Tuesday, February 20, 2018

5 Best Arguments Against Immigration

Here is a libertarian defense of immigration, at Reason.com:
The 5 Best Arguments Against Immigration—and Why They're Wrong ...

They take our jobs and lower wages.
Yes, that is true, but he says: "low-skilled immigrants make things cheaper for all Americans". The biggest thing pro-business libertarians want is lower wages.
They're using massive amounts of welfare.
This one is true also, but they argue that immigrants don't always claim the benefits they are allowed, and thus they collect benefits at a lower rate than poor blacks do.
They don't pay their fair share.
He claims that half of the illegals pay taxes. I doubt it.
They broke the law to get here and they're bringing all their relatives.
No, not all their relatives. Millions of them are on waiting lists to get in.
They're not assimilating.
They say: "By the third generation, just 25 percent of Hispanic households say that Spanish is the dominant language at home.

Maybe assimilation is not the best word here. Even when Mexicans and Hindus and others learn to speak English, they still do not become genuinely American.

Here is what I found most annoying:
More important, immigrants grow the population, which stimulates economic growth, the only way over the long term to improve standards of living.
No, this is crazy libertarian talk. The USA would be a much nicer place if we had 200M residents, and a lot fewer immigrants. While immigration has raised the GDP, it has lowered the standard of living.

And of course the immigrants are not libertarian. The more immigrants we have, the less we will have a free society.

8 comments:

Ajit R. Jadhav said...

Have you or your "LuMo" stopped thinking of assassinating those who know QM?

What's the trick up your "Western" sleeves as of now?

Best,

--Ajit

Roger said...

Nobody is thinking of assassinating anyone. Explain yourself, or I will delete your comment.

Anonymous said...

Maybe assimilation is not the best word here. Even when Mexicans and Hindus and others learn to speak English, they still do not become genuinely American.

Wouldn't this apply to Catholics as well? Plenty of Catholics speak English of course and have adopted external American customs and mores, but I don't see how anyone could be a Catholic and genuinely American.

Samuel Huntington wrote about how genuine American culture and identity are Protestant in nature:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Are_We%3F_The_Challenges_to_America%27s_National_Identity#Describing_American_identity

"As for the importance of Protestantism, Huntington states: "The American Creed is the unique creation of a dissenting Protestant culture"."

Roger said...

Yes, the American founders were mostly Protestant. Catholics were in the minority. See: Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies.

What is your point? Are you trying to say that there is no difference between Catholics and Hindus? And why did you post a comment about assassination?

Anonymous said...

I didn't post a comment about assassination. I'm a different commenter.

Catholics are the largest denomination and around a quarter of the American population. More if you include lapsed or non religious Catholics who nonetheless maintain Catholic folkways and attitudes.

Obviously there are differences between Catholics and Hindus, but to the extent that being genuinely American is characterized by Protestantism, neither would be genuinely American.

Roger said...

There are degrees of similarity. Catholic settlers from Europe were a lot more similar to American Protestants than Hindus from India are similar to American Protestants.

MD Cory said...

The media is flooded with false statistics about immigration. A meta-study of 50 studies on immigrant crime said it was lower than natives. The problem is that there is NO DATA on the issue because the government doesn't collect it. In fact, federal data indicates the exact opposite. On the issue of the economic benefits of immigration, the verdict is crystal clear: immigrants are a major cost even under varying scenarios. The supposed benefits to GDP are consumed by the immigrants themselves and studies on population growth in the United States and across the world do not show any correlation with per-capita economic growth. The attempt to fix the Social Security and Medicare ponzi scheme with increased immigration is a complete joke.

Sources:

https://fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2014/08/28/economic-abundance-with-shrinking-population-why-not/#73c969a9ff55

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/440321/immigration-us-budget-long-term-effects

https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Households#14

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/444543/immigration-welfare-media-misleads-washington-post

https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Border-Wall-vs-Cost-Illegal-Immigration

https://cis.org/Richwine/Refugees-Do-Not-Pay-Their-Own-Way

https://cis.org/Richwine/Should-We-Be-Satisfied-Immigrants-Are-Better-Class-Underclass

https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/09/great-growth-disconnect-population-growth-does-not-equal-economic-growth/5860/

http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Brief7-the-relationships-between-economic-growth-and-population-growth.pdf

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/lpritch/Population%20-%20docs/whereintheworldispopulationbad.pdf

Roger said...

Yes, I am baffled by those studies claiming that immigrant crime is lower. Where I live, most of the crime is immigrant-related.