with a credible fear of political violence have a greater claim than an “economic” migrant trying to escape crushing poverty?) Once you agree we do have obligations towards non-citizens, the whole shaky premise of the state having immutable sovereignty over a particular patch of land and the citizens of a country being special parties to a “contract” bound up with that land starts to feel absurd.
There’s only one reason a Honduran migrant has less claim on the resources of the US than I do: The accident of birth means the power of the state is on my side and not his. Which is whatever, but that cold hard explanation just refuses to square with the universalism at the heart of all liberal political ideas. Asylum is the wedge that exposes the arbitrariness of the international system and the disturbing fact that the state as such is fundamentally incompatible with seeing all humans as fully human.
OK and now I snap back to the world of daylight and think “why can’t the US have a sane conversation about immigration policy?”
You’re the second person here saying this and I find it very strange to be honest. On the philosophical level you seem to have a problem with the basic notion of having spectrums and the fact that drawing the line always involves certain arbitrariness. But that’s just any rule necessarily works. It doesn’t negate its utility or moral justification. You do actually have to draw the line somehweee and you need to learn to live worth the power of contingency.
Well, yes, and as I said, I am fine with drawing the line somewhere RE: asylum for practical reasons. But I think you’re missing the larger point. The moral problem is the *lack* of a spectrum. The system creates a stark, qualitative division between “citizen” and “other” that I just don’t see a way to justify outside of tautological appeals to state authority.
You can debate how meritocratic our society actually is, but generally speaking it doesn’t explicitly sort citizens into castes. Every US citizen, theoretically, is equal under the law. That's a pretty bedrock principle, and I think it’s part of why Jim Crow felt so wrong even to many midcentury white people who might not otherwise be too sympathetic to Black families — the idea of having a separate class of citizens with separate rights, conferred only by birth, just doesn’t make sense.
But immigration status definitionally sorts people into castes. Citizens have more rights than non-citizen residents. Everyone with papers has more rights than those here illegally. And why? An accident of birth. It’s the system we have, and we have to live with it, but I’d rather not pretend it’s not fundamentally amoral.
It's justified by the empirical evidence of millennia of civilization. Successful cultures have created privileges and responsibility for those who hold a stake, and kept non stake holders from interfering. It's possible, but deliberately difficult, for outsiders to gain entry into citizenship. It's practical and helps ensure the survival of the mother culture and the nation. That survival is the root of morality. Without survival, there is nobody alive to be moral.
<< “why can’t the US have a sane conversation about immigration policy?” >>
At least one of the reasons is because we had these Democrats give legitimacy to the Abolish ICE narrative ... which then anchors on a position so radical where can you even start?
“Owing nothing” and “open borders” aren’t the only options, you know… if you’re wealthy you may feel obliged or simply willing to do *something*’for the poor but it doesn’t follow that the only moral course is to give up all you have…
Not sure whether the issue is psychological or philosophical and I agree it’s probably not worth debating (or at least I personally lost patience with these abstract philosophical debates) but i admit to finding it strange, and do wonder to what extent these semi emotional semi philosophical differences drive much of our politics.
This is why despite having mostly conservative viewpoints, I subscribe to this Substack. I want to see Progressives who aren't histrionic, and he seems to be one of the few that gets any attention. It is good to see his opinions, even when I disagree. Matt mentioned in a previous article that he didn't think he reached any Republicans, but I bet he reaches plenty of normie Republicans. At least I read his stuff, FWIW.
It has been disgusting to me to see that people freak out when Trump talked about building a wall (even a broken clock is right twice a day), but yet Matt is intelligently pointing out that uncontrolled illegal immigration seems to be a big negative for most any thinking human being.
I think it could be summed up that most Americans think that illegal immigration should be harder and legal immigration should be easier. But you have to shut down the illegal pipeline to do that, and Progressives immediately scream racism and the whole conversation goes up in smoke. Therefore we don't really have any sensible immigration policy in the USA.
One point Eric Kaufman makes is that the conservative movement in Canada is basically bifurcated between conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois. Imagine if an evangelical party almost exclusive to the Deep South ran alongside Republicans in national elections. This probably makes it harder for conservative issues to win nationally in Canada.
Back in the day they were pretty red in the European radical way. Currently SocDem in the European centrist way. Left compared to the US and Canada in general.
"Imagine if an evangelical party almost exclusive to the Deep South ran alongside Republicans I'm national elections."
I think this would be great. The now-smaller Republican Party would probably be much more reasonable after jettisoning a lot of the most religious people.
I'm not so sure about that. Irreligious right-wingers are some of the scariest people alive. You end up with weird eugenics and ethnic stuff at the fore as opposed to Jesus stuff. Even if the Jesus stuff is misconstrued and in bad-faith, I think it takes the edge off of the purely Darwinian conception of humanity.
I think this suggestion isn’t particularly politically realistic. Categorically, grand bargains on contentious social issues are a sort of centrist political myth. Bipartisan deals on the specific issue of immigration have been failing since the 1980s— even under conditions when elements of Republican leadership were much less hostile to immigration than the party is now. The incentives for the most hardcore restrictionists to tank the process have always been too strong— they get closer to getting what they really want by maintaining the muddled policy status quo and stoking anti-immigration sentiment than they would by compromising.
Biden trying to do a compromise deal now would set him up for an embarrassing “Lucy pulls the football away”-type public legislative failure and raise the salience of immigration going into an election cycle— which David Shor and others have found tends to help Republicans even when Democrats’ particular position statements test well. Much better at this point to use administrative and diplomatic levers to manage the situation at the border and use the admin’s legislative agenda and public messaging for either pushing bills that have a genuine chance to pass or highlighting issues where the Dems have their strongest public opinion advantages.
Jonah Goldberg regularly says, "My position on immigration policy is that we should have one." and that really sums up the most important bit. I'm pretty thoroughly inclined toward basically limitless immigration, but fighting over just where to set the dial is way way secondary to the need to actually have a dial you can adjust, rather than simply, as Matt points to, leaving it up to how effectively the lawyers can manipulate the asylum system in lieu of actual policy.
I agree with the sentiment, but I’d think that the first chart Matt shared is actually a bit of a cautionary tale. I’m pro-immigration and think we could stand to double or triple current numbers of legal immigrants with a skills-based program.
But it would be a near-impossible challenge to build the physical infrastructure needed to allow 12 million (3.5% of the population) to move here annually without sending the housing markets into a frenzy that would harm lots of ordinary people. Canada is experiencing precisely that problem according to folks I’ve talked to there; 3.5% is simply too high to be sustainable under modern political constraints and expectations regarding standard of living and housing quality.
Yes. Relatedly, Matt argues that “Canada is massively underpopulated relative to its vast land area and natural resources,” but while I think this statement is silly for a number of reasons[1], it’s kind of moot in its entirety if the immigrants in question aren’t moving to “Canada” at large so much as “Toronto and Vancouver near-exclusively,” which kind of radically changes the import of that 3.5% country-wide number because the *local* relative population increase is much higher (in housing markets that have by all accounts been insane for years already). Basically the difference between force and pressure
[1] To even make the claim you’d need to argue there’s a specific optimum population-to-land ratio on a country-wide basis, which seems like something that’s kind of intrinsically bold to claim, runs somewhat contrary to Matt’s YIMBY stance, and also presumably implies that, say, Singapore is *over*populated relative to its land and natural resources, which is a claim that few people, let alone Matt, seem likely to make.
There's no particular point in arguing about how many people a given plot of land should contain in the abstract, lol. No possible objective vision can give you an answer and no priors/ideology-driven paradigm can be "proven correct."
The questions basically boil down to the following, in order of importance:
1. Is immigration good for the people who already live here?
2. Is immigration good for immigrants?
3. How much immigration is good, which is to say, how much can we accommodate and does immigration stop being good at some point?
and a very distant 4. Is immigration good for the rest of the world?
Those questions can be answered, within wide uncertainty ranges, empirically.
And we reach the conclusion that the answers for 1, 2, and 4 are "yes, when well-regulated," "yes, period," and "mostly yes, surprisingly," which solidifies the moral case handily.
3... is the hard bit. How much housing and infrastructure can we crank out annually, can we direct immigration preferentially to "underutilized" metros, how much does shifting immigration flows towards high-skilled and professional class immigrants pump up aggregate demand for working-class labor, how much do immigrants contribute to US technological and economic leadership, how many can we allow in such that we can assimilate them or their kids to the culture?
My read is that we can probably physically and socially integrate about 3-4 million a year (more if we can offer place-based preferences to refill some empty metros and reduce the amount of new-build housing required), and that if two-thirds are skilled, professional-class immigrants, it will go a long way towards both alleviating skills shortages plaguing our new industrial policy attempts *and* provide natural redress to inequality as the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labor skyrockets.
As a super minor nit just so we’re on the same page, my footnote [1] was largely *agreeing* with your first paragraph, which is why I was saying Matt’s initial normative claim was conceptually silly even if the local-versus global flow issue didn’t basically render it irrelevant in any event.
Substantively I think this rubric largely makes sense, although I would say that I think the analysis of (1) is oftentimes a bit glib in The Discourse beause I think it’s a fairly high-dimensional space that’s often reduced to an fairly low-dimensional one (“do immigrants increase GDP?”). But I think that’s compatible with the “wide uncertainty ranges” claim.
Legally I think advocates would do well to think about how to effectively implement place-based preferences in a way thar doesn’t violate the Commerce Clause / Dormant Commerce Clause or internal freedom of movement given that immigration is and will be administered by the Feds. I strongly suspect there are a lot of legally-supportable carrot approaches (eg VT paying cash for people to relocate there and work remotely) but a lot of the easy stick-based approaches (eg locality-conditioned visas) seem kind of suspect. Not sure if eg a place- rather than employer-based H-1B analog would pass constitutional muster, but maybe?
I know, I was amplifying on our agreement.
My understanding of (1) is rooted in a having ties to working-class friends and family who do have a real case for saying they're harmed by our current immigration policy. Immigration helps everyone if the flow of immigrants is balanced by socioeconomic status in rough proportion to what exists already in the country, avoiding glutting any particular sector or oversupplying low-skilled workers and reducing their wage growth and bargaining power. The combination of 2000's-era mass immigration of low-skilled workers and 2010's demand-deficit overhang materially harmed the working class in this country. Going forward we should be aiming to hold low- and semi-skilled immigration to no more than a third of immigration flows for at least a decade, maybe two, and bring millions of well-educated people who are going to have high demand for services, construction, and manufactured goods like cars and furniture.
As for place-based preferences, one mechanism I've heard of would be to make most of our new high-skilled immigrants the recipients of work visas rather than green cards, with a decade-long path to LPR status, and then give states a fast-track green card quota they can use to entice folks to put down roots. Once they're LPR's or citizens there's nothing we can do to force them to stay in a given place, but I have no doubt that it'll make a dent at the margins and we'll end up with more immigrants settling in places like Louisville, Cincinnati, or Baton Rouge than would otherwise be the case.
Hmmm. Intriguing, so kind of de-Federalizing parts of the immigration system in practice by delegating limited forms of immigration authority to the states?
"it’s kind of moot in its entirety if the immigrants in question aren’t moving to “Canada” at large so much as “Toronto and Vancouver near-exclusively"
I don't think this claim is true. 1/3rd of all immigrants come in under provincial sponsorship. In 2022, 44% of immigrants went to a province other than Ontario or British Columbia. Quebec had more immigrants than BC.
And BC's immigration totals are largely in line with their population. They make up 14% of Canada's population and accepted 14% of immigrants. The real outlier is Ontario but even that isn't especially egregious -- Ontario is 38% of the population and accepted 42% of the immigrants.
You could argue that half of immigrants going to Ontario and BC is a problem -- but they are the biggest provinces so that's exactly what you'd expect.
Canada has failed to build any meaningful Second Cities in those provinces. Vancouver is the largest city in BC with 2.4 million people. The second largest city is Victoria at 363,000 and then third is Kelowna at 181,000.
Where else would immigrants go for jobs in BC, especially if they actually have skills? Do you think the immigrants enjoy paying Vancouver's high real estate prices and are just there for fun?
Histrionics like claiming they are exclusively going to Toronto and Vancouver just makes it look like you are out of touch with reality.
Your numbers regarding provincial ingress and sponsorship are informative and a welcome corrective, although I think you are rather misusing the term "histrionics."
I would say I find your second- and third-to-last paragraphs to be odd takes: generally the building of cities (second or otherwise) is considered an emergent phenomenon of growing populations and limited land and/or availability of trade and industry - the existence of Chicago or San Francisco (or even Sacramento) isn't a matter of U.S. federal or state fiat and it seems odd to maintain that "failure to establish a second City" is on Canada rather than on immigrants (or internally migratory Canadians). Relatedly, I don't believe I suggested that there was a moral dimension to this as seems to be at least suggested by your allusion to immigrants paying high rents in Vancouver - rather, it appears that the phenomena of no second cities and immigrants moving to Vancouver despite high rents are related: superstar cities in the modern era basically act as industry- and job-vacuums by creating returns to human capital that are so relatively high that immigrants flock there despite much of that return being sucked away by high rents.
So under present conditions we should either expect superstar cities to eclipse everywhere in a country as population sinks in perpetuity, or else for rents to climb dramatically more in order until an equiilibrium is reached between population ingress due to agglomeration effects and egress (e.g. to second cities or farther afield) due to rent extraction.
I don’t think he’s making a population-to-land ratio claim. I think he’s saying that the cities could stand to grow.
The Vancouver metro area is hemmed in on the south by the US, on the north by tall pointy mountains, and on the west by water. The only directions it could "stand to grow" are a) upward (expensive to build) and b) eastward along the Fraser River Valley (which is already getting crowded as it is).
I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying, growing Vancouver is not a simple task.
It looks like there's still plenty of open land on the southern edge of the Vancouver metro area, even before you get to the US border, and a good amount of flat land to the east as well:
https://goo.gl/maps/SKM5NXEJrquuPCuv5
It hasn't filled out its valley the way that Los Angeles has.
There's a number of ways in which the Vancouver metro area is using scarce land inefficiently. Restrictions on height and floor space, minimum lot size, minimum setbacks. A striking example: https://morehousing.ca/senakw
I think the bigger problem is regulatory - we have people who want to live here and other people who want to build housing for them, but it's very slow and difficult to get approval, so our housing supply is completely inelastic. Which means that when demand increases, whether due to population growth or per-capita demand growth (Covid => more remote work => more demand for space at home), prices go way up, forcing people out. https://morehousing.ca/cmhc-wedge
Alex Usher is expecting that the Canadian government is likely to cut back on international student visas. https://higheredstrategy.com/the-bailiffs-are-at-the-door/
While it is true Vancouver still has land available to build, the building takes time, skilled trades, raw materials and infrastructure to support that growth. No other country have ever attempted to immigrate as many people (as a percentage of population) as this CDN gov’t has done and it is clear that we don’t have the capacity to support that growth.
There are plenty of immigrants in Victoria, Calgary and Montreal. I’ve eaten excellent Indian food in Regina, Saskatoon and Courtnay(BC). The rural areas don’t have many immigrants, but most cities of 50k plus are pretty cosmopolitan
Saw this tweeted recently from Alec Stapp making that exact point. For all the issues with housing in the US, Canada is doing about 4x worse.
https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1677882255451082753
It would be interesting to compare Canada to the northeast/pacific coast states in the US. Canada doesn’t have Arizona/Texas/Florida/North Carolina or even really a rust belt, that keep the average down in the US.
Yea. Australia seems to have a less severe version of the same issue, but in either case if left to fester this is obviously going to poison the well politically.
Canada would have to at least double, probably closer to triple, its current housing output to deal with a 3.5% annual increase in population. NIMBY is the current limiting factor but there are a lot of other roadblocks that they'd hit before they could go from 300k annually to 600-800k.
Likewise, if the US were to try to admit 12 million immigrants a year, we'd need to construct a minimum of 4 million units of housing across single- and multi-family to accommodate. Not even vaguely possible, even if we just tossed the zoning, approvals, public engagement, and environmental review processes entirely.
EDIT: In all honestly, 4 million is incredibly charitable, the real figure is probably 7 million.
There must be some sort of data error somewhere, because there is *no way* that Canada's natural population increase added 2.5% onto that, which is what Matt's first chart implies.
And a cursory Google search provides the answer:
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/06/28/canada-sees-record-setting-population-growth-spurred-by-immigration-in-first-quarter-of-2023.html
“Canada welcomed 145,417 immigrants in the first quarter, the highest for a single quarter for which comparable data are available and a record first quarter across all provinces,” said StatCan in the release. “The country also saw net gains of 155,300 non-permanent residents in the first quarter, thanks in part to an increase in the number of work permit holders.”
If those ratios hold up, then Canada is admitting closer to 600k immigrants per year starting this year, and its definition of immigrant excludes half of the people who are actually entering, for a total of 1.2 million.
For the first half, I agree that there is some room to grow. As I said though, I think 4 million is a more reasonable target.
It's more in line with our historic capacity to socially integrate people, and even with underutilized urban centers at our disposal, there is just not sufficient construction capacity to build or rehabilitate the 4-5 million units of housing (across all types) that we'd need to accommodate 8 million newcomers each year. The industry cannot possibly grow into that need in anything less than a decade or two.
I don't know about the others but DFW is really only cheap compared to the overheated elite coastal markets.
I was just in Canada, and I was shocked by how basically everyone I talked to (including people who seemed fairly left-wing) agreed that Canada's current pace of immigration is undesirable.
The rate of immigration seems like it would strain even a place building housing under a permitting and regulatory regime run by rabid YIMBYs.
The question is why, given that they have a functioning dial, did they decide to set it to 3.5%; surely they knew it would strain the housing supply. There is certainly room for flattening the curve.
I think of this a little like the US response to crime. First (in the 1960s) we take some broad steps to increase individual rights (both civilly but also broad-based criminal justice reforms and judicial rulings such as Miranda and basically the Warren Court), then we pivot and over the course of several decades get mass incarceration. We decide this is suboptimal and in a very short period of time (say 2014 to say 2021) we do justice reinvestment, defund the police and then have some significant civil unrest. If you look at homicides you can see a trend beginning to increase around 2014 to 2016 (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate). Justice Reinvestment "began" in the 2000s and started to really peak after 2010 to 2014. My take is that it was probably a good idea initially but due to diminishing returns became a bad idea later as it expanded from interesting ideas like drug courts into absurd ideas like treated illegal firearms possessions as a status offense (and basically trying to ignore violent crime).
Things link homicide start trending up and then spike massively in 2020-2021. The spike may have saved us from repeating history because it seemed to introduce a pause and allow us to rethink our policy options.
I suspect Canada is going through the same process but with immigration. This will likely result in less immigration than they now but more than they would have otherwise. So hopefully it is a good thing. I believe it is hard to calibrate these type of issues and people do not realized that most policy outcome curves are not straight but are likely U shaped. Sometimes a radical change, even if it leads to bad outcomes in the short term, allows us to see issues with our policies that would go unnoticed if allowed to progress at a slow point. Kind of like the boiling frog analogy.
I have no clue whatsoever. It makes no sense.
To support the unsustainable growth in housing prices. Canada’s third largest GDP driver is real estate, and immigrants, especially skilled ones, bring outside money that can make them afford homes that are unaffordable on an income basis. Our mortgages are non-dischargeable and renew on a 1-5 year term. Meaning our interest rates are not locked for 25 years, and if you default on a debt, you are still responsible for the difference between the sale price and the mortgage loan. About 25% of mortgage holders are non-amortizing due to the astronomical increase in interest rates, meaning they are not paying down any of their principle and in some cases are actually increasing their debt load because they can’t even pay the full interest amount.
Any type of sustained housing decline would destroy so much wealth in the Canadian economy.
Would be a challenge in the U.S. for sure, but the U.S. has far more urban areas for potential immigrants to choose from.
Sure. I assume you have a magic wand which can [POOF] the necessary housing into existence?
"A very big door with a very strong lock" is a way that I've heard it explained somewhere, although I can't recall where I heard it and Google is no help. Maybe for the purposes of this article it should be a "very big door with a well-designed lock", but yeah, I agree.
I've noticed a trend lately in your writing, as well as some other places recently, that is kind of an anti-legalistic turn.
Seems like the broad pattern is that starting in the 70s, both progressives and conservatives embraced legal battles as a way to short-circuit Congress and impose unpopular policies. The result is that now policy is shaped almost entirely by esoteric legal rulings and politicians are reduced to griping about it or playing dumb constitutional games to try and get their way.
I hope this trend in critique holds. I think it would be tremendously helpful to get back to a world where elected officials are the main drivers of policy change, not judges and lawyers.
It's something I've noticed with some of our newer managers at work, too. We hold monthly meetings with HR exploring various aspects of company policy. There is a torturous, never-ending need for them to have HR explain every possible corner case, no matter how obscure or unlikely in practice. That way, I guess, the manager is freed from ever having to actually *make a decision*--they can just tap the sign.
Without fail, the meeting only ends when one of the more senior managers uses their outside voice to explain, as if to a child, that this is why you get paid more now! Because you need to make hard decisions and exercise your best judgment on a case-by-case basis.
As a lawyer, I agree. The number of meetings where people turn to me and ask, essentially, 'what's the legal answer to this question' and I say 'all of the options you've come up with are legal, if you came up with an illegal option, I would say so, you have to make the choice which to choose,' is a bit painful. Though it has gone down some since the pandemic.
The firm I work for often says "I have given you my opinion on your legal options but your course of action is fundamentally a business decision, which is yours to make"
I've heard that from our general counsel more times than I can count (n.b., I can only count my fingers on one hand)
Just tell me what to do so I won't get in trouble!
As an in house lawyer this is my response 99% of the time, the 1% being when someone proposes a blatantly illegal idea.
More policymakers on the Democratic side need a healthy understanding of the limits of the law, of the kinds of questions the law can and can't answer for you. Perhaps I'm biased by who I follow on Twitter, but what I see is people losing faith in the law in some sort of total philosophical sense when the law comes up short (Supreme Court makes politically motivated ruling --> "the law is just a smokescreen covering for powerful interests!") rather than recognizing that the law is and always has been limited.
I am of two minds on this. There is a bunch of horrible red tape in the way caused by legalism, but predictability and a rules based order are incredibly valuable compared to "the executive [or even the legislature] just gets a ton of discretion".
Personally, I think the right answer is fewer and simpler rules, but still rigorously enforced by lawyers and judges.
Yeah to be clear I'm not saying we should just ditch the rule of law. Laws ought to be enforced rigorously.
I'm really more talking about the ongoing trend of large policy shifts via legal action.
“Courts can quickly and flexibly generate guidance on how to handle edge cases and novel circumstances” has long been considered a feature of common law legal systems. We’re increasingly seeing that it may also be a bug.
My hunch is this evolved in part because congress is so disfunctional. There are things that need to get done in the world. There just are. If congress cannot do the, maybe we can get the courts to.
I think of it as, we got this huge glut of lawyers, and they went and entrepreneurially expanded the range of things that should be subject to legal review. And now we’re stuck with a whole bunch of stuff that hears “mmm actually have you considered whether that’s appropriate, ya know, legally?” as a good thing rather than a problem.
The following is politically realistic and would fix most of the asylum problem:
1) Asylum is available only to those who enter at a regular port of entry and request asylum the day they enter
2) Asylum seekers are detained until their claims are heard. Conditions are austere but better than a typical jail, Im thinking college dorm rooms or super 8 motels with some outdoor space and a fence around them.
3) All applications are adjudicated within 21 days of entry, witnesses in foreign countries can testify via zoom or webex
4) Temporary administrative judgeships are created until the backlog is cleared. Retired/former JAG officers, state prosecutors and state level magistrates would be perfect.
Under the status quo, many people with marginal claims come to take advantage of the delay in adjudication. Many never show up for their hearing. Legalism can’t function without judges and prompt hearings.
I think that (3) may risk placing unrealistic demands on applicants rather than or in addition to the judicial system. Prompt hearings are a laudable goal (and I think swifter adjudication in general is something U.S. tribunals could stand a lot more of), but AIUI 21 days can pose a difficulty as far as just compiling corroborative basic documentation, let alone a comprehensive asylum package. Maybe 90 or 120? Or else relax documentary requirements (but maybe that itself risks making “convincing liar with potentially hired witness-accomplices” a more attractive irregular-flow sidechannel?)
There are 10 or 20 wanna be economic migrants for every legitimate asylum seeker. A system that just denied all the claims would get the right result 90-95% of the time.
I don’t really see why waiting months for a birth certificate is worth it. It’s easy enough to determine where the person first caught a plane. Anyone who comes to the US by boat is probably cuban if they speak spanish, haitian if they speak french creole.
Also, asylum seekers should apply in the first country they get to. Asylum is not about seeking prosperity or reuniting with relatives, it’s about avoiding prison or death
The number of people terrorized by gangs, militias and corrupt governments is actually quite high. Personally, I would rather have a system that errs on letting people with credible claims in than making it more likely that denying asylum will be an inadvertent death sentence. It’s the same reasoning as a presumption of innocence. It is better for a guilty person to go free than an innocent be incarcerated.
Yes we need high walls and big gates, but we also need some sense of rule of law and mercy. Not an easy balance, but I am more willing to tolerate some level of inadvertent/illegal immigration to save more lives.
The number of people terrorized by gangs, militias and corrupt governments is actually a significant fraction of the world's population. Should we let them all stay here, as long as they can get here? If you're making a moral case, why stop there? Why not charter flights to corrupt places and load everyone who wants to come onto the plane?
Thousands of children die of diarrhea every day. If we really want to help suffering people, we should subsidize low cost life saving interventions abroad
The recent years of madness at the border show the downfall of this lenient approach.
Gangs don't count.
Asylum is for government prosecution
Where did you get this from?
why can’t those terrorized by gangs relocate internally. if the LA crips are after you, eureka is probably safe n’est pas?
“There are 10 or 20 wanna be economic migrants for every legitimate asylum seeker.”
This is a laughably ridiculous claim, but if you have evidence I’m really keen to see it.
“Also, asylum seekers should apply in the first country they get to.”
If a first (assuming you mean “safe” too) country approach is the policy the US wants to pursue, then it should also involve building regional partnerships to support asylum seekers across borders and ensure asylum seekers can continue to move if they are still at risk in an intermediary country.
Around 50-70% of claims are denied. Not as stark as David puts it, but it shows a majority of people coming here don't have legitimate asylum claims.
The fact that 50% to 70% of claims are denied by a cohort of DOJ bureaucrats is neither evidence that these claims are ‘not legitimate’ nor is it evidence that they are ‘economic migrants.’
I think by definition, they are illegitimate if denied by the legal system set up to adjudicate such claims, but I see your point nonetheless.
Once you (legitimately) are granted asylum, your status is essentially that of a refugee. If it’s better for you to be somewhere else, you should follow the rules for refugee resettlement
I mean, David's point about a surge in judges is the critical one, because someone is going to be exercising judgement.
Corroborative documentation? Asylum isn't and can't ever be like doing your taxes. The cartel's squad of death goons doesn't send you a DOJ-style target letter informing you that you should expect to soon be indicted for snitchin'.
By “corroborative documentation” I mostly meant stuff like birth certificates or other official residence/citizenship documentation (although I believe that things like human rights group / NGO reports on conditions on a country also are often good to include in a package, but those are quicker to get ahold of.)
I am befuddled. How is something like a birth certificate even remotely relevant in establishing whether someone is legitimately fleeing their country with credible fear for their safety?
You can't just layer on extra steps until the Legal Flowchart self-adjudicates each and every case. The reason judges are held in high esteem in our society and culture is that we recognize that they need to make hard, unprovable and unfalsifiable decisions based on limit information (we could call them "judgements").
The obvious answer to your first question would be to prove (well, corroborate, really) that someone is, in fact, fleeing from unstable country A rather than stable country B, assuming both claimants from A and B have strong economic incentives to migrate (but only A-ers have legitimate asylum claims.)
Prove? Do these countries even have birth certificates? Seems a bit first-worldy to me.
I have trouble with the evidentiary and confidence standard that some seem to unconsciously apply to the question of asylum seekers.
It starts to sound an awful lot like innocent until proven guilty (months! to build your case), whereas I feel like the appropriate standard is, if anything, closer to a very serious and sober job interview.
This seems like it would be very expensive. Housing someone (even under austere circumstances) costs a lot more money than saying "come back here on this date".
3 weeks of housing may not be that expensive, but that means hiring enough judges to adjudicate claims that quickly. That's expensive too.
I think the expense is worth it but I'm not convinced that it is politically realistic to be spending that kind of money housing people.
What is the current alternative for most asylum seekers? I would assume most have relatively scant resources, are we relying on private actors to house and feed them in the interim?
Yes. In my state, Catholic Charities does 90% of the work to house asylees and asylum seekers. They are the ones who met them at the plane, get them shelter and clothing, and transport them to hearings etc. The State has little to no funds or infrastructure to handle this.
Great link. But this suggests that David Abbot's recommendation is even more pressing. If the choice is between short term housing by the government vs having them be dependent on private charity or be homeless, I would think we should emphasize resolving the issue quickly.
Cool. You got a few million lying around to pay for it? Because the State of Maine does not.
Immigration is a federal issue and they should pay for it.
I think part of the idea is that the number of people seeking asylum will rapidly decrease due to 1 and 2.
Color me skeptical on that point.
Local to me...
https://www.pressherald.com/2023/06/28/asylum-seekers-protest-conditions-at-portland-expo-shelter/
This seems broadly correct but I’m missing the next step. Are Canadian levels of immigration, even if mostly of skilled/educated workers, socially sustainable ? And if so, under what *cultural* policies? Let me put it differently: how do you maintain a national ethos and national solidarity in this manner? To use stark examples: can you maintain national solidarity levels that will allow the country to function well in a war scenario (I hope Ukraine has disillusioned those who think this worry is in the past)?
Another example: how does one maintain the unique values of western countries (eg gender and lgbt equality )?
My worry is that American born upper middle clsss people such as MY, are specially insular in their understanding of the world (much more than their European peer btw). They think they know “diversity” but actually have very little familiarity with real cultural gaps and the challenges they pose. Too few of them lived abroad or speak a foreign language. They also seem to seriously under appreciate the challenges of great power competition that will require social cohesion in addition to ecocnomic power.
All this is *not* to say high level immigration is bad (on the contrary it’s probably necessary) but rather that the debate has to broaden to include social and cultural concerns and how to address them.
"My worry is that American born upper middle clsss people such as MY, are specially insular in their understanding of the world (much more than their European peer btw). They think they know “diversity” but actually have very little familiarity with real cultural gaps and the challenges they pose. Too few of them lived abroad or speak a foreign language. They also seem to seriously under appreciate the challenges of great power competition that will require social cohesion in addition to economic power."
Odd then that the US has much less trouble with poorly assimilated immigrants than the EU does with their amazing supposedly nuanced view of culture.
EU countries, esp Germany, have a well-earned chip on their shoulder (to say the least) however their experiences with mass immigration of “normal” people who neither share their values nor wish to is creating fast disillusionment. US has benefitted from so far having immigration mostly from the culturally similar Latin America.
That's because those countries all have roots have ethnostates, while the US is and always has been an idea. I don't necessarily blame those countries for being more racist than the US is, but that's the fact of the matter. They are a lot worse at handling these "social cohesion" issues because their societies begin from a place of weakness relative to ours.
You’re not wrong there. US is a nation of immigrants since the native population was largely killed/kicked off and the remainder totally marginalized. However even so US still needs some biding narrative (“an idea”) and some consensus on social behavior. In other words you still need some assimilation/melting pot mechanism. seems to me today’s us has less of that than it used to.
The assimilation mechanism is asking: Do you want to work hard to make some money? If you do, then you naturally understand the culture. And the process of getting here tends to self-select for that characteristic.
>> Do you want to work hard to make some money? If you do, then you naturally understand the culture.
Do you? Does it follow that you consider black people equal? Allow you daughter to date whom she wishes? Allow gay pride events in your neighborhood?
Isn't the natural conclusion then that if the Left succeeded in drastically expanding the social safety net and in opening the borders then we'd lose our unifying culture?
"seems to me today’s us has less of that than it used to."
Based on... what, exactly?
Yep, some on here will say that cultural/social concerns are irrelevant and we should simply let in as many people as possible, no questions asked (or, for some, as long as they are skilled). Even leaving my strong disagreement aside though, these things matter to a lot of people - folks don't want to feel like a stranger in their own country, and thus those sorts of proposals are politically DOA. My own view on this is that we should figure out how many immigrants we can reasonably assimilate at once, and that should serve as a key upper bound on determining the immigration level. America is a nation, not just an economy.
Anyone who has ever traveled radially with respect to the nearest city (ie, a city dweller going to the suburbs or country, or a rural person going to the suburbs or city, or a suburbanite going either direction) has felt like a stranger without even leaving their state.
>Are Canadian levels of immigration, even if mostly of skilled/educated workers, socially sustainable ?<
I guess we (and Canadians) will find out. Herb Stein's law, etc. I regularly hear things suggesting it isn't (politically) sustainable, but that could just be Canadian rightists making noise on the internet (most people who are fine with the status quo—any status quo—are less inclined to complain online than the disgruntled).
They do need to get their act together on housing, though. It's a bit of a head-scratcher: Trudeau has a working majority, and he (and his ministers) can't possibly be stupid enough not to realize that country has a rendez-vous with a pissed off electorate if they don't start building more housing, and soon. And they've got next to no veto points compared to us. Maybe after next election they'll do housing deregulation?
The Liberals have an unhealthy relationship with suburban boomers who have 80% to 90% of their wealth tied up in the value of their home. Fixing the housing crisis would mean taking a notch out of their bases retirement plan. Poor people don't vote liberal, they vote NDP.
As a pro-housing federal Liberal, I'd put it like this: housing is an issue that cuts across the usual left-right divide. On the left, new housing is popular with younger people, unpopular with the environmentally-minded; on the right, new housing is popular with business, unpopular with older people. https://morehousing.substack.com/p/liberal-convention
I think David Eby and the BC NDP are doing the best job of pushing municipalities to allow more housing. If persuasion, compromise, and threats are the three elements of diplomacy, they're also the three elements of intergovernmental relations in Canada, and Eby is using all three in combination. https://morehousing.substack.com/p/bc-update
Exhibit A is that the first thing anyone thinks of now when they talk about Canada is that we're friendly and like hockey. A more benign national character I am sure is not in existence. We are "bound" together by the least offensive common denominators known to man and virtually no one in this country actually knows what it means to be Canadian. Maybe that's fine... I don't know if its ever worked anywhere else in the history of the world though...
Many Canadians fought and quite a few died in WWI and WWII. This was, presumably, at least in part because of a lingering affinity they still then felt to Europe generally and Britain especially.
What are Canadians willing to fight for today? How long can this "vacation from history" model last (aka how will Canadian society cope when some real challenge eventually comes?), and can it be applied to any country not totally dependent on a benign powerful neighbor for its security?
That last part is maybe the most important. We're like an obnoxious teenager living in his parent's house (the USA) and rolling his eyes at the sort of shit his dad does. It's this bizarre situation where we get lots of the perks of basically being a vassal with none of the responsibilities. Not sure if there's historical precedent for that. Would be curious.
1: This generally seems to a non-issue for skilled migrants. Highly-educated people worldwide share a great deal of cosmopolitan cultural context and are generally more similar to each other than they are to their countrymen. This seems to be even more true for their children, who, with a bit of a push from their parents, usually strive to succeed in educational institutions and tend to internalize their values (politically, my high school and college classmates with highly-educated immigrant parents had political views that were similar to or more liberal than their American-parented peers’.)
2: Even for less skilled workers, the US’s prestige and global cultural hegemony has done quite a bit to ‘pre-digest’ would-be immigrants. Pretty much anybody who lives in an urban area in a middle-income country grew up watching American TV and movies, and many of those people (including quite a few less-educated ones) speak English fairly well. Almost nobody immigrating to the US today would be nearly as out-of-place as say, the peasant migrants who came to the country from southern Italy and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century were. I think there are a bunch of good economic and logistical reasons why the US shouldn’t permit unlimited low-skill immigration, but our capacity to assimilate people is pretty strong.
you're seeing the assimilation of the skilled and esp their kids because their numbers are quite small still and no immigrant community is large enough to dominate whole parts of the country. American elite institutions esp. are still incredibly numerically dominated by the American born, esp. at the undergraduate levels. With American natives outnumbering all the internationals put together many times over, and the international themselves divided into a dozen or more of even the major countries, no wonder there appears to be pretty smooth assimilation. But what happens if in some schools 25% are immigrants or 1st gen of the very same country of origin? Is assimilation going to run as smoothly?
About 20% of my high school’s class were Chinese-born or had Chinese-born parents. That’s not uncommon at magnet schools or at selective universities that don’t discriminate against Asians (ie: UC Berkeley). And it was pretty much a non-issue; the Chinese kids formed a lot of friendships and romantic relationships across national origin lines and generally grew up to be at least as prosocial/civic as their classmates with American-born parents.
>Another example: how does one maintain the unique values of western countries (eg gender and lgbt equality )?
well not even all westerners agree that those are good values, and i think you will run into some obvious issues if you are trying to screen non Americans for "correct" American political beliefs.
I'm not asking for immigrants to pledge support for gay marriage. I'm asking that we screen out those with outrageous views like gays should be stoned and sharia should be the law of the land. I'm a Republican, trust me I have no interest in screening out people who would be on the right's side of the culture wars, that's stupid (even though I think many current culture wars are stupid altogether). This is about things that are completely outside the Overton window except for the dumbest of twitter frogs. Likewise, I also strongly support the fact we don't let avowed communists naturalize. Freedom doesn't defend itself.
You’ve making a ton of assumptions about MY or the rest of us, right? Like it turns out I do know plenty of people I have to cross a big “cultural gap” to interact with. It’s not really a huge problem, and by the time it’s their kids’ generation those issues have disappeared.
My impressions of MY are based in several years of reading his writing on almost a daily basis, my generalizations about a certain class of Americans are based on many years living in this country (in several different cities and suburbs), observing the lifestyle etc and occasionally discussing these issues with the locals. My concerns are based on many more years living in and reading about what’s going on in other countries. What I would like to see is someone seriously addressing my concerns. Explaining why it won’t ever be relevant here or some
such. Saying “nah it’s fine” isn’t reassuring to me.
P.S.
What I’m saying basically is that mass migration in Europe caused a lot of problems, many of which exacerbated in the 2nd or 3rd generation. At least in large part as reaction to this the far right is resurgent in many of those countries. There are many reasons why these problems happened there and not in the us (so far). MY even touched on this a bit once or twice. What I’d like to see in any proposal for mass overhaul in the ways us does immigration is an explicit discussion of those risks and a reassurance how to keep the us “exceptional” in these regards. What I see instead is typical American liberals being quite ignorant of the situation in Europe which leads them to dismiss the whole thing as right wing propaganda/xenophobia and an implicit confidence in the continued success of assimilation in America as if it were a law of nature/divine providence and not a result of specific factors that might change in certain scenarios.
I don’t think that’s quite right and especially might not be right in sufficient numbers that will shift the balance of power. But at least you address the issue and basically suggest keeping the immigration mostly to the educated since you believe educated people all hold liberal values. Again, I think your premise is wrong, but at least you engage with the problem. I only wish the debate generally was like that.
The immigration debate makes me realize that despite all the discourse, very few people out there actually clearly state their policy preferences.
Personally, I think anyone who speaks English, cares about western/liberal values (e.g., women and racial and sexual minorities are not second class citizens, freedom of speech is important, etc.), will pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, and (most importantly) *wants* to be an American should be able to come here legally and easily.
What are your all's policy preferences on the matter?
I'm definitely a "give me your poor and huddled masses" guy. I think immigrants make us a better country. We also have a strong history of assimilation that I think we should embrace as one of our country's most powerful advantages.
is there a limiting principle for you?
I think a common limiting principle is when it would overwhelm the host country's institutions or culture. For example I wouldn't support letting in 2x or 1x the country's current population all at once. But I think our history shows that we can successfully assimilate very large flows of immigration over time, several times what we currently accept.
I don't know that I have a specific limiting principle, but I agree with Matt's basic point that it should be a dial we control rather than a chaotic and uncontrolled process. My ideal I guess would be to accept the largest number that proves to be politically tolerable. With the note that you should actually try to work and solve problems people have. So if we want to focus on "high-skill" immigration, that's fine with me. Or if we want to take action to spread immigrants out geographically, that seems like a reasonable policy to me.
“ I think immigrants make us a better country. ” How so? Better in what ways and why?
something like half of unicorn startups are founded by first or second generation immigrants -- and our insanely successful tech sector is one of the reasons we're a lot richer than other developed countries
So skilled immigrants in specific sectors (overwhelmingly coming form specific cultural+class backgrounds). Hardly immigrants per se. Your original claim is far too generalizing.
[Btw it’s not clear from your example that it’s necessarily so (perhaps without those immigrants more native born would have had the chance to do those things?) - but I leave that aside. ]
> (perhaps without those immigrants more native born would have had the chance to do those things?
This is, as they say, "not even wrong." There isn't a bucket of trillion-dollar tech companies that we are dispensing to qualified applicants.
Further down the thread, asking if Larry might have met someone besides Sergey to create Google with instead is like asking if John Lennon had met someone else besides Paul McCartney, could they have just had the Beatles with a different name?
Let's not leave it aside. In what sense did a native-born person not have the chance to create Google?
I’m not sure if that’s the case but you can easily imagine one. Larry page was born in the us He attended u Michigan and Stanford. Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and immigrated to us. He attended u Maryland and Stanford. What if there is some John or Jane doe, American born, who would have gotten Brin’a place in either school (both highly selective), what if he/she then had the opportunities Brin had and partners up with Page to found Google? Can we be sure that Google , or something quite similar, would have never happened without Brin?
I’ll tell you, and for some reason it makes me feel awful to say it. I work in manufacturing, and at the entry, production floor level it’s almost impossible to find native born people who will show up on time for work every day, and do the (typically quite simple) thing that is being asked of them. Most of the facilities I’m in, I don’t know how they’d function without the people, many of whom speak no English, who actually do the work every day.
I have to ask, how much are these folks being paid? At higher level roles that pay more, do you encounter these issues?
Occasionally as low as $18/hour, but new facilities are having to open at $22-25/hour to be competitive (these numbers have jumped a lot in the last two years). This is in the south, mind you. I do some work in other regions, but haven’t paid attention to entry level wages. And yes, seeing the same problem at the next several levels above that.
Greta point ! Why is it, you think, that working class Americans are less likely to be reliable? Why can’t they do it? I would say that this is evidence that the American education system and society generally is failing it’s native born (or at least the more disadvantaged among them). Isn’t it then the case that immigration is an excuse for the continuation of this neglect ? For turning a blind eye rather than trying to fix this failure of the country towards its own citizens?
Let me give an analogy: elite schools like boasting “diversity” eg of black people by accepting upper middle class black children of immigrants- which understandably tend to be better prepared - rather than facing the problem of lingering gaps and generational disadvantages in much of the native-born African American descendant of slaves. Immigration helps paper over and ignore the root problems and injustices in the country.
> Why is it, you think, that working class Americans are less likely to be reliable?
Because native Americans who are reliable quickly leave the working class.
Beat me to it.
"Americans don't want to do _____ job!"
No, people with American citizenship and fluent English have access to more jobs than people lacking one or both of those things, so they have more opportunities to opt for more pleasant or better-paying jobs.
First - we're not the US without immigrants. The United States of America is literally build on immigrants. Were your ancestors in the US 500 years ago? If not, then you and 99% of the people here are better off because of immigrants.
Second - immigration selects for people who are willing to strive and take more risk in order to improve life. This is a very valuable trait for our citizens.
Third - our people and the world are better of with more people who have American ideals. If there is a choice between Europe, China, India or America being the dominant country/market, we're better off with it being America. The best way to do that, is increase the number of Americans. Particularly, people who love America. Fourth - Citizen immigrants have higher opinions of the US than natives, are more patriotic, are less ashamed of the US. You may disagree, but I think all of these are good for the country.
I could go on, but if you are not convinced, you probably won't be.
1. Not only is it debatable that all immigrants are better off (is the average Norwegian American today better off than the average citizen of norway?) more importantly it doesn’t follow that immigrants benenfit from their own immigration will subsequently benefit from
The next one. Perhaps they will in fact be worse off? At best you have moral argument here not a utilitarian one.
2.perhaps, but it selects for much else. For example right now it is selecting for people who live in the American continent south of us, and for people able and willing to romantically attach and marry Americans. Is this good? Bad? Could there be a better way? Questions worth asking.
3. Perhaps. But how do you keep American ideals the same. Might not mass immigration change them?
4. Whatever traits immigrants have today have a lot to do with todays immigration regime , state of the country and a thisand other factors. It doesn’t follow that immigrants will always have these traits and hence isn’t an argument for immigration in genral.
Finally, it’s funny that you assume I’m against immigration. I’m general for more liberal immigration policies and would also personally benefit from them (I’m not American but my life will be dramatically easier if I were!). All I’m saying it’s a complex problem requiring broader considerations.
1) I'm not sure what you are saying with this? Should we not have accepted Norwegians then or Guatemalans now because in a hundred years their country of origin might get its act together and become a pleasant place? Or are you saying that we as a country would be better of it we hadn't allow Norwegians to come? What groups who have immigrated to the US in the past would you highlight as groups we would be better of not having?
2) Could there be a better way - sure. But I would highlight that even among the poor impoverished of humanity, most default into NOT immigrating. I submit there is something very American about picking yourself up and being willing to move thousands of miles and change cultures in order to improve your and your children's lives.
3) American ideals have changed radically through our history. Attempting to stop things from changing is futile. However, there are certain key components of the American culture that have been very resilient and I think will continue to be. Which is why people who are scared about culture changing are so foolish to me - either you believe in the American ideals to triumph, or you are simply trying to delay their obsolescence.
4) History demonstrates that immigrants influence our culture, but within a couple of generations we absorb them quite well. I'm good with that.
I don't assume you are against immigration. You asked a question, I tried to answer and provide some reasons for that answer. I view immigration as a general good (like freedom) though agree that good implementation can be complex.
People do jobs and make money.
As opposed to people born in the us?
No, in the same manner. Are you suggesting that there needs to be a choice between them?
No. I’m asking- if it’s “in the same manner” in what sense do “immigrants make us a better country “?
I've given my unpopular stance before but I think we should let in everyone who wants to come.
We don't require that native born citizens speak English, have liberal values, pay more taxes than benefits, or want to be American. Those seem like nice-to-haves, not requirements.
So no shared langiage no shared values and not even a minimum economic skill? May I ask what’s your understanding of how a society actually functions ? Esp a free one?
We don't even have an official language and we have plenty of people with wildly opposing values.
Could you be more specific with your question?
Cool, I don't want to let in hordes of people who believe I should be stoned for being gay.
I strongly believe that under any immigration policy we should keep homophobic stoning illegal.
At some distant margins there are tradeoffs between liberalism and democracy though.
If you let in enough of the developing world and allow them to vote, then maybe homophobic stoning wouldn't stay illegal (but thank goodness for our undemocratic supreme court who would not allow that)
Of course, but just look at certain European countries with much looser immigration policies than ours to see how many immigrants have brought these activities with them from the third world to the first world. The grooming gangs in England and the concerningly high level of support for ISIS (I think it was around 1 in 5 according to polls?) among French Muslims back when ISIS was big come to mind.
Fair enough - I’m in favor of not stoning people for any reason, and especially not for being gay - but I’m wondering why “immigrants” are necessarily more likely to be homophobic than the millions of native-born Americans who already are.
"We don't even have an official language"
This falls in the category of "technically true but practically false." English is the de facto official language, being used by the government, schools, businesses, and social organizations for almost everything. English is spoken exclusively by a significant majority of the population and spoken competently by the vast majority. A non-anglophone in the US is at a huge disadvantage in almost all areas of life.
And yet, if they want to come they should be able to.
Enforcing a language requirement on newcomers that we don't on the native-born population seems foolish to me.
We do enforce a language requirement on native borns, though?
It isn't an official "Speak English or we will fine you / put you in jail" requirement but there are huge swaths of life that are impossible to live without either knowing English, or having a translator to assist you. To say nothing about things like "graduating from school", which itself gates a massive number of important activities.
You can claim that isn't technically a requirement, but that claim has about as much merit as the claim for most mobile games that they are "free to play".
How exactly would you enforce a language requirement on the native-born population?
The US is incredibly homogenous in both values and language (depressingly so in the latter case). Have you lived abroad (Canada doesn’t count)?
Two things about that. people in say Europe, can claim to be living abroad when they haven't moved half the distance my last two moves involved. I just moved back to the East Coast from the Midwest, just about the distance from London to Kyiv. I think European insularity within such small distances not our homogeneity is the less desirable status.
As to language, yes more of us could learn to speak a second language, but which one would really add any efficacy? Of the first 5 friends, colleagues, or neighbors I can think of who speak a language other than English, learning a second language would only allow me to speak to one of them in something other than English.
Until you’ve lived in a different country with a different laws different culture , different facial expression and tones of voice, even, you are, frankly, dangerously close to being blind to a whole dimension of human existence. Learning a foreign language is a small slice of that which is great but frankly neither necessary nor sufficient. Moving to the uk or Ireland will probably be sufficient to get that point across which moving within one country , no matter how geographically vast, simply could not, at least not to nearly enough extent. The point is to discover difference in things you didn’t even realize you took for granted.
I actually find Canada depressingly heterogenous. No cohesion, unlike in the US. When I visited Niagara Falls, frankly the American side felt like a country and the Canadian side felt like an international airport terminal, despite similar levels of racial/ethnic diversity on both sides.
No I haven't.
Then try it (if you get the opportunity) it might shape your perspective on this.
The society we have has taken in virtually all of either us or our ancestors and shaped them it into the society we have. All the arguments I hear now: they don't speak the language, they don't share our values, they worship a different God, are exactly the things that were said about my great and great, great grandparents.
Me, I believe in the overwhelming power of both our power to assimilate and the correctness and attraction of our ideals. I fully believe that people who come here and are welcomed into our society will be fairly easily persuaded to adopt our values. It's not like we sprang from the ground fully formed in our current attitudes.
You’re wrong to assume a passive unidirectional model (“ society we have has taken in virtually all of either us or our ancestors and shaped them”). It’s a two way street. Previous immigration waves did in fact change American society nor are our current values set in stone by a Mandate of Heaven nor is it true that arch of history necessarily bends towards Justice. The future hasn’t been written, no victory is irreversible and that’s true with or without immigration but it’s reasonable to assume that high levels of immigration would be culturally and socially destabilizing. If you like things the way they are or the way they’re tending you should be concenrend by such scenario. Unless of course you simply believe everything will turn out fine thanks to divine providence that loves the us of a irrespective of the choices we make.
The only politically valid “we” is “we the people” ie the citizens taken and a whole. The question is how to improve “us”. One way is by adding more good people to become part of “us”. The question is how to select them and then integrate them so as to make “us” better. I don’t see any paradox.
No. Native born children do not bring a separate culture with them, and they are de facto inculcated in our culture from birth. They will be steeped in our values and learn how we are expected to behave in their most tender and formative years. Society is set up to ensure every possible avenue leads children to embrace our values. Whereas someone from another culture has already undergone this process somewhere else. This comparison is silly.
The answer to this is that humans broadly consider it morally acceptable for a nation to choose immigrants, but not morally acceptable for a nation to engage in eugenics.
Is there a limiting principle? If half the population of Bangladesh wanted to move to the states, should that be allowed?
I'm fine with it.
I appreciate the coherence of your position!
This reminds me of Norm MacDonald's joke about Bill Cosby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljaP2etvDc4
At least he's not being incoherent cause that's the worst part ;)
That's more than the population of Kentucky fwiw
My god, that would be a horror show for anyone who values liberty, tolerance, and gay people not being beaten. (Not ascribing this position to you ofc, just commentary on its outcomes)
"We don't require that native born citizens..."
I don't find this persuasive. First, we pretty much have to take what we get with regard to people born in the US, there's not a practical way to deny citizenship. And second, we make an effort while they're children to teach them English and at least instill some liberal values and patriotism.
You can allow immigrant children to go to school and learn English and instill those liberal values and patriotism. That works for me.
And you can also screen their parents for those traits before admitting them as immigrants.
I would love to screen people born in the US for English proficiency, liberal values, and so on, but this is not possible.
First, the US Constitution explicitly grants citizenship based on birth in the US.
Second, even if we shredded the Constitution a situation in which there is some large internal group of stateless people is not feasible.
By contrast, prospective immigrants aren't already here, so we get to pick and choose who we admit. It makes a whole lot of sense to admit people who will improve the US and deny people who will not.
I get the idea that you're coming from the idea that it's basically unfair that some people are born in safe, wealthy countries and some people are born in unsafe, poor countries. Yes, it's unfair.
Actually, it's really comfortable unless you drown yourself in sophistry, and no other nation in the world considers it unfair to treat native citizens differently than non citizens. You might consider that evidence against your argument here.
Pretty close to you, except I'd swap out the "will pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits" with "willing to work an available job", as that's the goal we and they are looking to end, and would simultaneously handle the tax issue you mention, as people pay payroll/income taxes from what they earn from their labor, not to mention sales taxes directly from purchases, and property taxes indirectly from rent payment. I'd also strike an English requirement as long as the job doesn't require it, and I think it's something that solves itself in the end as immigrants want to participate in parts of America beyond their job. Technology may also make this easier than it was before, too.
1. Admit people described in your second paragraph, with throttling mechanisms to target a rate of about 1.5% of American population per year AND with source diversity. Citizenship for people after they're in the US working for ten years with minimal use of public funds (other than public schools for their children).
2. Strict enforcement of immigration laws; crossing the border illegally or overstaying an entry should result in immediate removal and be a strike against the offender ever entering the US under #1.
3. Asylum process should not be available to anyone in or attempting to enter the US illegally. Asylum applicants should be processed quickly. Detention may not be practical, but failing to report for asylum hearings should result in immediate denial and a prohibition on ever entering the US again.
4. Only grant birthright citizenship to people born in the US to at least one parent holding some kind of legal status in the US.
5. Vastly trim family and chain migration. Create some kind of "grandparent's visa" for foreign citizens 65+ with several children/grandchildren in the US as citizens or in #1.
I wouldn't limit it to those who can speak English. Anyone who profiles as being able to easily become proficient in English should be included too. There are a lot of people who are capable of learning pretty quickly.
A lot of our pro-immigration leanings are a reaction to how traditional and assimilationist our imports from the south are. Most work very hard, just want to raise a family and try to learn English (I’m around lots and lots of immigrants in manufacturing and these are just my anecdotal observations). If we were importing a large population of, say, religious fundamentalists who have no interest in assimilating then I think we would look at this very differently.
Maybe. But I'd worry more about importing lazy godless welfare statists from places like Norway.
If you think this is a counter argument, you’re wrong.
Your idea is very theoretical. Your criteria are hard to execute in practice.
oh I'm totally sure of that. We could use proxies like education for earning potential and tests to gauge alignment with American values, but it would be very far from perfect as well as being administratively difficult.
I believe the 9/11 hijackers were well educated and certainly quite wealthy individuals?
My sense is that American progressives have a very 19th cent naïveté about the inevitability of progress and the power of education.
My sense is that we should probably bar Western European immigrants. Y'all can't seem to get with the program on immigration, too rooted in your history, culture, and the attendant blood-and-soil nationalism.
:-P
yeah basically! I don't want layabout French people coming here to not work and complain about our lack of a welfare state
Funny you say this, I actually know a French guy who came here specifically because he hated that in France you're effectively totally banned from working more than 48 hours a week (or whatever the cap is) even if you want to. He's came up in the trades and loves the sweet sweet overtime pay. He's in his 50s or 60s now and came over in his 20s, when France was even more overregulated than nowadays.
Being able to pick and choose our immigrants is very good!
I'm less worried about that and more worried about them, you know, degrading our capacity to assimilate immigrants into something akin to Germany's or, god forbid, France's.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. They think immigrants are uncultured, unwashed, illiberal people, and thus five generations later their descendants are at least illiberal, if not uncultured and unwashed.
That's the last thing we should want native-born Americans to start believing. So let's keep the social contagion out and confine the French and Germans to tourist status.
yeah but if you asked them questions to gauge willingness to accept American values (e.g. is freedom of speech good, are westerners evil infidels, who won the super bowl last year, etc.) they may not have passed that test
Human beings generally have a right to pursue happiness and shouldn’t be kept imprisoned in the place they happened to be born.
There should be an orderly process to screen out special cases such as violent criminals but outside of pretty narrow special cases no country should be able to forcibly control its population flows.
Forcibly keeping someone somewhere he or she doesn’t want to be seems to be per se immoral and if you or I did it no one would doubt that. States shouldn’t be able to do it either.
Since debates are usually about allowing people in rather than allowing people to leave I am not sure this analogy really works here.
When you are imprisoned you are not allowed to leave a certain place. If a state denies you entry they are not saying you can't leave where you are, they are saying you can't come here.
It's less, "I've locked you in my basement" than it is, "I am not allowing you to enter my house".
I am more supportive of open borders than most but I am not sure that the argument that states shouldn't be able to control their borders is likely to gain a lot of purchase.
It's inconsistent to think that people have a right to pursue happiness/live wherever regardless of where they're born and also oppose rich people in droves moving to Hawaii or Fiji or the Maldives or wherever. (Not saying OP believes this, but it's a common view on the left that moving from central america to the states is good and just but moving to hawaii is settler colonialism).
I super don’t believe that. I believe where you’re born is a random fact about you and it is no more moral to legislate who can buy a home or work somewhere based on it than it is to say Jews can’t buy property or blacks should be subject to lynching.
Should you be able to decide to live in whatever house or neighborhood you want whether or not you can afford it? The housing you're born in is also a random fact about you
One wonders what is the maximum size of group that is allowed to restrict the entry of others. I assume everyone in this comment section locks their front door at night, so one house is okay.
If you live in a row of townhomes and you really like and trust your neighbor, are you allowed to lock your front door, but install a lock-free door on your shared wall? How about neighbors on both sides?
There are weird questions about how property is even justified, but private property is a different thing from national borders. If someone can afford a residence, it’s weird to put an extra restriction saying that they need to have been born in the right place to rent that residence.
I am for open borders but I will say that I think lynching is worse than border control.
I mean it’s worse but at an abstract level it’s the same principle. Your rights are determined by random factors impossible to change or very hard to change ones like religion.
Yeah, didn't mean to imply that you did, just that many hold relativistic positions on this topic.
“You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here”
I don’t think it will but controlling individuals based on something random like birth seems as bad as any of the other kinds of exclusionary discrimination and is as bad as racial or religious or any other once common practice.
“Imagine theirs no countries, it’s easy if you try”. No, John, it’s actually easy only if you don’t try. If you actually think about it seriously, how exactly can your world function without countries, and what are countries without borders ? I’ve yet to hear a serious theoretical model let alone an empirical example!
Wasn’t this pretty close to the 19th century US? I mean there were some marginal restrictions but come on in what’s our default posture and it worked out pretty well.
You said “ no country should be able to forcibly control its population flows.” that’s never been the case in the us- only in failed states. The US *chose* a liberal immigration policy for a while. It was quite orderly, to my knowledge, had pros and cons, and eventually changed with evolving politics and circumstances. My beef with you is qualitative not quantitative. It’s about the principle of sovereignty. Allowing many people into your home is far more similar to allowing few people than it is to saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to decide and that in fact your home is everyone’s home
If we had had a welfare state during that time, and travel had been as easy as it is now, I guarantee that there would have been strong border controls.
I'm not sure that would have been feasible. We struggle to enforce borders now, the ability to have strong border controls on a nation the size of the US in 1880 would have been very, very difficult.
Right. Not enough state capacity.
But do you know what we did have the capacity for back then?
Banishing unwanted people from settlements and cities and letting them (likely) starve out in the wilderness.
And that very real risk would have deterred most would-be migrants. Better to stay home where you have a social support network to help you survive.
What if the next wave of immigrants all came from places where people are incredibly opposed to LGBT rights and enough of them settled in your area that it changed who got elected?
This concerns always seem kind of concern-trolly but to take it a face value.
If those people came, became citizens, and voted then the laws would change. Screening potential immigrants by political values seems sort messy. People voting for things we don't like sucks but that is kind of part of democracy.
That's a normal part of democracy, but if we really are letting in "anyone who wants to come" we're talking about tens of millions of people from places were homosexuality is still a capital crime because that's what the populace wants.
And there's clear differences in voting by county of origin. Venezuelans are a Trump-and-GOP-supporting group. If 10 million were allowed to settle here next year, that could easily swing elections.
Hand-waving these kind of societal changes away is sort of a mirror image of "concern-trolling". It feels like you're not seriously engaging with the potential risks of an open border proposal if you're not thinking about them
You don’t get to vote within a year of arrival.
What about the streets? The schools? Not concerned about filling them with unabashed homophobes ?
People here seem to think we hand out ballots on arrival. We have ton's of Americans we don't even let vote.
Yes immigrants might vote in a way you disagree with.
It's sort of wild the GOP hasn't realized this and just opened immigration to all these anti-LGBT Trump voting people.
If they did we would suddenly see some "we need to build a wall", "how many is too many" vibes from many of the people who are pro-open borders today.
Is it actually true that we might have tens of millions of people coming to the US from countries where homosexuality is a capital crime? How many people live in such places now and how many do we think would immigrate?
Most of the world is homophonic by us standards, regardless of the legal situation in their country. Here’s a nice example involving literal caucasians (to all those pro open brides people hasting to imply racism!):
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66145898.amp
People who don’t take these concerns seriously are usually: 1. Straight 2. Not following the situation in Europe (including the uk). It doesn’t even have to be about the vote and the law. It starts with just making the streets unsafe again. What to do about the concern is a second order question. The first step is to admit that we have a problem.
We have a hypnotical problem.
Are there places in Europe that are rolling back Gay Rights? Is homophobic crime globally going to increase if more people are able to come to countries where it is illegal?
In reality, I agree- it's a bit concern trolly. But based off of the hypothetical Andrew presents, I think it's a legitimate counter. Andrew has put forth a policy whereby the US adopts an immigration policy that essentially says "if you come to the US and want to live here then you have to be allowed to do so and you can become a citizen." The People's Republic of China has over a billion people. What's to stop them simply sending 400 million of them to the US in a political invasion and thereby legitimately electing a congress and President that is now beholden to the PRC? It's obviously a ridiculous concern in real life, but it highlights how absurd such a policy would be in practice. Not to mention that even smaller scale actions could have serious impacts- geopolitical enemies can make widespread forced immigration in targeted ways and towards targeted communities to disrupt the American political system. Don't like California's environmental policies? Movie large numbers of voters into highly progressive communities to tip the balance of power within the state.
Sure, it's a silly thing to be worried about, but it's a silly policy that Andrew is putting forth, so might as well have some fun with it :)
"Don't like California's environmental policies? Movie large numbers of voters into highly progressive communities to tip the balance of power within the state."
I mean you can do that within states already. Get a few hundred thousand friends and flip the Dakotas and Montana.
If the People's Republic of China wants to send us 400 million new Americans I think that would work out less well for them than they were hoping.
I think you're underestimating the difference between an individual citizen living in the US who wishes California's politics were different and an autocratic government that can forcibly order large groups of their own citizens to relocate for political gains. The PRC has a little bit more control over its citizens than I do over the actions and lives of a few hundred thousand of my like minded fellow citizens.
Another example to highlight the absurdity- instead of the US, lets say Ukraine had adopted this immigration policy. Which do you think would have been easier- Russia to have invaded Ukraine with huge numbers of soldiers or Russia to have bussed huge numbers of individuals across the border for the length of time necessary to elect the government of its choosing?
It's not trolly at all. It happened in Hamtramck:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned
Respectfully...you are simply wrong.
Canada would disintegrate if we didn’t have strict border controls. Even the boost in immigration numbers is beginning to create strains in the normally welcoming attitude.
What is the point of having nation states, if it can only be maintained by doing per se immoral things to maintain it.
Stop to think for a second here, the obvious answer is that a world without nation states would not be a moral garden of eden utopia. It would be a world where people banded together in other social groups (let's call them "tribes") and did immoral things.
Somalia and a few other failed states / very remote, off the grid areas, like the highlands off Papua New Guinea, are the areas that are following your model
Extreme "no I actually DO mean defund the police" vibes from one side of this conversation.
Great, now all the rich people have private goon squads and live behind their own walls, and all the poor people are just this teeming soup. But it's PRINCIPLED, so that's okay!
If the only option is one kind of horrible or another why should anyone care about anything at all?
It isn't immoral or a nation-state to control borders based on whatever that nation-state desires.
What is the principled difference between your rights being determined by race or religion and birthplace?
You’re just assuming border controls are immoral. Few share your view. Border controls are no more immoral than the door of your house.
The point is survival, not moralism. Morals are most often a luxury.
What other random happenstances should we reduce people’s freedom for? Everyone agrees that it would be super bad to have a policy that Catholics can’t come here in any country. You can stop being Catholic. It is worse to keep someone from going where they want to because they were born in Burundi (to pick a random place).
Oh, a few thousand other ways, give or take.
Because 'reduce freedom' is ridiculously nebulous.
You seem to be trying to reduce humanity to some kind of atomized soup of individuals, but it is not (and I think will never be) such a thing. Just as I don't let people come into my house unasked, we don't have to let people come into our country without our permission.
Yes that’s exactly my goal. Atomized individuals with strong global human rights that apply without any special circumstances and no need for intermediary smaller organizations for basic rights.
That sounds nightmarish to me.
And given global opinions on collectivism vs individualism, I suspect it would to most of humanity.
You would basically have to prevent social groups from practicing any kind of 'positive' discrimination (preferences for 'their' people).
And I suspect you are going to have to be very heavy-handed to do so.
You allow your children to live in your house and eat your food. Why is okay to not allow someone else's child (me) to live in your house and eat your food? Are you just depriving me of freedom because I happen to be born to someone else?
I would go all for only skills based immigration with some for refugees, but only for people in iminent danger or who are mass-displaced by war or natural disaster. Many people I know came to the US as students and I think this is a great pathway to select for young, smart industrious people. It does seem slightly silly to outsource the job of deciding who gets in to college/grad school admissions committees, but they’re looking at it from a self-interested lens of who will benefit them by doing a good job as a student, and isn’t that basically what we as a country want?
I'm fairly restrictionist, but not an absolutist. I also very much like that America is much less dense than Europe and have no desire to reach One Billion Americans. 400-500 million seems like a reasonable place to end up at eventually. Immigration policy should be geared toward two aims:
1. Maximizing the well-being of American workers
2. Getting the best and brightest from around the world
No diversity lotteries, cut way down on chain migration, no using H1B as a way to undercut American prevailing wages (I'd restrict it to only focus on true outstanding talent - no more companies just using it for mass cheap hiring of junior devs). Stop other abuses as well like the abuse of J1 visas as a way to get cheap seasonal labor. Create a seasonal farmworker program like the old Bracero Program that has no path to citizenship.
Require immigrants to speak English well, and ensure immigrants line up well with American values - they aren't bringing third world values of clannishness, honor killings, violence toward women, and the like. This will be more of a problem in some regions of the world than others, but I don't care, life ain't fair. I am very much a Fortuynist on this issue.
Adjust the national immigration quota upwards during boom times and downwards during bust times, instead of a rigid fixed quota.
We should also figure out how many immigrants we can assimilate at once, and use that as an upper bound on the immigration level. I'd guess that would be no more than 125% of the current level.
"I also very much like that America is much less dense than Europe and have no desire to reach One Billion Americans."
There will still be huge low-density areas in a 1BA scenario. A population of one billion spread across the land area of the contiguous forty-eight states is only 338 people per square mile, which less dense than Florida or New York State are currently.
Both of those states are *way* too dense for my taste, Florida in particular.
Florida in particular? But Florida is the less dense of the two.
Also... have you ever been to rural parts of either? Florida has eleven counties that are less dense than Nevada, for example.
NY's density is more concentrated, so upstate feels pretty empty. Yes, the FL panhandle is pretty empty, but 3/4 of its landmass is the peninsula, which is basically the definition of sprawl hell.
The fact that people will be concentrated in certain places while others are nearly empty is exactly the point. In a 1BA scenario there will still be large low-density areas in the US, just as there are right now in the FL Panhandle and Upstate NY.
Is it relevant where they are coming from and whether they are in iminent danger of harm? A refugee from Venezuela that has travelwd through Mexico to get to the United States would seem to have a poor case by that standard, since they were most recently in Mexico, not Venezuela, and were therefore no longer in iminent danger.
Yes, and that gets at the heart of why the asylum claims are an abuse of the international system. In the last SB post Dara and Matt used an example of an LGBT person in South America who might not find any of the intervening countries welcoming, or a person threatened by cartels in El Salvador who is pursued into Mexico.
I don't think they bought these argument, they were just using them as examples of the kinds of thing that may be argued. But I thought they went to show how bad that line of reasoning is. Of course there are places that are more or less welcoming to LGBT in Latin America, just like there are here! And if drug cartels are using their small number of international links to pursue someone internationally, chances are that person is an actual cartel member that double-crossed them. Most of these gangs are local and they aren't going to waste their time pursuing the average citizen threatened with extortion across international borders.
Legally I don't know, but factually I think you'd have to know first whether Mexico's asylum system is fair and actually can be relied on grant asylum to people whose claims are meritorious.
I believe I saw a Pew study that shows Mexico is one of the CoI tries that has a more negative appraisal of illegal immigrants than the US. I bet their asylum something is a large part of not stopping people going to the US.
The Texas busing to Chicago has been super effective at raising the salience of the boarder crisis around here. My parents are talking about it. It's great politics. Lightfoot just declared a "state of emergency". It perfectly exposes the hypocrisy of the "Sanctuary City" Trump-era rhetoric. It's all fun and games until facilities are overrun -- and what do you think is happening in Texas right now? I hope Abbott keeps it up and it pushes the democrats to police / close the illegal boarder flow.
https://abc7chicago.com/migrant-caravan-sanctuary-city-lori-lightfoot-chicago-migrants/5249464/
https://www.axios.com/local/chicago/2023/05/03/chicago-migrant-buses-texas-lightfoot
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/01/chicago-mayor-urges-texas-governor-stop-busing-migrants
https://news.wttw.com/2023/05/09/lightfoot-declares-state-emergency-humanitarian-crisis-posed-surge-migrants-accelerates
Totally agree. It's really backed these progressive states into a corner and they all sound like hypocrites. Lightfoot said the migrants in Chicago "suffer under the humanitarian crisis you have created." *YOU*! As if Abbott had anything to do with this. Adams said the city "is being destroyed by the migrant crisis." Are you kidding me? You're now dealing with like 1/10th the scale of the problem Texas is dealing with and this is your reaction as a "Sanctuary City". I believe this Biden's weakest position vs. Trump. Trump really did build his wall. Biden really did halt it. I think immigration is gonna be the #1 issue here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/us/politics/immigration-politics-2024-election.html
Agree. But we're 6 quarters away from the election and while inflation might continue to come down the looming credit crisis in commercial real estate and corp. debt has me worried the broader economy has a steeper landing coming.
EDIT: Also shoot ... The Fed just pumped in $300B in emergency lending and no one seems to be talking about this.
Recession. 100%.
The right's position on immigration is bad.
The left's position on immigration is incoherent.
If you dig a little deeper, you'll find the right's position is also incoherent, while maintaining their status of being bad. They'll claim to uphold American values, but don't want to be a nation of immigrants, in the land of opportunity. They'll claim it's about jobs, but don't want to reduce any of the incentives for employers using an illegal work force with no bargaining power. Then they'll complain the labor market's too tight, and the wage increases are driving inflation. Then they'll claim it's about preserving judeo-christian values, then still seek to restrict folks from majority catholic countries. There's even more when they start to consider who should or should not receive citizenship.
In all of this, the easy way to make sense of it is, both partisan abstractions are formed of a variety of people and institutions, and expecting absolute coherence is more of a user problem, than a practical way to resolve anything.
Don't get me wrong, the right's immigration position is light years worse than the left's. But even a super racist "only let in white immigrants from Norway" policy is *coherent*.
The left's position seems to be that they're opposed to open borders, but also opposed to any enforcement or deportation. The political faction that's closest to an immigration policy that's both good and coherent is the libertarians.
Is the right's position "only let in white immigrants from Norway" because that's way more coherent than I've ever heard from an elected republican.
I think you're picking very specific examples to form very specific partners to shadowbox with, because now you've actually articulated a very coherent immigration policy from the left. (I'd gripe that "the left" are usually portrayed to want "open borders" but maybe we're tuning into different news sources.)
And if anything, Libertarians are hardly coherent about anything. Are you talking about the Mises Caucus? Or the Marginal Revolution cohort? Or the Caplan cohort? Or the Ron Paul cohort? Or the Cato Institute?
That seems like confirmation no one's ever said "only let in white immigrants from Norway."
It also seems like confirmation that right wing immigration policy is more incoherent, because, surprise, the US does take in people from places like Norway.
"they'll claim it's about preserving judeo-christian values, then still seek to restrict folks from majority catholic countries"
People on the right don't want to openly say it, but they are really concerned about letting riff-raff into America. They think that immigrants have screwed up governing their own ['shithole'] countries and are fleeing elsewhere. They are frightened the cycle will repeat in the US if too many are let in. That's what it boils down to.
I think much lower asylum claims and more >>controlled<< immigration would reduce crankiness on the right.
Both Republicans and Democrats believe in "demographics is destiny," and both believe that increasing immigration will deliver eternal, unchecked power to Democrats. Which is why Democrats want open borders and amnesty and Republicans want a wall and mass deportations.
This is pretty new stuff, though. For a long time, immigration split both parties, with pro-business vs. nationalists on one side, and internationalists vs. labor rights on the other. I wonder how long the current polarization will last, and if we'll ever see some sort of reversion to what it was before.
If 20 years old is pretty new, then sure. The Emerging Democratic Majority was published in like 2004. I'm more interested how the movement of Hispanics in to the Republican Party affects this dynamic.
"25% of Hispanics are marrying non-Hispanics (mostly White people)"
Most Hispanics consider themselves White people...
Are there coherent political spectrum positions on immigration?
Just adding some context as an Australian.
1. Useful to think about where the majority of our migrants come from. By a wide margin it’s New Zealand, followed by the UK and Western Europe (China and India round out the top 5).
2. Australia (like the US) considers itself a nation of immigrants and the country has been notably changed by different waves of migration. Polish migration post WWI, mass British and Italian migration post WWII and mass Vietnamese migration after the war.
3. There has definitely been backlash to migration - see the reasonably successful ‘One Nation’ party.
4. There’s been bipartisan support for what is a quite inhumane system of offshore detention.
5. Most migration is skills based and works on a points system.
I'm surprised New Zealanders even really considered immigrants in Australia. My impression was that due to very close cultures and legal freedom of movement between AUS/NZ, they're fundamentally "different" even from people coming from somewhere like the UK.
Yeah. Even similar people moving en mass can create tension (see how people in other states respond to Californians) but I think its less intense--they drive the housing prices up but that’s about it.
Recently migrants have been coming mostly from Asia (https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/research-and-statistics/statistics/country-profiles/profiles). Still some from the UK and NZ, but migrants are overwhelmingly Asians.
Assuming we accept this premise it seems like the question becomes, given that we do have a large southern border, is there a good, humane, cost effective way to control the flow of people so that we can get support for immigration that we do want?
Deterrence methods and obstacles seem like they may increase the danger and enforcement by border agents or law enforcement seems like a tough area.
Employer-centered enforcement is the only way to do this without playing Stasi at the border or Gestapo on every street corner.
A working e-verify system and general enforcement of immigration rules on the employment side would go a long way and I think would matter more to economic migrants than a wall. There is a loss of freedom with such rules, though I think the bigger problem is needing to tie it to some sort of [amnesty] deal for the 11 million or so without papers that are integrated into American society.
[Update: I originally referred to an asylum deal, but that was the wrong word. Thanks to Ethics Gradient for that note. By amnesty, I mean any of a range of possible residency or citizenship deals in the style of past such amnesties and tied to e-verify and other enforcement measures to credibly address the attack of "won't there just be another amnesty in a few decades?"]
Why? Why should people who willingly came here illegally (ie as adults) be rewarded? Exceptions aside we should aspire to get them all to leave, and sanction them for their crimes (eg kick them to “the back of the line” for visas)?
Because they've lived here for years (10 years is a standard cut off), have contributed to our society in a range of ways, typically have strong family ties, and and we can set criteria on good behavior.
Grandfather clauses are common when making large shifts because even if a new policy is a better arrangement all around, enforcing a new equilibrium on the past is often massively disruptive. Such clauses also reflect that we can judge what has already worked in retrospect. Many of the ancestors of people born in this country came at a time when there were no real restrictions on immigration or strictly racially based ones. The choice made by our elected representatives to not enforce a meaningful e-verify system was in no small part a conscious decision to accept a grey-zone labor force that would work for cheap. I think that's a bad equilibrium, but people that broke the rules but have been in the country for a decade have generally paid harsh dues in other ways and any amnesty deal would likely be conditioned on that.
The way I'd put it is that if you've been a constructive member of society for 10+ years, then you've already repaid your debt to society.
What if instead we just allow them to stay and work and live with their families and friends. You know, to really punish them.
Lol.
I didn’t say they should be rounded up. But rewarding them with citizenship isn’t a solution either. Make everify totallly universal. Make the unemployable and ineligible for any welfare. Then give them some small carrot if they leave (eg they’ll be eligible to apply to enter legally after 10 years). Make humanitarian exceptions that will get permission to stay but no path to citizenship (eg the elederly). Replace all the deported with legal immigrants who waited patiently and followed the rules. Do all this and then you could naturalize the “dreamers” without incentivizing further illegal immigration.
P.S.
Basically we should follow the following principle: illegal immigrants broke the law and jumped the line. They’ve *already* been rewarded by living in a higher gdp country all these years while those following the legal path languished in their home countries and were relatively disadvantaged. A just solution would fully force them to pay back this entire gap of wealth+some fine for breaking the law. The solution I proposed would in fact be more lenient than that and in many cases reward them in the net, but to a far less egregious scale than commonly proposed.
Not sure what #1 means. #2 is even more true for family than country. Far more so in fact. What follows ? I’m all for social democratic redistribution policies. But I’m not a communist. I don’t believe in abolishing the family and abolishing countries and abolishing the very legal systems all of which Marx calls for in the manifesto. Do you?
I agree with your broader point, but will note that Plyler v Doe was a 5v4 decision. I think if this was in front of the court today, it wouldn't reach the same result (the majority did have 4 concurrences, so unsurprising there).
Will also note, the law was struck down because the court overruled the legislature on whether there was a "compelling state interest." This is the type of jurisprudence that progressives loved when they held sway on the court, but now decry with conservatives gaining a sizeable majority.
You are correct that e-verify (in addition to long visa processing times) are major reasons Canada avoids an illegal immigration problem. I think the problem at this point is that internal enforcement is totally unworkable; people who have lived here 15 years, have US citizen kids, legal resident spouse, etc have a far stronger moral claim against deportation than the new asylum seekers Biden welcomed in a year ago. But how do you differentiate that with internal deportation and employment verification? You can't. The same problem applies with awarding asylum to a more deserving unauthorized immigrant who arrived a decade ago vs one who arrived last year.
That's a large part of why I suspect legal immigration is in political trouble. Everyone increasingly agrees the wall is a shtick, and internal enforcement under both parties controlling the White House hasn't peaked since Obama's first term (over a decade ago!) If Yglesias's imagined Democratic party of immigration prudence could promise staunch internal enforcement to deliver with expanded legal immigration, then it would exist. It can't, and accordingly it doesn't. The party has made the recent asylum seeker problem much worse. So with no amnesty (unfair with recent arrivals) and no harsher internal enforcement (unfair with older arrivals) on the table, I suspect RAISE is closer to what's left. Cutting overall visas is a certainly a one way to reduce the number of visa overstays, even if it's not ideally the best way.
My stylized fact understanding is that the total undocumented population has been steady for some time. That makes it a lot easier to set a decade cut off as a practical matter.
What would make it politically viable is a set of champions from the Hispanic American community that reflect the larger makeup of that often socially conservative demographic. There are deeply pragmatic parts of the Democratic coalition, but there is a justified reticence to impose solutions originating from leaders without strong ties to most affected communities.
Minor point of order: I think you mean “residency deal” or “citizenship deal” rather than “asylum deal” - asylum is a specific extra-ordinary immigration channel, generally in practice based on membership in a particular (disfavored or discriminated against in country of origin) social group (there are other bases on which to aoply but they apply with less frequency). I would tentatively assume that the majority of the 11 million in question woulnd’t qualify as having valid asylum claims.
Because asylum is both intrinsically hospital to irregular means of entry (rather than, say, requiring a visa) and not numbers-limited, it’s become a very attractive avenue for migrants of all stripes to invoke a basis for non-removal (and release into the interior of the U.S., and also generally entitlement to a work permit after 150 days without a determination since it doesn’t really do anyone any good to preclude participation in the regular labor market by those awaiting an asylum determination.). This is the basis of the concern Matt is invoking above, but a key takeaway is that “being in the U.S. without authorization” isn’t really the basis nor the crux of asylum claims - it’s much more about flows and the conditions of entry (as an immigration policy matter) or else the conditions in an asylum claiman’t country of origin (as a matter of adjudication.)
Correct! I meant to say amnesty deal.
Exactly. If we are finding a majority thinks we should be able to control the flow of immigration, an obvious/important question arises: CAN WE?
(I mean, we try to control many things, often without success.)
Yes, with a wall/fence.
honestly I would like more people to evaluate "Wall" as a serious policy. I took a good long look at it and my analysis was that it's an incredible effort that will make very little difference. People already go right over the chunks of wall that they have! And they build tunnels under! And walling off the Rio Grande is difficult and a real loss for the people who currently have access.
I'm just not convinced people who have made it through the Darién Gap are going to make it to one final 30 foot wall and be like "nope, THAT is the final obstacle that's too hard to pass. Let's turn around."
This seems like defeatism. If we simply annex Mexico and also, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama we could have a much more manageable southern border.
"real NAFTA has never been tried!"
"If we simply annex Mexico and also, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama we could have a much more manageable southern border."
I know you're sort-of joking, but my takeaway from visiting Panama and learning a lot about its history was that the US should have just annexed Panama and given it statehood around 1900. The benefits to the US (make the canal a domestic rather than international issue) and Panama (access to the US, investment, stability, security) would have been huge.
I actually think it'd be interesting and worthwhile to offer Panama statehood today. Chinese influence has been on the rise there. This would be a win-win for us and Panama, if they're interested. They get economic development, we get the canal. Perhaps Costa Rica too, though I doubt they'd be interested.
The rest of Central America? Firm no thank you.
I mean, here's a little history lesson if you've ever wondered why we didn't do that in the first place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_of_Mexico_Movement
"Identitarian ideas inherent in Manifest Destiny suggested that Mexicans, as nonwhites, would present a threat to white racial integrity and so were not qualified to become US citizens"
who knew Mexico would come with so many Mexicans?
So, absent a wall/fence, how do you stop illegal immigration? (BTW, I'm not anti-immigration. I'd love to see 10X the legal immigration we have today.)
Walls do work. Look at how well the Berlin Wall kept East Germans from emigrating.
Here's more on the Berlin Wall BTW: https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/europe/berlin-wall-fast-facts/index.html
Two relatively short walls (just 27 miles in Berlin) creating a zone in between (the "death strip") that had landmines, attack dogs, and snipers ready to shoot on sight. Yucky business... Takes us into "are we the baddies?" territory in my opinion.
So at the Berlin Wall, it's not so much that people couldn't get over the wall itself, but that they shot the people who tried. That was a powerful incentive. As a thought experiment, are you willing to do that at our Southern border? I am not - my mind recoils from the thought.
I take the question of how to control population flow at the border seriously, but I am not sure how effective it can be. That has never been a closed border, you know? It's the 10th longest land border in the entire world and includes the busiest land crossing in the world.
I'm just a guy writing comments though. I would appreciate some genuine policy insight on how border enforcement could be made more effective. Right now the discourse is weak because many Republicans are fixated on a simplistic & ineffective Wall idea, but Democrats do not want to engage with helpful ideas on "you know what would REALLY stop immigrants?" It's a real policy vacuum IMHO.
Not that I endorse shooting anyone but there's a big category difference between restricting people from leaving your country vs restricting people from entering it. (It's not weird for you to not let me in your house, it is weird for you to not let me leave mine).
I have a relative who works at the upper middle range of immigration policy, and has done so both in and out of government. I mentioned to her once that I had told some anti-immigrant friends that unless we're willing to machine gun them at the border, they're coming. Her response was we would need to machine gun them all and not miss. Because if word gets back to the terrible little village or barrio that someone got through, more will come.
Have we considered building a wall?
If someone is going to figure out how to cross a hundred mile desert, they’re going to figure out how to cross a wall in the middle of that.
I hoped it would be obvious I was joking
There are several people in this thread who seem to be earnestly advocating it!
Fair enough haha
You got me too! Online irony is sadly impossible but it's always worth trying.
"And while Ron DeSantis’ weird stunt of flying people to Martha’s Vineyard mostly backfired..."
Did it? This stunt completely dominated the media for several days. Plenty of people got huge satisfaction at seeing the absolute pandemonium caused by delivering a mere ~50 asylum seekers to a location associated with wealthy leftists.
I think it backfired because Martha's Vineyard is not a realistic place of settlement. DeSantis is just really awkward and makes his publicity stunts look dopey (or Dopey, given his spat with Disney).
The migrants being moved off MV quickly under massive media coverage was more feature than bug for RDS. Fair or not, the rapid relocation of migrants away from the second homes of wealthy liberals was gleefully seen by a lot of Republican voters as an example of liberal hypocrisy.
It seemed like an excellent application of #4 and #6 from "Rules for Radicals."
"Trying to get in on the joke too late" is basically DeSantis in a nutshell, is it not?
Another point: I think america functioned well in the recent past -both generally and esp as a nation of immigrants- because of a strong ethos of respect for the law. Whereas other countries attempted to entice compliance with seat belt by stressing the benefits, in America you could have a slogan like “buckle up it’s the law”. But there is a sense of growing lawlessness and chaos. At the top you have a former President (and presidential candidate) doubly indicted. At the bottom you have homeless encampments taking over more and more public spaces, people urinating in broad daylight or smoking in public transport with impunity. It’s not nostalgia- it really didn’t use to be like that (in living memory) and it’s not sustainable. We need to go back to enforce the laws, both in terms of the police and party discipline (ie kick out politicians who deviate from norms a fortiori laws)
This is the hardest political issue, because the normal, rational, practical person in me agrees wholeheartedly with the sensible reforms outlined here and in the comments (tougher asylum policy and a more orderly legal process), but on a deeper, darker level I feel like anything short of open borders is basically morally indefensible.
What does the US owe non-citizens? Nothing? Well, no, the premise of the international asylum regime is that we do have some obligation towards them simply as fellow humans under some circumstances. It’s not just charity; it’s something we owe.
But the problem is that no matter how you define the specifics, admitting that we owe *something* opens the door to other things. (Why should a wealthy Venezuelan with a credible fear of political violence have a greater claim than an “economic” migrant trying to escape crushing poverty?) Once you agree we do have obligations towards non-citizens, the whole shaky premise of the state having immutable sovereignty over a particular patch of land and the citizens of a country being special parties to a “contract” bound up with that land starts to feel absurd.
There’s only one reason a Honduran migrant has less claim on the resources of the US than I do: The accident of birth means the power of the state is on my side and not his. Which is whatever, but that cold hard explanation just refuses to square with the universalism at the heart of all liberal political ideas. Asylum is the wedge that exposes the arbitrariness of the international system and the disturbing fact that the state as such is fundamentally incompatible with seeing all humans as fully human.
OK and now I snap back to the world of daylight and think “why can’t the US have a sane conversation about immigration policy?”
You’re the second person here saying this and I find it very strange to be honest. On the philosophical level you seem to have a problem with the basic notion of having spectrums and the fact that drawing the line always involves certain arbitrariness. But that’s just any rule necessarily works. It doesn’t negate its utility or moral justification. You do actually have to draw the line somehweee and you need to learn to live worth the power of contingency.
Well, yes, and as I said, I am fine with drawing the line somewhere RE: asylum for practical reasons. But I think you’re missing the larger point. The moral problem is the *lack* of a spectrum. The system creates a stark, qualitative division between “citizen” and “other” that I just don’t see a way to justify outside of tautological appeals to state authority.
You can debate how meritocratic our society actually is, but generally speaking it doesn’t explicitly sort citizens into castes. Every US citizen, theoretically, is equal under the law. That's a pretty bedrock principle, and I think it’s part of why Jim Crow felt so wrong even to many midcentury white people who might not otherwise be too sympathetic to Black families — the idea of having a separate class of citizens with separate rights, conferred only by birth, just doesn’t make sense.
But immigration status definitionally sorts people into castes. Citizens have more rights than non-citizen residents. Everyone with papers has more rights than those here illegally. And why? An accident of birth. It’s the system we have, and we have to live with it, but I’d rather not pretend it’s not fundamentally amoral.
It's justified by the empirical evidence of millennia of civilization. Successful cultures have created privileges and responsibility for those who hold a stake, and kept non stake holders from interfering. It's possible, but deliberately difficult, for outsiders to gain entry into citizenship. It's practical and helps ensure the survival of the mother culture and the nation. That survival is the root of morality. Without survival, there is nobody alive to be moral.
<< “why can’t the US have a sane conversation about immigration policy?” >>
At least one of the reasons is because we had these Democrats give legitimacy to the Abolish ICE narrative ... which then anchors on a position so radical where can you even start?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/politics/abolish-ice-democrats-list/index.html
Deciding to be nice and share doesn't mean it's an obligation. It means we've decided to be nice and share because it makes us feel good.
“Owing nothing” and “open borders” aren’t the only options, you know… if you’re wealthy you may feel obliged or simply willing to do *something*’for the poor but it doesn’t follow that the only moral course is to give up all you have…
This is just strange to me,
Not sure whether the issue is psychological or philosophical and I agree it’s probably not worth debating (or at least I personally lost patience with these abstract philosophical debates) but i admit to finding it strange, and do wonder to what extent these semi emotional semi philosophical differences drive much of our politics.
This is why despite having mostly conservative viewpoints, I subscribe to this Substack. I want to see Progressives who aren't histrionic, and he seems to be one of the few that gets any attention. It is good to see his opinions, even when I disagree. Matt mentioned in a previous article that he didn't think he reached any Republicans, but I bet he reaches plenty of normie Republicans. At least I read his stuff, FWIW.
It has been disgusting to me to see that people freak out when Trump talked about building a wall (even a broken clock is right twice a day), but yet Matt is intelligently pointing out that uncontrolled illegal immigration seems to be a big negative for most any thinking human being.
I think it could be summed up that most Americans think that illegal immigration should be harder and legal immigration should be easier. But you have to shut down the illegal pipeline to do that, and Progressives immediately scream racism and the whole conversation goes up in smoke. Therefore we don't really have any sensible immigration policy in the USA.
One point Eric Kaufman makes is that the conservative movement in Canada is basically bifurcated between conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois. Imagine if an evangelical party almost exclusive to the Deep South ran alongside Republicans in national elections. This probably makes it harder for conservative issues to win nationally in Canada.
Doesn’t the Bloc Québécois also have an angle that might be seen as hard left on some policies?
Back in the day they were pretty red in the European radical way. Currently SocDem in the European centrist way. Left compared to the US and Canada in general.
That's what the Dixiecrats tried to be in the 60s.
"Imagine if an evangelical party almost exclusive to the Deep South ran alongside Republicans I'm national elections."
I think this would be great. The now-smaller Republican Party would probably be much more reasonable after jettisoning a lot of the most religious people.
I'm not so sure about that. Irreligious right-wingers are some of the scariest people alive. You end up with weird eugenics and ethnic stuff at the fore as opposed to Jesus stuff. Even if the Jesus stuff is misconstrued and in bad-faith, I think it takes the edge off of the purely Darwinian conception of humanity.
I think this suggestion isn’t particularly politically realistic. Categorically, grand bargains on contentious social issues are a sort of centrist political myth. Bipartisan deals on the specific issue of immigration have been failing since the 1980s— even under conditions when elements of Republican leadership were much less hostile to immigration than the party is now. The incentives for the most hardcore restrictionists to tank the process have always been too strong— they get closer to getting what they really want by maintaining the muddled policy status quo and stoking anti-immigration sentiment than they would by compromising.
Biden trying to do a compromise deal now would set him up for an embarrassing “Lucy pulls the football away”-type public legislative failure and raise the salience of immigration going into an election cycle— which David Shor and others have found tends to help Republicans even when Democrats’ particular position statements test well. Much better at this point to use administrative and diplomatic levers to manage the situation at the border and use the admin’s legislative agenda and public messaging for either pushing bills that have a genuine chance to pass or highlighting issues where the Dems have their strongest public opinion advantages.