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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35888 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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"Immigrants" as a class are different than the types of persons who have no other option but to "sneak" in.

All immigrants, legal and illegal, tend to wind up in blue states. Red states tend to be lacking in economic opportunity and the comparative lack of major cities or pre-existing communities makes them relatively unattractive.

The ones crossing the border are almost certainly a much, much larger burden and net drain on resources than those that follow "proper channels."

What's your model?

I challenge you to show that blue states, especially Northern ones, have as many undocumented immigrants as Southern border states.

"Southern border states" includes includes California. If you mean "traditionally southern states" (or just red states on the border), that's literally just Texas.

As for where illegal immigrants end up:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/ (this is measuring by metro area, rather than state, and some of the cities spill across state borders - New York being the most prominent)

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/Pop_Estimate/UnauthImmigrant/unauthorized_immigrant_population_estimates_2015_-_2018.pdf

Per DHS numbers, out of the top 10 states, we have

Blue States (CA, IL, NY, NJ, WA): 4.33M

Red States (TX, FL, GA, NC): 3.33M

Purple States (AZ): .33M

CA and TX account for about half of their respective categories.

An older (2016) study from PEW gives us the tally below for all statse: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/

Red States: 4.22M

Blue States: 5.76M

Purple States: .62M

If you want to compare Texas to the northeast, that's 1.6M vs 2.3M (states counted: CT, DC, MD, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VA)

These are good numbers to use, but I suspect that as soon as I scale them for the population of the respective states it will make things a little clearer as to how each state has been faring in shouldering their share of the influx.

Here's a 2016 study from Pew that estimates the total number of 'unauthorized' immigrants and their percentage of population on a state by state basis:

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/

See also @netstack's post below which indicates Texas and Florida have far more immigrants in absolute numbers than anywhere but California, and that as a percentage of the population its heavily skewed towards border states.

To get REALLY specific: based on these numbers, in order for Martha's Vineyard to have a similar share of immigrants in their borders, which I've arbitrarily set at 3% to approximate the ratio of the whole U.S., the community of 15,000 people would need to have 450 illegal immigrants living there.

They declared a crisis over Fifty. So they really aren't prepared to shoulder their fair share at this rate.

Do you disagree?

Per the PEW study I cited, the top five states by percentage of population are: NV, TX, CA, NJ, and MD (in that order). In absolute numbers: CA, TX, FL, NY (FL and NY are separated by an estimated 50k - 775k vs 725k). And CA has a lot more than TX in absolute terms. The DHS numbers are broadly similar, at least at the top.

The core point I am getting at here is that the narrative pushed by American nativists that conservatives are bearing the financial and social "costs" of liberal xenophilia is not supported by the information available. This entire conversation appears to really pivot on Texas specifically.

Martha's Vineyard

The obsession with places like Martha's Vineyard is why I think this entire endeavor is about lib-owning.

Piping in to confirm faceh’s read on my numbers, except for AZ, which is more akin to NJ or WA. FL is also weird; its moderately high absolute numbers don’t match its low percentage. Really, this is a conversation driven by the two obvious outliers.

I will disagree on Martha’s Vineyard. We don’t know how many already do live there. Even if there were already ~450 changing that population by >10% is nontrivial, especially when none of the newcomers have jobs or much savings. A 10% surge in a Texas town would mean either seasonal labor or diffusion to neighboring towns. Neither was practical in the short term on MV.

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