Socialite Cordelia Scaife May Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Can a billion dollars always push an idea into the mainstream? Or are there counterexamples of groups who poured huge amounts of money into promoting something that never caught on?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor and an expanded consumer base. It's just about the only thing the Koch brothers and Soros can agree on.
The big money, big ideology people poured money into hard right conservatism. Investing in and advertising on talk radio being one key strategy. Your average blue collar worker/trucker/etc has been indoctrinated with conservative blather for 30 years.
If the consensus position is broad-scale immigration is a good idea (which seems to be solidly the case in English-speaking politics) then voters who don't like immigration are out of luck.
When I worked on the farm in the 90s, the classic rock in the barn was swapped out for Rush every afternoon. When I go back home, it’s pretty much the same, except most of the farms are out of business.
If you’re from a white collar, suburban background, you just can’t understand. Most media is New York/LA centric, and conservative outlets reject that.
It's easy to identify propaganda in microcosm, it's harder to see the same thing writ large. I find that most white collar suburbanites I meet have a great number of received opinions and rarely examine the sources of such.
Could be I just misinterpreted your comment.
George Soros does not, to my knowledge, employ a large number of low-wage workers- how would he personally benefit from a larger labor pool? The Koch brothers do have a very large workforce, but they're all industrial assets- hard to imagine farm laborer-types from Central America could be employed in huge numbers. The only people who could conceivably benefit from immigrant labor would be industries with huge huge numbers of minimum or close to minimum-wage employees- Home Depot, Chipotle, Subway etc. I guess Amazon.
Seeing as we have a federal minimum wage- how much money could an evil billionaire who employs thousands of unskilled workers possibly save with a larger labor pool? $1 per hour, per worker? $2 per hour? I find the amount of cost savings they'd get to be not that much- you'd think Evil Billionaire would put way more effort into healthcare reform, given that non-wage benefits are (much much much) more expensive than a few dollars per hour.
Saying 'the labor pool' is handwavey. Outside of a few industries, developed countries have mostly outsourced unskilled work to the 3rd world- so, if a bunch of farm laborer-types with a 6th grade education come here, they're not competing with the huge huge majority of skilled US workers. There is no affect on wages for most workers, and no motivation for really any white collar employer. I find your hypothesis unconvincing
It’s the farms
Just look at the latest big raid: chicken farms
In California César Chavez was against illegal immigration because the farms would use immigrants to break the unions
Don’t know exactly what Soros and the Kochs do, I’m guessing they don’t exactly employ people but own companies that sell things to people
Kamala Harris has called for defacto open borders, same with Julian Castro.
She literally said during the debate no one gets deported, and crossing illegally would be a civil penalty, aka jay walking ticket.
You can argue the pros and cons, but clearly she and some of the other candidates are calling for de facto open borders.
Yes, it is. Specifically, it's most commonly a strawman applied to people who disagree with the speakers’ preferred methods of enforcing immigration law while still supporting the principle of limited legal immigration. As you demonstrate.
> Kamala Harris has called for defacto open borders
No, she hasn't. She's called for decriminalizing crossing outside of designated border crossings (not “crossing illegally”, as there are other illegal crossings—such as crossing at a designated border crossing with false documentation—which is also criminal and she has not called for decriminalizing), but also for continuing to enforce immigration law with civil rather than criminal process (which includes continued use of deportation, which is itself a civil rather than criminal sanction.) This is not open borders, de facto or otherwise.
> same with Julian Castro.
Well, it's the same in that the claim is also not true of Castro, who explicitly called for monitoring and retaining civil penalties for illegal entry and presence including the selective use of deportation, alongside supporting decriminalization of crossing outside designated crossings and assuring that asylum seekers get the hearings they are entitled to under the law.
> She literally said during the debate no one gets deported
No, she literally did not.
> and crossing illegally would be a civil penalty, aka jay walking ticket.
Civil process includes sanctions much more severe than jay walking tickets, including deportation.
"Harris said people should not be deported if their only offense is living in the United States without documents." https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/28/democratic-debate-...
Coming across would not be a crime. So as long as a person did not commit a crime, they get to stay. that is defacto open borders. It can't get much more clear than that.
you can argue if that is a good or bad thing, but that is what she is for, she said it very clearly.
For low wage jobs maybe, but doctors have fought very hard to minimize foreign trained competition being allowed to work in the US.
This interview would indicate that he understands that, and wants to restrict immigration for that very reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0
Edit: The interview is from 2015, so it may be that his understanding has 'evolved' since.
Most border crossings aren't even prosecuted. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/520/
Increasing the number of them being prosecuted places a massive burden on the court system and results in the various unjust scenarios we have today. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/us/border-immigration-cou...
There isn't any evidence that criminalization decreases the number of border crossings either. https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2015/OIG_15-95_May15.pdf
Indeed, immigration levels haven't decreased under trump despite the massive increase in prosecutions.
Given this, it isn't absurd to think that other approaches would be at least as effective at controlling immigration in practice.
The only reason why it's 'cheap' labour is because traditionally immigrant labor has been used for things that either Americans won't do (due to low pay) or through corporations not being punished. This situation is why H-1B abuse is prevalent among certain companies: They hold the deportation card over immigrants, which then gives them market leverage to pay them less by having them fear losing or switching jobs.
This is an issue paradoxically supported by the modern right, because it's usually farmers and larger corporations that benefit the most. The fixes that the modern right realistically want is the ability to eliminate minimum wage and further destroy workers rights because it makes labor cheaper which in turn boosts profits.
Is that really true?
To me, both Soros and the Kochs seem to be somewhat close to classical liberalism. Mostly free people, mostly free markets, etc.
As such, to me, they to have more in common with one another than either has to the Trump crowd or the Sanders/Warren/AOC crowd.
My understanding of Soros and the Kochs is somewhat low resolution, so I would be happy to be corrected on whatever I am not seeing here.
Now that US politics are going through a realignment, the two are becoming as chummy as they were always destined to be. The demonization from both sides was mostly kayfabe.
Popular opposition does not look like it had much of an effect on immigration rate [1]. One might even call the policy un-democratic.
[1] https://cis.org/Report/Immigrants-United-States, Figure 1
The “other” side will attack all of the points weaknesses and then, because people don’t have the ability to just say “yes, this idea associated with my party is both expensive and stupid” it will be defended instead. Often by just a few people who like to argue.
But the defense makes it appear that people in the party support the idea, which then further solidifies the concept in the base as the back and forth continues. At best you will hope to work out the bad ideas via primaries and debates, but sometimes a bad idea that’s popular is going to hold on because voters often care more about how they feel than math.
Of course, they succeed sometimes too, but it turns out that money is no guarantee.
0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-in...
'Impossible' is a very strong word for something many countries manage just fine. Unless you define 'prevent' as "no immigrant ever enters, even if only to be deported the next day".
But there's a third way - prosecute those unscrupulous employers. If only their lobbying money wasn't in the way...
/s/, descendant of Potato Famine Irish Immigrants
Do you have any idea what has happened to the wages for non-skilled labor since the 1970s? While you and I may have nice cushy jobs and live in nice houses, the largest employer in this country is Walmart. Most people in this country don't have college degrees. They are poor, and mass immigration has made them poorer, and continues to make them poorer.
A lot of the "Abolish ICE" support comes from people in highly gentrifying areas of the country, living in cities that are in the process of driving out their historic minority residents from their homes to go live in the Midwest, all to make way for wealthier white people. Not that this would be your situation, of course! But it can make that sort of person's cheap grace very cheap indeed.
That gentrifying neighborhood is also home to DC’s Central American diaspora. My daughter’s classmates’ families fled violence in Honduras and El Salvador (both in the 80s and now, with renewed unrest).
I’m also from rural Iowa, lived on a farm during the 80s farm crisis until my dad threw in the towel. I go back regularly. I have a very personal understanding of rural depopulation and economic stagnation.
Your accusation of cheap grace is indeed cheap. You want real grace? Love thy neighbor, every one of them. Do you have any idea what life is like in San Pedro Sula?
And if your interest in immigration is especially asylum law, I would be extremely worried about the people now deploying asylum fraud as a mass immigration wedge. It's going to wind up hurting the people who need it the most, and in fact already has.
This also ignore two other big parts of the picture: The fact that in the pre-1970s America still had historically high immigration with the same complaints you bring up now (that the 'dirty' Irish for example were poor, uneducated and a drain on society) just with different color slapped on top. New York was quite literally a city of immigrants.
And then you have automation, which means even if you were to completely stop all immigration would mean the loss of jobs as companies further reduce their bottom line.
I'm not a fan of this sort of historical revisionism where the history of immigration in the US is sort of paved over to make way for new fears of immigrants destroying the fabric of society somehow.
Persistence of the status quo flow of illegal entrants would doom the Triangle countries forever.
I support immigration because my ancestors were immigrants, and I believe others deserve the same opportunity.
And what about the current citizens who are relatively poorer off because off high number of low skilled new immigrant arrivals? Does a nation not owe more to its current citizens?
> When labor supply rises, Econ 101 says that wages fall, right? Wrong. The problem with this kind of approach is that it ignores the dynamic nature of the US economy.
Source: https://www.hoover.org/research/economic-effect-immigration
Certain sectors of the economy are experiencing shortages - of course that just means people are not willing to pay the price that citizens charge: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/A-catastrophic-trend...
Wonder how many nativists will end up cared for by immigrant caregivers
> Empirical studies of immigration’s effect on national economies confirm the general impact shown in the third chart. A review by David Card in 2007 concluded that “more than two decades of research on the local labor market impacts of immigration have reached a near consensus that increased immigration has a small but discernible negative effect on the relative (emphasis in original) wages of low-skilled native workers” but also a small, positive overall effect.
So in effect, more or less neutral, then?
> In the face of the reality that average wage levels are not negatively affected, one counterpoint is that the impact differs among skill levels (i.e., that low-skill migrants depress wages for native low-skill workers)
So that means, that low skill immigration which is the bigger chunk of all immigration, is at best neutral and most likely hurts wages? It is the high skill immigration which helps.
> National and even state economies are much more dynamic than simple theory
Just asserts a wishful thinking and concludes on this, doesn't really put any numbers to support this.
All of this from your own link.
An immigrant can’t take jobs from citizens, since jobs aren’t property owned by citizens. Jobs are trades (an agreement, a relationship) between two people. Do I really need to explain that a job isn’t an entitlement you get for being a citizen? I think you know this.
No matter how many immigrants come here, they can’t steal the fruits of your labor. Immigrants aren’t reaching into your bank account and taking your money.
It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away?
Every single immigrant visa category in the US immigration system is based on something that has been specifically deemed by the Congress as a reason to offer people admission, permanent residency, and ultimately citizenship in the United States.
So, yes.
It’s arguable that this policy while very cruel and unjustly applied and which resulted in skewed gender demographics, had allowed China to prosper quicker than otherwise. On the other hand, in 20-30 years they will face a severe shortage of working age people. But they are autocrats so they may be able to manage that via central policies.
this is phrased so strangely that i can't tell what it's supposed to mean. environmentalism was long intertwined with romantic thought and philosophy, and obviously until the second half of the 20th century did not carry the eschatological urgency of climate change. environmentalism as we've inherited it is largely a european and american development so it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that it is associated with white people, but i can't tell if the implication is supposed to be some kind of indictment of it.
Overpopulation is obviously a problem; immigration maybe or maybe not (case-by-case each country decides).
Overpopulation is from people being born; not from people crossing borders. No humans are created or destroyed in the act of emigration or immigration.
Overpopulation, nobody wants to talk about; immigration, everybody wants to talk about.
One of the big drivers of population growth is being a poor farmer and preserving a legacy. Once you have some wealth, the incentives change.
My grandparents grew up poor in rural Ireland, my grandmother was one of 12 children and at least 16 pregnancies, born in the WWI era. 9 of the siblings made it to adulthood. They needed people to milk cows and catch fish, and needed living sons to inherit the land and take care of the elders.
Immigration in modern western countries fills the gap between productivity gains and the dearth of workers. It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo. Remember that behind of all of these crazy debates is a need for certain stakeholders to maintain power.
That doesn’t seem correct. Waves of Hispanic and Asian immigration has reshaped California from Conservative to _the_ most liberal state. CA also has high minimum wages and much better worker protections than most other states, due to the liberal leaning politicians that got elected.
Why do you think that these folks are so upset about immigration from Latin America and Asia? The old way was to exploit cheap immigrant labor... but after many years, you now have a situation where that immigrant labor is disrupting the status quo.
This has happened before. The same type language directed at Mexican and central american laborers was directed at Irish, Italian, Greek, Chinese and Jewish immigrants in the 19th century. Race, religion, supposed immorality, the same shit. See the Page Act, Chinese Exclusion Act and "Know Nothing Party".
I'm not talking about your little patch of ground, I'm talking about the globe here.
edit - Also, I am not entirely sure that her partners in this battle she was fighting against immigration, have really got the memo on the whole ecology/overpopulation thing. They strike me as more the sort to either be siring their quiverfull ready for the coming eschaton, or to leave a trail of illegitimate children from a series of messy affairs with employees.