I would like to play devil's advocate a little bit.
First, I think that the European response to Syrian refugees was still enthusiastic at this stage of the crisis. I believe it took some more time for the attitudes to go where they are today.
Second, I'm not really sure that Europe is very enthusiastic about resettling Ukrainian refugees right now. Temporarily hosting women, children, and elderly people, while the rest of the country is fighting? Sure. But permanently resettling families (including non-elderly men) as was the case with Syrian refugees? Not so sure. In addition, the fact that many men from the Ukrainian diaspora return home to fight also creates a different dynamic and supports the argument that "These are real refugees and not immigrants posing as refugees.".
Third, I believe that the refugee crisis that Lukashenko created on the Polish-Belarusian border deserved a mention in an article like this explaining Polish attitudes towards migrants.
Finally, I find the racism angle completely wrong, because it tries to Americanize a very different set of attitudes. I think the problem with Europe is nationalism instead. The "Polish plumber" stereotype in Western Europe existed despite the fact that Poland is a country whose population is predominantly classified as "white" by Americans. It probably did contribute to Brexit after all. Moreover, to use Godwin's law, racist Nazi policies didn't spare white Poles and other Slavs. I think that here we just have a set of attitudes that can't fit within American racial categories and attitudes towards whiteness.
What is indeed true is that Americans on average are MUCH MUCH more open to any person who comes from elsewhere than Europeans, and as a European who lives in the US I'm very grateful for this! I feel more welcome here than my friends from back home who live in other European countries.
Reading further I am struck by how once again, any discussion of events outside the Us never lasts long before it becomes a discussion of the US...total ethnocentrism.
Are you talking about the article or this comment? Cause the comment is about America because the article largely is. And the article is because it is written by an American in English for a primarily American audience.
It's like hanging out in a record store and wondering why so many conversations you overhear are about music.
It is about the comments in general, and comments in American media in general. I read a lot of them.
I am struck by how little interest Americans have in actually discussing and understanding the world outside the US, always interpreting any foreign issue through a US lens, etc.
Now you are telling me I shouldn't expect Americans to be interested in anything outside the US...lovely.
That would be your analogy. Since Matt wants to relate the Euro-experience to possible changes in American immigration law, it might be like standing in the jazz section of an old Tower Records (do the kiddies out there even know what that is?) and talking about jazz.
C'mon, just recently Matt had a long post about the Hapsburg Empire and another about the Russia/Ukraine history. Waddya want? American spoken here!
When the invasion started there was an apparent "expert" on Twitter claiming that the reason the West didn't care about the invasion was because there were too many black people in the Ukraine. Forget the fact that the part about the West not caring was wildly incorrect, but the Ukraine has less black people than almost every country in "the West". But respectable people where amplifying her insanity because Woke Americans are some of the most insanely parochial people in the world.
I think you have to be careful when using Britain as an example of anything to do with European attitudes towards immigration. We're just a very different case, due to feeling less European than those on the contininent, something that was reflected in people making less of an exception when it comes to Ukrainian refugees than Syrian ones (and that's true for both pro and anti-asyulmn sides). In the EU the situation is a bit clearer - Poland was the country that had to take the refugees in, and it has freedom of movement with the rest of the EU, so it's really just a recognition of reality that the wider EU has made itself open to Ukrainians - short of suspending Schegen they had no alternative. And I do think you can see in the attitudes of European conservatives a distinction being made, in a way that wouldn;t in Britain or America.
Okay, that's fair, we don't consider you guys European either. :P
However, stereotypes around Eastern Europeans aren't/weren't limited only to the UK. They helped lead the charge against the Bolkestein Directive for example, or the French rejecting an EU constitution in 2005. A more recent example is the attitude towards Portugal-Italy-Greece-Spain and the associated acronym. I think we just don't like each other in Europe, regardless of whether Americans think we are all white or not. :P
I'm not really sure what difference it makes to say that the differential treatment of Ukrainians is being caused by "nationalism" as opposed to racism. Either way, Ukrainians are being given far more hospitable treatment than Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, etc. etc. fleeing comparable crises. Objecting to the charge of racism doesn't excuse the injustice of that; all it does is expose the extent to which nationalism is used to legitimize the same bigoted impulses that fuel racism and religious bias.
I didn't say that nationalism is the reason for differential treatment of refugees. I just said that it's a more accurate lens than racism to view European matters in general. I also said that we'll have to wait for a few years to see if there is indeed differential treatment of refugees, and I offered reasons other than nationalism (such as the fact that many Ukrainian men either stay behind or return from abroad to fight) to explain disparities too. Finally, I would like to point out that Ukrainians that come to the EU, unlike the other nationalities that you mention, come to the first country across the border to avoid war, and this comes up frequently in debates in Europe.
It makes a huge difference in understanding the psychological mechanism involved, and so understanding what the issue is, which is essential in understanding how to deal with it if you consider it an issue worth dealing with.
In those early days after the Arab Spring, the UK press coverage was surprisingly sympathetic to refugees. But the enthusiasm didn’t last long. The heart-warming stories of rescue featured mentions of family sizes that were double or triple what any modern Brit was having. As for this immigration resistance being racist, I wonder what poling in the UK might have shown at the time. Would multi-generational Brits from the West Indies and South Asia really have voiced a notably higher level of welcome than Euro-origin Brits? Their house prices, too, were spiraling out of reach. It was to the Labour Party’s great discredit that their message to voters was that had no right to any input, at all, into immigration levels.
Writing from Poland, there's two things I'd want to note. One is that while Ukrainians are seen as 'fully European/just like us' now, that was definitely not the case before the start of the war. Russians, Belarusians, Georgians and Ukrainians were definitely seen as different from 'proper' Europeans (we include ourselves there now), and you'd occasionally hear derogatory comments about those groups of similar kind you'd hear about Mexicans in the US. The geopolitical context of facing the same threat – and Ukrainians making it very clear that they wouldn't side with Russia – has changed the Polish/Ukrainian dynamic to one of much greater solidarity.
Secondly, the Polish attitude towards migrants has always been a bit weird – and yes, tinged with racism. No country issued more residence permits to non-EU migrants than Poland, and while these were almost all from Eastern Christian nations, many of these people are Muslims from the Russosphere. Nevertheless, the government fought tooth and nail against accepting a single Syrian refugee. Poland also has a strong historical memory of being a country of emigration, so people struggle a bit psychologically that it's now a destination. No specific point, but it has been a bit more complicated than the white/colour binary that American racial politics always imposes.
Poland is genuinely fascinating because it's Government actually did not take offence to Brexit, and even used it as an excuse to campaign for Poles to return home. The basic dynamic is that Poland lost workers to the richer parts of the EU, but gradually became richer than it's non-EU neighbours, and so started attracting economic migrants from the likes of Ukraine and Belarus to plug labour supply bottlenecks.
That's another really interesting aspect. There's no talk of 'they're stealing our jobs' but 'good they'll shore up the labour market.' It's widely understood that they're need for a wide variety of service-sector jobs and as a tax base.
It's also pretty interesting that the refugees are almost entirely women and children. This definitely helps with the empathy – there's an attitude that the we're protecting families while the men are fighting – but I have no idea how it'll play out economically. Luckily Poland, while patriarchal in a whole bunch of ways, seems to be very good at female workforce participation.
I think the Polish expectation is that war will be mostly resolved within 18 months so most Ukrainians will return home (the law recently passed used that the timeframe). However, some percentage of those that have found jobs in Poland will remain in Poland while those who haven't will basically all return to Ukraine.
Europe has had a wildly different history from the New World, every nation has a long history of conflictual relations with others, and long histories of developing different cultural, languages and identities.
Ukraine right now is fighting for its national cultural identity against a powerful neighbour that wants to dominate it, which is in the long historical tradition of Europe.
Ironically, Putin is also fighting for basically nationalistic rather than ideloogical reasons, but his interpretation of Russian national identity conflicts with that of Ukraine, just as Hitler's conception of Germany's national identity conflicted with is neighbours'.
And BTW, an important factor imo is that for Russians, WWII and "fascism" has more to do with conflicting national and ideological identities than with the Holocaust and Jews. That for them was secondary to the Great Patriotic War.
I'd say just accept Russian immigrants 18-35, period. Each person working here is someone not getting conscripted, and makes Russia's own dependency ratio that much more difficult.
Let's run the counterfactual to the "everyone cares about Ukraine because Ukrainians are white Christians" BS and swap the populations of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Does anyone really think that Europe would look at an invasion at its Eastern border and say "Wait, hold on, it's just a bunch of a Muslims, we don't have to do anything." The reason that everyone is freaking out over Ukraine is because a nuclear-armed (former) superpower run by an authoritarian quasi-dictator invaded an Eastern European country, full stop.
Oh, but there are ongoing conflicts in Africa that didn't get this much attention! There has been a hot war in Eastern Ukraine since 2014 between Russian-backed separatists and regular old Ukrainians who want no part of it. Many people have been killed. Schools have been attacked. And yet it was not on the front page until Russia actually invaded. Oh, but what about Syrian refugees! Germany took in what, over a million? And that was an internal conflict, not an invasion, regardless of what countries backed which sides of the civil war. Oh, but... no, shut up, there is no parallel to this situation! Even the historical analogies are a stretch because nothing like this has happened in the nuclear or information ages.
This is not a situation where peer nations are threatening each other. It is not a civil war. It is not sectarian violence. It is not the US "promoting democracy" with bombs. Russia, a giant country with piles of nuclear weapons and a massive army, is trying to capture and occupy a peaceful country without provocation for the purpose of expanding its borders. Anyone who tires to flatten that down to crude binaries and make some stupid point about white supremacy is an amoral zealot who should not be taken seriously.
This post makes a couple of valid points but is rather infuriating overall by muddying the waters and conflating the moral debate on refugees with an economic debate on immigration. We open our doors to refugees because their life is at imminent risk, regardless of economic benefit to us. Thus we welcome the elderly, for instance, the unskilled etc indiscriminately from the rest. By the same token, howeve, such acceptance of refugees should be *temporary*. We can and should hope for a relatively swift resolution in Ukraine, ending in Russian defeat - and western governments should work harder to assure this outcome. Soon after this is achieved refugees should be first encouraged, then possibly required to return home - and most would be happy to do so.
Finally, sympathy for Ukraine may have many reasons , but the no. 1 reason is that it’s a democracy fighting against an unprovoked assault of an authoritarian regime seeking to eliminate its freedom and enslave it, and clearly not planning to stop there. In response, moreover, the people of Ukraine are bravely sacrificing all to defend themselves and indirectly the entire free world. *That’s* the no. 1 reason for the great solidarity, and it’s maddening that it’s not explicitly mentioned in this post.
I think that point 21 of "23 thoughts on the war in Ukraine" shows that Matt may attribute Ukrainian determination to nationalism instead. I agree with this assessment. I think that Ukraine scores even lower than Orbán's Hungary in the Freedom House index, and I don't consider Hungary to be a "real" democracy. Moreover, Ukrainians seem to chant "Slava Ukraini", which I think is much more closely aligned with past nationalists than past democratic reformers. In return, the Russians apparently accuse them of being followers of Stepan Bandera. Based on all these I think that the conflict is much more easily explained as a clash of two different nationalisms, which would align it with the majority of European conflicts in at least the past 150 years.
However, I think that Americans have a hard time understanding European style ethnonationalism, and for this reason "Ukrainians fight because they are nationalists." sounds somewhat disqualifying and not worthy of support. On the other hand, I fully want the resistance of a smaller nation to prevail over the huge empire that tries to absorb them, and I would support the Ukrainians even if Zelenskyy was a dictator. To use a completely different example, I understand the desire of my Catalan friends to have their own country, even though I don't consider Spain to be an autocracy.
It is rather the dichotomy between ethnonationalism and democracy that is very America-centric. Historically the two developed hand-in-hand in Europe even if each does not necessarily include the other. As for the "Slava Ukraini" motto, its history is rather more complex than Russian/Soviet anti-Ukrainian propaganda would have us believe, but regardless, if it is now being wielded by Ukraine's democratically elected, Jewish, president, who's main goal is to get his country into the EU, it can hardly be considered to be exclusively or predominantly associated with national chauvinists of the racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic, exclusionary, type, but rather the rallying cry of the broad, inclusive, kind of nationalism (which Americans prefer to call "Patriotism") that goes hand in hand with, and is arguably indispensable to, the defense of a free society.
I have made the first point many times in these comment sections! I'm European and I believe that European democracies are mostly fine, so of course I know that ethnonationalism is very compatible with democracy.
As far as Russian/Soviet anti-Ukrainian propaganda is concerned, I have no idea how it might look like, but I suspect that it's pretty ugly based on the fact that nationalists in every European country usually hate nationalists of neighboring nations against whom they have fought in the past.
Finally, Spain has a democratically elected leader too, but the Catalans I know still want to liberate Barcelona. Hungary has a democratically elected leader (and scores higher than Ukraine on Freedom House), but my understanding is that his approval rating in the West isn't nearly as high as Zelenskyy's is. Moreover, Israel has a democratically elected AND Jewish leader, and I think his approval rating in the West is lower than Zelenskyy's too. Furthermore, many Americans thought that the democratically elected American leader named Donald Trump was probably racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic, and exclusionary.
I think that what I'm trying to say is that Russians could somehow overthrow Putin and manage a quick conversion to a democracy (let's say, like Estonia), but that wouldn't make Ukrainians want to be ruled by an extremely democratic Kremlin even if that meant that they would get more democracy than what they currently get.
I think the western media is portraying the Ukrainian fight as an idealistic one over democracy, when it is basically a nationalistic one, for its national identity, but the latter is no longer a politically correct reason to fight a war so is getting downplayed.
I mean, Ukrainian national identity is kind of a "nice to have" compared to democratic self-determination. Ukrainians are fighting because their cities are being seized by force, not just because Russia wants them to act more Russian. From the Russian perspective, sure, it's about wanting Ukrainians to return to a more Russia-centered national identity, and their democracy (shaky though it was) just stood in the way.
Democracy is "nice to have" compared to national self-determination, people have been fighting for the latter way before the former.
Today for Ukraine, identification with the West rather than Russia is a large part of what makes them fight for democracy, but it is also just the most recent form that national identity has taken, they like Poland and other nations were fighting against would-be conquerors for centuries.
I agree that the fight for Ukrainian national identity is probably the actual leading motivator in resistance to the current invasion with preserving democracy being a nice secondary motivator. Ukrainians fought for independence (or at least autonomy) from Russia twice before in the past century (Russian Civil War and WW2) and there's very little evidence that those efforts had anything to do with democratic aspirations -- the clear emphasis was getting away from Russian rule, with the question of what form of government to adopt being something for later consideration.
The links below have relevant information on the subject. While the first Ukrainian national government was at least nominally democratic, it was formed under the aegis of the Central Powers and lasted barely a year before being replaced by a military dictatorship after the Central Powers found it too autonomous. All the subsequent instances of Ukrainian national governments (or attempts at national governments) were pretty clearly themed around the idea of liberating Ukrainian soil first and with the question of what form a permanent government should take coming later.
I'd go further and say fighting heroïcally against would-be invaders is a central part of the national identity of Ukraine, Poland, and other small peoples.
One of the great virtues of literally any other medium than Twitter is that you're not required to append "...and that is bad" when discussing things that are obviously bad.
I think what you see as muddying the waters is Matt's entire point, viz. that immigration is good and we should take every opportunity to do more immigration. Ideally we would be more open to everyone, but if a particularly sympathetic population comes along then we should take advantage of that instead of complaining about double-standards.
I think it's rather cynical, and dangerous, to conflate the immigration debate, which is complex, and in which there are very good arguments on both sides, or at any rate, both sides are quite legitimate, with the urgent humanitarian need not to turn away refugees in immediate danger for their lives. Many people who are immigration skeptics could be sympathetic and indeed supportive of generous asylum policies (as is indeed the case, I believe, in certain midwestern US states, though this is downplayed by both sides in the US due to polarization, which conflates the legal immigration, illegal immigration and asylum debates. three related but distinct issues). Moreover, such conflation lacks intellectual rigor. It blinds us from understanding likely causes of *why* the Ukrainians are more sympathetically received right now than others (or indeed compared to Ukrainian migration previously!), nor are the perceived benefits from an economically driven immigration plan fully congruent with the demographic profile of a refugee population etc. etc.
In short, MY piggybacks on the unfolding humanitarian crisis to merely recycle arguments for his old, and only very tangentially related, ideas. This is not convincing, and rather distasteful. It comes down to "let's save people's lives because it benefits our selfish material interests". This is both a morally repugnant stance, and factually dubious in many cases (and thus counterproductive for both the asylum AND immigration debates).
"the immigration debate, which is complex, and in which there are very good arguments on both sides, or at any rate, both sides are quite legitimate"
The author of this website, and the large majority of readers (myself very much included), don't think that the immigration issue is that complex- we think that immigration is an unalloyed good on multiple fronts. I struggle with a reading of American history, the world superpower and number one economic, financial, military, scientific, technological and cultural power on planet Earth, where you look at everything we've accomplished and say 'yeah, we don't want too much immigration here'. Immigration was the actual cause of these things, due to having a huge population if nothing else! We, the author of this website and the readers, are generally pro-immigration, so I don't think your arguments are going to be too persuasive here
"Soon after this is achieved refugees should be first encouraged, then possibly required to return home - and most would be happy to do so."
I think the second part is correct: probably most will be happy to return home once the war is over. But that being the case, why on earth should we force whatever number of them have found their new homes congenial to move? Our *checks notes* long history of problem assimilating slavic immigrants?
Keep in mind that there are two phrases of a refugee crisis. The temporary shelter stage and then if the conflict is prolonged the permanent resettlement phrase. The vast majority of refugees in conflicts want to return to their old homes, but want to wait out the conflict in a safe place. It's only when a conflict becomes prolonged/countries becomes to destroyed that they shift to wanting permanent resettlement.
Right Ukrainian hope/believe that the war will be over in a few months or at least within a year, so they can return to Ukraine. That's a significant factor why most of them are staying in neighboring countries. It's when a conflict seems likes it will be never ending, that refugees shift away from finding temporary shelter to shifting to try to find a country for permanent resettlement.
I believe it's more likely than not that some kind of settlement in the war will be reached within six months, although a prolonged war is still possible. So right now the focus should be on ensuring that neighboring countries have enough resources to host Ukrainians not trying to permanently resettle Ukrainians in other countries, since that's not really want Ukrainians want right now. (Of course its good for other countries to also host Ukrainians and its good to help those that want to immigrate permanently to do so).
A sidenote, in the early months of a conflict, there's usually a greater willingness to host refugees, it's when a conflict becomes prolonged that sympathy dries up. Remember there was a six month period when Germany was very welcoming to Syrian refugees but that welcome dried up . Right now Europe is welcoming to Ukrainian refugees, but we shouldn't expect that welcomeness to stay at this high level when public eventually gets fatigued.
This is only tangentially related to the issue here, but I wonder how much of American immigration politics is based on false assumptions about how the legal immigration system actually works. Like, I strongly suspect that a lot of people have it in their heads that an honest, hardworking person from anywhere who speaks or is willing to learn English and is willing to adapt to American customs can find a way in if they're just patient, when in fact this is not the case.* Hence the apparently greater salience of "border security" vs. TPS for people who are already here--if you think anyone who "deserves" to come here already can, everyone trying to circumvent that system is "undeserving" and therefore rightly excluded.
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* An exercise to illustrate this problem: Imagine Carlos. Carlos is a journeyman baker at a panadería in Juárez. He speaks halfway-decent English and has some distant relations across the border in El Paso (his grandfather's brother moved there in less-restrictive times). He genuinely appreciates certain aspects of American culture (big football fan) and occasionally sees his American relations at holidays.
One Christmas, he's talking to his second cousin Sam, a bit of a whiz-kid who got a scholarship to the Wharton School of Business. Sam was complaining about how the Mexican food in Philly kinda sucks (it does), and also commenting about how good the pan dulce Carlos brought was. Carlos mentioned that he'd baked it himself.
At this, Sam had a business idea: bring Carlos over to bake pan dulce in Philadelphia. There's an opening in the market because one of the two decent panaderías in town had closed (COVID casualty). Plus Carlos's pan dulce, while merely very good by Juárez standards, would absolutely blow anything else available in Philly out of the water. For Carlos's part, he'd be interested because at this relatively early stage of his career, he's not really making great money and he's nowhere near running his own kitchen.
Prompt: Identify which visa, if any, Carlos is eligible for. (Please do not assume he will meet/marry an American citizen for the purposes of this exercise. Note also his American relations are strictly those descended from his grandfather's brother, and Carlos has no formal education past high school.)
None, of course, unless he's under imminent threat of death back home and can prove that to the satisfaction of some State Department bureaucrat *and* an asshole from DHS.
I have not. My fiancee and I keep hearing about the Mexican-food scene in Norristown, but for various reasons never make it out that way. I'll put a pin in that one to try when we do get out there. (I have been to Norristown exactly once, 2+ years ago, for an early-morning appointment with the Department of Environmental Protection to peruse their records in relation to a case. We got done around 11. My colleague didn't want to have Mexican food for lunch/was afraid we'd end up waiting too long and miss our train. We got Popeye's and missed our train anyway, so took the NHSL-->El back to the office .)
Lol it's mostly that full-time work and near-full-time student mean my fiancee has basically no time to do any exploring--she steals just enough "free time" to visit family and friends. And Heaven forbid I eat any Mexican food without her there to approve or disapprove lol.
Racism exists and its a problem. The handful of cases on the Polish border where people were racist is wrong and awful, and those people should be held to account, but a couple observations:
First, it is natural for humans to empathize more with people who are like them. To use a banal example we feel it and care more when someone in our family has cancer than when a random stranger has cancer. In real terms: both cases of suffering are (all else being equal) the same, but the family member gets more empathy. The same is true for broader tribes.
Of course Europeans are more empathetic to Ukrainians than they are for Syrians. First Ukrainians look and speak a lot more like most Europeans, so they feel the pain more. Second, Ukraine is a country being invaded by an historic imperialistic power which, in living memory, brutally dominated much of Eastern Europe. This means that this is familiar to many in Europe (they have literally felt Ukraine's pain), AND there is an additional incentive to be welcoming to Ukrainians: other parts of Europe might be next.
Americans, I think, due to our historical and cultural ties to Europe feel many of the same impulses. A war in Europe, where millions of Americans came from AND where historically America has spent hundreds of thousands of soldiers off to die, means more than, say Afghanistan, a country with few ties with the US.
So is it racist for the Ukraine war to matter more to Americans? I do not think so: I think the stakes (for understandable and obvious reasons when you think about it for more than 10 seconds) are higher in Ukraine than they were in Syria, than they are in Ethiopia, or in Chad, or (pick another country currently in conflict). This is before we get into the geopolitical implications of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Let's take Syria. Syria is a mess, which has upended millions of lives. The humanitarian concerns in Syria are almost as bad as Ukraine (Syria is, IIRC, about half the size of Ukraine but was hurt worse). But what are the geopolitical implications if Syria is in shambles? To the US? Not much. Syria is not nuclear armed, turmoil in Syria is not going to cause one of its neighbors to become more hostile to the US. Overall, to the average American, the Syrian conflict won't matter much.
Ukraine, bluntly, is different. America is in a military alliance with nearly all of Ukraine's neighbors, who are now tensely fearful of Russian invasion. Russia is an historic adversary to the US, is making demands of America in exchange for peace, and has more nukes than any country on earth. The Ukrainian conflict has serious security implications to the US.
Second, like all foreign policy issues, Americans LOVE to make FP revolve around our own domestic squabbles. Hence the debate on NATO. This may come to shock most Americans but NATO really is not the driving force behind this conflict: this war is about Ukraine and Russia, and basically that's it. Our focus on NATO is detrimental to understanding the conflict in my view. If we want to learn more about this conflict, we should learn more about Russia and Ukraine, not about our won foibles in Europe since 1991.
I think the main point is that it does not matter whether or how racist it is. The time to dwell on that question is the next time there's a refugee crisis in a nonwhite country. Dwelling on it now can only have the effect of punishing Ukrainians, who are not at fault.
I think that’s fair, I’m pointing out there are multiple reasons why people can care more and emphatically concluding something’s racism when other explanations exist is lazy analysis and assumes the worst unfairly.
I don't think this article needed the "anti-racists are at it again" section at the top. It's really a boilerplate "immigration is good, especially in a tight labour market" piece. Especially when it's so weakly made: the man quoted at the top is a producer at a Pakistani gaming channel?!
In a way, it's even a little ironic. The headline is "the mainstream media is using the Ukraine crisis to talk about its favorite topic." Then this article goes on to use the Ukraine crisis to talk about _Matt's_ favorite topic.
I think it is a legitimate policy issue that TPS in practice serves as a permanent suspension of visa rules. Moreover I believe this misapplied policy contributes to the political view that the immigration system is “broken” which drives a lot of otherwise sympathetic voters to more nativist politicians.
As the party of expanded government, my view is that Democrats should care when policy is bad and working poorly.
I cannot understand why Biden does not do the same with Venezuela. It has all the same characteristics? white, Christian, well educated on average, and symbolically important as showing hostility to "Socialism." Economic and political benefits.
From Gwen's comment immediately above you: "in the early months of a conflict, there's usually a greater willingness to host refugees, it's when a conflict becomes prolonged that sympathy dries up."
I'm not advocating this on the basis of sympathy, but policy. I doubt that Republicans could complain to much if Biden sanctioned "Russian ally Venezuela" with refugee status for their "tyrannized people." Or maybe just threaten to and try to flip Maduro out of the Russian camp and toward market reforms.
Uh ... right. Irish/Italians/Jews have no "white"- "non-white" issue. Of course Venezuelans are not "white" in terms of US political culture, but neither are Ukrainians.
Italians are darker skinned. Many Sicilians and Calabrians have substantial amounts of Arab DNA.
Irish are white as can be and show a) otherness can exist despite skin color and b) pale skinned others are more assimilable than African Americans descended from slaves.
“In an inflationary, full employment economy you can’t generate prosperity *for anyone* by pushing up nominal wages in labor-intensive sectors of the economy.” (emphasis added).
This is absolutely false. Higher wages for shitty, low paid jobs generate prosperity for workers with (previously) shitty, low paid jobs. These workers benefit from higher wages much more than doctors, lawyers, rentiers, or IT workers who need the money less.
The inflationary effect of unskilled workers getting raises is minimal. The bottom 40% of American earners bring in a whopping 11% of national income. Increasing this figure by 50% would increase low end wages by 50% but would only increase production costs by 5.5%. In other words, it would increase the purchasing power of low paid workers by 44%.
Please don’t use middle class inflation grievances to kick low paid workers to the curb.
Not the point of the quote. They are saying that paying low paid workers more does not in itself generate more total output, it transfers income from others to the low paid workers. Of course to the extent that higher wages encourage more people into the labor force (maybe the nursing home jobs Matt mentions elsewhere) the DO generate more output.
And of course nothing about wages has anything todo with inflation. That's all about Fed policy.
Furthermore, wages do drive inflation because ~70% of production costs are ultimately wages, paid by either the seller or intermediate producers.
However, the fact that wages do drive inflation is used by capitalist stooges to suggest that increasing wages of low end workers is bad and they should suffer in penury until productivity increases. Never mind the fact that productivity had increased far faster than unskilled wages over the last 50 years.
A good example is a fast food restaurant. Something like 25% of the cost of a meal is paid as wages to the workers in the restaurant. Increasing their wages is inflationary, every extra dollar they make will increase the cost of a burger by 25 cents. However, the other 75% goes to suppliers, rent, advertising, transport costs, legal and accounting costs, front office salaries and profit. Some of the suppliers costs go to underpaid meat packers, but much goes to managers, truckers, gas, farmers, etc.
A wage floor would increase production costs by 20 to 30 cents for every dollar it increased low end wages. Even in a low skilled, labor intensive industry like fast food, a majority of the revenues go to managers, owners and professionals. You can increase the wages of those at the bottom without much inflation. You just have to care.
I think we are talking at cross purposes. If you assume that wages of some group are exogenously raised, several thing will happen. Employers will find ways to reduce (maybe by not very much in the short run) and (assuming it is a big enough change to be noticeable) will present the Fed with a dilemma of temporarily raising its inflation target or seeing unemployment increase.
I think something like this is what has happened during the COVID recovery. The Fed set its instruments at levels it though were consistent with 2% PCE inflation and smartly recovering employment. But it miscalculated. Employment and production did not increase as much as expected becasue of "supply chain" problems (increases in the international price of petroleum have the same effect) and the effects of COVID and we got the spurt of inflation that we got. And The Fed is dealing with that dilemma now.
Your analysis should incorporate the fact that low paid workers get so little of national income that increasing their wages doesn’t create much inflation.
It’s certainly true that increasing wages across the board does create inflation (though it is arguably a net positive if it cuts down on the share of national income going to capital). It’s also true that untargeted stimulus increases wages across the board and is inflationary. However, having fewer unskilled immigrants and/or increasing the minimum wage would increase wages at the bottom but not higher up. Such policies would be only be mildly inflationary
My way of saying that is that having to increases in the wages of low paid workers, like nursing home workers put off by COVID to attract more of them to the workforce will not create much if any of a dilemma for the Fed.
If Matt wanted to say that increasing low end wages doesn’t increase total output, he should have said that. I would have agreed. However, he used language which suggests that redistribution can never create prosperity for anyone, which is just wrong
I will again quote myself: How else could catch-up wage growth (catching up to past productivity increases) for the bottom 50% *possibly* express itself except by inflation outpaced by wage growth in the bottom half?
No one has given me a satisfactory answer aside from "inflation is bad".
The reason to have inflation at a targeted rate is to allow relative prices to adjust when some prices are downwardly sticky. Wages of low paid workers could rise relative to others withing the target range. If not, the Fed will have to allow above target inflation for a time or force slower changes in relative prices that will result in higher unemployment.
With a series of supply shocks the least worst think is to allow temporarily higher inflation. The key is to keep expectations of inflation in the long run on target ("anchored"). Right now I think there is a danger of them becoming unanchored. TIPS expectations for inflation over 10 years is well above target and the relation between the 10 year and 5 year expectation implies that markets are no longer expecting under target inflation in years 6-10. None of this catastrophic. But the Fed has a tough job of allowing enough inflation in the short term to allow for supply side shocks while persuading markets that ii does still intend to bring inflation back down to target.
I hope this also will be extended to Russian political refugees. I know Russians opposed to Putin who have fled to the US and are now stranded here with no clear immigration path. If we opened the doors to Russian dissidents and high skilled Russians, the brain drain would accelerate their decline. It is scary to be opposed to Putin in Russia and we should be welcoming Westernized and anti-Putin Russians with open arms.
Maybe we should pass a law that says anyone who gets jailed in Russia for protesting the war is eligible for a visa. (Might have to massage the precise language, but that would be the general idea.)
Probably no...because then Russia decides that all the people in jail for murder are there for protesting the war and grants them the ability to take our offered visas. Then bad stuff happens when you get a bunch of murders coming over and the backlash impacts all the refugees.
Some of those murderers would find a fresh start, and become law abiding citizens. As for the rest…well, that sounds like yet another good reason to fund the police, no?
"The current situation is more or less exactly what Poland’s foreign policy has long wanted" - as a Polish-born U.S. citizen, I have to say, that's cold. Really cold. I mean, I get what MattY is saying, but pregnant women being killed by Russian bombs is not what anyone in Poland has "long wanted."
Also, I'm sure that racism plays a role in Poland's differential response to Ukrainian vs. Middle Eastern refugees. But I want to signal-boost a point made by many other commenters: there's a huge difference between "we're accepting a bunch of women, children, and elderly while the men are back in their homeland, bravely fighting off an invasion" and "we're accepting a bunch of people, including a lot of young men."
Stereotype alert: Young men, especially unemployed and unmarried ones, are the major demographic that gives rise to crime and social unrest in any society. See Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" for details. You can bet that if the Ukrainian refugees included many men along with women and children, the host countries' response would be very different.
Reading and listening to some British press in the last few weeks, they noted some amnesia snot Syrian refugees -- Merkel and other EU leaders initially supported admitting huge number of Syrians before the political issues of admitting low skilled immigrants to high welfare countries with tight labor regulations became impossible to ignore. Part of the reasonable bits of One Billion Americans is that we do a mildly better job of limiting the roadblocks to hiring a new immigrant in many ways by providing fewer workers guarantees ( easier to fire makes it easier to hire).
On the other hand, just listened to a podcast with a recent British immigrant and *wow* we make the paperwork to transfer money and setup bank accounts take a couple months for no good reason, which forces them into a weird cash economy limbo for way longer than I would have expected, largely due to forcing immigrants to wait until in country to a social security number...
Germany stuck by welcoming Syrian refugees. There are an estimated 600k in Germany today. There are also 100k in Sweden, which is an even higher share of its population.
I would like to play devil's advocate a little bit.
First, I think that the European response to Syrian refugees was still enthusiastic at this stage of the crisis. I believe it took some more time for the attitudes to go where they are today.
Second, I'm not really sure that Europe is very enthusiastic about resettling Ukrainian refugees right now. Temporarily hosting women, children, and elderly people, while the rest of the country is fighting? Sure. But permanently resettling families (including non-elderly men) as was the case with Syrian refugees? Not so sure. In addition, the fact that many men from the Ukrainian diaspora return home to fight also creates a different dynamic and supports the argument that "These are real refugees and not immigrants posing as refugees.".
Third, I believe that the refugee crisis that Lukashenko created on the Polish-Belarusian border deserved a mention in an article like this explaining Polish attitudes towards migrants.
Finally, I find the racism angle completely wrong, because it tries to Americanize a very different set of attitudes. I think the problem with Europe is nationalism instead. The "Polish plumber" stereotype in Western Europe existed despite the fact that Poland is a country whose population is predominantly classified as "white" by Americans. It probably did contribute to Brexit after all. Moreover, to use Godwin's law, racist Nazi policies didn't spare white Poles and other Slavs. I think that here we just have a set of attitudes that can't fit within American racial categories and attitudes towards whiteness.
What is indeed true is that Americans on average are MUCH MUCH more open to any person who comes from elsewhere than Europeans, and as a European who lives in the US I'm very grateful for this! I feel more welcome here than my friends from back home who live in other European countries.
Reading further I am struck by how once again, any discussion of events outside the Us never lasts long before it becomes a discussion of the US...total ethnocentrism.
Are you talking about the article or this comment? Cause the comment is about America because the article largely is. And the article is because it is written by an American in English for a primarily American audience.
It's like hanging out in a record store and wondering why so many conversations you overhear are about music.
It is about the comments in general, and comments in American media in general. I read a lot of them.
I am struck by how little interest Americans have in actually discussing and understanding the world outside the US, always interpreting any foreign issue through a US lens, etc.
Now you are telling me I shouldn't expect Americans to be interested in anything outside the US...lovely.
Re: "It's like hanging out in a record store and wondering why so many conversations you overhear are about music."
I'm the Prince of Bad Analogies but I intend to cross up my friends and defy expectations by remembering this one.
The analogy is more being in a record store with music from all over the world, but the only music anyone is interested in is American music.
That would be your analogy. Since Matt wants to relate the Euro-experience to possible changes in American immigration law, it might be like standing in the jazz section of an old Tower Records (do the kiddies out there even know what that is?) and talking about jazz.
C'mon, just recently Matt had a long post about the Hapsburg Empire and another about the Russia/Ukraine history. Waddya want? American spoken here!
When the invasion started there was an apparent "expert" on Twitter claiming that the reason the West didn't care about the invasion was because there were too many black people in the Ukraine. Forget the fact that the part about the West not caring was wildly incorrect, but the Ukraine has less black people than almost every country in "the West". But respectable people where amplifying her insanity because Woke Americans are some of the most insanely parochial people in the world.
'...there was an apparent "expert" on twitter ..." I think I'm beginning to see the problem.
I think you have to be careful when using Britain as an example of anything to do with European attitudes towards immigration. We're just a very different case, due to feeling less European than those on the contininent, something that was reflected in people making less of an exception when it comes to Ukrainian refugees than Syrian ones (and that's true for both pro and anti-asyulmn sides). In the EU the situation is a bit clearer - Poland was the country that had to take the refugees in, and it has freedom of movement with the rest of the EU, so it's really just a recognition of reality that the wider EU has made itself open to Ukrainians - short of suspending Schegen they had no alternative. And I do think you can see in the attitudes of European conservatives a distinction being made, in a way that wouldn;t in Britain or America.
Okay, that's fair, we don't consider you guys European either. :P
However, stereotypes around Eastern Europeans aren't/weren't limited only to the UK. They helped lead the charge against the Bolkestein Directive for example, or the French rejecting an EU constitution in 2005. A more recent example is the attitude towards Portugal-Italy-Greece-Spain and the associated acronym. I think we just don't like each other in Europe, regardless of whether Americans think we are all white or not. :P
I'm not really sure what difference it makes to say that the differential treatment of Ukrainians is being caused by "nationalism" as opposed to racism. Either way, Ukrainians are being given far more hospitable treatment than Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, etc. etc. fleeing comparable crises. Objecting to the charge of racism doesn't excuse the injustice of that; all it does is expose the extent to which nationalism is used to legitimize the same bigoted impulses that fuel racism and religious bias.
I didn't say that nationalism is the reason for differential treatment of refugees. I just said that it's a more accurate lens than racism to view European matters in general. I also said that we'll have to wait for a few years to see if there is indeed differential treatment of refugees, and I offered reasons other than nationalism (such as the fact that many Ukrainian men either stay behind or return from abroad to fight) to explain disparities too. Finally, I would like to point out that Ukrainians that come to the EU, unlike the other nationalities that you mention, come to the first country across the border to avoid war, and this comes up frequently in debates in Europe.
It makes a huge difference in understanding the psychological mechanism involved, and so understanding what the issue is, which is essential in understanding how to deal with it if you consider it an issue worth dealing with.
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Sorry, my reply was meant to be to Enrique Blanco.
In those early days after the Arab Spring, the UK press coverage was surprisingly sympathetic to refugees. But the enthusiasm didn’t last long. The heart-warming stories of rescue featured mentions of family sizes that were double or triple what any modern Brit was having. As for this immigration resistance being racist, I wonder what poling in the UK might have shown at the time. Would multi-generational Brits from the West Indies and South Asia really have voiced a notably higher level of welcome than Euro-origin Brits? Their house prices, too, were spiraling out of reach. It was to the Labour Party’s great discredit that their message to voters was that had no right to any input, at all, into immigration levels.
Writing from Poland, there's two things I'd want to note. One is that while Ukrainians are seen as 'fully European/just like us' now, that was definitely not the case before the start of the war. Russians, Belarusians, Georgians and Ukrainians were definitely seen as different from 'proper' Europeans (we include ourselves there now), and you'd occasionally hear derogatory comments about those groups of similar kind you'd hear about Mexicans in the US. The geopolitical context of facing the same threat – and Ukrainians making it very clear that they wouldn't side with Russia – has changed the Polish/Ukrainian dynamic to one of much greater solidarity.
Secondly, the Polish attitude towards migrants has always been a bit weird – and yes, tinged with racism. No country issued more residence permits to non-EU migrants than Poland, and while these were almost all from Eastern Christian nations, many of these people are Muslims from the Russosphere. Nevertheless, the government fought tooth and nail against accepting a single Syrian refugee. Poland also has a strong historical memory of being a country of emigration, so people struggle a bit psychologically that it's now a destination. No specific point, but it has been a bit more complicated than the white/colour binary that American racial politics always imposes.
Poland is genuinely fascinating because it's Government actually did not take offence to Brexit, and even used it as an excuse to campaign for Poles to return home. The basic dynamic is that Poland lost workers to the richer parts of the EU, but gradually became richer than it's non-EU neighbours, and so started attracting economic migrants from the likes of Ukraine and Belarus to plug labour supply bottlenecks.
That's another really interesting aspect. There's no talk of 'they're stealing our jobs' but 'good they'll shore up the labour market.' It's widely understood that they're need for a wide variety of service-sector jobs and as a tax base.
It's also pretty interesting that the refugees are almost entirely women and children. This definitely helps with the empathy – there's an attitude that the we're protecting families while the men are fighting – but I have no idea how it'll play out economically. Luckily Poland, while patriarchal in a whole bunch of ways, seems to be very good at female workforce participation.
I think the Polish expectation is that war will be mostly resolved within 18 months so most Ukrainians will return home (the law recently passed used that the timeframe). However, some percentage of those that have found jobs in Poland will remain in Poland while those who haven't will basically all return to Ukraine.
Europe has had a wildly different history from the New World, every nation has a long history of conflictual relations with others, and long histories of developing different cultural, languages and identities.
Ukraine right now is fighting for its national cultural identity against a powerful neighbour that wants to dominate it, which is in the long historical tradition of Europe.
Ironically, Putin is also fighting for basically nationalistic rather than ideloogical reasons, but his interpretation of Russian national identity conflicts with that of Ukraine, just as Hitler's conception of Germany's national identity conflicted with is neighbours'.
And BTW, an important factor imo is that for Russians, WWII and "fascism" has more to do with conflicting national and ideological identities than with the Holocaust and Jews. That for them was secondary to the Great Patriotic War.
Geez,
Can the race essentialist left not make any crisis and especially a humanitarian one about themselves?
They are so myopic and clueless about the world outside a neat little morality play they have written for this country.
Another war-related immigration idea: accept lots of anti-war skilled Russian immigrants.
I'd say just accept Russian immigrants 18-35, period. Each person working here is someone not getting conscripted, and makes Russia's own dependency ratio that much more difficult.
In the time-honored tradition of American immigration: brain drain the fuck out of your enemies, straight to victory.
I really like that idea. It’s also very American in a good way.
Let's run the counterfactual to the "everyone cares about Ukraine because Ukrainians are white Christians" BS and swap the populations of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Does anyone really think that Europe would look at an invasion at its Eastern border and say "Wait, hold on, it's just a bunch of a Muslims, we don't have to do anything." The reason that everyone is freaking out over Ukraine is because a nuclear-armed (former) superpower run by an authoritarian quasi-dictator invaded an Eastern European country, full stop.
Oh, but there are ongoing conflicts in Africa that didn't get this much attention! There has been a hot war in Eastern Ukraine since 2014 between Russian-backed separatists and regular old Ukrainians who want no part of it. Many people have been killed. Schools have been attacked. And yet it was not on the front page until Russia actually invaded. Oh, but what about Syrian refugees! Germany took in what, over a million? And that was an internal conflict, not an invasion, regardless of what countries backed which sides of the civil war. Oh, but... no, shut up, there is no parallel to this situation! Even the historical analogies are a stretch because nothing like this has happened in the nuclear or information ages.
This is not a situation where peer nations are threatening each other. It is not a civil war. It is not sectarian violence. It is not the US "promoting democracy" with bombs. Russia, a giant country with piles of nuclear weapons and a massive army, is trying to capture and occupy a peaceful country without provocation for the purpose of expanding its borders. Anyone who tires to flatten that down to crude binaries and make some stupid point about white supremacy is an amoral zealot who should not be taken seriously.
This post makes a couple of valid points but is rather infuriating overall by muddying the waters and conflating the moral debate on refugees with an economic debate on immigration. We open our doors to refugees because their life is at imminent risk, regardless of economic benefit to us. Thus we welcome the elderly, for instance, the unskilled etc indiscriminately from the rest. By the same token, howeve, such acceptance of refugees should be *temporary*. We can and should hope for a relatively swift resolution in Ukraine, ending in Russian defeat - and western governments should work harder to assure this outcome. Soon after this is achieved refugees should be first encouraged, then possibly required to return home - and most would be happy to do so.
Finally, sympathy for Ukraine may have many reasons , but the no. 1 reason is that it’s a democracy fighting against an unprovoked assault of an authoritarian regime seeking to eliminate its freedom and enslave it, and clearly not planning to stop there. In response, moreover, the people of Ukraine are bravely sacrificing all to defend themselves and indirectly the entire free world. *That’s* the no. 1 reason for the great solidarity, and it’s maddening that it’s not explicitly mentioned in this post.
I think that point 21 of "23 thoughts on the war in Ukraine" shows that Matt may attribute Ukrainian determination to nationalism instead. I agree with this assessment. I think that Ukraine scores even lower than Orbán's Hungary in the Freedom House index, and I don't consider Hungary to be a "real" democracy. Moreover, Ukrainians seem to chant "Slava Ukraini", which I think is much more closely aligned with past nationalists than past democratic reformers. In return, the Russians apparently accuse them of being followers of Stepan Bandera. Based on all these I think that the conflict is much more easily explained as a clash of two different nationalisms, which would align it with the majority of European conflicts in at least the past 150 years.
However, I think that Americans have a hard time understanding European style ethnonationalism, and for this reason "Ukrainians fight because they are nationalists." sounds somewhat disqualifying and not worthy of support. On the other hand, I fully want the resistance of a smaller nation to prevail over the huge empire that tries to absorb them, and I would support the Ukrainians even if Zelenskyy was a dictator. To use a completely different example, I understand the desire of my Catalan friends to have their own country, even though I don't consider Spain to be an autocracy.
It is rather the dichotomy between ethnonationalism and democracy that is very America-centric. Historically the two developed hand-in-hand in Europe even if each does not necessarily include the other. As for the "Slava Ukraini" motto, its history is rather more complex than Russian/Soviet anti-Ukrainian propaganda would have us believe, but regardless, if it is now being wielded by Ukraine's democratically elected, Jewish, president, who's main goal is to get his country into the EU, it can hardly be considered to be exclusively or predominantly associated with national chauvinists of the racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic, exclusionary, type, but rather the rallying cry of the broad, inclusive, kind of nationalism (which Americans prefer to call "Patriotism") that goes hand in hand with, and is arguably indispensable to, the defense of a free society.
I have made the first point many times in these comment sections! I'm European and I believe that European democracies are mostly fine, so of course I know that ethnonationalism is very compatible with democracy.
As far as Russian/Soviet anti-Ukrainian propaganda is concerned, I have no idea how it might look like, but I suspect that it's pretty ugly based on the fact that nationalists in every European country usually hate nationalists of neighboring nations against whom they have fought in the past.
Finally, Spain has a democratically elected leader too, but the Catalans I know still want to liberate Barcelona. Hungary has a democratically elected leader (and scores higher than Ukraine on Freedom House), but my understanding is that his approval rating in the West isn't nearly as high as Zelenskyy's is. Moreover, Israel has a democratically elected AND Jewish leader, and I think his approval rating in the West is lower than Zelenskyy's too. Furthermore, many Americans thought that the democratically elected American leader named Donald Trump was probably racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic, and exclusionary.
I think that what I'm trying to say is that Russians could somehow overthrow Putin and manage a quick conversion to a democracy (let's say, like Estonia), but that wouldn't make Ukrainians want to be ruled by an extremely democratic Kremlin even if that meant that they would get more democracy than what they currently get.
Totally agree!
I think the western media is portraying the Ukrainian fight as an idealistic one over democracy, when it is basically a nationalistic one, for its national identity, but the latter is no longer a politically correct reason to fight a war so is getting downplayed.
Por que no los dos? They're fighting for national identity and democracy.
I mean, Ukrainian national identity is kind of a "nice to have" compared to democratic self-determination. Ukrainians are fighting because their cities are being seized by force, not just because Russia wants them to act more Russian. From the Russian perspective, sure, it's about wanting Ukrainians to return to a more Russia-centered national identity, and their democracy (shaky though it was) just stood in the way.
I think it's the other way around.
Democracy is "nice to have" compared to national self-determination, people have been fighting for the latter way before the former.
Today for Ukraine, identification with the West rather than Russia is a large part of what makes them fight for democracy, but it is also just the most recent form that national identity has taken, they like Poland and other nations were fighting against would-be conquerors for centuries.
I agree that the fight for Ukrainian national identity is probably the actual leading motivator in resistance to the current invasion with preserving democracy being a nice secondary motivator. Ukrainians fought for independence (or at least autonomy) from Russia twice before in the past century (Russian Civil War and WW2) and there's very little evidence that those efforts had anything to do with democratic aspirations -- the clear emphasis was getting away from Russian rule, with the question of what form of government to adopt being something for later consideration.
Maybe I just lack the imagination/historical understanding to know what form of government would enable self-determination other than democracy.
The links below have relevant information on the subject. While the first Ukrainian national government was at least nominally democratic, it was formed under the aegis of the Central Powers and lasted barely a year before being replaced by a military dictatorship after the Central Powers found it too autonomous. All the subsequent instances of Ukrainian national governments (or attempts at national governments) were pretty clearly themed around the idea of liberating Ukrainian soil first and with the question of what form a permanent government should take coming later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_after_the_Russian_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists
ctnd-
I'd go further and say fighting heroïcally against would-be invaders is a central part of the national identity of Ukraine, Poland, and other small peoples.
I dont think we're disagreeing on anything? Being invaded sucks.
One of the great virtues of literally any other medium than Twitter is that you're not required to append "...and that is bad" when discussing things that are obviously bad.
I think what you see as muddying the waters is Matt's entire point, viz. that immigration is good and we should take every opportunity to do more immigration. Ideally we would be more open to everyone, but if a particularly sympathetic population comes along then we should take advantage of that instead of complaining about double-standards.
I think it's rather cynical, and dangerous, to conflate the immigration debate, which is complex, and in which there are very good arguments on both sides, or at any rate, both sides are quite legitimate, with the urgent humanitarian need not to turn away refugees in immediate danger for their lives. Many people who are immigration skeptics could be sympathetic and indeed supportive of generous asylum policies (as is indeed the case, I believe, in certain midwestern US states, though this is downplayed by both sides in the US due to polarization, which conflates the legal immigration, illegal immigration and asylum debates. three related but distinct issues). Moreover, such conflation lacks intellectual rigor. It blinds us from understanding likely causes of *why* the Ukrainians are more sympathetically received right now than others (or indeed compared to Ukrainian migration previously!), nor are the perceived benefits from an economically driven immigration plan fully congruent with the demographic profile of a refugee population etc. etc.
In short, MY piggybacks on the unfolding humanitarian crisis to merely recycle arguments for his old, and only very tangentially related, ideas. This is not convincing, and rather distasteful. It comes down to "let's save people's lives because it benefits our selfish material interests". This is both a morally repugnant stance, and factually dubious in many cases (and thus counterproductive for both the asylum AND immigration debates).
"the immigration debate, which is complex, and in which there are very good arguments on both sides, or at any rate, both sides are quite legitimate"
The author of this website, and the large majority of readers (myself very much included), don't think that the immigration issue is that complex- we think that immigration is an unalloyed good on multiple fronts. I struggle with a reading of American history, the world superpower and number one economic, financial, military, scientific, technological and cultural power on planet Earth, where you look at everything we've accomplished and say 'yeah, we don't want too much immigration here'. Immigration was the actual cause of these things, due to having a huge population if nothing else! We, the author of this website and the readers, are generally pro-immigration, so I don't think your arguments are going to be too persuasive here
"Soon after this is achieved refugees should be first encouraged, then possibly required to return home - and most would be happy to do so."
I think the second part is correct: probably most will be happy to return home once the war is over. But that being the case, why on earth should we force whatever number of them have found their new homes congenial to move? Our *checks notes* long history of problem assimilating slavic immigrants?
Keep in mind that there are two phrases of a refugee crisis. The temporary shelter stage and then if the conflict is prolonged the permanent resettlement phrase. The vast majority of refugees in conflicts want to return to their old homes, but want to wait out the conflict in a safe place. It's only when a conflict becomes prolonged/countries becomes to destroyed that they shift to wanting permanent resettlement.
Right Ukrainian hope/believe that the war will be over in a few months or at least within a year, so they can return to Ukraine. That's a significant factor why most of them are staying in neighboring countries. It's when a conflict seems likes it will be never ending, that refugees shift away from finding temporary shelter to shifting to try to find a country for permanent resettlement.
I believe it's more likely than not that some kind of settlement in the war will be reached within six months, although a prolonged war is still possible. So right now the focus should be on ensuring that neighboring countries have enough resources to host Ukrainians not trying to permanently resettle Ukrainians in other countries, since that's not really want Ukrainians want right now. (Of course its good for other countries to also host Ukrainians and its good to help those that want to immigrate permanently to do so).
A sidenote, in the early months of a conflict, there's usually a greater willingness to host refugees, it's when a conflict becomes prolonged that sympathy dries up. Remember there was a six month period when Germany was very welcoming to Syrian refugees but that welcome dried up . Right now Europe is welcoming to Ukrainian refugees, but we shouldn't expect that welcomeness to stay at this high level when public eventually gets fatigued.
This is only tangentially related to the issue here, but I wonder how much of American immigration politics is based on false assumptions about how the legal immigration system actually works. Like, I strongly suspect that a lot of people have it in their heads that an honest, hardworking person from anywhere who speaks or is willing to learn English and is willing to adapt to American customs can find a way in if they're just patient, when in fact this is not the case.* Hence the apparently greater salience of "border security" vs. TPS for people who are already here--if you think anyone who "deserves" to come here already can, everyone trying to circumvent that system is "undeserving" and therefore rightly excluded.
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* An exercise to illustrate this problem: Imagine Carlos. Carlos is a journeyman baker at a panadería in Juárez. He speaks halfway-decent English and has some distant relations across the border in El Paso (his grandfather's brother moved there in less-restrictive times). He genuinely appreciates certain aspects of American culture (big football fan) and occasionally sees his American relations at holidays.
One Christmas, he's talking to his second cousin Sam, a bit of a whiz-kid who got a scholarship to the Wharton School of Business. Sam was complaining about how the Mexican food in Philly kinda sucks (it does), and also commenting about how good the pan dulce Carlos brought was. Carlos mentioned that he'd baked it himself.
At this, Sam had a business idea: bring Carlos over to bake pan dulce in Philadelphia. There's an opening in the market because one of the two decent panaderías in town had closed (COVID casualty). Plus Carlos's pan dulce, while merely very good by Juárez standards, would absolutely blow anything else available in Philly out of the water. For Carlos's part, he'd be interested because at this relatively early stage of his career, he's not really making great money and he's nowhere near running his own kitchen.
Prompt: Identify which visa, if any, Carlos is eligible for. (Please do not assume he will meet/marry an American citizen for the purposes of this exercise. Note also his American relations are strictly those descended from his grandfather's brother, and Carlos has no formal education past high school.)
None, of course, unless he's under imminent threat of death back home and can prove that to the satisfaction of some State Department bureaucrat *and* an asshole from DHS.
Moving to the important bit:
"Mexican food in Philly kinda sucks (it does)"
https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Primo+Produce/@40.1322298,-75.3352049,20.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c6bd8f34719b8b:0x5cc94af119954d95!8m2!3d40.1323397!4d-75.3350468
Ever been?
I have not. My fiancee and I keep hearing about the Mexican-food scene in Norristown, but for various reasons never make it out that way. I'll put a pin in that one to try when we do get out there. (I have been to Norristown exactly once, 2+ years ago, for an early-morning appointment with the Department of Environmental Protection to peruse their records in relation to a case. We got done around 11. My colleague didn't want to have Mexican food for lunch/was afraid we'd end up waiting too long and miss our train. We got Popeye's and missed our train anyway, so took the NHSL-->El back to the office .)
It's like a 20 minute drive, dude.
Even my pansy-ass EV can make it there and back 10 times on a charge.
:P
Lol it's mostly that full-time work and near-full-time student mean my fiancee has basically no time to do any exploring--she steals just enough "free time" to visit family and friends. And Heaven forbid I eat any Mexican food without her there to approve or disapprove lol.
That sounds an awful lot like culinary abuse. :)
I’m working on my wife; she’s not yet been exposed to Latin American food long enough to fully appreciate any of it. Wearing her down slowly.
Racism exists and its a problem. The handful of cases on the Polish border where people were racist is wrong and awful, and those people should be held to account, but a couple observations:
First, it is natural for humans to empathize more with people who are like them. To use a banal example we feel it and care more when someone in our family has cancer than when a random stranger has cancer. In real terms: both cases of suffering are (all else being equal) the same, but the family member gets more empathy. The same is true for broader tribes.
Of course Europeans are more empathetic to Ukrainians than they are for Syrians. First Ukrainians look and speak a lot more like most Europeans, so they feel the pain more. Second, Ukraine is a country being invaded by an historic imperialistic power which, in living memory, brutally dominated much of Eastern Europe. This means that this is familiar to many in Europe (they have literally felt Ukraine's pain), AND there is an additional incentive to be welcoming to Ukrainians: other parts of Europe might be next.
Americans, I think, due to our historical and cultural ties to Europe feel many of the same impulses. A war in Europe, where millions of Americans came from AND where historically America has spent hundreds of thousands of soldiers off to die, means more than, say Afghanistan, a country with few ties with the US.
So is it racist for the Ukraine war to matter more to Americans? I do not think so: I think the stakes (for understandable and obvious reasons when you think about it for more than 10 seconds) are higher in Ukraine than they were in Syria, than they are in Ethiopia, or in Chad, or (pick another country currently in conflict). This is before we get into the geopolitical implications of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Let's take Syria. Syria is a mess, which has upended millions of lives. The humanitarian concerns in Syria are almost as bad as Ukraine (Syria is, IIRC, about half the size of Ukraine but was hurt worse). But what are the geopolitical implications if Syria is in shambles? To the US? Not much. Syria is not nuclear armed, turmoil in Syria is not going to cause one of its neighbors to become more hostile to the US. Overall, to the average American, the Syrian conflict won't matter much.
Ukraine, bluntly, is different. America is in a military alliance with nearly all of Ukraine's neighbors, who are now tensely fearful of Russian invasion. Russia is an historic adversary to the US, is making demands of America in exchange for peace, and has more nukes than any country on earth. The Ukrainian conflict has serious security implications to the US.
Second, like all foreign policy issues, Americans LOVE to make FP revolve around our own domestic squabbles. Hence the debate on NATO. This may come to shock most Americans but NATO really is not the driving force behind this conflict: this war is about Ukraine and Russia, and basically that's it. Our focus on NATO is detrimental to understanding the conflict in my view. If we want to learn more about this conflict, we should learn more about Russia and Ukraine, not about our won foibles in Europe since 1991.
I think the main point is that it does not matter whether or how racist it is. The time to dwell on that question is the next time there's a refugee crisis in a nonwhite country. Dwelling on it now can only have the effect of punishing Ukrainians, who are not at fault.
I think that’s fair, I’m pointing out there are multiple reasons why people can care more and emphatically concluding something’s racism when other explanations exist is lazy analysis and assumes the worst unfairly.
I don't think this article needed the "anti-racists are at it again" section at the top. It's really a boilerplate "immigration is good, especially in a tight labour market" piece. Especially when it's so weakly made: the man quoted at the top is a producer at a Pakistani gaming channel?!
In a way, it's even a little ironic. The headline is "the mainstream media is using the Ukraine crisis to talk about its favorite topic." Then this article goes on to use the Ukraine crisis to talk about _Matt's_ favorite topic.
Be fair, it's only his *second* favorite topic. He barely mentions housing here!
I think it is a legitimate policy issue that TPS in practice serves as a permanent suspension of visa rules. Moreover I believe this misapplied policy contributes to the political view that the immigration system is “broken” which drives a lot of otherwise sympathetic voters to more nativist politicians.
As the party of expanded government, my view is that Democrats should care when policy is bad and working poorly.
I cannot understand why Biden does not do the same with Venezuela. It has all the same characteristics? white, Christian, well educated on average, and symbolically important as showing hostility to "Socialism." Economic and political benefits.
From Gwen's comment immediately above you: "in the early months of a conflict, there's usually a greater willingness to host refugees, it's when a conflict becomes prolonged that sympathy dries up."
Venezuela has been in crisis for *how long* now?
I'm not advocating this on the basis of sympathy, but policy. I doubt that Republicans could complain to much if Biden sanctioned "Russian ally Venezuela" with refugee status for their "tyrannized people." Or maybe just threaten to and try to flip Maduro out of the Russian camp and toward market reforms.
Venezuelans are less white than Ukrainians. Latinos are the Irish/Italians/Jews of the 21st century.
Uh ... right. Irish/Italians/Jews have no "white"- "non-white" issue. Of course Venezuelans are not "white" in terms of US political culture, but neither are Ukrainians.
Italians are darker skinned. Many Sicilians and Calabrians have substantial amounts of Arab DNA.
Irish are white as can be and show a) otherness can exist despite skin color and b) pale skinned others are more assimilable than African Americans descended from slaves.
That is what _I_ said.
“In an inflationary, full employment economy you can’t generate prosperity *for anyone* by pushing up nominal wages in labor-intensive sectors of the economy.” (emphasis added).
This is absolutely false. Higher wages for shitty, low paid jobs generate prosperity for workers with (previously) shitty, low paid jobs. These workers benefit from higher wages much more than doctors, lawyers, rentiers, or IT workers who need the money less.
The inflationary effect of unskilled workers getting raises is minimal. The bottom 40% of American earners bring in a whopping 11% of national income. Increasing this figure by 50% would increase low end wages by 50% but would only increase production costs by 5.5%. In other words, it would increase the purchasing power of low paid workers by 44%.
Please don’t use middle class inflation grievances to kick low paid workers to the curb.
Not the point of the quote. They are saying that paying low paid workers more does not in itself generate more total output, it transfers income from others to the low paid workers. Of course to the extent that higher wages encourage more people into the labor force (maybe the nursing home jobs Matt mentions elsewhere) the DO generate more output.
And of course nothing about wages has anything todo with inflation. That's all about Fed policy.
Furthermore, wages do drive inflation because ~70% of production costs are ultimately wages, paid by either the seller or intermediate producers.
However, the fact that wages do drive inflation is used by capitalist stooges to suggest that increasing wages of low end workers is bad and they should suffer in penury until productivity increases. Never mind the fact that productivity had increased far faster than unskilled wages over the last 50 years.
A good example is a fast food restaurant. Something like 25% of the cost of a meal is paid as wages to the workers in the restaurant. Increasing their wages is inflationary, every extra dollar they make will increase the cost of a burger by 25 cents. However, the other 75% goes to suppliers, rent, advertising, transport costs, legal and accounting costs, front office salaries and profit. Some of the suppliers costs go to underpaid meat packers, but much goes to managers, truckers, gas, farmers, etc.
A wage floor would increase production costs by 20 to 30 cents for every dollar it increased low end wages. Even in a low skilled, labor intensive industry like fast food, a majority of the revenues go to managers, owners and professionals. You can increase the wages of those at the bottom without much inflation. You just have to care.
I think we are talking at cross purposes. If you assume that wages of some group are exogenously raised, several thing will happen. Employers will find ways to reduce (maybe by not very much in the short run) and (assuming it is a big enough change to be noticeable) will present the Fed with a dilemma of temporarily raising its inflation target or seeing unemployment increase.
I think something like this is what has happened during the COVID recovery. The Fed set its instruments at levels it though were consistent with 2% PCE inflation and smartly recovering employment. But it miscalculated. Employment and production did not increase as much as expected becasue of "supply chain" problems (increases in the international price of petroleum have the same effect) and the effects of COVID and we got the spurt of inflation that we got. And The Fed is dealing with that dilemma now.
Your analysis should incorporate the fact that low paid workers get so little of national income that increasing their wages doesn’t create much inflation.
It’s certainly true that increasing wages across the board does create inflation (though it is arguably a net positive if it cuts down on the share of national income going to capital). It’s also true that untargeted stimulus increases wages across the board and is inflationary. However, having fewer unskilled immigrants and/or increasing the minimum wage would increase wages at the bottom but not higher up. Such policies would be only be mildly inflationary
My way of saying that is that having to increases in the wages of low paid workers, like nursing home workers put off by COVID to attract more of them to the workforce will not create much if any of a dilemma for the Fed.
If Matt wanted to say that increasing low end wages doesn’t increase total output, he should have said that. I would have agreed. However, he used language which suggests that redistribution can never create prosperity for anyone, which is just wrong
He did not say "for anyone" but at the margin he was wrong about not "creating aggregate prosperity."
he literally did say for anyone. if he meant “for everyone” matt or milan should correct the typo
I will again quote myself: How else could catch-up wage growth (catching up to past productivity increases) for the bottom 50% *possibly* express itself except by inflation outpaced by wage growth in the bottom half?
No one has given me a satisfactory answer aside from "inflation is bad".
The reason to have inflation at a targeted rate is to allow relative prices to adjust when some prices are downwardly sticky. Wages of low paid workers could rise relative to others withing the target range. If not, the Fed will have to allow above target inflation for a time or force slower changes in relative prices that will result in higher unemployment.
With a series of supply shocks the least worst think is to allow temporarily higher inflation. The key is to keep expectations of inflation in the long run on target ("anchored"). Right now I think there is a danger of them becoming unanchored. TIPS expectations for inflation over 10 years is well above target and the relation between the 10 year and 5 year expectation implies that markets are no longer expecting under target inflation in years 6-10. None of this catastrophic. But the Fed has a tough job of allowing enough inflation in the short term to allow for supply side shocks while persuading markets that ii does still intend to bring inflation back down to target.
I hope this also will be extended to Russian political refugees. I know Russians opposed to Putin who have fled to the US and are now stranded here with no clear immigration path. If we opened the doors to Russian dissidents and high skilled Russians, the brain drain would accelerate their decline. It is scary to be opposed to Putin in Russia and we should be welcoming Westernized and anti-Putin Russians with open arms.
Maybe we should pass a law that says anyone who gets jailed in Russia for protesting the war is eligible for a visa. (Might have to massage the precise language, but that would be the general idea.)
Probably no...because then Russia decides that all the people in jail for murder are there for protesting the war and grants them the ability to take our offered visas. Then bad stuff happens when you get a bunch of murders coming over and the backlash impacts all the refugees.
Some of those murderers would find a fresh start, and become law abiding citizens. As for the rest…well, that sounds like yet another good reason to fund the police, no?
Like I said, you might have to massage it a little.
"The current situation is more or less exactly what Poland’s foreign policy has long wanted" - as a Polish-born U.S. citizen, I have to say, that's cold. Really cold. I mean, I get what MattY is saying, but pregnant women being killed by Russian bombs is not what anyone in Poland has "long wanted."
Also, I'm sure that racism plays a role in Poland's differential response to Ukrainian vs. Middle Eastern refugees. But I want to signal-boost a point made by many other commenters: there's a huge difference between "we're accepting a bunch of women, children, and elderly while the men are back in their homeland, bravely fighting off an invasion" and "we're accepting a bunch of people, including a lot of young men."
Stereotype alert: Young men, especially unemployed and unmarried ones, are the major demographic that gives rise to crime and social unrest in any society. See Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" for details. You can bet that if the Ukrainian refugees included many men along with women and children, the host countries' response would be very different.
To make another cold point, native-born young men tend not to object so much to influxes of unmarried young women.
Perhaps the new S. Korea president would welcome refugees?
Reading and listening to some British press in the last few weeks, they noted some amnesia snot Syrian refugees -- Merkel and other EU leaders initially supported admitting huge number of Syrians before the political issues of admitting low skilled immigrants to high welfare countries with tight labor regulations became impossible to ignore. Part of the reasonable bits of One Billion Americans is that we do a mildly better job of limiting the roadblocks to hiring a new immigrant in many ways by providing fewer workers guarantees ( easier to fire makes it easier to hire).
On the other hand, just listened to a podcast with a recent British immigrant and *wow* we make the paperwork to transfer money and setup bank accounts take a couple months for no good reason, which forces them into a weird cash economy limbo for way longer than I would have expected, largely due to forcing immigrants to wait until in country to a social security number...
Germany stuck by welcoming Syrian refugees. There are an estimated 600k in Germany today. There are also 100k in Sweden, which is an even higher share of its population.
https://www.unhcr.org/cy/2021/03/18/syria-refugee-crisis-globally-in-europe-and-in-cyprus-meet-some-syrian-refugees-in-cyprus/
Germany stuck by the refugees they had welcomed, but shifted to discouraging any new refugees. The EU now basically bribes Libya to intercept refugees before they reach Europe and then detain them. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/01/21/no-escape-hell/eu-policies-contribute-abuse-migrants-libya#