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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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So Ed West has a good piece up on immigration. He's British, so naturally he will focus on the British angle but I think his main takeaways have wider applicability across the West. His argument is that so-called "experts" have consistently underestimated the potential for mass migration for decades. Ed makes the case that given a confluence of factors (established migrant communities, English being the lingua franca, a whole apparatus of NGOs/judicial activists and a very pro-immigration media envionrment), we're likely to see a continued rise in immigration unless there is a drastic shift in policies.

For my part, I think any serious restriction is out the window. That ship has basically sailed for the West. Trump did what he could but was sabotaged by the courts and political insiders at every step. So instead of trying to prevent what is essentially the inevitable, better ask what our future look like.

American social scientist Garrett Jones has written an important new book which argues that new research suggests that assimilation is fact very rare and cultural patterns persist for decades, perhaps even centuries. Even if we were to restrict ourselves to white immigration, how many of the Catholic and East European immigrants who came to the US during the 1870-1924 period truly assimilated into the Anglo-Saxon ethos of limited government? Was JFK's and FDR's winning coalitions not in small part due to these new immigrants?

Jones makes the case that even attitudes like propensity to save or social trust are passed down through generations. This would suggest that the future of the West is a hyper-unequal and low-trust society. Perhaps we are already well on our way. Politically, it could paradoxically help the right since to enact a leftist agenda on economics you need a cross-racial coalition among the working class and this seems to be unlikely if you cannot have assimilation across population groups even after decades, as Jones suggests.

we're likely to see a continued rise in immigration unless there is a drastic shift in policies.

For my part, I think any serious restriction is out the window. That ship has basically sailed for the West. Trump did what he could but was sabotaged by the courts and political insiders at every step. So instead of trying to prevent what is essentially the inevitable, better ask what our future look like.

Agree. I don't see any reason for this to change. Both sides benefit from immigration ,either more votes or more consumers, cheaper labor, etc. It does not even have a be a serious restriction, just any attempt seems doomed to fail.

American social scientist Garrett Jones has written an important new book which argues that new research suggests that assimilation is fact very rare and cultural patterns persist for decades, perhaps even centuries.

I think this is wrong. 2nd, 3rd gen Irish, German, Hispanic, etc. immigrants seem pretty assimilated. Irish and Italian Americans used to be reliably blue, but now much more red. They may not be assimilated in the sense of caring about the hagiography of the founding US, but they are assimilated in terms of culture.

It might be a good idea to post this in the new thread tomorrow.

Britain's economy has been unusually poorly performing, primarily due to all this migration IMO. There's no need to mechanize if labor is cheap. Why bother raising wages if there's another 100K arriving this quarter? Though there are also issues with planning laws and endless delays/community consultation.

Migration now is peanuts compared to what's coming when climate change starts really hitting Sub-Saharan Africa. They're one of the only remaining regions with high population growth. Africa is supposed to hit 2.4 billion by 2050, much of that will be in the least developed parts. There's little water, few jobs and already considerable political dysfunction.

If Europe does not adopt an Australian-style migration policy, they'll experience serious problems. There's a fairly high cap for skilled immigration. However, Australia had a policy that no asylum seekers who arrived by boat would be resettled in the country, regardless of whether they were legitimate or not. They get sent to Nauru for processing. At best they'd get to be resettled in Papua New Guinea, an unappealing prospect. Boats that came to Australia would often be turned back to the port of origin. Europe has more naval power/km of coastline than Australia. They have the power to turn back the boats, it is only a matter of will. The EU is very troublesome here, human rights lawyers are mostly ignored in Australia but hold power in the EU. There appear to be various NGOs who shuttle refugees across the Mediterranean, these could be broken up.

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There's no need to mechanize if labor is cheap

Isn't this disproven by China, which had a lot of cheap labor but 'mechanized' - or any country that's gone from poor agriculture to first world?

And for explaining the economy - a very quick google claimed 'There were a record 44.8 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2018, making up 13.7% of the nation's population', while 'Last year 16.8% of people in England and Wales had been born outside Britain, up from 13.4 in 2011'. Those are quite close, so that can't be it. Comparing in europe - "As of 2019, around 13.7 million people living in Germany, or about 17% of the population, are first-generation immigrants", despite a gdp/capita higher than the UK.

It's funny how 'there is a broad correlation between X and Y across countries' can't prove 'X causes Y', but 'there isn't a broad correlation across countries' serves as evidence here against 'X causes Y'. But it's fine because - I'm not using this to claim 'therefore, immigration doesn't hurt economies' - just claiming that 'britain's claimed economic underperformance can't be caused by more immigration in a simple sense'. i.e. - yeah, maybe most higher-immigration countries have some factor Z that improves the economy that correlates with immigration, so it 'looks like' Z and immigration don't affect the economy, but britain has immigration and no Z, so its economy is impacted. Even then, though, britain's "unusually" poorly performing economy, relative to the world, can't be caused by immigration - that'd be the difference in Z (or britain having a different kind of immigrants or something)

Add this to the fact that America has indeed stayed powerful and effective despite multiple waves of mass immigration. I think the idea that naturalization is rare and/or difficult needs to have extremely strong evidence behind it to be believed.

Naturalization and remaining powerful are two different things.

I hope Jones credited anechonicmedia for that insight.

He(?)'s the only person I've seen doing the actual math on it with General Social Survey data though. Is that the same way Jones supports his argument?

Trump did what he could but was sabotaged by the courts and political insiders at every step.

It's the job of Congress to set immigration policy, not the President. The focus on the President as the end-all of the American government is understandable but misplaced. Congress is a large body and it's difficult to assign individual responsibility to particular legislators so its gets kind of diffused out. But for better or worse, they are in a far stronger position to steer the ship of state than the President.

In any event, looking at the tally it seems fairly clear that this policy doesn't command anything close to a majority of the House even when it was GOP controlled.

It's the job of Congress to set immigration policy, not the President

And if Congress passes vague enabling acts empowering the President with immense discretion, then it becomes the President's job de facto.

Fair point. And indeed a lot of the INA is maddeningly non-specific.

At the very least, though, when the President does anything that can be defended under the statute (+Chevron deference), we ought to assign responsibility.

The whole thing is a vicious cycle. Congress' vague language enables massive discretion, the assignment of responsibility ("Obama did", "Trump did") fuels further for Congress to pass the buck.

If you read the actual immigration policy, as set by the Congress in the actual acts it passed, you’ll observe that Trump’s actions were very much in line with what the immigration laws actually are. For example, he made some moves to enforce the public charge rule, for the exact reasons this rule was passed into the law in the first place. His problem was not so much that he was blocked by the Congress, which passed different policy, but instead by judiciary and lawfare, which instituted policies contrary to what the Congress passed into law, and the Executive actually tried to enforce.

It would seem that Congress did not agree with your fiat that the public charge rule meant what Trump said it meant, or else it would have amended the statute to say so. Congress is more than capable of being precise when it suits them and conversely of being extremely vague when they'd rather pass the buck. And Trump could very well have asked for specific language to that effect but AFAICT he didn't make a specific push for it.

What I mean to get at here isn't the object level of any particular provision, but more broadly that the government is a huge ship and the best way to make policy change is to get both Congress and the President steering in the same direction at the same time.

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