Hell Yes, Mayor Bloomberg. I’m With You. | Hacker News Reader

Hell Yes, Mayor Bloomberg. I’m With You.

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155 pointsrazin104 comments

The only thing I disagree with in this article is Arrington's assertion that "the issue of illegal immigration over our Southern border must be separated from the issue of immigration of people who want to come here to build companies."

I don't really see why we need to separate those issues. They are the same issue. We should discard isolationist policies in both cases and move toward a more enlightened policy in both cases.

After all, one can't always tell with certainty which immigrants are the "good" immigrants and which are the "bad" ones, in advance.

It's certainly a thorny issue though. If you're going to run any sort of welfare state, it's pretty hard to argue for totally open borders; it simply leads to financial ruin, as much of Europe has found out over the last 30 years (which is why European countries have swiftly and brutally tightened immigration policies). If you're giving away a lot of free stuff, you're forced to guess at which immigrants are going to be productive and contribute to your society and which are just there for the freebies.

I've always found this cognitive dissonance interesting (particularly and recently evident in France): those who feel it's morally wrong not to support the poorest of their societies have no problem refusing to do the same for those who were born on the other side of an arbitrary stripe on a map.

As an Eastern-European, I agree it's a thorny issue. But Westerners also have to agree that the "Trente Glorieuses" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses) couldn't have been possible without foreign workers, or, in the case of Italy, without the help of internal migration (from South to North).

Unlike our past whereas a large amount of unskilled labor allowed companies to create new wealth...its now skilled labor that we need n immigration..

Unskilled labor immigration thus is and should be separate issue

This certainly explains the explosion of manufacturing in China.

It's a cognitive dissonance born out of pragmatism (economics), hence the moral suspension.

I don't think there's any dissonance. A nation is a group, and you may feel obliged to take care of the poorer people of your group, but not those of some other group that would not do the same for you.

Few serious people claim that European countries have been ruined by immigration. The reason for the political backlash has more to do with political motives, and economical changes which have nothing to do with immigration (sharp decrease of low-skill, high wage incomes, etc...).

Long term citizens of Malmo and certain Paris arrondissements disagree, I think.

Just because you haven't read about the issue in a major US paper doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

"Few serious people" make blanket claims of "few serious people claiming" without realizing they are engaging in a tactic meant to shame someone over expressing an unpopular idea.

They disagree about what ? What does happen ?

As far as unpopular idea go, I think "immigration is good for the economy" is pretty unpopular nowadays in France (and most European countries).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnP-XzB_U0

Ignore the stupid, racist comments.

100% of rapes in Oslo over the last five years committed by Muslims.

http://www.westernyouth.org/articles/shocking-all-rapes-in-o...

I find it highly distressing that the Nordic countries are putting up with this stuff.

Immigration critical parties are gaining more and more popularity (as an example, Swedish Democrats and True Finns).

Great! I don't want a Muslim majority in my new country.

This number doesn't pass the smell test. I might believe that Muslims are committing more rapes that Nordics, but no rapes at all in Oslo by Nordic men?

The only non-blog article I could find on this was from NRK in Norwegian: http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/norge/1.6944861. Translating through Google, it says the police only starting keeping statistics on rape in 2006 (?!?) and that there were 21 in 2008 and 11 in 2009.

According to Wikipedia, the Oslo metro area has 1.4 million people and Norway has a per capita rape rate of 20 per 100,000. So on average you'd expect something like 280 rapes per year in Oslo. Something here doesn't make sense.

The linked article has an embedded news report. They name the police report in question. You could hunt it down from there.

"Long-term"? The ones rioting in the Parisian banlieues were typically second or third generation (if they were not native). And those riots were caused by a lack of opportunity, not a bleeding dry of the state.

And I live in the UK, and could read anti-immigrant rhetoric in the papers every day. So I'd disagree with your "unpopular idea", more's the pity. For example: http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/tag/immigration/ Popular points of views, widely claimed, and yet I would not call them serious people. But I do think they deserve shame.

The problems in Paris aren't due to immigration by itself. One of the big problems is the how low-cost housing was concentrated in some areas, putting all the less rich/successful people together and making it hard for them to make progress.

Are you people really this deluded about the immigrants? The problems throughout the West are not policy or economic issues. The problem is massive numbers of people with no interest or aptitude to assimilate to Western culture.

It leads to financial ruin for welfare states? Then how is it that Sweden is one of the countries that accepts most immigrants per capita in Europe, but still has a good economy, and still have opened up policies even further during the last decade?

Sweden's lax immigration policies are not without their own problems, though. Ghettos are forming within the major cities and crime is up across the board. Immigrants are refusing to adopt the culture. Norway also suffers from this problem, but to a lesser degree as they allow fewer immigrants.

Anyone who wants to slow down or limit immigration is labeled as a racist in these countries.

Here's an example posted in another thread here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661027

Keep in mind that Sweden is also using its own currency, not the fluctuating Euro. They're not responsible for bailing out insolvent member states like Germany is.

"Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

While I don't grant your premise (that open borders in a welfare state lead to financial ruin), I think the US has a special consideration in that it was founded not on a race, ethnicity, or culture, but an ideology of self-evident truths. And immigrants.

1) Was the US a welfare state when that poem was written? From seeing "Gangs of New York", I think not. :)

2) You do realize that Asians were excluded from immigrating to the US until very recently, right? http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/immigration_c...

That's a nice resource but I don't think it shows what you intended it to show. From that timeline all I gather is that the United States has always wavered between xenophobia and the need for labor.

There were essentially four brief periods of high immigration in American history, usually lasting on the order of 20 years or less. Outside of those periods essentially zero immigration was the norm. From 1924 to 1965 immigration was zero (somehow business and technology advanced in America; not sure how). There were many such periods farther back.. Allowing only immigration from Western nations was the norm.

We are now in the fourth decade of an unprecedented experiment with extraordinarily high immigration. The length of this wave and the volume of newcomers dwarfs all previous waves. This is also the first experiment with high numbers of non-Westerners, who to all indications do not appear to be assimilating and intermarrying as previous waves did.

The lesson to take away from the history of American immigration is that immigration waves should be followed by long periods of zero immigration for assimilation.

Looking at the US Census data from 1850 onward (they didn't ask where you were born before the 1850 census), the percentage of the US population was a steady 13-14% from 1860 to 1920. In 1950 (they didn't ask in 1930 or 1940), it's down to 9% presumably from the changes in immigration law in the 1920s. Then it's around 5% for 1960-1980 and from 1990 starts to rise up to 12.48% today. That's roughly where the percentage of immigrants was for the 6 decades before 1920. That doesn't to me look like "an unprecedented experiment with extraordinarily high immigration"

Despite reaching replacement level fertility in the 70s, the population has continued to explode, and this is due entirely to immigration. This is historically unprecedented.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/sustainability/bigge...

A cursory reading of the founders shows the US was founded as a racial and cultural nation. Nobody thought much differently until post WWII, more like the 1970s really.

From an economic perspective, open borders are highly desirable. But you're right that they're not really compatible with welfare programs. I don't know if it's ever been tried, but one solution would be an "open borders, but non-citizens aren't eligible for welfare until they've been here for, asy, 10 years" policy.

The current European financial crisis has many more causes than immigration. In general, the causes fall in line with the US economic crisis causes: the housing bubble, an extended period of cheap money, no regulation of newly conceived financial instruments, etc.

Immigration may have exacerbated these issues, but not more so than the monetary union.

> After all, one can't always tell with certainty which immigrants are the "good" immigrants and which are the "bad" ones, in advance.

You can. Those with advanced degrees should be viewed as "desirable" immigrants.

That could become a loaded policy, one which encourages universities to crank out graduates with those degrees, not necessarily with the expected understanding. [1]

I'm not saying its a bad idea, but it draws a somewhat arbitrary line in the sand, one which would eliminate some of the "desirable" immigrants - entrepreneurs that have dropped out and gone on to build amazing companies.

[1] A good example can be found here: http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education and the associated discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483976

Actually it can be worse than the reference you provided - some universities are in fact businesses selling degrees with no regard to quality OR quantity whatsoever (rote learning? you'd wish).

Basically it's like going to the market - see a license you like, then buy it.

That's what happens when the system is broken - you put stupid discriminatory rules in place, then prepare to get played.

I wish there was a name for this law. It runs something like this:

If there is a reasonable proxy measure for a desirable behaviour, and you reward the reasonable proxy measure, it ceases to be a reasonable proxy measure.

North Dakota companies are now recruiting experienced welders from Canada. I would say you might want to look beyond "degree".

I don't know why we're so picky about our employees, either. After all, one can't always tell with certainty which ones are the 'good' employees and which are the 'bad' ones in advance.

Look, there's a world of difference between someone coming to America to do sub-minimum-wage farm labor and someone coming to America to start a company. Enlightened policies raise our average skill level, not lower it.

Because there is a large number of illegal immigrants from the southern border already here. That and a few other reasons make it a much harder problem to solve than the problem of skilled immigration.

Not with certainty, but with probability. Mexican immigrants vastly outnumber Russian, Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Persian immigrants. But the entrepreneurship ratio is lopsided in the opposite direction. One group creates jobs on net, the other is a net tax recipient. And other developed countries like Canada and Singapore routinely distinguish between skilled and unskilled immigrants, so it's really not that hard a distinction to make.

the other is a net tax recipient

I call BS. Do you have a statistic you can cite?

And maybe you should be a bit more thankful to the group of people who ensure you can buy cheap produce in American supermarkets. Among other things...

I have no data on the tax contribution of immigrants, but their welfare use is very high.

http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011

However, data on estimated tax liability is present, and it suggests immigrants are liable for very little in tax. This should be unsurprising - taxes are primarily paid by the highest income brackets, and immigrants tend to lie within the lowest income brackets.

Labor cost inputs to agriculture are low and have been falling for decades.

How do Germany and other high-wage countries manage harvesting?

They invest in automation instead of pushing for what is close to indentured servitude, as American agribusiness does.

They invest in automation instead of pushing for what is close to indentured servitude

Actually we prefer servitude over automation, too. Our harvesters come from Poland, Hungary and Romania. Much cheaper than expensive machines.

Exactly. Plus, we dont export as much agriculture products as the US does. I have no data on this, but Germany is probably a net importer of agriculture products, despite all those subsidies and cheap labor from east europe.

http://irepp.stanford.edu/documents/GDF/SUMMARIES/Imazeki.pd...

Average cost of a California public school student per year: $8268 [with 90% between $6200-$11000].

http://paa2008.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=8035...

Hispanic TFR 2.5-2.8. Roughly, the average number of children per woman over lifespan.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0690.p...

Median Hispanic household income: $37912.

For your median Hispanic household, during school age years with 3 kids we're talking about $24,900 per year in taxpayer expenditures, which is about 65% of their household income. This is likely significantly more than is paid in taxes by the household and is one line item; we have not yet included medical bills or the array of other costs borne by society.

Business owners are currently fobbing off the costs of unskilled immigration (illegal and otherwise) on the rest of society; your cheap produce is not cheap.

Education should be regarded as an investment. It has to be paid for, but we have 'nationalized' school as a strategic measure, intended to optimize the next generation's opportunities. Regardless of who's children they are, the 'cost' of not educating them will, over their lifetimes, be much greater than $8268.

Possibly true. However, given a surplus of people wishing to immigrate to the US, we should selfishly take all the immediate operating-profit applicants first before admitting any that require us to borrow money (feel-good or whole-world-utilitarian exceptions like asylum aside; credit them whatever value you think they're worth).

Kids don't 'wish' to immigrate - they get dragged along.

Furthermore, its not clear we in America are so poor we must operate on an immediate-profit bases, especially when considering human capital. You for instance. Should we eject you, probably a student by the sound of it, because you are not currently profitable?

Now you argue that you're already an American, which is true but firmly on the "I've got mine" side of politics and not pretty.

America is in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars and in the worst economy since the Great Depression. When do you think we should start looking at the profit/loss implications?

So, you advise looking ahead to the next quarter only, while torpedoing the chances of the next generation? What is it all for then?

If it is an investment then we need to look at ROI and determine the point at which this investment becomes cash flow positive from a net tax expenditure standpoint. Chinese, Korean, Indian, Russian, Persian immigrants are throwing off cash in generation 1 -- wait and see is not required. But 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanic immigrants have not achieved significantly greater economic success than the 1st generation.

If it is an investment then we do need to look at these bottom line metrics.

Your numbers have nothing to do with being Hispanic. Is making $40000/year so rare for families with 2 or 3 kids? First we socialize schools then we complain when the costs are not covered by those using the schools. This is a very common pattern.

I don't know if it's that simple: the very act of getting to America from Mexico has got to be cheaper and easier than from any of the other countries that you mentioned, surely. That is to say, because it's a lot cheaper to actually get to the USA from Mexico, more blue collar workers ("less entrepreneurial") are able to do so.

If all of those other countries shared a border with the USA, only then could you really start comparing the 'entrepreneurship ratio'.

Be careful about selection bias. Perhaps people dedicated enough to leave their home and move across the globe are probably better entrepreneurs.

Of course you can't tell with certainty but you can guess at averages. Would you rather work with a programmer who has a track record of launching excellent products or a random guy picked off the street?

Encouraging immigration of skilled individuals is not a moral policy, it's an economic one.

Why? Was this country built up by the best of Old World or those that were considered the worst? Our bigger risk may not be on the dimension of education and skills but political and economic attitudes.

""" After all, one can't always tell with certainty which immigrants are the "good" immigrants and which are the "bad" ones, in advance. """

Well you certainly can't tell if you don't even try.

The only good solution to the immigration mess is to just let people buy their citizenship. Put a price on it. Then people would see more clearly that those who jump in line are thieves. Those who want poor immigrants can sponsor them.

With qualifications, I assume? Mexican druglords could certainly afford to buy citizenship.

Of course... but we're probably getting just as many drug lords now than if we didn't have qualifications.

BTW, I got the idea from Gary Becker...

http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/06/22/gary-becker-immigrant...

And no doubt they'll be easier to arrest if they take up residence in mansions on the US side.

Why would they want to buy US citizenship? They're having plenty of fun in Mexico.

You can buy citizenship (or at least residency), but the cost is astronomical. $500,000 to be exact. http://www.legalusvisa.com/permanentvisas/greencardsforinves...

first thing that will happen there is companies will start offering citizenship loans secured against your brighter future

We need to separate the issue because we have a very different relationship with our neighbors than other countries in the world. We have trade agreements that try to create an economic zone differently than non-connected countries.

We gave 499.4 million USD to Mexico in foreign aid in 2009. Yet, people from Mexico come to the US illegally for opportunities. It looks like we would be better off instituting special programs that target individuals with that money. Special worker visas are not really going to be sufficient (but needed nonetheless).

Just as a basic security measure we need our southern (and northern) borders a tad bit more secure. If nothing else because of the violence spilling into the US (and especially our Native American reservations on the border). It has become a safety issue.

You realize that targeting individuals with that money would be 2-3 bucks per mexican. Give everyone a big mac and that'll solve everything?

Also, our southern border has been nearly militarized in the last 2 years, and there has been ZERO increase in crime or impact on the US side of the border, despite a whole lot of propagandizing by racist assholes. (here's one cite, you can find more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/05/02/20100502ar...)

I said target individual, not "give everyone an equal check". Business and development loans would seem to be a better use of money than giving it directly to the Mexican government. Individually, work visa are needed but insufficient. Overcoming the objections on mexican trucking is another problem.

Although NPR is sometimes considered propaganda I am don't think I have heard it characterized as that type. I will cite the testimony of Tohono O’odham tribal Chairman Ned Norris Jr. http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/042009Norris.pdf - you can also google for more information on the tribe's struggle and the violence spillover.

- http://buffalopost.net/?p=6232 - http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-12-21-border21_ST_N... - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1285398...

The article I provided had data. From the FBI. 3 links to an anecdote do not make it data.

I question your data because it was AZ - not the reservation on the border in AZ.

The data was "border areas of AZ".

You question it because it doesn't support the narrative you've already committed to. Finding a local exception to the overall trend doesn't invalidate the trend.

No, I question it because the reporting of data from the reservation is not generally included in AZ stats and none of the NG troops down there were placed on the reservation land. Pushing the problems into a smaller, less reported on area doesn't change the problem either.

Uh, is this reservation a significant fraction of the land area in Arizona? It's not? So it wouldn't have moved the averages at all? Thanks.

look at the nice map on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O’odham showing the reservation. Notice the significant % of the border it takes up. Notice that no NG were placed in that section of the border.

Well, I suppose I learned something then. So, everywhere except this indian reservation, NG presence has been substantially beefed up and there's been no impact, but seemingly this reservation has seen increased crime.

So you don't understand why one should separate the discussion of LEGAL temporary/permanent immigration from ILLEGAL immigration? You are proving Bloomberg's point about the urgent need to separate the two.

Because of the huge amounts of illegals from Mexico? Here in SoCal we see the negative effects of illegal immigration every day.

You don't need to separate into "good" and "bad" but I think it'd be easy to get bipartisan support for a bill that opened up a large amount of visas to immigrants with masters and doctorates or entrepreneurs with existing funding. The fight over the other kind of immigration is likely to be a lot more vitriolic.

Two questions. What counts as an advanced degree? And why is starting companies considered important separably from say working in one?

Starting a company and moving to another country are both fairly large life disruptions, and doing both at once would decreases the success of either working well.

If I manage to get a green card I would probably focus first on just getting a job to move to and get myself stable before starting a startup, whereas I am already stable here and could consider starting a business where I already know my way around etc.

I find it interesting where he says "we wouldn't have become a superpower without the contributions of immigrants", rather than consider that almost every American living today had immigrant ancestors.

At which point does he draw the line of immigration? At which date does he (or any American) consider himself "American" rather than an immigrant?

I suppose at the point where one feels closer to the "generic" American values/culture than to that of your forebears. I think it's the truest definition, however it is often hard to prove/demonstrate, so the arbitrary definition "have be born in this country" is used instead.

That makes sense... I think the speech would have been better if it reminded people how their ancestors were all immigrants at some point, though.

so the arbitrary definition "have be born in this country" is used instead

That hardly seems arbitrary -- it's what the word means. If you were born outside the country then you have immigrated, therefore you are an immigrant.

Well it may seem a bit arbitrary to those who grew up in the U.S. but were born elsewhere (or even to those who were born in the U.S. but grew up culturally isolated).

Every American living today has immigrant ancestors, forget the "almost". The Americas were devoid of human life a mere twenty thousand years ago.

Or as I like to say, all Americans are African-Americans.

I heartily agree, but would still place this article firmly in the "politics" category - it's not just about startup visas or things like that.

For exhibit A, we have some guy commenting already "If you're going to run any sort of welfare state, it's pretty hard to argue for totally open borders; it simply leads to financial ruin, as much of Europe has found out over the last 30 years", which is of course complete bunk, as "much of Europe" is most certainly not "financially ruined".

Exactly, that comment had me wondering "who apart from Daily Mail readers believes that immigration causes financial ruin"?

Lots of recent immigration to the UK from other EU states (particularly Poland) has been a very good thing in my opinion.

I read that as saying that Europe found out that they had to strengthen border controls to avoid ruin, not that they were already ruined.

Everything Bloomberg talked about is correct except it applies to LEGAL immigration. ILLEGAL immigration is the problem.

Many people don't seem to actually differentiate though

Legal immigration is a huge problem. We are taking in vastly more people than the nation can culturally assimilate, and statistically these legal immigrants are net economic tax drains.

Even if the legal immigration screening were fixed and we stopped bringing in so many economic losers, the cold hard fact is this country is full. MOST of the US is facing fresh water crises in the next couple decades. We will become net importers of food within the next 20 years as prime farmland is consumed. We already have become net importers in most categories.

The USA is overpopulated. Net immigration should be ZERO.

Did you know the US would not be an oil importer if immigration had been stopped in 1970? Instead of being in a position to peacefully mind our own business we're spending trillions on wars for oil.

Sounds like BS to me. Do you have any citations backing this up?

You realize the US is facing an enormous labor shortage in the coming decades as the baby boomers retire?

That's not really true. Social Security is insolvent, but so what; the sooner that gets shut down the better. There's no evidence that boomer retirement is creating a labor shortage. The boomers are retiring now and wages are not increasing. Japan's boomers are 10 years ahead of ours and their retirements have not created problematic labor shortages.

Even if there were labor shortages, impending water shortages rather plainly remove the option of continued population growth.

The native population of this country decided the land was full in the 1970s. Native born birth rates leveled to replacement. The current immigration paradigm is a political agenda at odds with democracy. Poll after poll shows pretty much everybody agrees we don't need more people. What we have here is a political alliance between certain business interests and certain ethnic interest groups to benefit at the expense of the majority.

A tax eater is a tax eater whether he's legal or not. An immigrant who produces wealth is a producer of wealth whether he's legal or not.

As a guy who works for an american company, living in south america, i say: make this happen. please.

He's certainly the only Republican I'd ever seriously consider voting for.

Actually Bloomberg is not a Republican. He changed his status to Independent a couple of years ago, but got permission from the Republican party to run on their ballot line during the last mayoral election.

I'm with you too. But who's the gatekeeper?

he's describing a meritocratic system. The gatekeeper is still the US government. The acceptance criteria is still merit in one shape or the other. It's all just easier.

Yet another harangue from a capitalist running dog. Move on nothing new here, nothing to see. We all know immigration is a capitalist codeword for labor exploitation, keep those wages low, benefits nonexistent, and jobs to a minimum, so they will be docile and subservient.

American pyramid scheme does rhyme with American dream; this seems like a way to keep newcomers working to feed the incumbents.

This worked fine when Europe was heavily in debt post world war and China was a backwater, but Europe is now ticking along fine, China is doing well, and we are all looking abit wryly at America's lack of social safety nets.

Grrr... Hands off our entrepreneurs. Grow your own.

It's funny that you would mention "social safety nets" when it is most likely the economies of those areas that push the entrepreneurs to the U.S. I'm not saying the U.S. doesn't have its own issues (boy, does it), but I don't see why entrepreneurs shouldn't come here if it is in their best interest. If Europe and China want to keep their entrepreneurs, they should start making themselves more attractive to entrepreneurs.

I think the push is declining.

Personally I am keen to get the hell out of Germany with its 50% tax PLUS 13% compulsory health insurance. Social safety net is one thing, but it is ridiculous here, even rich families get government money for having kids. Foreigners get unemployment benefit. Utter insanity and no one wants it to change. America, please let me in!

And don't get me started on trying to start a business. Europe is purging its entrepreneurs like some sort of viral infection.

Ha ha. I am moving to munich germany on sunday and i will find out for myself.

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