Open Thread and Link Farm, Canned Milk Edition

  1. Debt and Deficits, Yet Again – Center for Economic and Policy Research
    “The deficit hawks will be screaming that the Biden package will over-stimulate the economy, leading to rising interest rates and inflation. There is some truth to these claims, but we have to think clearly about what is at issue.”
  2. Black US doctor dies of Covid alleging racist hospital care – BBC News
    “”He made me feel like I was a drug addict,” Dr Moore said in a Facebook video. “And he knew I was a physician. I don’t take narcotics. I was hurting.””
  3. Jimmy Dore and the Left’s Naïve Cynics Have Turned on AOC
    The headline is about AOC, but I’m linking it for its discussion of the (non)viability of an immediate vote on Medicare For All. “If politics is a tool for minimizing needless suffering — rather than a theater for performing one’s personal convictions — then a tactic is only as morally sound as it is likely to succeed.”
  4. The anti-porn religious lobby just destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of pornographers | Salon.comThe headline is a bit misleading – the article itself has virtually no emphasis on the “religious” lobby in particular, and honestly part of what makes the anti-porn lobby so difficult to address is that it’s in effect a coalition of religious conservatives and anti-sex-work leftists. But despite that misleading headline, the article is very good.
  5. The top priority in America right now is getting vaccines into arms as quickly as possible. And we’re just not doing it.
  6. “I’ve had a long time to think about what I did when I was 13. That was how old I was when I ceased to be a daughter, sister, niece, student, and friend and became instead a murderer, super predator, killer, felon, criminal, and inmate.”
  7. Rejected Tintin cover design sets record for comic book art with €3.2m auction price | The Art Newspaper
    That’s $3,868,864 in U.S. dollars. “Like all markets, it’s a question of supply and demand and there is practically no supply.”
  8. Why immigration doesn’t reduce wages – Noahpinion
    “In this post, I’m going to explain why immigration doesn’t lower wages for native-born people (except possibly a little bit, in a few special circumstances). But before I do that, there’s one thing you really have to understand: No one is going to be persuaded by this post. There are two reasons for this.”
  9. Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing — ProPublica
    A great deal of this story is set in Westport, CT, where I was raised from fifth to twelfth grades. In some ways the story gives a false impression – the majority of Westport homeowners don’t live in mansions or on beachfront – but it’s nearly entirely on target.
  10. Mimi Choi – Google Image Search
    Choi is fantastic. I love this sort of illusion-based face painting, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone do it better.
  11. Why $15 minimum wage is pretty safe – Noahpinion
    The best evidence indicates that raising the minimum wage to $15 won’t cause a significant amount of unemployment. I found the graph at the top of the post, showing how economists’ opinions on this have changed over time, to be very striking, and as someone who has been saying this for decades I admit it has made me a little bit smug(ger).
  12. The 1994 Crime Law Hogs The Legal Reform Spotlight. But A Lesser-Known Law Deserves More Attention. – The Appeal
    “…Reformers should focus on the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which restricts the ability of incarcerated people to protest their conditions of confinement.”
  13. A twitter thread from UK trans podcast “What The Trans” giving a history “on how absurd the UK is on transgender issues and how the UK got so transphobic.” (And an alternate non-Twitter version).
  14. In Poland, Protests Over Abortion Ban Could Revolutionize Politics – The New York Times (And an alternate link.)
    “Hundreds of thousands of women, teenagers and their male allies have been turning out every few days on the streets of cities and small towns across the country for weeks, braving tear gas, court orders, harsh police tactics and surging Covid infections.”
  15. A thorough (and thus lengthy) rebuttal of Kathleen Stock’s anti-trans arguments.
    “”If you really think I’m an ‘anti-trans’ activist you really had better spell out why, and with evidence,” she said on Twitter yesterday. I will do that here.”
  16. Lindsey Stirling – Crystallize (from Home For The Holidays) – YouTube
    Dancing and playing the violin while suspended from the ceiling by your hair may be a stunt, but it’s one I really enjoyed watching. I looked at it and thought “I guess that isn’t as painful as I’d imagine it to be,” but then I watched her vlog about learning to hang from her hair, and oh my god it’s so much more painful than I imagine. (CW for weeping due to pain.) I know some violinists sneer at Stirling’s violin abilities, but I think they’re missing the point – she’s not one of the best violinists, or one of the best dancers, or one of the best video makers, but she might be the greatest dancing violinist videomaker.
  17. I’m really enjoying Marvel’s new TV show WandaVision. Although I wonder what the show’s like for viewers too young to be familiar with 1950s and 60s sit-coms.
  18. Countdown to Biden’s inauguration. 2 days, 19 hours, 6 minutes, 47 seconds as I type this.

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42 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, Canned Milk Edition

  1. 1
    Stephen Frug says:

    “I wonder what the show’s like for viewers too young to be familiar with 1950s and 60s sit-coms.”

    J, alas, who was really looking forward to it—he’s a huge fan of all the Marvel movies and all the Marvel TV shows he’s seen (basically, the non-Netflix ones)—and was deeply disappointed. He found the first episode really boring, although he liked the second a bit more. Still overall not great for him.

    (Not saying, btw, that everything, or even every Marvel thing, has to be made for 12yo boys! But it’d be nice if they’d be clearer in the marketing.)

    Meanwhile S & I both enjoyed the heck out of it.

  2. 2
    Ampersand says:

    In their marketing’s defense, the trailers were pretty clear that it was going to be telling the story with pastiches of old sitcoms. But I don’t know what other marketing they did?

    I’m glad two out of three of you enjoyed it, anyway! :-) Please tell S & J that I say hi.

  3. 3
    Kai Jones says:

    I don’t mind the pastiches (I loved Bewitched, for example) but the cringey self-deprecation throws me right off the show.

  4. 4
    Ampersand says:

    I’m not sure what you mean by “the cringey self-deprecation.” Do you remember an example?

  5. 5
    Kai Jones says:

    @Ampersand – I don’t remember an example, but I do remember mentioning it to my son several times during the dinner for the boss.

  6. 6
    RonF says:

    Re: #8 – the premise here seems to be that the debate regarding immigration is between those who are pro-immigration and those who are against. Of course, there are a large number of people who are fine with legal immigration but are against illegal immigration. The data sets used for this article either don’t differentiate between the effects of legal and illegal immigrants or just deal with legal immigration. It would be interesting, and a valuable contribution to the immigration law enforcement debate, if there were some that did look just at the effects of illegal immigration.

  7. 7
    Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    @6

    This link should be a good start on your quest for answers to your question.

    Don’t be embarrassed about not being able to find this on your own. I had to work 14 years for the fictional doctorate that enables me to find such obscure things on the intertubes.

  8. 8
    Nancy Lebovitz says:

    #8: “Immigrants are just babies from elsewhere.”

    I can turn it the other way– I think a lot of hatred of teenagers is like hatred of immigrants. It’s a lot of people coming in with different customs.

  9. 9
    Görkem says:

    ” Of course, there are a large number of people who are fine with legal immigration but are against illegal immigration.”

    I dunno, in my experience there are very few people who believe illegal immigration is a major problem but at the same time believe current immigration law is fit for purpose.

  10. 10
    hf says:

    Yeah, I can’t think of one politician offhand who has made “illegal immigration” a central issue, and yet supports legal immigration.

    The previous administration was obviously hostile to legal immigration from the start, despite the fact that anyone concerned about the working class would want to increase visas for highly-paid professionals – or students thereof, if we ignore everything at that link – by a factor of at least 100. Bringing in more health-care professionals would have been particularly good.

  11. 11
    Mookie says:

    Seems an entirely question-begging assertion to me, possibly on two grounds. One, lawmakers, by definition, tend to run on proposals that promise to preserve, strengthen, weaken, or abolish existing laws, even if they never end up governing on those campaign premises and promises. Naturally whatever definition of legal immigration they adopt they will support, and any they reject will necessarily be regarded as unlawful or ought to be.

    Secondly, handwringing about the purity of “data sets” is a little rich when precious few public funds are spent analyzing the issue in order to actually release unadorned stats or shape effective policy (even when that policy is something other than opaque) and when overlapping agencies tasked with carrying out existing law regularly flout it, do not report when and under what conditions they circumvent the law and with regards to whom, and resist systemic analysis and third-party oversight while doing so. ICE is literally running amok right now; the Deep State is suddenly great and oh so brave again!

  12. 12
    Mookie says:

    As for pols having threaded that needle, just take Dubya’s now seemingly benevolent stance and compare/contrast with post-Tea Party GOP. Back then, electoral politics—that is, GOP electoral prospects—apparently hinged on placating what they viewed as broadly-brushed “Hispanic”/Latino voters’s apparently simplistic view of immigration and asylum. Irrespective of the pragmatic wisdom of that approach, we none of us in the present should operate under the illusion that adopting radical and unpopular positions (that, moreover, they have no intention of translating into legislation because then what will the party of ideas run on next term?) can harm a party pursuing, committed to, and now depending upon minority rule. You don’t need abide by norms or a mandate if you can increasingly lose to the opposition on raw numbers but still win the seats and states you’ve actually and for real fraudulently rigged.

  13. 13
    Chris says:

    Re: #8 – the premise here seems to be that the debate regarding immigration is between those who are pro-immigration and those who are against. Of course, there are a large number of people who are fine with legal immigration but are against illegal immigration. The data sets used for this article either don’t differentiate between the effects of legal and illegal immigrants or just deal with legal immigration. It would be interesting, and a valuable contribution to the immigration law enforcement debate, if there were some that did look just at the effects of illegal immigration.

    This is so full of tautologies that it gave me a headache.

    Let’s try to apply the way we frame immigration in this country to any other issue:

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal abortion but are against illegal abortion.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal marijuana but are against illegal marijuana.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal tax increases but are against illegal tax increases.”

    What does any of that MEAN, RonF? Would you agree that each of these statements are functionally meaningless? That they tell us absolutely nothing about what policies related to those issues we should favor or oppose, or what the societal and ecomomic impacts of those issues are?

    It’s possible that illegal immigration has a different economic impact than legal immigration…but that is not because one is illegal and one is legal, it’s because of what types of immigration we make illegal and what types of immigration we make legal. That’s the conversation you (and most of the right) ignore every time you talk about “legal vs. illegal immigration” without getting into the particulars of what that means.

  14. 14
    Görkem says:

    ” Dubya’s now seemingly benevolent stance”

    I think there is a very strong element of rose-coloured nostalgia when assessing Bush era immigration policy. The difference was largely one of presentation. It was during the Bush era that building walls and “securing the border” became common Republican talking points. Trump took the subtext and made it text (or perhaps, supertext) but there is a very strong continuity.

  15. 15
    Mookie says:

    Görkem, I’m speaking particularly of Dubya as a candidate in the 2000 POTUS election and thereafter his unsuccessful and unpopular late in the evening “moderate” approach to shaping potential law itself (specifically, the failed Kennedy-Kyl “compromise”), not the Dubya government’s administration of immigration law and enforcement nor Congressional action in the noughties, which as you say ushered in a new and radical benchmark and helped cement “immigration” (a process, a disputed idea, a sphere regulated by competing agencies) as a fruitful theatre for the right wing in the US culture wars as well as one of the few solid planks for the decidedly wormy 21st century GOP platform.

    He was genuinely unpopular within his own party on these issues (ditto Jeb! a decade later, which is hardly surprising, given both their experience as governors in states for which the only sort of immigration and immigrant we are accustomed to scapegoat is a daily reality, not a bogey), and of course far too radical for actual centrists, liberals, and the left. The die was cast then in more ways than one.

  16. 16
    Fibi says:

    Chris wrote the following:

    Let’s try to apply the way we frame immigration in this country to any other issue:

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal abortion but are against illegal abortion.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal marijuana but are against illegal marijuana.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal tax increases but are against illegal tax increases.”

    I don’t think any of these analogies are really on point.

    Abortion – in America it would pretty nonsensical to make that statement; for those most part abortion is legal here but there are far too many barriers to access. But my understanding is that many European countries don’t have the same access issues we have early in a pregnancy but do effectively make late term abortions illegal (note: I am not an expert on international abortion law so I may be wrong). If I’m right it would be pretty easy to imagine someone who supports legal abortion but opposes illegal abortion. Especially if you interpret “opposing illegal abortion” as meaning that you support increased enforcement of the existing law.

    Marijuana – Again, as stated this is nonsensical. But it’s easy to find people who support legal marijuana and support strict(er) enforcement of laws against distribution of drugs that remain illegal.

    Taxes – This time it’s not hypocritical, it’s me. I generally vote against tax increases whenever they are on the ballot. But I still want the tax laws enforced!

  17. 17
    Görkem says:

    @Mookie: I get what you are saying, but I think looking at Dubya the candidate and not Dubya the President or Dubya the Republican party leader gives a very limited picture. Normally I would say slicing out particular years of a public figure’s life is excessive selectivity, but it’s even moreso to emphasise the candidate and not the office-holder, when the whole raison d’etre of the candidacy is to achieve office.

  18. 18
    Corso says:

    Chris @ 13

    This is so full of tautologies that it gave me a headache.

    Let’s try to apply the way we frame immigration in this country to any other issue:

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal abortion but are against illegal abortion.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal marijuana but are against illegal marijuana.”

    I think you inadvertently made Ron’s point for him. Do you really not see the difference?

    When you’re talking about the difference in legal or illegal abortion, marijuana, or taxes… You’re in essence arguing whether or not you think something *should* be legal or illegal, because the difference between legal or illegal abortion is the law. That’s a tautology… “It’s illegal because it’s illegal.”

    No one, at least no one here, is arguing that immigration should be illegal.

    There is a difference between legal and illegal immigration that exists outside the base act of immigration. Illegal immigrants aren’t breaking the law because they exist, they’ve immigrated illegally. The difference is in agency; acting illegally is different than being illegal as a function of existing. Legal immigrants go through a process; Their immigration, their status, is determined by metrics. We can disagree on what those metrics should be, but they exist, and they exist for reasons.

    It would be hard, as an extreme example, for a convicted rapist or murderer to make it through the legal immigration process. I’d like to explicitly say that, obviously, not all illegal immigrants are that class of criminal, they generally aren’t. But I will say that illegal immigrants are almost entirely *a* class of criminal. With a few exceptions for people like children being brought in by their parents, almost every illegal immigrant has purposefully broken the law.

    Saying that people broke the law isn’t a tautology.

  19. 19
    Corso says:

    Also…. Before we get into the obvious: “People that say things like that really hate all immigration and just use that to excuse their bigotry” Angle.

    Almost every developed nation has a birth rate among native-born citizens hovering around 1.5 children per woman; Immigration is necessary if for no other reason that that without immigration, developed nations would collapse in a couple of generations. Our systems don’t even like ZPG very much, negative population growth is a death spiral. And so most developed nations have a relatively healthy relationship with immigration. There’s always been people that have thought that immigrants are stealing their jobs, or that their governments are giving their country away, but those thoughts don’t reconcile well with reality. Those immigrants are generally necessary because they do jobs that no one else will, and they aren’t being given the country; even if you want to argue that they’re getting it, which is a hard position to argue, they’re earning it.

    The United States is special in that it’s one of the most developed and wealthy nations on Earth sharing a direct land border with one of the poorest, least developed, and an indirect land border with about a dozen others. It’s Wakanda. Illegal immigration into America is orders of magnitude larger than Canada, as an example, even adjusted per capita. And that only makes sense… Anyone wanting to immigrate illegally has to either overstay a visa or traverse the entire length of America to do it. That means America has a unique and legitimate concern.

    Saying that it doesn’t isn’t necessary, true or helpful.

  20. 20
    Görkem says:

    “developed nations would collapse”

    Why does a smaller population lead to national “collapse”? Whatever this worst-case population scenario is, there’s some other country out there with that many people, or less, that is doing absolutely fine.

    Not that I mean to argue against immigration, but I feel the imperative is very different to the one you are describing, to avoid some population-based “collapse”. I’ve never understood this pseudo-Malthusian idea that population decline leads to some unspecified disaster.

    I’d also dispute that the USA is unique in its proximity to undeveloped countries. Firstly, Mexico is not “one of the poorest, least developed countries”. Mexico is 71st of 180-something countries in per capita GDP. There are a lot of countries much, much poorer than Mexico. Secondly, half of Europe shares indirect borders with poor countries, many of which are much poorer than Mexico (e.g. Libya).

  21. 21
    Ampersand says:

    Why does a smaller population lead to national “collapse”? Whatever this worst-case population scenario is, there’s some other country out there with that many people, or less, that is doing absolutely fine.

    One argument: It’s less about total population than it is about the proportion of the population that’s elderly. Those people are retired (in a decent society, which I assume we want to be) and they are disproportionately likely to need care. So we need to have enough younger people to provide that care, and also to be productive workers whose productivity is keeping the economy afloat and paying for things like Social Security and Medicare.

    A shrinking population – that is, fewer people being born each generation – is going to lead to a lot of retired elderly people and not enough younger productive workers to support them as well as we’d want.

    I don’t know if that argument is true or false. But it’s an argument I’ve heard.

  22. 22
    JaneDoh says:

    In support of Görkem’s last comment, I would add that 1) most new illegal immigrants to the US are coming in by air and overstaying their visas, which has been true for some time and 2) pre-covid, net immigration from Mexico to the US was negative for several years, with many illegal border crossers traversing Mexico from further south. There is nothing particularly magic about the US-Mexico border – it is just that there are many fewer people living north of the US (though there certainly are undocumented Canadians living in the US too).

    I also find that most people who are strongly opposed to any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants are also opposed to legal immigration, and have no desire to actually fix the broken US system (which doesn’t really work well for anyone right now). There is a huge mis-match between what US companies are willing to pay and what US residents are willing to do for that money – it isn’t just unskilled labor either. The rural health care system would collapse without immigrant doctors and nurses. In the case of unskilled labor (ie jobs that don’t need a license or documented skills), undocumented workers fill those holes.

    FWIW, there is nothing special about Americans (ie they aren’t particularly lazy compared to the rest of the world), they just have more options. Countries that don’t have loads of immigrants manage to get food harvested and hotel rooms cleaned, but employers may need to pay more for the labor.

  23. 23
    Görkem says:

    @JaneDoh: I think the reason you don’t see such inward movement from Canada is partly because Canada has far fewer people than Mexico, but also because the income gap between America and Canada is also much less significant than between Mexico and the USA. It isn’t wrong to point out the income gap as a factor, it’s just wrong to claim that it is unique or that Mexico is notable for its poverty in a global context.

    There are plenty of other bordering countries with parallel wage gaps and most of them also experience significant immigration flow (Spain to Morocco, Italy to Libya, South Africa to Zimbabwe, Singapore to Indonesia, Russia to Kazakhstan, Turkey to Syria, etc etc).

  24. 24
    Chris says:

    Corso:

    Legal immigrants go through a process; Their immigration, their status, is determined by metrics. We can disagree on what those metrics should be, but they exist, and they exist for reasons.

    My point, though, is that simply distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration does not typically lead to a discussion about what the metrics should be, and in most cases is used to avoid discussing those metrics–as seemed to be the case in RonF’s comment.

    Furthermore, saying “I oppose illegal immigration but favor legal immigration” remains meaningless. Yes, we all think the things we like should be legal and the things we don’t like to be illegal. Most people who are called “pro-illegal-immigration” actually want more immigrants to be able to come here legally, and we think the law should change to reflect that. These terms obfuscate more than they clarify.

  25. 25
    Corso says:

    Gorkem @ 20

    There are a lot of countries much, much poorer than Mexico. Secondly, half of Europe shares indirect borders with poor countries, many of which are much poorer than Mexico (e.g. Libya).

    I…. Did you use the wrong nation as an example? Libya is on the coast of Northern Africa. There are 0 European nations that share a land border with Libya. I suppose they can boat across the sea, but that is maybe more akin to the Cuba-US border but that’s a bad comparison for a whole lot of reasons.

    Why does a smaller population lead to national “collapse”? Whatever this worst-case population scenario is, there’s some other country out there with that many people, or less, that is doing absolutely fine.

    Amp’s response @21 was the base theory. We’re starting to see it function in real time in Japan, where their low birthrate, low immigration rate, and low worker engagement rate were leading to some very concerning economic consequences. If you’d like to learn more, I’d read up on the “Grass Eater” movement, where Japanese men, understanding that they can’t really succeed in anything resembling the “American Dream” (or the Japanese equivalent), are purposefully seeking under-employment. That is…. They *could* make more, but seeing no reason to, they set out to only make enough to cover rent, food and necessities. It’s a real problem, and bloody interesting.

    Jane @ 22

    In support of Görkem’s last comment, I would add that 1) most new illegal immigrants to the US are coming in by air and overstaying their visas, which has been true for some time and

    I didn’t explicitly say this in my comment, but it should be obvious that “illegal immigrant” is still a broad classification. To your point, for the last five or so years, the number of overstayed Visas started to outnumber the border crossings. The split in 2019 was 60/40. But I would argue that even though overstayed visas are the larger problems in raw numbers, border crossings remain the larger issue as a whole. People who overstay Visas were at least allowed in on the Visa. While they’ve still broken the law, and there are good reasons to enforce those laws, my expectation would be that on average, border crossers would disproportionately be the kind of immigrants the system would be intended to control against.

    Gorkem @ 23

    It isn’t wrong to point out the income gap as a factor, it’s just wrong to claim that it is unique or that Mexico is notable for its poverty in a global context.

    I know that I said that Mexico was “one of the poorest, least developed” nations on Earth, and to be fair to you, I overstated my case. But to be fair to me, the difference between the top 10% of nations, and the bottom 90% is pretty stark. As opposed to saying that Mexico is one of the poorest nations on Earth, my comment should have focused on the difference between Mexico and America. Without putting a whole lot of thought into it, I don’t think you’ll be able to find a more extreme example of wealth disparity between two nations sharing a land border. Maybe an oil rich Middle Eastern nation and an Asian neighbor. But their immigration policies are generally even worse than America’s.

    Chris @ 24

    My point, though, is that simply distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration does not typically lead to a discussion about what the metrics should be, and in most cases is used to avoid discussing those metrics–as seemed to be the case in RonF’s comment.

    I don’t know how you’d get there from the comment you made…. But taking this at face value, I don’t think it’s fair to project that onto Ron. I don’t see it.

    I also think a variation of “You’re an awful person who hates all immigration” is a really weird way to introduce a conversation about legal immigration metrics. It shouldn’t surprise someone when accusing someone else of making no differentiation between legal and illegal immigration that the person they’re conversing with would be more interested in asserting their belief in that differentiation that a completely different, if related, topic.

    You often get what you ask for, I guess.

  26. 26
    Görkem says:

    “There are 0 European nations that share a land border with Libya.”

    I said “indirect borders”, using a phrase that you used yourself. You mentioned the USA shares “indirect borders” with many poor countries. I assumed you meant countries like Honduras, Haiti etc etc, which do not have a literal border with the USA but are very close. The situation between Southern Europe and Northern Africa is very similar. Italy is closet to Libya than the USA is to Haiti, and Spain is very, very close to having a land border with Morocco – you can cross the strait of Gibraltar by swimming with a life jacket on a good day (and many do).

    ” We’re starting to see it function in real time in Japan,”

    Ah yes, Japan, with one of the highest standards of living in the world one of the highest life expectancies, and one of the lowest levels of wealth inequality. If the threat of a shrinking population that is supposed to concern me is the threat that, in 20-30 years, I could be living in a country that is in a similar situation to the one Japan is in now, well, I can’t really say this seems like something I should be worried about.

    I’m very familiar with the “grass eater” phenomenon and it is really just a big nothing – it’s the usual “kids these days don’t work hard the way they used to when I was a youngster” phenomenon, except in Japan.

    ” I don’t think you’ll be able to find a more extreme example of wealth disparity between two nations sharing a land border.”

    Singapore and Malaysia. (Singapore’s GDP per capita is almost the same as the USA’s, Malaysia’s is only a little above Mexico’s).

    Saudi Arabia and Yemen (Saudia Arabia’s GDP per capita is about 40x greater than Yemen’s. The gap between the USA and Mexico is only 8x)

    Israel and Syria (Israel’s GDP per capita is 20x greater than Syria’s)

    South Africa and Mozambique (South Africa’s GDP is 10x greater than Mozambique’s)

    Etc etc.

    “But to be fair to me, the difference between the top 10% of nations, and the bottom 90% is pretty stark. ”

    I don’t really think that’s true. For reference, there are 187 countries listed in the IMF’s per capita GDP estimates. France is #20, the UK is #21, Japan is #22, New Zealand is #23. Those countries are all outside the top 10%. I wouldn’t say the difference in quality of life between France and the USA, or Germany and the UK, or Japan and Singapore, or Canada and New Zealand, is really that stark.

  27. 27
    JaneDoh says:

    Part of the problem is that the US always likes to think it is exceptional. It is a major migration destination because 1) it is a very wealthy country, 2) as a society, it is quite open to immigrants, 3) it advertises this openness through nearly all forms of media, and 4) it pushes the ideal of the “American dream” of rags to riches by your own boot straps hard, even though its social mobility is quite low for a modern developed nation. Even with all of this, the fraction of foreign born residents in the US is close to the average (15% for the US, 14% average) for wealthy nations.

    The truth is that the number of undocumented immigrants in the US has been falling since 2007 and that most undocumented immigrants (something like 2/3) have been in the US for 15 years or more. Figuring out what to do with long-term unauthorized residents is at least as important as fixing the immigration system to better match reality, especially since these are people who are, for the most part, deeply embedded in US society already.

  28. 28
    Corso says:

    Jane @27

    No argument from me. It’s like the abortion discussion: Abortions have been decreasing year over year even in places where they’re readily available because of education, contraception and healthcare. On a long enough scale, the issues probably dwindle down to a fringe. We still need to focus on those fringes, because they’re very serious topics for the people effected, but perhaps they won’t take up as much political oxygen as they do now and we’ll be able to have better discussions.

  29. 29
    Corso says:

    Gorkem @ 26

    I said “indirect borders”, using a phrase that you used yourself. You mentioned the USA shares “indirect borders” with many poor countries.

    I mean…. Sure. But by that measure Russia shares an indirect border with South Africa. Panama to Texas is about 600 miles. Libya to Bulgaria is closer to 2000 and goes through several conflict zones.

    Ah yes, Japan, with one of the highest standards of living in the world one of the highest life expectancies, and one of the lowest levels of wealth inequality. If the threat of a shrinking population that is supposed to concern me is the threat that, in 20-30 years, I could be living in a country that is in a similar situation to the one Japan is in now, well, I can’t really say this seems like something I should be worried about.

    My point, which I think you’re deliberately avoiding, is that Japan’s metrics aren’t going well. My point was that in 20-30 years, you very well might have a similar standard of living to Japan’s, your standard of living might even be better! But if that happens, I expect that it’ll be more because their standard of living has decreased, than yours has increased. I suppose we can hope. Regardless, in the short term they’re about to have a real hard time maintaining their programs. We can disagree on this, I fully admit that I’m speculating, but I really do recommend to anyone reading up on the phenomenon, even if we come to different conclusions, the phenomenon is fascinating.

    For reference, there are 187 countries listed in the IMF’s per capita GDP estimates.

    You brought up the average GDP of nations in both your responses, and I should have mentioned in my last that that is a particularly poor metric, and one I didn’t use. My point is more about quality of life than personal wealth, and GDP per capita doesn’t even measure personal wealth. The average GDP in America is about $65,000 USD. The average GDP in Canada is a little more than $45,000 USD. I don’t think the average Canadian is 30% less well off than the average American, particularly from a quality of life perspective.

    How would you quantify that? I have no idea. It’s why I didn’t try. How did I come to my conclusions regarding quality of life between nations? My completely subjective perceptions.

    What could we do objectively? Comparing quality of life is qualia, but there should be other correlations we could measure. If America’s border to Mexico isn’t unique we should be able to find another border where approximately 300,000ish migrants illegally cross per year. Or perhaps a border where .1% of the destination nation’s population crosses illegally per year. Or perhaps a border where .25% of the nation of origin’s population crosses illegally per year.

    All of this is really beside the point though… Are you really arguing that America’s illegal immigration situation isn’t unique? Because it seems to me like this is something we both believe is probably true, but you’re challenging me on terms.

  30. 30
    Chris says:

    I don’t know how you’d get there from the comment you made…. But taking this at face value, I don’t think it’s fair to project that onto Ron. I don’t see it.

    This was RonF’s comment:

    Re: #8 – the premise here seems to be that the debate regarding immigration is between those who are pro-immigration and those who are against. Of course, there are a large number of people who are fine with legal immigration but are against illegal immigration. The data sets used for this article either don’t differentiate between the effects of legal and illegal immigrants or just deal with legal immigration. It would be interesting, and a valuable contribution to the immigration law enforcement debate, if there were some that did look just at the effects of illegal immigration.

    If he wanted to talk about what the metrics should be when it comes to legal vs. illegal immigration, and how that ties into the economic effects of different types of immigrants, he could have done so (and still can do so). But he didn’t, and he hasn’t.

    I also think a variation of “You’re an awful person who hates all immigration” is a really weird way to introduce a conversation about legal immigration metrics.

    No one here has said anything like that.

    It shouldn’t surprise someone when accusing someone else of making no differentiation between legal and illegal immigration that the person they’re conversing with would be more interested in asserting their belief in that differentiation that a completely different, if related, topic.

    You often get what you ask for, I guess.

    I’m not following.

  31. 31
    Corso says:

    Chris @ 30

    Hmm. Perhaps a recap.

    -The article Ron responded to didn’t differentiate between legal and illegal immigration’s effects on wages. Ron thought it might be interesting to measure the two datasets separately, the implication being that illegal immigration *might* depress wages.

    -You actually seem to admit he might have a point: “It’s possible that illegal immigration has a different economic impact than legal immigration…but that is not because one is illegal and one is legal, it’s because of what types of immigration we make illegal and what types of immigration we make legal.”

    That’s really as far as we had to go. This conversation did not require a conversation of why illegal immigration is illegal, it assumed that you already knew.

    The reason I said “I also think a variation of “You’re an awful person who hates all immigration” is a really weird way to introduce a conversation about legal immigration metrics.” is because you called the distinction between legal and illegal immigration a tautology and then said that Ron and “most of the right” wants to avoid discussing why illegal immigration is illegal.

    That seemed to me like you were suggesting that the only reason illegal immigration is illegal is because people like Ron say it is, and they want to avoid having the conversation on why illegal immigration is illegal, because they’re really only concerned with keeping people out.

    Just to remind you, his comment was:

    the premise here seems to be that the debate regarding immigration is between those who are pro-immigration and those who are against. Of course, there are a large number of people who are fine with legal immigration but are against illegal immigration. The data sets used for this article either don’t differentiate between the effects of legal and illegal immigrants or just deal with legal immigration. It would be interesting, and a valuable contribution to the immigration law enforcement debate, if there were some that did look just at the effects of illegal immigration.

    and yours was:

    This is so full of tautologies that it gave me a headache.

    Let’s try to apply the way we frame immigration in this country to any other issue:

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal abortion but are against illegal abortion.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal marijuana but are against illegal marijuana.”

    “There are a large number of people who are fine with legal tax increases but are against illegal tax increases.”

    What does any of that MEAN, RonF? Would you agree that each of these statements are functionally meaningless? That they tell us absolutely nothing about what policies related to those issues we should favor or oppose, or what the societal and ecomomic impacts of those issues are?

    It’s possible that illegal immigration has a different economic impact than legal immigration…but that is not because one is illegal and one is legal, it’s because of what types of immigration we make illegal and what types of immigration we make legal. That’s the conversation you (and most of the right) ignore every time you talk about “legal vs. illegal immigration” without getting into the particulars of what that means.

    As always, it’s possible that I’m wrong! If that’s not what you meant, and you understand that the difference between legal and illegal immigration is material, as opposed to tautological, that Ron’s point might end up being incorrect, but it’s at least not facially absurd, and that people making the distinction between legal and illegal immigration aren’t necessarily making that argument out of an animus against immigration generally, well… Just say so, and I’ll apologize.

  32. 32
    Görkem says:

    “I mean…. Sure. But by that measure Russia shares an indirect border with South Africa. Panama to Texas is about 600 miles. Libya to Bulgaria is closer to 2000 and goes through several conflict zones.”

    I mentioned Italy to Libya, which is 300km. I didn’t mention Bulgaria at all. Spain to Morocco is not even 10km. Not even close to Russia vs South Africa.

    “My point, which I think you’re deliberately avoiding, is that Japan’s metrics aren’t going well. My point was that in 20-30 years, you very well might have a similar standard of living to Japan’s, your standard of living might even be better! ”

    But Japan’s standard of living has not been declining. Even if we take the “grass eater” phenomenon at face value, which I don’t, we have gone from talking about “collapse” to talking about a subset of a subset of the population being less ambitious in their job seeking than they could be. So like I say, a big nothing.

    “, but I really do recommend to anyone reading up on the phenomenon, even if we come to different conclusions, the phenomenon is fascinating.”

    I’m very familiar with this narrative, both within Japan and in the rest of the world looking at Japan, and that familiarity is what informs my view that there really is nothing going on there except standard inter-generational kvetching.

    “If America’s border to Mexico isn’t unique we should be able to find another border where approximately 300,000ish migrants illegally cross per year.”

    Well, the raw number is more about the large population size of Mexico and the USA than their relative wealth levels. If Mozambique had 90 million citizens, and South Africa had 350 million, you had better believe there would be 300,000 Mozambiqueans showing up in South Africa every year.

    The US-Mexico border might be unique in that it is between two large (e.g. high population) countries with a significant wealth disparity. None of the countries I listed have population sizes approaching Mexico’s, let alone the USA’s. But you haven’t flagged that – you have always come back to relative deprivation levels, and that’s not unique. In fact compared to Mozambique vs South Africa, the USA and Mexico are relatively close in terms of wealth.

    “ve mentioned in my last that that is a particularly poor metric, and one I didn’t use. My point is more about quality of life than personal wealth, and GDP per capita doesn’t even measure personal wealth.”

    GDP per capita measures spending power, which is closely linked to wealth. But even if we throw it out – let’s assume the GDP figures are wrong, which of the countries in the 10% high-quality-of-life bracket do you think doesn’t belong there, and is taking a place deserved by France or the UK or Japan or New Zealand. Is Ireland too high? Singapore? Does Sweden or Australia not deserve to be in the magic 10%? Or maybe your 10%/90% figure is just too restrictive? Can you name your 19 countries that you think belong in the 10% that is on the right size on the quality-of-life chasm? Bear in mind the whole of the EU is more than 19 countries.

  33. 33
    Ampersand says:

    Republicans in national office – who are elected by other Republicans and can reasonably be said to represent the priorities and goals of the party as a whole – are, in fact, against both legal and illegal immigration.

    (2018) With last week’s vote in the House of Representatives on hardline immigration legislation from GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, about three-fourths of Republicans in both the House and Senate have voted this year to cut legal immigration by about 40%. That would represent, by far, the largest reduction in legal immigration since Congress voted in 1924 to virtually shut off immigration for the next four decades.

    And while each of the bills this year to slash legal immigration ultimately fell short of passage, their preponderant support among Republicans marked a telling shift in the GOP’s center of gravity: The last time Congress seriously considered cuts in legal immigration during the 1990s, about three-fourths of Senate Republicans, and about one-third of House Republicans, opposed it.

    “It tells me that the party is more interested in reducing the number of foreigners in the United States than in reducing illegal immigration,” says David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “One reason to allow people to immigrate legally is to reduce the incentives to come illegally, and so this entire portion of that immigration bill is working at cross-purposes to the goal of securing the border and reducing illegal immigration.”

    The only immigration bills they are willing to pass are bills to build the wall (literally or figuratively). Any bill that will ease the burden of the ridiculous, Kafkaesque system immigrants face will be filibustered. Republicans tried to pass a bill vastly reducing green cards, especially for family reunification. The large majority of Republicans in Congress voted to cancel pending immigration applications from about 3 million relatives applying for legal immigration – some of whom have been “waiting in line” the legal way for decades. Republicans in Congress voted down bill after bill intended to help the Dreamers. Trump’s executive orders caused enormous damage to asylum seekers, making it nearly impossible to legally apply for asylum, and other forms of legal immigration, like the Diversity Visa Program, or denying temporary visas to pregnant women, making the application process for green cards needlessly more difficult, denying green card applications for trivial errors like typos, closing all overseas USCIS field offices, and the creation of the denaturalization task force. (I could name many more examples).

    For that matter, in 2018 Trump made signing a bill to help the Dreamers – undocumented immigrants brought to the US as infants or children – conditional on Congress ending the visa lottery and so-called “chain migration.” That is, he said he’d help a select class of undocumented immigrants only if legal immigration were reduced. How does that fit with the “we love legal immigration, we’re just against illegal immigration” claim?

    The words “illegal immigration” do not appear in Trump’s presidential announcement speech. Instead, Trump focused on immigrants’ country of origin. “When Mexico sends its people,” he declared, “they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists … It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably—probably—from the Middle East.” […]

    On Thursday, when presented with a bill that traded the legalization of Dreamers for more border security but did not reduce legal immigration, only eight Republican Senators voted yes. However, 37 voted for a bill that legalized the “Dreamers,” added more border security, and substantially reduced legal immigration.

    The Republican party is against immigration. They hate legal immigrants just as much as they hate undocumented immigrants. And if some grass roots Republicans don’t like people recognizing that, they should elect officials who will be pro-legal immigration.

  34. 34
    Ampersand says:

    Reminder to everyone: The preferred language on “Alas” – which is a privately-owned blog, not a public space – is “undocumented immigrants,” not “illegal immigrants.”

    I do think there are times when it makes sense grammatically or in context to use the phrase “illegal immigration” referring to the phenomenon, but not the people. However, we don’t call people “illegal immigrants” here. And of course, the term “illegals” and “illegal aliens” are banned, as well.

  35. 35
    JaneDoh says:

    @Amp
    Sorry – that was me. I was trying to distinguish between people making illegal border crossings now and long term undocumented immigrants and slipped.

    @Corso
    Canada is experiencing close to 0.1% of its population crossing the US-Canada border (or at least was pre-covid) due to the increased difficulty in gaining asylum in the US. Of course, the number of crossings is much smaller in raw numbers since Canada’s population is much smaller than the US population. That is a counter example.

    I think Görkem is correct in that it is a numbers game. Mexico has just over half the population of the US right now (170 million vs 330 million), so if anything, the number of illegal border crossings should be higher if economics was the whole story.

    Alas, many of the migrants from Mexico, and the majority from further south are migrating because they fear for their lives and not just because they seek economic opportunity. Most of the people caught at the US border are not Mexicans anymore. Until recently, there was net movement of Mexican undocumented immigrants back to Mexico. Living on the edge of life, constantly fearing arrest and unable to ever visit family again is a last alternative. Given opportunities in Mexico, many would (and do) choose that instead.

  36. 36
    Görkem says:

    “The Republican party is against immigration. They hate legal immigrants just as much as they hate undocumented immigrants.”

    To the extent that Republicans focus more on undocumented immigrants, it is purely pragmatic – it is easier to move against these people.

    “mpossible to legally apply for asylum, and other forms of legal immigration”

    Many Republicans and conservative independents simply do not believe asylum seeking as legal – they view the laws that permit it as illegitimate. I think that is what is hiding inside the legal/illegal distinction – when Republicans and conservatives talk about favouring “legal immigration” they are defining immigration as “legal” in the context of what they think the law -should- be, not what it actually is. Bear in mind that it is a common idea in Republican/conservative ideological spaces that existing immigration law is the result of bribery, corruption or part of an electoral fraud scheme.

  37. 37
    Jacqueline Onassis Squid says:

    … when Republicans and conservatives talk about favouring “legal immigration” they are defining immigration as “legal” in the context of what they think the law -should- be, not what it actually is.

    When that isn’t a rationalization for one’s actions or beliefs, it’s totally nonsensical. I mean, I think that Payday Loan businesses should be illegal but I don’t pretend that they actually are, nor do I say I’m in favor of “Legal Payday Loan businesses” when I don’t actually mean that.

    If they want asylum to be illegal, they should continue to work to make it illegal instead of pretending that it’s illegal now.

  38. 38
    Görkem says:

    “When that isn’t a rationalization for one’s actions or beliefs, it’s totally nonsensical. ”

    It is, but sadly it is an effective rhetorical tactic, as we have seen.

  39. 39
    hf says:

    Bear in mind that it is a common idea in Republican/conservative ideological spaces that existing immigration law is the result of bribery, corruption or part of an electoral fraud scheme.

    Wait, what? “Electoral fraud” would at least be coherent, if it hadn’t been soundly refuted. WTF do the others mean? What do these shadowy conspirators want, and where did they even get the money?

    These theorists do realize that smugglers have already cut through a wall, because that was apparently easier than bringing ladders? Pretty sure their tools were cheaper than bribing almost all of Congress!

  40. 40
    Görkem says:

    @hf: You know, the whole thing where they believe Democrats are deliberately trying to create a non-white majority by “importing voters” because it’s the only way they can win elections.

    PLEASE NOTE anybody reading that these are not my ideas, I’m describing a popular (and wrong, and also offensive) conservative narrative.

  41. 41
    hf says:

    Ah. So, like election fraud, but without the fraud, or any illegality, or indeed any mechanism to prevent sane Republicans from getting Hispanic votes. Our cunning plot of not-actually-having-a-plot must be what prevented the GOP from undoing it, those times they controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency.

  42. 42
    Görkem says:

    @hf: One of the virtues of the right wing version of the “deep state” is that it is a convenient excuse to prevent conservative politicians from being judged on their records, because any failure to deliver can be chalked up to the “deep state”.