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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.
For Somalia specifically, the whole ‘failed state because of perpetual multiple ongoing civil wars’ is probably a bigger factor in their poor infrastructure than the low human capital of the population.
I mean Somalia is especially terrible, but none of their closest neighbors (nor subsaharan Africa as a whole) are doing particularly great either, so I'm not sure that argument holds much water:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald%27s_restaurants
Kenya shares a border with Somalia, and seems to be doing ok. It's still a very poor country, but conditions are rapidly improving there. Life expectancy at birth of 64 years rising at about 0.2 years / year, GDP per capita rising 6% / year, infant mortality of about 3% and falling rapidly (similar to how the US was in 1950).
Kenya has no McDonalds but it does have Burger King, KFC, and Coldstone Creamery. And also Uber Eats.
Kenya is still incredibly poor but it's poor in a normal country way, not in the bodyguard and armored vehicles are not optional for foreigners way that Somalia is.
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