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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26352 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Any suggestion that a lot of these people becoming criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system?

Do you have statistics to back this?

Bluntly, this is a perfect example of the obnoxious "Cite?" demand that isn't really expressing skepticism or a desire for evidence, it's just saying "I dislike your argument so I will try to force you to waste time looking up citations which I can then dismiss."

I do not believe that you actually believe that the statement "a lot (illegal immigrants) become criminals and/or net drags on the social welfare system" is false. You might disagree with me over how much "a lot" is (a number I made no effort to quantify, but let's stipulate that I implied it's large enough to be a significant problem, and you could reasonably disagree), but you don't actually disagree that it happens with measurable frequency. You are just testing me to find out if I keep bookmarks handy for my arguments, or how much time you can get me to waste Googling something.

I actually started to do this. But I'm not going to post the links (you can use Google as well as I can) because I realized that you wouldn't actually care.

(Unsurprisingly, what you will discover is that in raw numbers, it's pretty indisputable that illegal immigrants are a net loss economically. Groups that are anti-immigration highlight the raw numbers and dismiss potential long-term benefits (how many of them eventually become citizens, or produce children who become citizens and taxpayers), while groups that are pro-immigration highlight the fact that illegal immigrants aren't technically eligible for most social welfare programs, and downplay the fact that many receiving benefits either married a US citizen or have children here who then become eligible, as well as ignoring things harder to quantify like downward pressure on wages, increased presence of organized crime, etc.)

Did more searching and found this: https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-migrants-take-the-jobs-of-native-workers

It's been a while and you still haven't responded to my follow up, so I now doubt that you do have sources and am now more convinced that immigration is actually a positive for jobs and economy.

It takes time and effort to find good sources. If you have good resources to share, I will read them and maybe learn a thing or two about immigration in the US.

"you wouldn't actually care"

Even being pro immigration, I would want to know if immigrants are far more likely to be criminals or net negatives because that would influence the kind of policies I would want to see pursued or how I would argue.

When I google, all the top results (from Penn Wharton, from CBPP, from AIC, from NBER) say immigrants are good for local economies. I would share links except I don't know if any of them are actually good sources or not.

Bad faith accusation. Takes a simple request to provide evidence for inflammatory claims as a personal insult.

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