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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26575 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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Backlash to the border bussing policies: To the surprise of no one, sanctuary cities don't actually want hundreds of thousands of poor foreigners wandering about in their backyards. New York City- which has received the largest number of migrants shipped from the southern border by Greg Abbott- is the site of protests https://nypost.com/2023/09/05/another-massive-rally-expected-outside-staten-island-school-turned-migrant-shelter/ Obviously not all of these people are democrats, but some of them seem to be. But the real story is down below, in LA.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/la-city-council-texas-governor-migrant-busing/story?id=102840424

One motion directs the city attorney to investigate whether any crime was committed by Abbott and if there's any potential civil legal action that can be taken against him and Texas regarding the initial busing incident. The other is a resolution calling on LA County District Attorney George Gascón, California State Attorney General Rob Banta and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to similarly investigate Abbott's actions, as well as urges the county, state and federal government to assist in responding to the needs of the migrants. MORE: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott buses group of migrants to Los Angeles

Both motions, which passed 13-0, were filed on June 16 -- two days after the first bus originating from McAllen, Texas, arrived in LA carrying 42 migrants, including 18 minors, according to the motions. Since then, 10 more buses have arrived from Texas -- the most recent Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for LA Mayor Karen Bass said.

Obviously, some of this is just hypocrisy and looking out for number one- it's fine for you to have hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers camped under highway overpasses with no say in the matter, but don't you dare dump any on me- but I'm struck by 1), the fact that the LA city council thinks injunctions and lawsuits will work

"[Abbott] is just going to continue to do it, because he has no incentive at all whatsoever until there is legal teeth put to this," he said. "And that means an injunction by a U.S. federal judge to stop the trafficking of these individuals." Abbott has also sent buses to cities including Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia.

When in reality Abbott has no incentive to stop when a federal judge tells him to, he has every incentive to appeal to the supreme court and ignore the federal judge- he does after all want to win his 2026 primary- and realistically unless the federal government decides to take over the border itself, or meet his demands, they can't make him stop. Both practically- he wants these people to be someone else's problem- and politically- this makes him look tough to a base that doesn't already think of him that way- there's every reason for Greg Abbott to just keep doing this until he's lost much, much bigger than anybody seems to be talking about, or his demands are met.

And of course, 2), the decision to cast this as human trafficking

During Wednesday's meeting, LA City Council member Imelda Padilla addressed the strain the influx of migrants causes on service providers while calling the busing an "ugly form of political theater."

"It's against all dignity and humanity of all people -- especially towards immigrants, families and children who have fled their country due to injustices or threats against their lives, who have faced unimaginable obstacles to seek asylum," she said prior to the vote.

When, likewise in reality, "free bus tickets to New York/LA/DC" is quite an appealing pitch to migrants living under a bridge in McAllen and Eagle Pass Texas. After all, most of them didn't walk from Venezuela with the intent of settling in McAllen, they wanted to go further into the US. And obviously Abbott's real incentive is to get them out of his jurisdiction as fast as possible, which means offering free bus tickets to the places they actually wanted to go to in the first place. There just isn't a scenario where the migrants stayed in Eagle Pass long term; they could be deported to Honduras or wherever they came from, or they could go somewhere else in the country.

I've not followed this closely, but are the tickets offered on a voluntary basis?

It seems like if they were and food and water were provided, it would sharpen the critique against the target cities with the exact same effect. Arguably that might make the posturing seem less "tough," but I would guess that's not nearly as important when it comes to Republican primaries as is embarrassing Democrats.

Then again, who knows if those details would actually even be reported. I don't know if I can trust ABC to fact check someone saying the migrants were sent without food and water.

The Texas state government claims that migrants boarding busses volunteered to go wherever they were being sent(and my prior is that setting foot in a refugee camp on the border and asking "Quieres una boleta gratis a Nueva York?" would result in very many takers, so this isn't implausible, and the Texas government has produced waivers signed by migrants before) and that food and water are stocked on the busses(I believe this, if only because you don't do anything to move groups of people in south Texas in the summer without laying in water) and migrants are offered a medical exam before boarding(I am more skeptical of this one, at least if the medical exam is more extensive than a national guard soldier checking to make sure no passengers have open wounds or are in labor before departure).

I got a medical exam before 1st grade tee-ball. I don't think anyone was doing bloodwork, but they probably took temperature, bp, and maybe some fellas had to turn their head to the side and cough.

I was on one of these busses that was filled with migrants sometime around the beginning of the year. The bus was traveling from San Antonio to Dallas. It was a normal Greyhound bus, and I had purchased a ticket. When I got to the bus station, there was some kind of (possibly Christian) charity group distributing boxed lunches. Most passenger wore stickers on their chests listing their names and final destinations.

I talked a bit to the guy sitting next to me (I speak Spanish). I'll call him L. L was from Venezuela, but had been living the past few years in Ecuador. He had a wife and 2 kids remaining in South America. He'd crossed north through Central America and then Mexico through some combination of foot, car, and rail. Finally, he'd arrived at the US border a few days prior. He proceeded to cross-over around Laredo, TX, then surrendered himself to American immigration agents. L was detained for a few days in some kind of immigration facility, then discharged to the streets with an (online) court date for a year in the future. Someone told L he should proceed to some kind of homeless shelter, so that's what he did. He stayed there for a few days, and then someone came and offered him (and other migrants) a free, 1-way bus ticket to the American city of their choosing. L chose Indianapolis, because he had some relatives living there. Some days later, he was escorted into a shuttle with other migrants, transported by shuttle to the Laredo bus station, handed a stack of bus tickets (there's no direct route from Laredo to Indianapolis!), and encouraged to board the bus. His first stop was San Antonio. L told me he'd worked as an auto mechanic before, and that he hoped to find similar work in Indianapolis, but that he was willing to work at any kind of job.

A few points:

  1. L maintained that he had been treated well during his few days in detention. (I asked.)
  2. L was clearly an economic migrant. He wasn't fleeing violence, or religious persecution, or climate change, or anything like that. He saw America as an economic opportunity for himself and his family (correctly or not).
  3. L seemed intent on finding a job ASAP. He asked me whether I could help him find work.
  4. L seemed intent on learning English. He asked me some questions about how to say simple words in English.
  5. L expressed the hope of saving money, then sending for his wife and kids to join him. He maintained that he would fly them to America, because it would be too dangerous for them to travel across land as he had done.
  6. I have no idea who the agent was who distributed bus tickets, or on whose authority he was acting. Did he operate in a governmental capacity? As a private citizen? As part of an NGO? I don't know.
  7. There was some kind of charity group (it seemed) greeting the migrants in San Antonio. I don't know who they were or what their role was, or how they were organized.
  8. L maintained that he hadn't been coerced into leaving Texas.
  9. This was a normal, commercial bus. It wasn't chartered. I had purchased a ticket online. Most of the people on the bus seemed to be migrants.
  10. L had received a medical evaluation when he entered detention, but he didn't mention any medical exam having been administered prior to his boarding the bus.
  11. I have no idea how typical L's case is.
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Reading this I wish L the best of luck in making a successful life in the USA. Economic migrants (of all stripes) are one of the few groups for whom their version of the American Dream is still a possibility.

I admire L and his actions, because they demonstrate that he's high agency.

I despise our country's response to his actions, because it means we're not.

That's the equivalent of "I met a poor person who genuinely needed a car, and the US budget is obviously able to handle giving out a car, so we should buy cars for every poor person who needs a car."

Even if the immigrant isn't a criminal and can get a job at a reasonable salary, the problem is the country only has resources for a limited number of immigrants. Because the drain on resources is distributed as a zillion dust specks, if you peer at any specific example it will always seem like that particular example couldn't possibly drain enough resources to matter, no matter where you put the limit. But cumulatively, doing that ends up meaning completely open borders and no limit at all.

Or in other words, the sympathy for the individual immigrant is a concentrated benefit, while the drain on resources is a distributed harm, so it's always going to look like we should add just one more immigrant because we don't balance concentrated benefits and distributed harms very well.

I'm not convinced that people like L are a harm on the country in any way shape or form, at least any more than comparable citizens. I can accept that the country is better off without L, but then I equally want acceptance that the country is better off without all its low end citizens (I am not asking for the citizens to be removed, I just want there to be a societal consensus that the low end citizens are a drain on society, who only get what they have by grace of their superiors), and we all know that's never happening.

The next best alternative to this is to flood the country with people like L. That way the wilfully blind societal consensus gets what it deserves by being run over.

Someone like L who has a trade, family members who will house him and get him work, and wants to assimilate isn't the worst type and good luck to him. The people trying to argue that it's a river, not a pie and that the USA can handle unlimited amounts of immigrants because they will magically grow the economy are the ones who need their feet held over a fire (in Minecraft).

I can accept that the country is better off without L, but then I equally want acceptance that the country is better off without all its low end citizens (I am not asking for the citizens to be removed, I just want there to be a societal consensus that the low end citizens are a drain on society, who only get what they have by grace of their superiors), and we all know that's never happening.

Without all its low end citizens? Or without a chunk of them? After all, not a lot of people are demanding that all immigrants be kept out.

And even if you restrict it to "a lot of low end citizens", that's sort of cheating, because it's indeed widely believed but it would get you cancelled if you say it in public. (There are also a noticeable contingent of people who "don't believe" it but whose revealed preference shows otherwise.)

Without all its low end citizens? Or without a chunk of them? After all, not a lot of people are demanding that all immigrants be kept out.

We could in theory rank all citizens (or households headed by citizens) in order by net value to the country; anyone below a citizen whose net value is zero you could define as a "low end citizen"; then the country would be better off without them.

Without a large chunk of them,.not without all of them. Just like cancer, the optimal amount of low end citizens is non-zero.

Fair enough that my language in the post above was needlessly extreme.

I fail to see how this type of immigrant is a resource drain at almost any scale. He's hungry and eager to work, has a skill, is willing to learn english (which I'll take as signaling the desire to assimilate). The job market is tight. Where's the downside? Yes at some point we don't need more workers but we're several million workers short of that at the moment.

Perhaps in a more perfect world we'd have an elaborate visa system like Canada to only let in the immigrants like this. But in some respects the journey he made was the elaborate filter, and seems to be doing a somewhat decent job. I trust the government to do almost nothing properly, so maybe a difficult journey works just as well in practice as letting the government pick immigrants.

Where's the downside?

The downside is the (alleged) corrosion of social fabric and other intangibles. On a purely material level, working age immigrants with useful skills are pretty much a free lunch.

On a purely material level, working age immigrants with useful skills are pretty much a free lunch.

Only if they pay enough taxes to cover their use of government services. Which if they have kids they very likely don't.

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He's so willing to work he's undercutting the wages of natives.

Fuck him, send him back where he came from along with the rest of the foreigners.

Unnecessarily antagonistic, write like you want to include others in the conversation, low effort, banned for this behavior before...

Let's call it seven days this time.

I considered making a comment with a similar angle. As nice as it is for L to work for a better life and all that, it's also bad when a bunch of Ls undercut people's wages. I see the "a bunch of" as the problem, not L himself.

It's also morally questionable that the US incentivized him to take a dangerous journey, too dangerous for his family by his own account, in order to get here.

Beyond that, all the authorities knew was "this guy showed up at the border," and they just released him with a joke of a court date. L seems nice, he knows a trade (or so he claims), he's certainly courageous, and I infer that he's a hard worker. A model immigrant, in other words. Most people who show up at the border probably aren't L.

A question for you, KMC. If the US accepted fewer immigrants, would you mind L becoming a citizen? Pick your ideal number of immigrants accepted each year for the hypothetical, whether 10 or 1000000.

Put another way: Do you absolutely hate all immigrants/foreigners in the US, or are you reacting to the ever-increasing number entering the country? Something else entirely?

Your vitriol seems misplaced. L isn't the problem, it's the people who made the policies that convinced L that migrating here was a good idea.

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This is a good thing. It means that I, as a consumer of labor in the USA, can get the same product at a cheaper price.

Protectionism in trade, which is what your argument amounts to, tends to benefit the few at the expense of the many and are negative sum over all. If skilled mechanics come to the USA from Central and South America mechanics in the USA will be econimically worse off but everyone who needs their car fixed will be economically better off

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This might be stupidly uninformed by me but wouldn’t it be easy for Texas to get voluntary compliance? Just put them in a shitty jail for the crime of being illegal which is against the law until they say give me the bus ticket.

That is if they didn’t already want to leave.

That would be relevant if they wanted to live in McAllen(none of them do).

  1. As I understand it, most of these migrants are people who have arrived at a US border and applied for asylum; hence, they are not in the country illegally.
  2. As for those who are in the country illegally, a state law declaring that to be a crime would almost certainly be preempted by federal law under Arizona v. US, 567 US 387 (2012). And although a state can probably arrest someone for violating federal immigration law, they do not have jurisdiction to maintain them in state custody, in the absence of a federal detainer order.

I suspect we might see "informed consent" rear its ugly head. As much as I like playing amateur lawyer, I can't make heads or tails out of immigration law. I legitimately have no clue where SCOTUS would come down on this.

I'm reminded a bit of SF's "Homeward Bound" program, where it offered free transportation home to homeless people. I'm not aware if they got the agreement of the hosting city before they did so, but I doubt it. Immigration law, of course, is a different beast.

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