Im-Politic: From Virtue-Signaling to Real Compassion on Immigration

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asylum seekers, celebrities, DACA, family separation, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Sanctuary Cities, Trump, virtue-signalling

As should have been clear from the start, President Trump’s decision to halt the practice of family separation for supposed asylum-seekers who try to enter the United States outside of designated ports of entry will by no means end this phase of the immigration policy wars.

After all, this reversal has come via executive order, and the administration’s new policy – which would prevent family separation by detaining both children who have sought illegal entry into the country along with the adults that have accompanied them until their asylum claims are approved – appears to clash with a 2015 Federal court decision appearing to mandate quick release of both the children and the adults, whether asylum claims have been vetted or not.

In addition, avowed immigration rights advocates have made unmistakably clear their dissatisfaction with the new administration stance – strongly indicating in the process that their main concern has never been family separation, but the practice of detaining any of these family members until their asylum claims can be examined.

In other words, these advocates want a “catch and release” policy to be applied to these newcomers as well – even though many and possibly illegal border crossers never comply with orders to return to immigration courts once their cases are up for judgment. So court challenges are inevitable, as is pressure on politicians to loosen such border control practices further, as the outcry over the previous administration policy appears to be widespread (though its depth remains unclear, as suggested by these Gallup results).

And since even ultimately the President has shown that he’ll allow apparent public opinion to override his restrictionist immigration instincts, it’s reasonable to expect the U.S. illegal immigrant population to resume rising, and to surge strongly if Mr. Trump loses a reelection bid in 2020. And don’t forget: Washington could well turn on another powerful magnet for more immigration, especially from the very low-income countries of the Western Hemisphere – broad amnesty for the DACA population, residents of the United States who were brought to the country as children by illegal immigrant parents.

It looks, therefore, all too likely that a new outburst of virtue-signaling fomented by the Open Borders lobby will generate major new costs for the American economy, including both the native-born population, recent legal immigrants, and even recent illegals. Principally, downward wage pressures will increase on workers from these groups with less than exceptional educations or skill levels. And taxpayers at all income levels will need to pay for the government-provided services these newcomers will need.

These services, moreover, aren’t simply confined to various forms of welfare (since a large majority of these arrivals themselves will be poorly schooled and largely unskilled). The population increases they fuel will need new schools, public transit, and fire and law enforcement capabilities, just to name a few. (For a shocking example of the price of failing to provide these new services, check out this recent Washington Post piece on a middle school located right near where I live in a Maryland suburb of D.C. that’s becoming dominated by MS-13 recruiting and recruits in part because of a ballooning student body attributable to the surge of unaccompanied Central American minors in 2014.)

At the same time, those Americans who reap most of the benefits from supercharged immigration flows will represent a much smaller group. As I showed in this 2014 Fortune column, it will be dominated by families high up the income ladder, who disproportionately use the cut-rate landscapers, housekeepers, and nannies who account for so many illegal immigrant workers; and from businesses and entire industries (like construction, hotels, and restaurants) which profit so handsomely from the continuing flood of cheap labor.

As I also wrote in that column, these inequities are far from inevitable, and reducing them is hardly rocket science. How? Through policies that result in the main beneficiaries of illegal immigration paying the lion’s share of the costs. Four years ago, I suggested a new tax on the super-rich, and on industries that heavily employ illegals. That’s still entirely appropriate. But other possibilities abound, too.

For example, how about channeling these newcomers to sanctuary states, and cities and other localities? Or to states that voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016? Or to the Congressional districts represented by the loudest critics of the family separation and other elements of the President’s immigration policy? (Yes, there’s lots of overlap here.)

Moreover, let’s not forget the celebrity world. Via social media campaigns, maybe the Samantha Bees and the Robert de Niros and the Kathy Griffins could be pressed to provide some financing for this new – or newly legalized – population. (And here, it’s vitally important to specify that big contributions to advocacy groups focused on indiscriminately helping newcomers work the system, and thereby encouraging greater numbers, a la the Clooneys this week, doesn’t cut it.) Considering its sometimes reckless, often hysterical, and usually one-sided coverage of this complicated issue, the Mainstream Media should be targeted for similar “shaming.”

It’s all about applying to immigration controversies a fundamental principle of fairness – user pays – and adding to it the idea of “cheerleader pays” And even if this proposal falls flat on its face, it will at least achieve a crucial goal: helping Americans distinguish between the virtue signalers and the genuinely compassionate.

Im-Politic: So You’re Outraged by Trump’s Reported –hole Remarks?

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amnesty, Barack Obama, chain migration, Charlottesville, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Dick Durbin, Gang of Six, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Open Borders, racism, Trump, visa lottery

Although it’s anything but clear that President Trump made the profane comments attributed to him at a recent meeting on immigration reform with several members of Congress, it’s also anything but outrageous that a reporter would ask him afterwards, “Are you a racist?” His performance after the Charlottesville protests last August alone are grounds for legitimate concern.

But are the alleged Trump comments (which only one participant in the meeting – Open Borders supporter Dick Durbin, a Democratic Senator from Illinois – has “confirmed”) the only outrageous set of remarks or positions characterizing the immigration policy debate specifically since it entered its current phase in the mid-2000s? Not on your life. In fact, here are some questions I wish journalists would ask Durbin and the rest of the pro-amnesty crowd.

>”Are you an adult?” That’s a question that’s justified by the abject refusal of those blanketly opposing all efforts to establish some form of effective controls on immigration flows to inform the rest of us just how many newcomers they believe the nation can safely absorb, and over what period of time. Their apparent belief that the answers are “an infinite number” and “as quickly as possible” can’t accurately be described as anything but childish.

>”Do you have a working brain?” The president’s critics have never acknowledged the reality that any sizable version of amnesty – as Open Borders enthusiasts in both major political parties are still pushing in the current negotiations over illegal immigrants originally brought to the United States as children – is going to strengthen greatly the magnet that encourages populations from all over the world to take whatever steps are needed to enter the country illegally?

It happened after passage of the ballyhooed amnesty-centered immigration reform legislation of 1986. And it happened after former President Obama in mid-2012 announced his decision to postpone deportation for many of the aforementioned illegal immigrant children via his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) decision. And why wouldn’t it? If Washington announces that nothing will be done to remove illegal immigrants once they’ve arrived, why wouldn’t they keep trying to come?

>”Are you completely cynical?” President Trump gave Congress more leeway than ever (mistakenly, in my view) to come up compromise immigration legislation. His unmistakable and entirely reasonable assumption was that the group of lawmakers he convened last Tuesday would come up with a proposal that would make permanent the protections currently enjoyed by most of the aforementioned childhood arrivals in exchange for (a) significantly strengthened border security measures; (b) ending the “chain migration” feature of current U.S. immigration policy, which has supercharged the entry of newcomers who have little or no prospect of contributing to the economy; and (c) ending the equally doofy visa lottery, which seeks to increase immigration inflows from certain countries simply because they have been deemed inadequate.

What was the initial response – from a self-appointed task force of Democratic and Republican legislators called “the Gang of Six”? Amnesty not only for DACA recipients but for those denied its benefits by the Obama program, and for the parents of most of this entire cohort; threadbare funding for border security; a shell game stunt that leaves the chain migration system fundamentally intact; and a visa lottery proposal that was just as fake.

So I’ll close by repeating a point I’ve made ever since Mr. Trump made his formal debut in presidential politics in late 2015: If his opponents really wanted to send him and his often objectionable style packing – or now that he’s in the White House, to neuter his effectiveness – they’d spend much more time and energy coming up with realistic solutions to the legitimate complaints voiced by him and his supporters than they spend on fulminating about his latest outrages.

Their failure to process that lesson helped fuel the President’s 2016 victory, and their responses to the alleged – hole remarks shows that their learning curve remains entirely too shallow.

Making News: On National Radio Early This Afternoon – & More!

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Cato Institute, Center for Immigration Studies, China, ChinaUSFocus.com, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Hong Kong, Immigration, John B. Judis, Making News, North Korea, Ted Galen Carpenter, The New Republic, think tanks, Thom Hartmann, ZeroHedge.com

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to appear today on Thom Hartmann’s nationally syndicated radio show today at 1:20 PM EST.  The subject:  the state of the U.S. and world economies — and specifically, is either one as healthy as the conventional wisdom seems to believe?  All the info you need to listen live is at this link.  As usual, I’ll post a podcast of the interview as soon as one’s available.

In addition, on September 26, the Hong Kong-based ChinaUSFocus.com posted a column by the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter quoting my views on President Trump’s North Korea policies.  Truth in advertising:  Ted is a long-time and very close friend.  He’s also one of the sharpest foreign policy analysts I know.  In addition, this website’s sponsor calls itself a non-profit organization, but given that Hong Kong is under China’s thumb in most important ways, this claim should be viewed extremely skeptically.  Moreover, this “non-profit” admits that it gets “support” from a prominent Shanghai-based think tank that (like other Chinese think tanks) is an arm of the Chinese government.

In this vein, however, it’s intriguing that the point made by me and by Ted (who agrees) is manifestly not one that toes the Beijing line on the crisis.

On September 10, a blog post from the Center for Immigration Studies spotlighted my findings on the economics of repeal of the former Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

And on September 9, my post on the subject was reprinted on the popular ZeroHedge.com economics and finance website.

Finally, as previously discussed, in a September 15 New Republic article, prominent journalist and author John B. Judis quoted my views on the worsening corruption of many already corrupt, corporate-funded American think tanks.  Unfortunately, as I also specified, I don’t believe that John’s treatment of this point met basic standards of fairness.

Keep checking in at RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments!

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Real Dreamer Fakeonomics

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Barack Obama, Center for American Progress, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Dreamers, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Immigration, Jobs, Paul M. Krugman, The New York Times, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you’ve been following the heated national debate about President Trump’s decision to rescind former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, you know that an economic conventional wisdom has been quickly established. It holds that, whatever you think about the legality, propriety, or morality of ending its legalization process for the young and young-ish residents of the country who arrived as the children of illegal immigrants, the impact on the nation’s growth, employment, and productivity would be disastrous.

Sadly – but not surprisingly – an examination of the data reveals this conclusion to be quintessential fakeonomics. Worse, these claims have been spread with techniques that have become all too typical in the nation’s political, policy, and media circles – by endlessly and credulously repeating assertions that are based either on no solid data whatever, or on unusually weak data.

Enough examples could be cited to fill a book, so let’s focus for now on one that’s just appeared in America’s leading newspaper (The New York Times) and by no less than a Nobel Prize-winning economist (columnist Paul M. Krugman).

As Krugman argued in this morning’s paper, the Trump administration’s position that DACA has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens” is not only “junk economics.” But because it’s based on the (equally false, per Krugman) belief that “immigrant workers compete with less-educated native-born workers, driving their wages down and increasing income inequality,” it’s “irrelevant.”

The reason? “The Dreamers [as beneficiaries of DACA are often called] are a relatively well-educated group, very different from undocumented immigrants who came as adults.” Therefore, “letting Dreamers work is all economic upside for the rest of our nation, with no downside unless you have something against people with brown skin and Hispanic surnames.”

Needless to say, the argument that Dreamers actually tend be valuable economically on top of being young and young-ish, and slated to suffer for the sins of their parents, contributes to the image of Mr. Trump’s policy as a loser on all counts.

But the main evidence cited by Krugman doesn’t justify this conclusion at all. It comes from a Times feature posted on Tuesday that purports to show that “DACA-eligible immigrants have higher-skilled jobs” than other illegal immigrant workers. Two big problems here, however. First, the statistics presented in this post show that this standard represents an awfully low bar. Second, the differences revealed by these numbers between DACA-eligible illegals and other illegals is decidedly unimpressive.

For instance, what’s the occupation of the greatest percentage of workers in both groups? “Food preparation and serving” (16 percent). That sector of the economy sure isn’t known for creating great jobs. Number two for the Dreamers and those eligible for this designation? “Sales and related.” This category also features the biggest absolute occupation gap between the Dreamer-types and non-Dreamers, employing 15 percent of the former but only six percent of the latter. But these kinds of jobs sound pretty dead-end, too. Ditto for “Office and administrative support” (which employs the next greatest share of Dreamer-eligible workers). Worse, both the sales and the office jobs are being killed off left and right these days by automation.

Equally revealing: The next four biggest employers of Dreamer-eligible workers are the kinds of blue-collar-dominated categories that typically don’t require much education, and which therefore place Dreamer types in direct competition with their “less-educated native-born counterparts.” These categories – “Construction and extraction”; “Production”; “Transportation and material moving”; and “Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance” – employ fully 32 percent of the Dreamer types. An additional seven percent work in the comparable occupations of Personal care and service and Installation, maintenance, and repair.

It’s true that, in what’s officially considered a very low unemployment economy, the Dreamer-eligible workers may not be taking jobs from the native-born (or from legal immigrants). At the same time, their presence may well explain some of the nation’s nearly multi-decade low labor force participation rate. Moreover, the laws of supply and demand strongly indicate that the influx of Dreamers into these labor markets is holding down wages, all else equal.

This Times feature reveals something else fishy about the new Dreamer-nomics conventional wisdom. Much is based on a survey that should prompt considerable skepticism – and especially from reporters and editors, who are supposed to be professional skeptics. Here I’m talking about the insistence that DACA recipients (in the words of the liberal, pro-DACA Center for American Progress), thanks to their new status “are making significant contributions to the economy by buying cars and first homes, which translate into more revenue for states and localities in the form of sales and property taxes. Some are even using their entrepreneurial talents to help create new jobs and further spur economic growth by starting their own businesses” as well as earning higher wages.

Yet there are no hard numbers behind this “finding.” Instead, it’s based on a widely cited survey conducted by a researcher employed by the Center and other pro-DACA groups that asks Dreamers about their experiences following the Obama decision. On the one hand, there can be little doubt that workers with some legal protections are going to do better than workers with none. On the other hand, how sustainable will these gains be, especially in an economy with poor recent economic and social mobility? Moreover, because DACA-style legalization is such a boon to recipients for reasons beyond economics, too, don’t the respondents have a strong incentive to play up their progress?

I’ve actually been moving toward the position that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the country permanently, and possibly get that proverbial “path to citizenship” – largely because they came out of the shadows and registered with the authorities based on a presidential promise. It’s not their fault that the promise’s legality was dubious at best. Best of all would be a Dreamer amnesty coupled with border security and other immigration policy measures smart enough to prevent yet another powerful illegal immigration magnet from being constructed.

But policy shifts based on clearly hyped and mis-interpreted data rarely turn out well. If Americans do decide to give the DACA recipients the blessings of legal residence in the United States, they should at least do it with their eyes wide open to the likeliest economic impact.