The U.S. cannot afford to turn against immigration
noahpinion.substack.com
noahpinion.substack.com
2). Maybe we can focus on immigration _and_ the reasons why women (and men) are choosing not to have as many kids anymore? Maybe just bringing people in to work the jobs most Americans don’t want to work should be looked at a little more closely? Just saying
Did that lifestyle come out of a vacuum? Or was it influenced by economic, social, and cultural forces in society at large?
If the decision of yourself and others in your situation really was a fully personal one, not influenced by economics or society—then low innate desire for children has become evolutionary maladaptive, and so we should expect birthrates to start rising rapidly through Darwinian selection pretty soon.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161105151917/https://assets.do...
> This report estimates that, at any given time in 2021, approximately 27.6 million people were in forced labor
https://www.state.gov/humantrafficking-about-human-trafficki...
That's no surprise - while only 15% of Whites see their race as very or extremely important to their identity, that number is 56% for Asians, 59% for Hispanics, and 74% for Blacks [1].
The simple reality is Whites will become a minority [2] in what was an 84% White country as recently as 1970 [3]. Will they be treated with gratitude for sharing their country, and so can afford to act colorblind, forsaking racial solidarity? Is gratitude what they're being shown now?
Or will that leave them as individualists in a country dominated by inter-group competition, as current polls suggest?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/race-in...
[2] It’s official: Minority babies are the majority among the nation’s infants, but only just - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-officia...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...
Don't expect large amounts of immigrant solidarity from Latinos going forward. I think trump got slightly upwards of 40% of the Latino vote...
I also think you can’t group Latinos as a voting bloc that swings one way on party or policy. Sure Latinos in Nevada lean blue and are more liberal but in Florida they are conservative and are voting Republican.
Overall though I disagree with the framing. Why is a white minority a bad thing? Canada’s response to such demographic shifts is much more measured. We’re building a country together.
I addressed this question: "Or will that leave them as individualists in a country dominated by inter-group competition, as current polls suggest?"
Of course this is not guaranteed - once Whites are a minority (in the US, not just globally), other races in the US may also turn away from in-group preference, and the culture might turn away from harping on white privilege all the time. It's just that that hasn't happened yet.
I agree this is interesting to watch. Minorities have more voice in the culture as the demographics change, and some in the majority want to push back. Identify politics is toxic, no matter where it comes from. Too many media organizations and politicians (on both sides of the aisle) want to take advantage of people's fears.
That said, if immigration was becoming a major issue then you would see shifts in the electorate backing say the People’s Party that performed dismally in the last federal election.
Could that change? Sure. But it would have to be via the Conservatives and that’s a risky policy shift for them to make.
This is not universally true. While many Latinos do indeed vote this way, others resent having to compete for jobs and social services with more recent arrivals. Geography and background play a major role
2. Does their past and often even current behavior towards other immigrants deserve any gratitude?
People who share kinship ties and cultural ties built the physical and political world of the country. My wife’s family fought in the American revolution, and settled the Oregon coast. All the rugged frontier individualism that permeates American culture is her people. By contrast my family came here on a plane I. 1989. My ancestors contributed nothing to this country. This country’s culture, institutions, etc., bear none of their imprint. If they had, this would be a very different country. We have a whole country that they made but it’s not this one.
Germans, Dutch, Norwegians, and Swedes settled the midwest, which was a key to the development of American society and government. They were a backbone of the Republican Party during the Civil War. Iowa, full of recent German immigrants at the time, contributed more soldiers per capita to the union than any other state. To this day, midwestern speech patterns are full of German or Norwegian influences. There's 50 million German Americans--more than half as many as in Germany.
Italians and Irish had major impacts on the culture and politics of the nation's largest cities. They changed the course of the 20th century by supporting the Democratic Party by large margins from FDR until Reagan, which took the country in a very different direction from the original vision created by the British founders. There's more Irish people in America than in Ireland.
Other European immigrant groups had localized impacts, but never shaped the country the way these other groups did.
I was mostly objecting to your simplified division of people into those "correct" groups whose country this is and those who are foreigners that don't belong here (I know you did not use these words, but that's how your comments sounded to me). I come from a place that has a long history of sentiments like that, and as far as I can tell, there was never anything good coming out of them.
So when is the cut-off date for having "built the physical and political world of the country"? My ancestors (on different branches of the family tree) came here in the mid- to late-19th century and early 20th century — to what extent do their contributions count?
2. Yes.
And even worse is this paragraph implying some kind of future risk to white people if they were not in political control:
> Will they be treated with gratitude for sharing their country, and so can afford to act colorblind, forsaking racial solidarity? Is gratitude what they're being shown now?
Seriously, I would ask you both define gratitude concretely and justify why it matters. Otherwise you’re just vending fear.
I'm not suggesting that. Only that they, on average, exhibit in-group preference, to a degree that correlates with how important they say their racial identity is.
I’m not even sure how you would quantify that. What counts as “in-group preference”? What do you mean “on average (…) to a degree that correlates with(…)”?
For a sufficiently weak “in-group preference” and “correlates with”, this is a very easy claim to make.
Sure, Indian Americans are more likely to support increased GC quota from India. They’re also more likely to have personal experience with how frustrating and difficult the GC system is for immigrants from India. Is that displaying in-group preference, or is that simply being more knowledgeable about a broken/unfair aspect of our immigration system that most people are unaware of?
And just how much more likely are Indian Americans to support increased GC quotas from India compared to say white people, normalized against confounding factors like having background knowledge on our arcane and complicated immigration system? How do you relate this against how likely Indian Americans are to say that their race is part of their identity (which as you say is the degree of correlation on in group preference)?
And is this behavior (in-group preference) consistent across a wide degree of issues across all races? Many people have already pointed out in the comments some counter examples with Latinos for example. Is this just an outlier?
That's not what being racist means. Here's a definition.
characterized by or showing prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
His statement showed neither prejudice, discrimination or antagonism.
OP has not stated this directly but come very close, implying that members of race X, for whom their race is part of their identity, will support opinion Y if such is preferential to members of their race.
At its core this is still prejudiced. Op has thrown a zillion cultural confounders and nuances to the wind and presented an argument based totally on race.
You've just described demographic research.
Prejudice is defined as such:
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
>At its core this is still prejudiced. Op has thrown a zillion cultural confounders and nuances to the wind and presented an argument based totally on race.
Reductive perhaps, but not prejudice.
> It would be racist - actually racist, not the politically correct “racist” - to suggest all members of the same race have the same beliefs.
Of course there is political and social homogeneity of racial groups. I can prove it by showing you voting statistics. By and large, your race/ethnicity and to some extent gender predicts which party you vote for. Also, people tend to live in neighborhoods that are not mixed. The funny thing is that politics relies on this heavily. That's why Biden says things like "he'll put y'all back in chains" and it's why there is a call for diversity in powerful positions like the supreme court and federal judges, because people assume judges of their own race will be more understanding to them (or maybe there is a more sinister reason like punishing opponents more harshly). This is a huge part of identity politics actually all over the world. I think both sides use it to be fair. You should ask Japanese people if they object to the idea of political and social homogeneity of their ethnic group.
>And even worse is this paragraph implying some kind of future risk to white people if they were not in political control:
Is there a political risk to anyone of being a minority? Do you think that if whites were a minority that it's impossible that other groups might seek to punish them? It's not unprecedented that happens. It happened to Indians in Uganda.
In fact until 2008, the majority of Hispanics said there were “too many immigrants” in the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/19/latinos-hav.... It flipped around then, I assume for the same reason it flipped among democrat leaning white people—party polarization. But even today 85% of Hispanics think the level of foreigners in the country is about right or too much, while only 15% say they’re are too few.
I agree ethnic solidarity politics is a danger, especially because some people are trying to push it so hard to keep minority voters in line (see the recent MSNBC article that basically excommunicated Nikki Haley from Indian Americans). But with 40% of Hispanics voting Republican in 2022, I think they’re headed the same way Italians, Irish, etc., did in previous generations. (Of course in the meantime the damage was done, with FDR getting elected, so there’s that.)
That's the author's point about why the U.S. will need immigration in some form or another going forward, because the only alternative will be a shrinking population and an increasingly older demographic.
I'm seeing numbers that conflict with your assertion, above. I've heard that Latinos are in favor of border security, more so than immigration. From one of the references in the featured article [0]:
> Less than half of registered Latino voters believe that the U.S.-Mexico border is totally secure ... over half of respondents said border security is a more important issue than immigration, 59% to 35%.
Trump was very much anti-immigration, was very outspoken campaigning on that topic, and took what actions he could to decrease immigration when he was in office. Given this he got more Latino votes than Romney did in 2012 - 27% of Latinos voted for Romney in 2012, 29% for Trump in 2016, and grew his share of the Latino voters to 32% in 2020 [1].
I don't think the numbers you quoted support your point, especially given the more specific conflicting data I found. The article you got your numbers above from talked about perceptions of discrimination in the U.S., and how those perceptions have changed recently. I would assume that when minorities are treated differently by the majority because of their race they will say that their race is important to their identity, they can't escape being what they are and have to live with how they are treated. Why would you assume that means they'd treat other people unfairly? It doesn't have to be that way. Black South Africans gave amnesty to the whites there for the horrible things they did.
> The simple reality is Whites will become a minority in what was an 84% White country as recently as 1970. Will they be treated with gratitude for sharing their country, and so can afford to act colorblind, forsaking racial solidarity? Is gratitude what they're being shown now?
Immigrants choose to come here, even when it's very difficult to do so, and they very much appreciate what the opportunities they have in the U.S. They want to work for better lives, just like those who immigrated before them. They certainly don't come here to hate on whites and ruin the country.
Southern and eastern European immigrants were looked down upon, mistreated and feared as the "others" by white anglo-saxon protestants a century ago, but by 1970 they are part of that 84% white population statistic that you quoted. They are one of us. Turns out there was nothing to be afraid of.
[0] https://usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/10/04/latino-v...
[1] https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-how-us-latinos-voted-2...
As an outside observer, it seems to me like the fears were borne out. WASPs were ousted from power in the country they had created. Irish and Italian immigration got FDR elected, which ultimately resulted in seismic changes to the original constitutional design (rubber stamping of quasi constitutional administrative state, etc).
The culture of America also changed. It’s hard to visit NYC and not notice the strong Italian influence in the city. Depending on your taste you might think that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But I bet those 1910s New York WASPs would prefer New Amsterdam to New Sicily.
I don't hear many WASPs today complaining that their fears from a century ago came true, nor many who are bothered by Italians at the moment. To the contrary, Italians are now counted as caucasians in the statistics, and there are different out-groups that people blame now for the country's problems and are afraid of.
I'd say that WASPs have had to share more power, as opposed to being ousted from power. Changes in transportation, communication, and geopolitics may have led to the administrative state regardless. I don't think that WASPs are being treated worse than other groups. Maybe it's human nature for groups to not want to share, and that's a big part of the problem.
Southern Italian immigrants brought their culture to the entire city, and eventually to city administration. It wasn’t just the food. In terms of how people carry themselves, in terms of orderliness, etc., NYC is much more like a Mediterranean city than a British or Dutch city.
> I don't hear many WASPs today complaining that their fears from a century ago came true, nor many who are bothered by Italians at the moment.
All those people are dead, and the ones there currently have no other reference point.
> Maybe it's human nature for groups to not want to share, and that's a big part of the problem.
Why do they owe it to anyone else to share what they built?
I agree with you that opinions vary around the cultural component of this. There's also many conflating factors influencing how a culture changes over time, and it's hard to avoid change. But there's an economic component to immigration that should be part of the conversation.
The only non-controversial immigrants to the U.S. were the Native Americans, since they came here first. The Europeans who came next, pushing away the natives, went on to import slaves to work plantations, enriching the south. They gave land to immigrants in the west, to secure it. They used immigrant labor in the north to industrialize, leapfrogging Britain and Germany to become the richest country in the world. Immigrants literally built NYC, the railroads, and other infrastructure like canals back in the day. One might wonder how different history might have been otherwise. Immigrants were brought over as indentured servants, then later as transport was cheaper they made their own way over, poor and desperate for work. More recently we've had Mexicans in construction, in the boom up until 2009. Economically immigrant labor built a lot of the U.S., literally.
The people making money off immigrants don't appear to care about the future of the culture, it appears they never have, not when they brought in slaves, not when they were hiring immigrants to build railroads, work in factories, or as cheap labor on farms. This is why I question the popular narrative on this topic. It's not just the rich who profit, the middle class enjoys lower prices, also. Is it fair to blame the immigrants? Why don't we talk about the economic component of this? Why aren't we doing more immigration checks at meat packing plants, farms, motels, and on construction crews?
I assume that one of the dynamics that has always been in play is that the rich like the cheap labor that immigration provides, and would prefer that the poor majority who eventually notice that they have to compete economically blame the immigrants for their problems, as opposed to blaming the people who benefited. This same thing has happened over and over in our history - the rich employ the immigrants, until the poor notice they are being screwed. Did you know that prior to the world wars there were no border checks for immigration? Passports prior to that time were for commerce only, not for people. Now it is the opposite. Money can move freely across international borders, and labor has become something to arbitrage. I predict that we'll have more immigrants as pleases those with money, perhaps to reduce inflation in service sector wages as boomers continue to retire by the millions and labor shortages continue to increase over the next decade or two. The alternative is what we have today - service sector wages increasing along with inflation. That could change the culture in a different direction, if everything in continues to became more expensive and standards of living have to go down.
I'm curious what you think about the economic component of this, and how important that is to talk about compared to the cultural component?
But I think focusing on the economics is short termism. I agree with Lee Kuan Yew (founder of modern Singapore) that “culture is destiny.” The most successful country in the history of the world, that’s the product of a singular British culture, should be really skeptical about importing huge populations of people from a different cultural background. Fundamental cultural dispositions, such as levels of social trust, are both important to national prosperity and extremely sticky over generations. See: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/just-like-home/
I agree. And I wonder if this is talked about enough.
> But I think focusing on the economics is short termism.
I'm inclined to say economics is the root cause of immigration, and should be talked about more.
Would everybody be in favor of decreasing immigration if they knew if might mean a 10-15% lower standard of living for all citizens? I assume the net effect would be more jobs for poor people, higher prices for everyone, and less profits for the rich. Would the richest ten percent allow that to happen?
We're already seeing some of that as we roll into another year of inflation, with service worker wages and food prices leading the way. Every year three million boomers are leaving the work force. Other countries are having big problems with the lack of young workers. Latino immigrants have been a boon to the U.S. in this regard the past couple of decades.
> The most successful country in the history of the world, that’s the product of a singular British culture, should be really skeptical about importing huge populations of people from a different cultural background
The U.S. has already imported huge populations from different cultural backgrounds, and prospered at the same time. We absorbed more immigrants, as a percentage of population, in the 19th century than we are now [0] (a bit more, for over 60 years, slavery goes back earlier than this reference shows).
Would the U.S. have replaced that singluar British culture as the most powerful nation on earth if it were not for immigrants? What if the U.S. as a new country wasn't making money exporting cotton? What if the civil war never happened? What if we took longer to settle the west and push out the Spanish? What if we didn't industrialize at the scale we did before the world wars?
> Fundamental cultural dispositions are extremely sticky over generations.
I grant this. We don't stay isolated in small homogeneous groups any more, we have national media and cheap international travel mixing us all together. We agreed that opinions vary as to whether this is a good thing or not. One could also wonder how much of the problem is the animosity that some people feel towards immigrants, as opposed to the immigrants themselves.
Gosh, as far as culture go, I'm more concerned that so many of our civic and social institutions that tied communities together, things like clubs, leagues, and third places, have deteriorated over the last 50 years, than I am about immigration.
In general I do share many of your concerns, to some extant, but am opposed to only talking about the cultural component of this, which we both agreed is a matter of opinion. Changing demographics, the geography of long borders with disparate neighbors and cheaper transportation may make much of this inevitable, not just in the U.S., given human nature, politics and economics. They are people like us. Can't just shoot them all, right? The world is a changing place, and we are along for the ride sometimes.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...
Further, usually people commenting don’t have to out whether they’re near a border. (Let alone actual US commenters or not…)
Personally, and I’ve always lived a few hours from the US/Mexico border, I think the US needs to address the otherism crap more directly. A point upgrade to the old adage of “send us your migrants, your weak, your poor, and there’ll be a place for hard workers.” “But leave any cultural baggage that’s going to cause you to discriminate against anyone else here behind. Same goes for any wars or desire to harm others.”
I’m also curious where we’ll be in about 10 years once more of the old guard “age out.”
Edit-the illegal immigration system currently pushes them into black markets and modern day slavery. So there needs to be a decriminalization of whole swaths of migrants. And it’s a huge, complicated issue that can’t be fully outlined in a quick cable news vignette.
I think this is utterly impossible and a ridiculous thing to expect from immigrants. You're asking them to stop being human. Of course immigrants are going to bring all their cultural baggage with them; it's impossible for them not to. People are a product of the environment they grew up in. You can't expect to just grab a person from some random place on the planet, drop them into an entirely alien new country, and have them magically assimilate in any short period of time. Generally, they never do: their kids do, however.
I know that some allowances need to be planned for regarding the economy, but it is obvious that indefinite/infinite population growth is not desirable nor tenable.
1. In the broadest possible sense. ie: economic structures are social structures
From the Wikipedia page for H-1B visa. Note: "temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations".
Also from the page: "The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is responsible for ensuring that foreign workers do not displace or adversely affect wages or working conditions of U.S. workers."
Note: "do not displace or adversely affect wages..."
US companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers, many I'm sure are H1-B but also many US citizens as well. Priority should be for US citizens and permanent residents, by definition of the H-1B visa itself.
Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, I citied sources. Please point out what is incorrect in my statements if you're going to downvote. Thanks!
Keep in mind that If I want to hire: A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup or
A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop [0].
my only path forward is H1! They'll both be listed as "computer related occupations" and apply for the same visa in the same quota. Does that make any sense to anyone?
Of course, my odds of getting a lottery spot for the former are dramatically lower, since we all know body shops and consulting firms won't hesitate to file 4-5 applications per seat they plan to fill out (so one can hopefully get a spot in the lottery and not get any RFE).
[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...
The reality is that companies hire a "junior developer" but expect senior developer work out of that H-1B, or they hire "software analyst" when they really mean "full stack programmer". Also they put out job ads in smaller circulations, or have weirdly specific requirements that put off Americans from applying, so they can say they advertised, got zero responses, or zero qualified candidates, and thus need the H-1B.