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Notes -
But why? What’s in it for me?
You are right red and blue tribe are not united enough to even try forced assimilation. I still think it would often fail due to personality differences.
Every time we do mass migration in the US we see massive outmigration of the native population from desirable locations. Many call this white flight. We now have zero urban environments in the US for middle class natives.
When the great migration occurred it eventually led to white flight thru out all of the rust belt cities. They left because the schools collapsed and their kids were being bullied in their communities. Crime rose. Which led to the birth of the suburbs and policy to keep land values expensive.
Recently LA and NYC have seen a new wave of white flight. Sure we can say this is due to blue tribe governance making housing and taxes unaffordable for the middle class. Regardless, immigration came to these cities and politically governance changed. I am personally a victim of the crime to white flight thing. It sucks. But not as much as staying and waking up to police marking bullets in the morning. Most of the people fleeing NY and Cali do not share my politics. They just left because the areas got worse and the financial mature sense to leave.
And you talk about the red tribe-blue tribe divorce. In reality with only the white vote we would have the power to do forced assimilation. I saw data that Trump would still win the election if only white females voted. But that’s not our electorate anymore. But I will emphasize I don’t believe forced assimilation would work due to genetic personality differences.
I understand why immigrants want to come here. I don’t hate them. It just makes my life worse.
So I will asks you what is in it for me?
You don't have to take migrants at all. I don't think there's anything immoral about being Japan. Maybe things would be a bit slower (though recent events in Canada and UK have proven problematic for the Max Immigration == Growth thesis so there're clearly diminishing returns) but that's a tradeoff a reasonable person can prefer. Practically, I don't think it's likely to happen but you can want that.
Even if you did close down the borders now though, something has to be done to digest the large numbers that have already been taken.
A lot of the pro-immigration people act like it is a moral thing so I respect that you don’t think it’s moral.
I guess I’m an urbanist. Which is sort of a blue tribe personality trait. Demographically and where I grew up I would be predicted to be very red tribe but my preferences are very blue tribe.-
I do think one of the strongest arguments against immigration is Americas inability to build middle class urban environments. Americas preference for building suburbs in my view is based on a strong preference not to live in diverse environments. I guess one could say blacks are special and prone to having unacceptable levels of violence and new immigrants are fine. That is kind of a justifiable view. But while we just had a huge immigration wave our biggest cities didn’t build more housing and make it work but instead had out migration of natives. So my opinion is if blue tribe wants me to accept mass migration then they need to show me they can run a multicultural city that doesn’t result in mass out migration of natives.
A lot of my anti-immigration views can boil down why doesn’t America have cities. Because I like living in cities.
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In theory, what's in it for you is that each immigrant that can support himself is producing at least as much as he takes, and therefore making you richer.
In practice, when a country gets dysfunctional enough (making it illegal to build new housing means that all productivity gains end up being stolen by landlords, lack of law and orders means the negative externalities of criminal immigrants can easily overwhelm the positive good created by law-abiding immigrants, the welfare state means that immigrants don't actually need to produce more than they take in order to support themselves, etc.) this doesn't hold.
Well, there are immigrants and then there are immigrants. Europe, which was almost completely white, and whose third-world immigration consists mostly of African and Middle Eastern Muslims, has seen its quality of life degrade significantly. America, which already had a ridiculously criminal ethnic underclass, and whose third-world immigration has consisted mostly of comparatively well-behaved Latinos, less so.
Never forget that white flight to the suburbs was the result of desegregation of the native black underclass, not Hispanic immigration from Latin America. If anything, Latinos help keep blacks in check, because we do not have an ounce of white guilt (see George Zimmerman).
I live in Miami, and I still remember how surreal it was when blacks attacked the Bayside Marketplace during the George Floyd riots. Some of my earliest memories of America are of shopping there with my father and sister.
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