That is the title of this new book by Philippe Legrain, and no I don’t know how you can buy it outside the UK. Legrain is also the author of the excellent Open World, a defense of economic globalization.
This work is the single best non-technical defense of a liberal immigration policy. What I liked most was how
it put U.S. debates in a broader context; most American sources don’t
do this. For instance how normal or extreme is the American experience
compared to other histories of absorbing immigrants? The book is original in this regard, yet without moving beyond easily
understood arguments.
I do understand the
concerns raised by Steve Sailer and others against immigrants, and I
readily grant that the idea of open borders is a non-starter. But is
the United States today in a position where Latino immigrants are
tearing us apart? I think not.
Yes I know your anecdotes, but here is what it would
take to budge me. Do a study of real estate prices in San Diego, Santa
Ana (a largely Mexican part of Orange County), and the relevant
sections of Houston, among other locales. Show me that real estate values in those areas
are falling or even plummeting, and yes I do mean in absolute terms and
no the recent collapse of the real estate bubble doesn’t count. Then I’ll
give the issue another look. Otherwise the worst I am going to believe is that "things are not getting better as rapidly as they might otherwise be," and that, whether or not you like such a possible state of affairs, does not represent the sky falling.
But for purposes of balance, here is the most anti-immigration post I have written. Here is an interesting recent paper on migration.
Addendum: Here is a good article on immigrant entrepreneurs.
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Robert M. said—
I think Steve Sailer (and others like Heather MacDonald) is right about immigration and it’s unfortunate his views are relegated to a tiny corner of the internet…Of course, it’s easy to see why Sailer is not more popular – for whatever reason he doesn’t come across as likeable
I very much appreciated most of your reality based points.
But I don’t agree with you at all that Steve Sailer doesn’t come across as likeable.
If one reads around his blog much you come to realize that he approaches very un PC topics without malice and with a view towards problem solving for the benefit of the citizens of this country as a whole. What he calls “citizenship†. As opposed to some narrow ethnic group alone which he e.g. identifies with.
Actually it’s quite evident after a bit that his even more primary motivation is truth telling – without any hatred or rancor behind it, though a fair amount of irony and sometimes irritation and PC dogmas.
Mitchell Young—
We know immigration=more crime. End of discussion.
No. CERTAIN immigration = more crime.
Groups differ radically.
More Chinese immigration = less crime. (Notably lower rates than among whites for example, not to mention Latinos and blacks.)
More S.Asian Indian immigration = less crime.
More Mexican and Central American illegal immigration does indeed mean more crime.
The biggest issue is what the second and third generation look like. In social statistics. Groups that are on the rapid success escalator do our country far more good than harm.
“If one reads around his blog much you come to realize that he approaches very un PC topics without malice and with a view towards problem solving for the benefit of the citizens of this country as a whole. What he calls “citizenship†. As opposed to some narrow ethnic group alone which he e.g. identifies with.”
Wow, Steve Sailer came up with “citizenship”? The man’s a genious!
“Well! The pretense that all this has anything to do with immigration per se is falling away pretty rapidly now.”
Yes Paul. The pink elephant in the middle of the room is frantically waving his arms but people pay him no heed . Hell yes it’s about race. But if you prevent people from talking about it, the immigration “debate” takes place in a kind of vaccuum, with people being forced to dig up arcane statistical arguments (actually, many of them are straightforward, but by the time all the challenges are answered, you know…it gets ugly). Let us be plain, if it were Germans and Swedes arriving, we wouldn’t be hearing a peep.
“But what to do with the violent, dopey brown people we’ve already got?”
Paul, if you’re reading this, listen to me. I’m ONE of those brown men. Things were FINE between myself and whites before immigration got crazy. You are doing NOTHING for race relations by continuing to swamp the country with racially alien (to whites) immigrants. You have no idea how this has impacted myself and others like me, forcing us to “become” Hispanics because whites have simply grown too suspicious of us. It’s everything I can do not to punctuate this comment with a thousand exclamation marks. In one sense, I am thankful for people like you, that wish to diminish the power of race. On the other hand, your (implied) dogged insistence that race must not be a valid factor in opposing immigration wildly infuriates me because race IS the reason whites who oppose immigration (legal or not) oppose it (even though they don’t admit it). You are ONLY making problems for the non-whites already here. Whites who never had a problem with “brown people” before all of a sudden have come to realize that no one is planning on EVER finally halting immigration and that that means their race will be snuffed out of history. That might not be such a problem if people ACTUALLY believed race is “meangingless”, but they do not actually believe it, they only say they do. This is a recipe for perpetual interracial turmoil.
Daniel Sosa said–
Let us be plain, if it were Germans and Swedes arriving, we wouldn’t be hearing a peep.
Let us also be plain, and even more honest. If it were Chinese and on average high IQ S. Asian Indians (the ones who come here anyway) who were arriving in mass numbers, you also wouldn’t hear a peep.
Wait, those groups ARE coming in mass numbers. And you barely hear a peep about them. And when you do it’s generally to be consistent and not look like one has a “thing† about Mexicans, and post 9/11 (but not much before) Muslims.
It’s not about race except perhaps as being an ultimately causative force, IN PART. Most people don’t have much theory about that. They think in terms of ethnicities – of the combined effect of culture and race, with rather more emphasis on the former. They care about the practical impact.
And the practical impact of some groups is a net negative. And others is clearly overall a net positive (Chinese, other NE Asians, S. Asian Indians of the variety we get here). Crime and effects on public education, and durably below average IQ and attendant job performance and contribution, into the second and third generation. Why ever that remains the case, it’s proven very hard, and for all we know impossible, to change. So why import lots more of it?
As I’ve said before, and smaller and higher IQ continued slice from Mexico and Central America is fine.
Yes it’s also a factor that the huge and rapid numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans is causing a rapid cultural swamping in some places. That rather than too much dark skin is what that problem is about. Why should people want the predominant culture in their locality change rapidly, and not by people achieving the most? As opposed to more reasonably paced sprinkling of lots of different cultural influences from many places, which can be and usually is enriching.
What i think about the immigration policies are some-what lame. If Americans werent too money hungry and would work for lower pay then we wouldnt be complaining about immigrants taking our jobs from us. Americans need to swallow their pride and work. work is what makes the world go round not money because you need to work before you get the money.
Immigrants are performing the jobs that we, as Americans, simply won’t do.
Not with paying citizens somewhat more money they won’t do them. No wouldn’t that be terrible, if our lower half in the black and Latino citizen communities were making more money at less skilled jobs?
Whatever your annecdotes, the statistics for illegal Mexicans and Central Americans are terrible. They remain terrible for their children and grandchildren and often worse, which is the real problem.
Why worse? Isn’t it America’s fault then? No, not really. Or only in the following way.
That is Chinese and s. Asian Indians don’t do worse in the 2nd and 3rd generation. They do better on average.
The problem is that we tell certain “disadvantaged” “victim” groups that their problems are heavily our fault do to our “racism”.
How do we know that we’re applying much more racism to the light brown skinned (and sometimes quite light) Mexicans and Central Americans variety of Hispanics, but not to the usually considerably or much darker skinned S. Asian Indians? Well look it how those Hispanics are doing. IT MUST be our “racism”, or “structural racism”.
Utter BS. It’s their cultural or subcultural issues (that is the set of goals and priorities and view towards education and being smart and so on). There may be many within Mexican society who have quite different outlooks but we don’t tend to get those as illegals.
To the extent there is racial prejudice, the performance profile in school, gangs, and so on particular of second and third generations, comes first, and then people — whites, AND Chinese, and so on — draw conclusions and generalizations second.
No we shouldn’t judge individuals by their group. I don’t. There’s WIDE variation in any group.
But yes we should cut off this innundation by Latino illegals. AND deport many of the ones that are here.
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MM. I pitty the poor immigrants sometimes. Always getting the bad end of the stick
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