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Matt Yglesias posted on X an argument in favor of immigration (having trouble finding it now). The argument was basically “you like lasagna right? Well if we didn’t allow Italians to immigrate no lasagna. And now Italians are pretty indistinguishable from other Americans so clearly that will be the case with others such as Somalians. Think of the future lasagna equivalent you’d get with no cost since the immigrants will assimilate.”
Leave aside the HBD argument. It seems to me that one Matt and those who make this argument miss is the massively different technology that exists today that didn’t exist in yesteryear. If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
It is likely harder to assimilate in the modern world where immigrant populations are not cut off as opposed to the old world. So pointing to historic examples of assimilation do not hold for today because the factors have changed. Now maybe you still think there will be assimilation for different reasons. But you need to make that argument. Comparing like and unlike however cannot be your argument.
I don’t think this is some kind of groundbreaking point but why would presumably smart people like Yglesias make such a sloppy argument? Maybe they aren’t smart. Maybe they don’t encounter enough arguments to the contrary. Or maybe they are propagandists. I can’t help but think repeating a catechism has value to building political unity even (perhaps especially if) it’s fake.
I don't think assimilation is harder today, or at least its a wash with the various technological and social changes. Especially for assimilation into and out of American culture, because so much of American culture has become world culture.
What does it matter that they can face time back to Italy when Italy is also watching MTV, eating at McDonalds, buying coffee at Starbucks, and talking about 21st century technology using barely converted English words? This same phenomenon makes traveling as an American simultaneously easier and more boring.
Lets not forget that past immigrant populations found plenty of ways to resist assimilation. Every "Little [Country]" in a big city is usually a past example of an immigrant population congregating together and avoiding assimilation as long as possible.
...
I think you pre-emptively answered your own question.
Anyways, its not like its hard to find a more thought out exposition on why immigration proponents want more immigration. Bryan Caplan did a whole book on the topic where he tried to make the arguments approachable for laymen: https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960
Twitter/X is a place where you can throw out a lot of arguments. And see which arguments stink or are good depending on the reactions. You are implicitly buying into a culture war framing on the whole thing by treating arguments as soldiers. You can certainly downgrade your opinion of certain commentators if they make a bunch of dumb arguments, but dumb arguments in favor of a thing does not make that thing wrong or incorrect.
Uh, are the countries these particular immigrants come from also buying coffee at Starbucks, eating at McDonalds, and talking about 21st tech?
This starts to hit on the other argument against accepting these immigrants: they come from third world backwaters that can't even maintain the infrastructure necessary to keep a McDonalds operating, and this is likely because the people are just that incompetent.
Generally American corporations have spread to everywhere they are allowed.
Poor countries often have more rules and operating a legal business without bribing a bunch of people is impossible. International corporations are unwilling to cross that line for good reasons.
I feel that calling corruption incompetence is disingenuous. Most European nations were equally impossible to operate in legally a few centuries ago. That's just how poor economies and politics tend to mingle.
Hell, even some places they weren't allowed!
This doesn't seem accurate if you exclude the Eastern European states.
Corruption in the U.K., France, and Germany was/is generally carried out by non-state actors. Organized Crime, Mafia, and maybe international corporations. I'll certainly grant Italy is up there. And I think the BIG sign you're in a true Kleptocrat state is if your military is taking bribes and/or selling equipment on the side, which I do not believe is happening in Western European nations.
Scandinavia as a whole has no reputation for corruption that I'm aware of.
The prevalence of corruption of State actors themselves seems more common in Russia and the Post-Soviet states, any given Middle Eastern or African Country you could name, And Central and parts of South America. I'm excluding Mexico because that whole situation is 'complicated' by the existence and influence of powerful Cartels.
At the very least, 'civilized' countries have formalized the process for bribing the government so its mostly done in plain sight and with an air of plausible deniability. That said, individual cities/local governments in the U.S. Certainly read third-worldy in their approach to graft. I wasn't aware of it being common practice to bribe cops even in Chicago but a quick Google search turned up this recent story lol.
So maybe the correlation between corruption and competence can be seen in how 'naked' the bribes and graft are or if there are robust detection and enforcement mechanisms that aren't themselves hopeless compromised.
A few centuries ago, there was no German state. Instead you had a bunch of larger and smaller states, which were certainly not above rent-seeking whenever they saw a profit to be made. At small state sizes, there is some kind of force unification happening: the taxman and the highwayman merge into the robber baron.
I think that Trump has mostly done away with the air of plausible deniability, as far as the federal government is concerned. Politicians were always beholden to big donors and willing to bent over backwards to make sure they got their wishes, but Trump is pimping out the US for cheap. Trouble with the DOJ? Buy some of his shitcoins to signal that you are on Team Trump, and your troubles will disappear, after all, his DOJ is meant for going after his enemies, not random criminals.
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The lines are often blurred between state and non-state actors. That is usually part of the problem with corruption, that the state hasn't fully locked down a monopoly on violence.
I was mentally thinking of France and Scotland when I thought of corrupt state actors.
It's been the longest amount of time since they were bad about corruption, but they absolutely were not free of it in 17th and most of the 18th centuries. The king of France would sell these tax collector positions that were basically approved banditry. In England it was difficult to run anything larger than a family business without the backing and often bribing of a noble. These places were absolutely corrupt in a way that we would all call "third world".
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This is not, by Latin American standards, particularly unique. Thé much poorer golden triangle countries south of there are(or, in the case of El Salvador, we’re up until recently) even worse. Columbia and Ecuador certainly have extreme problems of their own with the same thing. And some of the Caribbean nations are just as bad. Brazil also has a problem with it, although granted everything I’ve heard about it is that Eastern Europe style bribery is also common there.
We know about Mexico’s problems with the cartels because it’s huge and nearby. Something like a quarter of thé world’s Spanish speakers live in Mexico, it’s the standard dialect, it’s relatively wealthy(by Latin American standards), it borders America, etc.
Right, the thing that stands out to me is that the Cartels very actively prevent the government from ever becoming less corrupt by literally murdering anyone they can't buy out before they can attain public office. Back before reddit banned /r/narcofootage it was actually crazy to see vids of Drug Kingpins rolling around in massively up-armored pickup trucks with gold-plated AK-47s. They get away with absolutely absurd amounts of violence on a daily basis, and while individual acts don't get punished, most of 'em eventually get got in the end. Except El Mencho.
So one can correctly say that the Cartels as a whole are a "parallel" sovereign occupying the same territory. Which isn't really true of anywhere else that I'm aware of. The primary government isn't really able to oust this force, unless they get outside help. Now, if they did get outside help, and they committed to it fully to the extent that El Salvador did, I bet they make good progress.
Notable, on the topic of European corruption, that is how Fascist Italy broke the Mafia for a period of time, which might have led to the strengthening of the Italian Mob in the U.S. thanks to displacing the leadership.
Russia seems to have fully intertwined its organized crime with its state apparatus.
The U.S. at large seems to have managed to keep its violent criminal element from comingling too much with its political class, AND has relatively low levels of "Politician being handed cartoonishly large bags of money in secret" type of corruption. I'll grant "insider trading out the wazoo" is a factor, of course. MAYBE that's a distinction without a difference. Of course, in my local area, the Sheriff got hit with a Federal Investigation for literally taking a cash handout. And he's Italian (his name is CARMINE MARCENO), so maybe its just a culture inclination.
Also, our politicians do seem to have a weakness for sexy foreign agents.
Lots of other examples in Latin America, lots of ideologically driven examples in the Middle East.
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