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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Personally I always thought Texas and other border states were just playing national politics with the border crisis. Creating a crisis as an issue to run for re-election on.

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/07/new-york-adams-emergency-migrant-buses

NYC has received 17k migrants since April. That seems tiny compared to what Texas has dealt with.

Adams said the city is receiving on average 5-6 buses a day. I will assume 40 people per bus or about 240 a day. That’s about 75k a year and he says it will cost the city a billion a year.

Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming. NYC population around 9 million or 1/35 of the US.

He says it’s not an issue they asked for, but they did declare themselves a sanctuary city.

Maybe Adams is actually a Republican. Because his complaining is exactly what Republicans would want from busing them for political reasons. Conversely maybe Texas GOP complaining about migrants was not just politics but a real issue they were having trouble dealing with. I assumed it was politics.

I think this also shows some weaknesses with the blue city state capacity. The basic agreement before was we have some globally competitive people we can tax a lot to fund our local poor plus civil servants. Blue cities aren’t that good at building more housing and infrastructure anymore. It’s about $20k a year for them per migrant. Texas and the south can just give them a mortgage for $20k to buy a used a trailer and use their land which can house multiple people though jobs might be a problem theirs only so many meat processing plant and ranch hands you need.

Honestly NYC should just ship them to Chicago and write a $20k a head check. There’s plenty of abandoned property on the southside that needs people (though has violence issues but better than where they came from).

If Adams was going to be a good Democrat he should just pay the tab and tell Abbot he will take his proportional share.’

I posted this as a reply to someone else further down the chain, but I'm going to repost it as a top-level response:

Where illegal immigrants end up:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/ (this is measuring by metro area, rather than state, and some of the cities spill across state borders - New York being the most prominent)

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/Pop_Estimate/UnauthImmigrant/unauthorized_immigrant_population_estimates_2015_-_2018.pdf

Per DHS numbers, out of the top 10 states, we have

Blue States (CA, IL, NY, NJ, WA): 4.33M

Red States (TX, FL, GA, NC): 3.33M

Purple States (AZ): .33M

CA and TX account for about half of their respective categories.

An older (2016) study from PEW gives us the tally below for all statse: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/

Red States: 4.22M

Blue States: 5.76M

Purple States: .62M

An interesting side note to consider - if your ultimate goal is to get rid of immigrants these stunts may be counterproductive.

“It’s safe to say what’s going on is a pull factor, which is somewhat ironic given the criticism from some of these same governors involved in this about various pull factors that they claim already exist,” Magnus told The Times. He said social media plays a part in the problem because it is enticing “when migrants hear that there are buses that will take them to locations where they are told they will receive benefits and job.” Magnus noted that human smugglers use the same information to lure migrants.

Another fun side note:

We've seen the threshold for Texans to start complaining about immigrant culture, and it's something like 30K/yr. (See p.23) And that state isn't even hiring buses!

Well the intent isn't to deter migrants directly, I'm sure the intent is to get the Federal Government to act on border security, which would hopefully THEN deter the migrants.

Or at least, make blue states share the costs.

Blue states already share the cost, and annoying municipal officials is not going to persuade Democratic legislators to spend vastly more on border security (which Abbott and Desantis already know).

It will certainly make their case for the need for more border security vastly stronger when even the Democrats are declaring it a crisis, albeit indirectly. So when they take office the political road to action is already well-paved.

How else can they draw attention to the issue given that National Media (Fox excluded) alternates between ignoring it entirely and bemoaning the "extreme" tactics employed by border patrol and the plight of detained migrants themselves?

How would YOU suggest they raise awareness?

Hey, do you know if they're still keeping kids "in cages" at the border? Remember when that was a national outrage? Anyone? Bueller?

I'm assuming that faceh is not only talking about economic cost but societal too. And well as to your second point: "The beatings buses will continue until morale border policy improves"

As has been noted repeatedly, immigrants mostly live in blue states. The "societal costs" are already shared. That's not the issue. The issue is that nativists don't want any significant immigration at all.

"The beatings buses will continue until morale border policy improves"

The overwhelmingly pro-immigration voters living in areas with already high immigrant populations are not going to change their mind because a few more show up. It just doesn't affect their lives that much. You're more likely to see the Feds cut a big check to affected blue states than you are to see a major opinion shift. This policy is grandstanding by Abbott and Desantis to further build their lib-owning credentials.

immigrants mostly live in blue states.

That's a bit of a misleading phrasing. "Immigrants" as a class are different than the types of persons who have no other option but to "sneak" in.

The ones crossing the border are almost certainly a much, much larger burden and net drain on resources than those that follow "proper channels."

Hence, even that one Democrat mayor in Texas is shipping migrants out.

I challenge you to show that blue states, especially Northern ones, have as many undocumented immigrants as Southern border states.

"Immigrants" as a class are different than the types of persons who have no other option but to "sneak" in.

All immigrants, legal and illegal, tend to wind up in blue states. Red states tend to be lacking in economic opportunity and the comparative lack of major cities or pre-existing communities makes them relatively unattractive.

The ones crossing the border are almost certainly a much, much larger burden and net drain on resources than those that follow "proper channels."

What's your model?

I challenge you to show that blue states, especially Northern ones, have as many undocumented immigrants as Southern border states.

"Southern border states" includes includes California. If you mean "traditionally southern states" (or just red states on the border), that's literally just Texas.

As for where illegal immigrants end up:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/11/us-metro-areas-unauthorized-immigrants/ (this is measuring by metro area, rather than state, and some of the cities spill across state borders - New York being the most prominent)

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/Pop_Estimate/UnauthImmigrant/unauthorized_immigrant_population_estimates_2015_-_2018.pdf

Per DHS numbers, out of the top 10 states, we have

Blue States (CA, IL, NY, NJ, WA): 4.33M

Red States (TX, FL, GA, NC): 3.33M

Purple States (AZ): .33M

CA and TX account for about half of their respective categories.

An older (2016) study from PEW gives us the tally below for all statse: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/

Red States: 4.22M

Blue States: 5.76M

Purple States: .62M

If you want to compare Texas to the northeast, that's 1.6M vs 2.3M (states counted: CT, DC, MD, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VA)

These are good numbers to use, but I suspect that as soon as I scale them for the population of the respective states it will make things a little clearer as to how each state has been faring in shouldering their share of the influx.

Here's a 2016 study from Pew that estimates the total number of 'unauthorized' immigrants and their percentage of population on a state by state basis:

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/

See also @netstack's post below which indicates Texas and Florida have far more immigrants in absolute numbers than anywhere but California, and that as a percentage of the population its heavily skewed towards border states.

To get REALLY specific: based on these numbers, in order for Martha's Vineyard to have a similar share of immigrants in their borders, which I've arbitrarily set at 3% to approximate the ratio of the whole U.S., the community of 15,000 people would need to have 450 illegal immigrants living there.

They declared a crisis over Fifty. So they really aren't prepared to shoulder their fair share at this rate.

Do you disagree?

More comments

This report shows the top 10 states by illegal population in Table 3.

The only Southern border states are

  • AZ (360K, 5.1%).

  • FL (660K, 3.1%), if you count it as a border

  • TX (1940K, 6.6%)

Note that Arizona went blue. Against that we have

  • IL (450K, 3.5%)

  • NJ (460K, 5.2%)

  • NY (560K, 2.9%)

for unambiguously Northern blue states, and

  • WA (290K, 3.9%)

  • GA (380K, 2.7%)

  • CA (2610K!, 6.6%)

in the other-blue category. Percentages are proportions of total state populations per this 2018 estimate. The other state from the list is NC, which is neither blue nor border nor northern.

In conclusion, TX and CA dominate the conversation both in absolute numbers and in percentage. Of the northern states, NJ is closest in percentage, and NY in total population. FL has a higher total than any of them, but a lower percentage than IL or NJ.

On one hand, you could add up all the blue northern states, plus WA, and still not clear the number from TX. On the other, they are all dwarfed by CA. Take out those two big outliers, and I don't think AZ or FL really outpaces the north.

It's possible that this is skewed in some way, especially since it's pre-COVID, but it does agree with Texas' own numbers (p.27).

The fact that California is on the border and has such huge population of illegal immigrants tends to support the narrative that there's a border 'crisis.'

More comments

Texas isn't just playing politics, and a lot of that politics is more complex than "look at what Joe did to the border".

  • The largest single busing program is run by the city of El Paso, itself a democrat stronghold(albeit not always particularly progressive) and generally aligned against Governor Abbott. That this fact is only brought up by republicans trying to defend their own busing program is probably more political a decision than having busing programs to begin with.

  • A lot of these migrants are sheltering in the Rio Grande valley, which is realigning from "blue enough that these rural counties can't fill a room with local republicans" to "red-ish". A lot of this realignment is more or less the same people, too- existing elected officials are choosing to switch party registration, and in local terms this is aligning strongly with Greg Abbott. Busing migrants to blue cities elsewhere in the country is a way to reward newfound friends and punish long-term enemies, given that masses of unemployed and ethnically distinct(the valley is majority Hispanic, but it's mostly a specific kind of Hispanic- the descendants of white Mexicans living in Texas before independence from Mexico or at least before annexation by the US. The migrants are usually mestizo or indio centracos or Venezuelans.) poor people are generally not something anyone wants in their backyards.

-200,000 people a month is legitimately a lot and is getting used as cover for cartels trying to smuggle in drugs and slaves. This latter aspect is in heavy use in pro-border security narratives. There's also a major humanitarian aspect of having hundreds of thousands of unemployed poor people sitting around in a rural semidesert, and this fact is in heavy use in pro-busing narratives.

-Finally, busing is popular in Texas, although not overwhelmingly so, and this is probably a factor in Abbott's decision to continue the program. Texas is red but not red enough that he can afford to take a series of unpopular decisions with no consequences and Abbott would rather make it up elsewhere than compromise on abortion.

Does anyone have predictions on how this country will look when half of its citizens have a standard deviation lower IQ on average?

Let me rephrase this. Is there any way this won’t be a catastrophe which, in 500 years, people will look back on as a lesson in how nations fail? There’s no possible way that tens of millions of lower IQ people added to a nation is good for the nation, right?

Probably like Brazil, South Africa and Rhodesia in that order. On the plus side we'll be a less attractive destination as things deteriorate.

This is why I hate empathy. I’ve got no problem letting them in to work and go back. Just don’t give them citizenship.

How many people would be interested in a $50 a day childcare, cleaning, cooking, etc when they have young kids and are working professionals. Put them in your garage or spare bedroom. They could save a ton of money to eventually go back to their home country.

But empathy gets in the way. Because if they are here in this country then they need housing, health care, education, and citizenship.

The US depends much more on those with 3-4 or higher standard deviation higher IQ than it does having a mass of 100IQ people. The latter already just believe what smarter people come up with and work in jobs, entertain themselves, in ways said smarter people come up with. Whereas the latter ... physics, philosophy, finance, law, math, engineering, etc.

So if you're worried about tens of millions of lower IQ people added to the nation, why not worry about the hundreds of millions of similarly lower IQ people already here? There are still 15% of the population below a standard deviation anyway.

We have a generous welfare state, no IQ requirements for voting and award jobs and university admissions based on a racial spoils system. Adding a bunch of low IQ people is a complete disaster. If we were a dictatorship with no welfare state then yeah it wouldn't make as big of a difference.

Would it, though? Let's say the new people are, on average, 94 IQ. Are the existing 100IQ voters really competently evaluating political philosophies and candidates, or are they mostly just led by politicians and media on either side? If 150M 95Iq people were airdropped into the US right now, or the next generation was significantly dumber ... it would suck, but society wouldn't collapse. You just can't have a 95IQ person write a compiler, no matter how much affirmative action wants it.

Or - a bunch of 94IQ people wouldn't destroy society, because the existing 94IQ people and existing 100IQ people don't. And both are, relative to having much more intelligent and smart and passionate etc people, worse for 'the nation' or 'the people' or anything.

I don't think voting is about evaluating competing philosophies or that 100 iq people would be competent at doing that, I think it's about getting what you want. People with an IQ of 90 are plenty smart enough to realize that they can get what they want by voting for the party that will take from the middle class and give to the poor.

A dumb person can't write a compiler but he can certainly have a job as a compiler writer. There's no law of nature that says we have to give jobs to the people who are capable of doing them.

I don't follow the argument about ratios. It's harder for the smart people to support welfare payments for X + 150 million than it is for just X.

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'collapse'. I don't think the US will stop existing, but I think life will get drastically and permanently worse for me and my family.

It's the same issue as the race/IQ debate. You have people who are 130Iq on this site arguing that the US going from 100IQ to 95IQ is a CATASTROPHE. But what about the gap between 100 and 130? And for racism - ok, blacks are some number of points less. But - ">130IQ people" are 30 points higher than the average american. Isn't that a much more important bit?

It's harder for the smart people to support welfare payments for X + 150 million than it is for just X.

Yeah, but the solution is for the 130IQ people to have more children, or do eugenics, in either case. The difference between 100 and 95 is swamped by 100 - 130.

People with an IQ of 90 are plenty smart enough to realize that they can get what they want by voting for the party that will take from the middle class and give to the poor

this is not that stark. A lot of poorer people still vote R, esp if white. Also ... don't the democrats want higher taxes on the rich, and the republicans want lower taxes on the rich? I don't have a preference on the issue, but have never understood the 'take from the middle class' argument.

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'collapse'. I don't think the US will stop existing, but I think life will get drastically and permanently worse for me and my family.

Can you name a specific way that'll happen?

Also ... don't the democrats want higher taxes on the rich, and the republicans want lower taxes on the rich? I don't have a preference on the issue, but have never understood the 'take from the middle class' argument.

The rich is an exponentially different category. If you take the upper 10%, the first 9.9% are PMC and business owners with very transparent income streams. When the government raises taxes on the rich, it targets these people first and foremost. Orthoxerox the FAANG programmer and orthoxerox the owner of a copy center chain both have to do something for a living, which makes them middle class.

Taxing the "idle rich" is much harder. They have enough money to pay other people to take care of their money. These well-paid and highly qualified people spend their days thinking about minimizing the tax burden of their customers, coming up with complex and tailor-made solutions. To counteract them, you would have to fill the IRS with equally well-paid and highly qualified people, and this just doesn't scale.

You hire one such guy for $500K, he spends a year targeting Mr Moneybags, spends another $500K on court fees and gets ten million back in taxes. That's a great rate of return, isn't it? Hire a hundred of them, and they will collect a billion tax dollars every year!

There's 130 million households in the US. The top 10.0% (or 13 000 000) can be forced to pay $10K more in taxes. Bam, 130 billion tax dollars earned.

You have people who are 130Iq on this site arguing that the US going from 100IQ to 95IQ is a CATASTROPHE. But what about the gap between 100 and 130?

To be fair, if there were a country with an average IQ of 130, for them it would be a catastrophe to be reduced to an average of 100. It's possible that, for a fixed percentage of 130 IQ people a country might have (assuming it's a low percentage), having a population average of 100 is still going to get you a significantly better standard of living than a population average of 95, even if the gap between 100 and 130 is much larger.

I'm not arguing that intelligence doesn't matter, it does, I'm explicitly arguing that the difference that matters is the 130/160 vs 100, as opposed to native 100 vs migrant 95. It just sounds like a reductio ad absurdum

Can you name a specific way that'll happen?

Taxes go up because the ratio of welfare dependents to productive workers rises. Affirmative action gets even more common and harsh so my kids will be systematically excluded from good jobs and schools to an even greater degree than white people are currently. Crime rises to Central American levels as we become similar to them demographically. Basically the trends that are already taking place accelerate and get worse. I think it will more or less look like South Africa since the 90s.

Realistically, the US will fund future spending programs, no matter how large, through debt and not taxation. This has all sorts of negative externalities but none of them are what you're describing.

You want to see the worst case future of the US under a scenario of demographic semi-replacement(because no one expects the natives to pack up and move to australia like SA whites)? Argentina, not South Africa. Inflation is the killer, not tax burden or hostility driven outmigration(Hispanics think getting to live next to white people is the awesomest thing ever). And that's still bad, but talented and demographically majority Argentines aren't exactly excluded from in country opportunities the way SA whites or high caste Indians are. If anything, a scenario like that strongly encourages native talent to go to work in country in high-reward jobs because it strengthens the economy and raises tax revenues without having to raise rates(which the US is unlikely to do).

What makes you think these migrants are a full standard deviation lower IQ? Particularly if you mean genetic potential IQ?

Also, the US hasn't even been a nation for 500 years. Indeed, few nations last that long. Making predictions about 500 years from now seems extremely overconfident.

We have studies on the IQ of native Americans, mestizos, indigenous Mexicans, and so on. By all accounts they are lower than the median iq in America. IQ isn’t everything, but successful countries all have high IQs and when countries become inundated with low iq citizens (South Africa) it makes pretty much everything worse off.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15688574/

https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8611/1/1/9/pdf

Your first study is of childhood IQ, which is known to be not nearly as heritable as adult IQ. It also cannot adjust for confounding factors such as malnutrition (which is generally not an issue in the First World, but Mexico is not that). Your second is Lynn, who I do not have great confidence in -- but also fails to show a full standard deviation.

Mexico is a fairly developed country which is poor and a failed state, but there’s not masses of people starving on the streets there.

These migrants come from Central America and Venezuela, and in border states are considered less assimilable than Mexicans and Caribbean Latinos. It’s not totally unreasonable to point to recent food shortages in Venezuela as depressing average IQ, but I believe Venezuelan and Honduran IQ’s were also quite a bit lower when they were ruled by US-backed dictatorships that consistently produced enough food for everyone.

Of course Hispanics also seem to interbreed with whites and be indistinguishable therefrom in a couple of generations, so YMMV.

Here's an article from reason about exactly this, with a ton more studies and numbers (still reading). There's also the hispanic-white-iq-gap tag on human varieties.org , and - looking at the list of studies from the puerto rico article - the massive variation in result from study to study strongly suggests one can't take a random number from a random study at face value, but actually understand where they come from! (Gwern's now-deleted list of GWAS results on wikipedia felt similar, many entries with more than one study had very different results.) There are many well done studies that do have reliable, reproducible results, but that doesn't mean every or even most in some field are.

Cheap labor might be a net benefit if welfare expectations weren't so high and if crime were more effectively dealt with, but yeah, as it is it seems to be a bad deal.

Edit: And the sociocultural problems, obviously. And the identity politics.

they did declare themselves a sanctuary city

That is the problem, isn't it? "We declare that if you come into this country undocumented, we won't turn you away and we'll give you a place to stay in safety". And then bus loads come in from elsewhere and it's "We didn't mean it like that".

Well then, how did you mean it? I could declare my home a sanctuary for Azerbaijani refugees, safe in the knowledge that nobody from Azerbaijan is going to turn up on my doorstep. But if they do, I can't wriggle out of it by "Oh, I meant only if you came straight to my door, not that you came in to the country fifty miles away".

Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming.

One comparison I think is interesting is that the number of illegal border crossings each month in 2022 (~200k) is roughly the size of the Russian force that originally invaded Ukraine in February. Obviously those crossing into the US aren't an armed force bent on regime change, but I think it gives an interesting perspective to the scale of the problem that someone (wrongly, as it turns out) thought that was a large enough force to invade a country with more people than California.

Honestly, I think the Democrats have a branding problem in that they've been positioning themselves as Anti-Republican on this (among other issues) without universally wanting unfettered immigration either. But when word gets around that "Uncle Joe will let us in" and people start turning up, they can't exactly admit that some degree of restriction is valid and desirable, so they do things like quietly continue building Trump's wall.

I also think we need to reconsider the idea that the shibboleth "asylum" when said to border agents should grant months-to-years of legal residency until claims can be reviewed with no real teeth for failure-to-appear. It sounds nice in principle, but seems prone to abuse.

One comparison I think is interesting is that the number of illegal border crossings each month in 2022 (~200k) is roughly the size of the Russian force that originally invaded Ukraine in February.

I assume most of those are deported quickly. Do you know what proportion of the migrants manage to remain in the US long-term?

I was looking into that as well. I'm seeing about 180-220K "encounters" a month, of which 70-110K are immediately booted under Title 42. Unfortunately, the remainder are just flagged as Title 8 "apprehensions and inadmissibles." I believe this includes release-with-monitoring along with immediate deportation, detainment, or denial of asylum.

And of course, these numbers completely exclude any crossings that avoid the CBP outright.

The previous rule- and Abbott and Doucy’s original demand- was that migrants have to wait for their claims to be processed in Mexico.

I also think we need to reconsider the idea that the shibboleth "asylum" when said to border agents should grant months-to-years of legal residency until claims can be reviewed with no real teeth for failure-to-appear. It sounds nice in principle, but seems prone to abuse.

I listened to an interview a while back where, basically, the pro-immigration person said that this happens all the time, but is actually more common with chinese immigrants. Their copy-paste story is that they're a christian being persecuted for asylum.

Now, this was during Trump's presidency and on NPR, so the chance of the interviewee outright lying to make Trump look bad is high. Or perhaps that was on a per-capita basis, so hispanic asylum abusers were still more significant in a different way.

But yes, I'd agree. There are literal armies of lawyers camped at the border to coach and help make sure immigrants keep their stories straight. Even if you tighten up the rules, that's a difficult thing to fight against.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Yes, but if the reality is that most of the immigrants from certain countries are going to go live, disproportionately, in certain US states, then those states are bearing a larger part of the burden. Stunts like declaring sanctuary in Martha's Vineyard and NYC are then shown to be stunts just as much as Texas busing immigrants to NYC and Martha's Vineyard.

So if you're not willing to deal with the illegals, then stop declaring yourself a sanctuary, and pay your share towards the burden on the states that do deal with them.

And seeing a larger portion of the benefits as well, to be fair.

A big portion of the non-software industry in California is propped up by dudes coming up from places like oaxaca with experience and skill in trade who would be making 80k+ with a social security number and a Midwest accent working for way less building shit, and dudes coming from closer to the border willing to break their backs picking fruit for too little money for the juice to be worth the squeeze.

Source: I live there and worked in trades part/full time from 18yrs till the pandemic let me go to school for that sweet sweet STEM degree and the following fake job where I get to make six figures to sit on my ass and pretend to work instead of hauling wires through a 140 degree 2.5' crawl space.

That Oaxaxa point is apropos, actually. There is a community of dudes that came up from the peninsula a looooooong time ago near me, which drew more dudes from there, and finally peeled of a lot of guys with options. We get some real talented electricians , plumbers, carpenters, and arborists who could go anywhere to come to this shitty southern Californian area you've never heard of because the great-great-grand uncle came here 130 years ago to build retaining walls for avocado groves.

you really feel like your STEM job is fake and you don't produce value? but the $ is too good to go back to threading wire through hot crawl spaces?

Hell yeah.

Any job where I can take a break, cook myself a meal and wash it down with expensive whiskey then go back to my desk if fake as fuck.

For real though, I am referring to the difference in suffering and imposition from one to the other. In my previous job, I was exhausted, I was at risk of hurting myself or being killed because some chucklefuck flipped a breaker somewhere, and I did actual important work that mattered. If everyone in my position stopped working suddenly, society instantly collapses.

Now, I am at no risk, I can do whatever I want whenever I want, I make more money, and if everyone in my position stopped working suddenly society is damaged, but it doesn't sliiiiiiiiiide on back to the 1800's.

Any salaried CNR job feels fake when you realize you have the option of phoning it in if you don't feel productive today and this doesn't affect your pay. I could be reading The Motte for eight hours, uh-huhing my way through conference calls and still earn almost $300. I don't claim I could do this for several weeks in a row, but someone with an easily quantifiable output doesn't even have the luxury of a single lazy day. If you shingle roofs for a living, either you shingle them and get paid, or you don't shingle them and don't get paid.

Of course, those places are in fact dealing with illegal immigrants, because illegal immigrants tend to disproportionately settle in blue areas. The idea that NYC is saying "we don't want illegal immigrants" is obviously incorrect, given that the state allows them to get drivers licenses and the city provides them with free health care,

There's no problem shipping illegals to New York City, then. Glad we agree.

No, there certainly is no problem, as long as that is where they want to go.

And, btw, as I understand it, the people being sent are not illegal immigrants; they entered, requested asylum, passed a "credible fear" interview by an asylum officer, and hence were released pending formal adjudication of their asylum claim at a deportation hearing before an immigration judge. All of which is perfectly legal. Anyone who does not pass the credible fear interview can appeal, but are held in detention until that happens. See discussion of procedure here.

Yeah I don't believe gaming dubious asylum claims is a legitimate means of entering the country, gonna stick with illegals. Hope they keep getting shipped to sanctuaries!

As I mentioned, if they don't pass the credible fear interview, they don't get in. And I am guessing that asylum officers, who actually know the law, are better able than you or I to determine whether the claims are dubious or not. And, I too, hope they keep getting shipped to sanctuaries; it is better for them, and in the long run the sanctuaries will be better off economically.

I'm glad we agree! I'm more than happy with the transportation.

Albanians, who would get EU citizenship somewhere in Central Europe

Lol what.

I don't think so. None of these countries give citizenship out lightly. Not the former WP countries, not Germany - I still remember the anguished editorials from 1990s about how Turks who came to Germany in 1970s for work still didn't have citizenship.

Well, according to this, Turks were getting dual citizenship by a loophole where they renounced the Turkish one, got German, then got Turkish again. which the Turkish government was helpful with.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2020.536940/full

In '99 that reform stopped the loophole they were using, although it doesn't seem to have changed things much re: naturalisation rates.

Germany made naturalization much easier over the course of the 90s. See section entitled "The German Citizenship Law Reform of 2000" here

Yeah, legal requirement for residency went down to 8 from 15 years. None of that seems to make it particularly attractive as a place to 'get' EU citizenship.

Lol what.

This is low-effort and antagonistic. You're welcome to ask for clarification on a claim that confuses you, but this is not the way to do it.

Texas has grown 20% in the past decade, with non-Hispanic whites becoming a minority in the state. In 2005 the illegal immigrant population was estimated to be 1.4-1.6 million. In 2006 it was estimated to be 1.74 million. What's driving Texas' population boom?

Meanwhile New York's population has been flat, with a recent decline. California grew about 6% and started declining. At this rate Texas will be the largest state in a decade or so. I'm guessing that unlike provinces in Canada (or at least a particular province), states can't throw a hissy-fit about losing representatives in the House and end up getting to keep them? lol

Texas is 100% playing politics with the border. Well, maybe 90%; we've got to leave some room for Florida, which is apparently so overwhelmed that they have to use Texan migrants for their publicity stunts.

First, what's the cost of living in rural Texas or California? How about NYC? We already have a method for evaluating how much someone is willing to live in a particular location. It's curious that Republican lawmakers have chosen this particular cause to intervene in the market. There is a symmetrical argument for job markets; the demand for cheap agricultural labor in NYC does not compare to that in a commensurate area of west Texas or SoCal. Martha's Vineyard was a particularly extreme case--dumping migrants somewhere with no jobs and a high opportunity cost suggests that efficiency is a low priority indeed.

Second,

75k/yr is probably NYC's fair share (as 1/35 the US population)

How many illegal migrants do you think we get in a year? Because that rate suggests 75K * 35 = 2.6M/yr. Actually, I'm seeing a NYC population more like 1/39th of the US, which would suggest a total intake of 2.9M/yr. Given that the total illegal population has been stable or declining since 2007, at something like 10-12M, I find this rather unlikely. Source 1, source 2.

I don't have estimates for how many illegal immigrants are already in NYC, but Table 3 from source 2 estimates 520-630K in New York state. the city has 8.38M of the state's 19.5M people. Using the low end, since cost of living and agricultural labor likely pull migrants away from NYC, a rough estimate suggests 220K illegal immigrants already in NYC. That's somewhere between 1/44 and 1/36 of the total illegal population.

If the total illegal population is mostly stable, and NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population...what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?

NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population

I'd argue that the fair share is zero, because the population shouldn't exist, because it's illegal. Those constituencies undermining the rule of law in a way that increases the population should shoulder 100% of the burden, because they are responsible for all of it. I'd say that states and cities that declare themselves sanctuary locations should receive all of the illegal immigrant population.

They aren't being "shipped." They're not auto parts.

If the total illegal population is mostly stable, and NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population...what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?

Why wouldn't being a sanctuary city increase what counts as their fair share? If they have policies intended to be more friendly to illegal immigrants than average, shouldn't they also have to take more illegal immigrants than average?

If the total illegal population is mostly stable, and NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population...what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?

The justification is that they support the migrants and the people shipping them away don't. There's no problem with that arrangement; if you are pro-migrant, congratulations, you should welcome the chance to live up to your principles and help the unfortunate.

what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?

Rubbing their noses in NIMBY hypocrisy is quite sufficient.

Imagine an alternate world where Democrats found some clever way to publish the names of the daughters of rich politicians who had abortions. Imagine the Republicans freaking out and sputtering bullshit protests when they are obviously just upset that their constituents are finding out how many of their mistresses are getting abortions. Do you think you would be sympathetic to their plight? Can you muster up a comparable defense of Hershel Walker's abortion scandal?

Uh, yeah, I'd actually be upset about that doxxing.

That's not a very good comparison, though. The original argument was that sanctuary cities didn't have their "fair share" of illegal migrants. It'd be like Democrats finding newly pregnant Republicans, counseling them to get abortions, bussing them to abortion clinics, and then crowing about how high the Republican abortion rate is. I think you'd call that political theater and feel a sense of distaste.

The original argument was that sanctuary cities didn't have their "fair share" of illegal migrants.

Was it? I think the argument I've heard is more "You want them? You take them." And they clearly treat getting relatively small numbers as a catastrophe that they have little capacity to handle, so I find the "already getting their 'fair share'" stats to be deeply suspicious.

I was referring to slider's

Now 75k a year of migrants is probably NYC fair share of migrants for how many are coming. NYC population around 9 million or 1/35 of the US.

...

If Adams was going to be a good Democrat he should just pay the tab and tell Abbot he will take his proportional share.’

If they're already doing that, his argument gets a lot weaker.

Now, I agree that it's not a knock-down defense. It's still possible that NYC is shirking, that voters would demand a border wall if they weren't insulated from the immigrants. But it's not obvious. There are 5-600K illegal immigrants in New York state--4-6% of the illegal population. The state has about 6% of the total US population. As others pointed out, their laws are illegal-friendly, the enforcement is limited, NYC is a "sanctuary." It's not like residents are actually pushing illegals out. I'd assume that market forces and climate should make NYC less appealing than rural Texas and California, and yet it's picked up quite a few anyway.

So New York probably isn't far off from its proportional share, it's not being obviously exclusive, and it clearly has handled previous migrants well enough that residents aren't upset. Republicans want to claim that NYC is being hypocritical for complaining about a stress that only appeared once Abbott got involved.

Republicans want to claim that NYC is being hypocritical for complaining about a stress that only appeared once Abbott got involved.

But that's the point. Why is it a stress? Your whole argument hinges on NY being able to easily absorb the amounts they're receiving. If that's not the case (and it clearly isn't), then there's something different about the cohort of folks illegally crossing the southern border and making an asylum claim compared to the general block of people who are not legal residents of the US.

Put it this way: Is NY getting an amount of the people who crossed last month that is proportional to how much they represent support of the border crisis / open border situation? That 4-6% of the population might be a serious under-proportion if NY Senators and Congresscritters represent 15-20% of the defacto national support for the present shitshow. Similarly, if NY illegal immigrants are mostly people who overstayed visas, or long-time illegal residents who have been in the US for 10 years and have significantly acclimated, that might be trivially easier to deal with than a comparable number of Venezuelan refugees who just finished a 4,000 mile death trek.

Shrug. I don't think it's any worse a parallel than trying to deflect to someone's abortion scandal.

Given that the total illegal population has been stable or declining since 2007, at something like 10-12M, I find this rather unlikely. Source 1, source 2

These methodology behind these numbers is bad and a better methodology based on inflows, outflows, and demographic data suggests the illegal population is twice as large.

We have more direct data on new arrivals anyway. Ignoring people who aren't caught, border patrol has stopped about 1.8M illegal entrants this year so far. It seems Biden is now expelling about 40%. 1.8M*0.4/35 = 20.5K annual flow, not too far off.

22M? Big if true. Would that apply to the CBP estimates of NYC's current population, too?

I don't think your math checks out on the annual flow, though. It would be 1.8M * (1-0.4), assuming that everyone not in that 40% is just released into the country, and I'd divide by 39 instead of 35. Where'd you get the 40% number? Closest I could find was ~1M of the 2.2M encounters getting expelled under Title 42, but some of the remainder is also detained or turned back at the border. And of course neither number counts those who dodge the CBP entirely.

Yeah it should have been 60% and I forgot to include the source for the encounter and release numbers.:

Biden’s DHS is honoring that order increasingly only in the breach. Just 40 percent of the aliens who were stopped by Border Patrol at the Southwest border in July were expelled under Title 42, down from 47.7 percent in June and 62.3 percent in all of FY 2021. By contrast, Trump expelled more than 87 percent of migrants subject to Title 42.

The report in source 2 of gp actually addresses this...

Research by the Office of Immigration Statistics replicates the Fazel-Zarandi et al. methodology and assesses the possibility that the size of the unauthorized population was in the range of 16.2–29.5 million on January 1, 2017 as Fazel-Zarandi et al. conclude, rather than 11.4 million as the DHS residual model estimates. One key finding is that the difference between FazelZarandi et al.’s results and DHS’s residual model is entirely driven by high estimated growth in Fazel-Zarandi et al.’s model during the 1990s—yet key data required for inflow-outflow modeling are not available for those years. These data limitations, along with a number of questionable modeling assumptions, give DHS no confidence in Fazel-Zarandi et al.’s findings about population growth in 1990-2000. A forthcoming DHS whitepaper includes a preliminary inflowoutflow analysis that is similar to the Fazel-Zarandi et al. method but updates certain assumptions and makes fuller use of DHS data for 2000 – 2018; the paper finds support for the DHS estimate of about 11.4 million people as of Jan. 1, 2018 (Rosenblum, Baker, and Meeks, forthcoming).

...what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?

To make it clear for them that you don't want to deal with shit policies they're supporting ?

Most illegal immigrants already live in a couple of metro areas, generally in blue states or blue cities in red states. The issue is not really about the distribution of the notional burden of illegal immigration; it is a fundamental dispute whether or not illegal immigration/asylum seeking is even a big deal.

So why are they complaining about receiving a few tens of thousands more?

Then perhaps proponents should be honest about it rather than using a pretense of correcting unfairness.

It's okay for Republicans to say "we don't want these immigrants, so we are making them your problem." Democrats are entitled to object to this (manufactured) burden. If that's the case, Republicans shouldn't get to act as if their maneuver highlights hypocrisy.

Democrats are entitled to object to this (manufactured) burden.

Manufactured by?

Republicans shouldn't get to act as if their maneuver highlights hypocrisy.

Why not?

I think I made it pretty clear, above, that New York isn't obviously shirking. If they're already supporting their "fair share," then objecting to additional busses is not hypocritical.

You're welcome to disagree. Please try to make an actual argument instead, though.

The responsibility they're shirking is law and order. The people through their elected representatives choose to not address border security. Their fair share of the problem should be proportional to their lack of of cooperation on stemming the invasion.

If I have a roommate and I bring a new dog in despite my dog-hater roommate’s protests, then complain about how my roommate has been starting to shaft dog food costs on me, is that hypocrisy or not? Would my roommate getting me to walk the dog more than 50% of the time be a manufactured burden?

What exactly is a fair share of responsibility on something between two parties when one party clearly didn’t want that something and had that something imposed on them?

I don’t even have a dog (ha ha) in this fight, I live in another country and don’t really have strong opinions on immigration one way or the other, and immigration where I live generally seems to be positive. But it doesn’t seem like the problem is either manufactured, or that it doesn’t highlight some sort of hypocrisy. Let me rephrase: It doesn't seem like the problem is entirely artificial and Republicans just decided to fuck with New York just to dunk on them, and it isn’t obvious that there isn’t some sort of hypocrisy in asking for other states to process massive amounts of prospective immigrants on short notice (as “illegals” and asylum seekers do) while when the same thing happens in their own borders they shit themselves, irrespective of whether they are taking in a “fair share” of immigrants.

Blue cities in red states are still a problem for the red states. Herding them into these locations is a step in the right direction, though.

First I’m picking up elsewhere that the illegals in NYC are largely people who did not leave when their visa expired. So people who had jobs and functional lives. I don’t know enough to verify the truth of this. But therefore a different type of illegal than the completely homeless no job type showing up in Texas.

This article gives some numbers. 2 million illegal encounters so far at southern border this year. No clue how many are getting in but at that rate then 75k would be fair (though to date NYC only gotten 14k….75k was just my estimated run rate off Adams saying 4-6 buses a day)

https://news.yahoo.com/number-illegal-migrants-entered-us-155908676.html

I agree Florida doesn’t have the same issue. More similar to NYC that the illegals are a few by boat from Cuba, Visa expired illegals, or those with enough funds family to come to Florida.

I don’t know the true number of refugees but I’m fairly certain there are not 2 million agricultural jobs available in Texas. And NYC has a lot of restaurants in need of labor etc.

This is worth consideration, and if you want to calculate a fair share based on visa-expiration vs. border-hoppers, I'd be interested in reading it.

It is also possible that this year real is bucking the trend, and I am wrong to generalize from the last 15 years of stable population. If there are 2 million more illegal immigrants in the US next year, then shipping 51K to NYC would be proportional.

But we have been told about border crises year after year. Caravans, surges, whatever. And yet the population has been stable. Those 2M encounters are before any decisions--the article says 920K were already deported under Title 42. This chart suggests that >1M have been expelled, and that the remaining group includes detainees and deportations, too. It's not clear how many of those are released into the US until a hearing, or how many migrants are dodging the CBP entirely.

I don't think that it's obvious NYC is shirking its fair share, so I find it pretty defensible for them to complain.

Overstays are definitely the largest group of illegal immigrants in the US, but the vast majority are tourists and business visitors, not workers (it is very difficult for an unskilled person to get a work visa). So, not people with jobs. See overstay reports here

Re the 2 million encounters, the vast majority were immediately expelled or detained. It looks like 25-30 pct have been released.

Overstays are definitely the largest group of illegal immigrants in the US, but the vast majority are tourists and business visitors, not workers (it is very difficult for an unskilled person to get a work visa). So, not people with jobs.

But... how do you imagine they survive if they don't have jobs? Do you imagine they are all wealthy retirees, that they are economic parasites on the welfare state, or does the legal category not reflect the underlying reality?

The OP said:

So [visa overstayers are] people who had jobs and functional lives. I don’t know enough to verify the truth of this. But therefore a different type of illegal than the completely homeless no job type showing up in Texas.

My point is that a person who becomes an illegal immigrant by overstaying his tourist visa is also jobless when he becomes an illegal immigrant. He also is effectively homeless, in the same sense that an illegal entrant is. eg: From the perspective of the job market, or whether they are parasites on the welfare state, it does not matter whether an illegal immigrant entered illegally or overstayed a tourist visa. The distinction is not nearly as stark as the OP assumes.

The difference is that visa overstayers generally do not start out destitute and homeless. They arrive on airplanes with papers in hand, and they either have finances arranged such that they can live here in reasonable comfort without a job, or they choose to overstay once they have procured a job. They are apples and oranges to migrants who cross the border on foot and then claim asylum.

  1. And many, if not most, border crossers have relatives and friends in the US and can also live in reasonable comfort. It is not as if visa overstayers are particularly well off; if they were, they would not be seeking to illegally immigrate.

  2. I don't know what you mean by "papers in hand"; the only "papers" they have are tourist or similar visas, and some don't even have that

  3. The only job they could have procured is an illegal job. Had they procured a legal job, they would have applied for a work visa and hence would not be staying illegally.

Just to clarify, these are not people who are overstaying their tourist visas because they want a chance to see the Grand Canyon. These are illegal immigrants, just like border crossers, who plan to stay permanently and simply used a different means of entering the country.

Anyhow, as I said, the point is not that the groups are absolutely identical, but rather, as I said, the OP is greatly overstating the difference between them.

These are illegal immigrants, just like border crossers

The whole point is that, while they are both illegal immigrants, visa overstayers are not just like border crossers.

One group arrives on airplanes with passports and legal entry visas. The other undertakes a dangerous journey on foot or smuggled in a truck. It doesn't take a brain the size of a galaxy to recognize that there are going to be enormous socioeconomic differences between these two groups. OP didn't "overstate" anything, you're just splitting hairs to try to dismiss a fact that is inconvenient for your worldview (i.e. a deep blue sanctuary state like New York freaking out over the grim reality of what it means for thousands of the second type of illegal immigrant to arrive on one's doorstep).

More comments

Can you help me understand how you arrived at the conclusion that visa overstays are the largest group of illegal immigrants in the US? I looked at the overstay reports and I see a somewhat consistent estimate of about 700k per year. 25% of 2M is 500k, but it only represents actual encounters, so I'd expect this number to be the sum of the encounters released and the non-encounters. If even 10% more illegal immigrants are crossing without an encounter, it seems to me that the rate of growth of non-visa overstay illegal immigrants is larger, especially as of the last few years. Is the argument that the total visa overstay population is still larger than the total illegal southern border crossing population? I didn't see estimates for either of those numbers in the overstay reports.

I did not mean to imply that the link was the source of that statement, and because I was agreeing with the post's statement in that regard, I did not look for a citation. But see here

It helps. But dishwasher, cook, etc you don’t need English. I’ve eaten in restaurants in America where the waitress could only speak Spanish. I point at menu, she brings foods, I pay bill.

Even less of an issue at a McDonald’s self check out. They only need to learn how to say order numbers in English.

I'm starting to wonder if this wasn't the reason fast food places didn't shift to meals/combos.

But most restaurant workers are not waiters.

I don't know how much of a burden migrants are to border states, but you can't just assume that the burden is commensurate to the burden in NY, because migrants don't necessarily settle in border states. They go to existing communities, which are mostly not the states in question

As for Adams, his complaint all along has not been "don't send migrants" (I mean, come on, it is NYC; the city estimates that immigrants make up 37.2% of the NYC population and 44.2% of the labor force). but rather "coordinate with us before sending people." The city could probably use those types of workers; (unlike on the South Side of Chicago); the NY Times recently had an article about all the restaurants that have reduced hours compared to before the pandemic, because they can't find workers to fill all the shifts. There are certainly fewer places open 24 hours.

The state of emergency relates to the fact that NYC guarantees a spot in a shelter for all homeless persons, including the newly arrived migrants, and "The mayor’s declaration allows the city to open emergency relief centers more quickly by exempting them from the normal land-use and community-review process that often slows the opening of shelters.". Obviously, 17,000 people since August is nothing relative to the city's population, but is a lot relative to the current capacity of the shelter system, which is about 61,000.

Finally, $1 billion per year amounts to only $50 for every resident of NY State, so hardly much a burden.

but rather "coordinate with us before sending people."

Yeah man, that's all Texas wants too, but somehow it's racist when they say it.

Actually agree with a lot of your critiques which is why I made a tangent on housing. And the minimum wage in NYC is an issue. Texas housing and wages not as much of an issue. If NYC had SRO and no minimum wage then you could just put them to work at cheap rent.

My counter to you though is his speech is made to be meme in his tone. From a national politics perspective it sounds like they can’t handle them. When I agree in a labor shortage world they should be useful.

I’ve always been a Friedmanite and gave up feelings. But clearly there’s a 2-sided market here where there are migrants you can use for cheap labor who are also better off being used for cheap labor than their other options. But in the progressive labor standards world on housing and labor markets that’s not ok. And in that world it feels better to not do the trade and keep the problem away from you.

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