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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29056 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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Migrant crisis on the third coast

Even at the best of times, the denizens of downtown Chicago streets don’t seem to be having a good time. They hold up carboard signs titled “20 dollars will get me a room tonight” or “my house burned down two weeks ago” (poor kid, he’s had that sign up for a year – he keeps getting houses and they keep burning down). But in the last 6 months a new denizen has taken up residence: the migrant family, sitting on the side of touristy main roads, sometimes selling candy and usually holding signs stating they’re from Venezuela. Every time I walk past these people, I wonder: what was your plan? Was the life you had in Venezuela really that much worse than sitting on the frozen streets of a foreign country begging for money?

This article from CBS gives an interview with a representative woman selling candy accompanied by her son. In the interview she claims she came to work but cannot do so because she can’t get the right permits. I would estimate there’s one of these families per downtown block, mostly women and young children but sometimes accompanied by a man.

(Despite claiming she has not been able to find enough food to eat, it is clear that few of these people have been running much of a calorie deficit)

Given this seems to be a new phenomenon, I’ve been wondering how the migrants plan to last out a Chicago winter that is not at all conducive to being outside. It seems some of them profiled by the Chicago Tribune are thinking the same thing.

The people interviewed are, despite being admitted to the US as asylum seekers, purely economic migrants, not fleeing oppression but coming for a better education for their children and work opportunities. One family lived in an apartment subsidized $15,000 by the city, couldn’t afford it once the subsidy ran out, and moved around a bit more before claiming they were giving up and returning to South America. The extent to which current Chicago residents are upset by the state of affairs is hard to tell, but I hear about more and more discontent at city council meetings. This week’s “This American Life” about the migrant crisis in New York portrayed a similar group of people surprisingly negatively, abandoning the legal fiction of "fleeing from violence" that the asylum seekers and traditional media use to justify the moral imperative of letting in economic migrants. The top comment on the podcast’s subreddit describes the migrants as “entitled”, an epithet I am inclined to agree with.

All of this said, I do have a bit of affinity for these people. If I had to choose one group to occupy the streets I’d certainly prefer the migrants than the aggressive “native” homeless in progressing states of mental decay. The migrants are clean, accompanied by well behaved children, and don’t bother you when walking down the street (in this way I also prefer them also to the third inhabitant of Chicago streets, lanyarded young workers of some nonprofit that will accost you with any question they judge will trick you into attention). The regular homeless population of Chicago smells terrible, yells, and makes the city feel dangerous enough that no women I know will take the train at night. In contrast, a relatively dignified family looking for work at least has motives that are comprehensible to me, even if I think they’ve made the wrong choice.

If I had to choose one group to occupy the streets I’d certainly prefer the migrants than the aggressive “native” homeless in progressing states of mental decay. The migrants are clean, accompanied by well behaved children, and don’t bother you when walking down the street (in this way I also prefer them also to the third inhabitant of Chicago streets, lanyarded young workers of some nonprofit that will accost you with any question they judge will trick you into attention). The regular homeless population of Chicago smells terrible, yells, and makes the city feel dangerous enough that no women I know will take the train at night. In contrast, a relatively dignified family looking for work at least has motives that are comprehensible to me, even if I think they’ve made the wrong choice.

It's funny how much this feels like an argument that "the migrants aren't so bad really if you think about whether you'd choose them over what we already have," as though that were a plausible scenario and we won't just have both now. This is interesting rhetoric.

This is a similar rhetorical device to, "immigrants actually have a lower crime rate than American citizens". First, it lumps together "immigrants" as though it's actually hard to notice any difference in criminality between Central Americans and East Asians. Second, it lumps together Americans as though it's actually hard to notice any difference in criminality between demographic groups. When people are thinking about whether adding some illegal aliens to their neighborhood increases crime, they're considering whether that group is more criminal than their current local residents, not whether the newcomers are less criminal than a randomly chosen Baltimore resident.

Jakhammer's preference reveals more about the negative state of the perpetually homeless people than it does about the migrants.

The migration issue has a clear and simple solution - increase border security and stop incentivizing people to come to the United States. Homelessness to me is not as clear what to be done with. I believe cities in the past that effectively dealt with homeless people simply moved those homeless people to another place. It solves the problem on the city scale, but it is still a nationwide problem. There are policies that enable homelessness in these cities so stopping them would certainly help, but I don't think doing just that will solve the homeless issue.

I believe cities in the past that effectively dealt with homeless people simply moved those homeless people to another place.

Casual observation reveals lots of drugs and insanity. The historical approach to junkies and crazy people is locking them up. Homeless people that aren't crazy junkies are typically not all that visible, as they largely consist of people in temporary situations where they're living in their cars or the modern equivalent of mountain men that want to live rough, but are sane enough to stay away from meth encampments.

It solves the problem on the city scale, but it is still a nationwide problem.

Solving it in the cities generally solves it everywhere because their lifestyle is not sustainable in a rural area.

I was thinking of individual cities rather than cities in general since if Chicago decides to push out all homeless for example, San Francisco would not have changed their policies. On the city level, you don't get to decide to policy of another city.

The unfortunate truth is that seemingly the only two ways to eliminate the problematic homeless are to forcibly institutionalize them or to make their lives so insufferably bad that they voluntarily choose to shape up. I suppose a third option would be to tacitly allow people to kill them with impunity, but that is obviously less realistic and more evil than the first two approaches. Most people are adamantly against involuntary institutionalization, and they’re too humane to allow cops or strangers to instill genuine fear in the hearts of the homeless. So they proliferate.

The problematic homeless are generally so dysfunctional that abusing them into compliance is not going to happen. If they could pull their life together they would already be doing that. Having the cops beat them up isn't too far off of standard practice and it hasn't made much of an impact. Your options more or less amount to prison or rehab.

I think some people just don't want to be helped and can't be helped, and thus shouldn't be helped at all since it's just draining resources and enabling their drug-induced behavior. Forcible institutionalization would probably be the cheapest and fastest solution but like you said people would be against that. But I can't help but think of what San Francisco did to clean up the streets when Xi Jinping was coming to visit, clearly if there is a will then there is a way. I would argue the policies of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco enable a growing homeless population.

There is certainly an argument that it could be cheaper to provide a clean and safe place to let these people get their drug fix since that would lessen other crimes and means the city no longer needs to spend money on fixing the other issues (as they would no longer occur) but I haven't looked into those studies and my gut feeling is that even if the economics are true there are plenty of counter-arguments beyond just the economics.

If we could exchange these people for the homeless and the activists, that would certainly be a net win.

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