I’m seeing quite a few pieces about how great it is that our immigration rate is rising again. Examples: Paul Krugman in the New York Times, Rana Foroohar’s piece in the Financial Times . They remind me of nothing so much as the old joke about the guy who lost money on every sale but believed he could make it up in volume.
I don’t object to more immigration. Indeed, I welcome it. However, I oppose the immigration we have now. There are too many people who don’t speak, read, or write English and do not have college educations or specialized skills. I oppose it for several reasons.
First, these new immigrants come with costs and what they pay in taxes will never pay for their costs in terms of health care, security, transportation, and education. Those will be paid for with higher taxes on the rest of the population. Second, additional low wage workers depresses wages for the entry level workers who are already here. Third, a steady stream of new low wage workers distorts our economy so that we have more activity in sectors that employ these low wage workers than we would otherwise have.
I think we should have immigration systems more like those of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand than our present system.
I also wonder if this sudden rush of pro-immigration articles is intended to prepare us for another surge of immigrants at our southwestern border.
Interestingly; Canada has been trending towards a US style immigration system over the past decade — and that’s provoking a debate over the pros and cons.
Watch this video from TVO (Ontario’s public broadcaster) which is a great discussion on all the different aspects when thinking about immigration.
They bring their culture with them. Most of them are far more socialist and authoritarian than native Americans. A lot of them are Muslim or Catholic/Orthodox. It will be interesting to see how that plays out with the woke agenda. And none of them share the troubled history native American whites and blacks have. Not a few, e. g., Mexicans and Asians, are decidedly anti-black. Blacks will not only lose jobs to immigrant, the whole social and legal enviroment of blacks will most likely get worse.
I’ve been making that point for more than 20 years. Why should the recent immigrants be different from the Irish, the Germans, the Swedes, or the Italians in that respect? Each group brought their own culture with them. The Irish brought machine politics, “an Irish village writ large”, as Pat Moynihan put it. The Swedes brought 19th century progressivism, an expression of Lutheran social values. And so on.
Seattle recently enacted a law against caste discrimination, something that has never been needed in the U. S. previously. I also wonder if Bob Lee’s murder might have been an “honor killing”.
Title 42 officially ends May 11, following Biden’s conveniently timed ending of the federal emergency act. Those covering the border (not the main stream media) say thousands are waiting for this to happen, joining the thousands who have not waited and come over earlier. Chinese nationals and Venezuelans appear to be comprising a lot of these open border crossings. However, people from all over the world are taking advantage of our foolish border policies. This crushing stampede of people, streaming across the border, will put an additional burden on an economy (ours) which many are saying is nearing bankruptcy. Of course Biden will never admit how fragile and overextended we already are, as he keeps spinning illusions that “everything is just fine.â€
Immigrants bring their culture with them, but most seem to adapt fine to American culture, especially those that intend to stay. And immigrants seem a lot better when it comes to avoiding culture war stuff.
For example, most immigrants come from places where abortion is not nearly as acceptable as it is here in the US, yet we don’t see many immigrants making abortion a huge issue or weighing in on those debates.
Stay tuned, Andy. As populations of immigrants from countries in which abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. are serious crimes grow, expect the laws of those countries to be enforced with “rough justice”, cf. my comment about Seattle above.