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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Do the people opposing ICE really believe that large scale unregulated immigration from Latin America will actually benefit the US? Mexico is in a state of permanent civil war. The countries that the migrants are coming from are low trust, violent societies with major dysfunction. I am not really seeing the endgame here. Importing labour in an unregulated way from third world countries is going to dump wages.
It seems like they are taking a position which they themselves know is losing in the long term for some other benefit that I can't see.
Forget the US. What benefit do blacks like Johnson specifically get?
They compete with blacks for jobs (or spending in the case of cities with right to shelter) and now there's not even a pretense that they'll be a permanent Democratic client base like them to push for policies African-Americans would want. Clearly the emerging Democratic majority with a bunch of minorities all loyal to one another is not going to happen.
Hell, insofar as they do join up they dilute AA's hold on the party. And, because they're not fully captured there's more of an incentive to pander to them. As Biden said: unlike the black community Latinos are diverse.
the illegals flood cities and protect the Democrat power centers by keeping those who would threaten their power out
they don't need to be loyal to each other, they need to be united in opposition to another group which has worked pretty well for quite a long time
the loyalty to each other is solved through an ethnic spoils system which we already see in cities across the US (and have for quite some time, e.g., Los Angeles)
cities across the US are controlled by people who govern badly, let crime and other scams run rampant and, whether this is intentional or not, the result of this is they keep normal, functional Americans out of those cities which protects the machine politics of those cities
I get the theory. It's clearly just not playing out that way.
The fewer white people there are the more various goals conflict because you can't just take it all from them. Asians want meritocracy in education which squeezes out other groups besides whites, attempts to come up with some anti-crime measures that also don't annoy blacks lead to disorder that harms everyone, Latinos simply don't seem to be that interested in being auxiliaries in white progressives' fight against other whites if it comes at the expense of the economy or themselves and the in-group favoritism for random illegals is vastly overstated.
That part might be true but this isn't actually helping the electoral chances of Democrats or blacks as a whole. If anything, emigration to red states because of the disorder weakens their voting power and the most famous and wealthy liberal cities being basket cases just undermines the very idea of government competence.
This is basically what the Abundance turn of the party is about.
The state of California from 1960 to now proves the theory. The coalition is high-low, government workers, gov bureaucrats and other ideologues against the middle. Whatever "in-group preferences" random illegals have towards other random illegals isn't the question, it's whether or not they form coalitions against the White middle which they do routinely across the US and intra-coalition conflict is handled through ethnic spoils. Ethnic spoils systems may as well be made specifically for the low-trust, low "in-group preferences" for random ethnic groups for other random ethnic groups. Latinos were willing to be used by white progressive against the White middle in California and what they demanded was ethnic control and spoils and that's what they got.
California is effectively a one-party state. California in 1960 was a firmly middle-class Republican stronghold. Emigration out of California to red states is mostly red tribe, further cementing control of the state for Democrats.
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Right, and this is why the cities with the largest foreign-born fraction (Miami, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) are the poorest, most crime-ridden cities in the country, while the cities containing the lowest fraction of foreign-born Americans (Detroit, Louisville, Memphis, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City) are beacons of safety and prosperity.
On the one hand, selection effects are absolutely a thing, and will explain at least some of that trend. On the other hand it sure doesn't look to me like foreigners turn cities into ethnic spoils engines, except to the extent that they make cities wealthy and some of that wealth goes to spoils.
ethnic doesn't need to be foreign and foreign doesn't need to be illegals
the violence/crime stats for other demographics is so low compared to blacks, near the entire effect you're pointing out is explained by % black population down to the zipcode level
this outlier effect supplants any other effect because you've chosen a "top five" approach, but this argument doesn't work against the point of the post
places with high numbers of illegals are dirty, overcrowded, dysfunctional, and foreign, in addition to them having higher crime and being generally low-trust
that one "native" group also has this effect isn't mutually exclusive to illegals; the fact that Jackson, Mississippi is a dirty, dysfunctional, violent place while having few foreigners doesn't mean illegals don't have a similar effect on the places they concentrate which keeps regular functional Americans out
which reinforces the point I'm making; these cities being run poorly and protecting illegals (and black criminals) buttresses the political machines there because it keeps regular functional Americans out, even willing to commute multiple hours to live outside of these places
wait, are you implying cities like NYC and LA don't have ethnic spoils systems now or in the past (some of the ethnics being foreigners)?
I'm implying that ethnic spoils systems aren't a particularly interesting or significant part of what's going on with NYC or LA. If you ask people "what is New York an engine of" or "what is LA an engine of" you're very unlikely to get an answer like "ethnic spoils" even from the most race realist types.
This sounds like a problem that can be solved through the approach of "don't live in such places". There are plenty of such places. I will say, having grown up in a majority-hispanic area of southern california that "overcrowded, dysfunctional, and foreign" is not a description that fits LA very well. LA is a sprawling, wealthy, soulless suburb stretching to the horizon with occasional pockets of city sprinkled throughout.
People who commute for hours into LA are largely doing it because they're priced out of anywhere closer, not because they're trying to get away from immigrants. The exurbs have more immigrants, not fewer - e.g. Victorville (most stereotypical LA exurb) is 55% hispanic and only 18% white.
even if true, what does asking this open ended question to "people" demonstrate?
describing LA and NYC as "ethnic spoils systems" is accurate whether or not the above is a true statement
the first time I encountered this idea and these specific examples was from my elderly communist black professor; perhaps she qualifies as "even from the most race realist types"
right, which is what I claimed was the effect in my first comment
it's also a problem which can be solved through the approach of "deport illegals and other foreigners before they take over neighborhoods and fundamentally change it" bringing us back to the subject issue
Again, see Detroit, Birmingham, etc. Basically no immigrants and yet they are the way they are. Keep foreigners out before they change the neighborhood did not work in those cases. Why expect it will in others? Especially why expect that when the most desirable cities to live in are the ones with the most foreigners?
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It's called ethnic spoils for a reason. It doesn't matter much whether the different ethnicities have immigrated recently or have been there for generations.
Just purview the list of US cities by crime rate, sort by total crime and check out the highest vs the lowest total violent crime rate cities. It's hard to miss the fact that the demographics are, with only a few exceptions, dramatically different. For example, among the lowest five, 4 have (asians + white) > 75%, while among the highest five, all have (asians + whites) < 50%. The difference for the black population is, of course, especially extreme. Hispanics is also quite noticable.
Top 5 are Memphis TN, Oakland CA, St Louis MO, Little Rock AR, Tacoma WA. Oakland is the only one of those I particularly associate with immigrants. Also I don't really like the methodology of weighting larceny equal to murder. Looking at murder rate alone which is harder to fudge the top 5 are Birmingham AL, St Louis MO, Memphis TN, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI. Larceny theft alone does put Oakland and Portland near the top, which tracks.
Regardless, the "immigrants specifically make cities bad to live in" hypothesis doesn't seem particularly reflective of reality.
I have no objections to looking at only the murder rate - but that doesn't actually change anything, just check out the demographics.
Looking at foreign-born fraction, I see
For reference 13.8% of all US residents are foreign-born by the same metric. If you're going to Notice things about the populations of those cities, the things you notice are not going to be immigration-related.
Unless you're saying the hispanic people have a sense of racial solidarity with other minorities, to which I have to ask whether you've ever talked to a mexican person because they are usually second only to indians in expressed racism.
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Historically, it seems fairly clear that this is what happens: Lebanon, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem, the spoils machines in places like New York in the 1930s (which used to be carefully split so that the major political positions were held by one Irishman, one Italian, one Jew and one protestant IIRC) and the black machines in places like Chicago.
From the outside, it looks like America is already heavily focused around ethnic spoils - some of your biggest political debates are about to what extent ethnicity is relevant in job and university applications, the appropriate ethnic composition of universities and good jobs (between whites, Jews, blacks, etc.). Where and how children of different races should be educated, and how they should be treated by the law when they grow up. In more integrated countries these questions simply don't come up.
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