Im-Politic: A Year After

Tags

Biden, Capitol assault, Capitol riots, China, Constitution, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2024, GOP, Im-Politic, Immigration, impeachment, January 6, January 6 committee, Populism, Republicans, Trade

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of last January 6’s Capitol riot, and it’s also when we’ll see the new monthly U.S. trade figures (which I’m really anxious to cover). So I figured I’d post today on what to me is the most fascinating and important development stemming from that day’s tumult:  Contrary to my expectations, the impact on American elective politics has been pretty slight so far and may well stay minimal. And that includes on the question of Donald Trump’s political future.

Before starting the political analysis, let me recap my main views on the actual events of January 6, the run up to them, and their immediate aftermath.

First, anyone who forced their way into the Capitol building, or even past the security barricades then erected around its perimeter, should be punished severely. Ditto for anyone who planned these actual attacks, and anyone illegally present in the building or anywhere on the Capitol grounds who resisted arrest and/or destroyed property.

Second, anyone illegally inside the building who didn’t act violently should be punished, too, though less severely (for reasons explained nicely by CNN here and here). For even if they just wandered in once the entrances were left unguarded, it should have been obvious from the chaos and violence they must have seen and/or heard that something was very wrong. Moreover, it’s a well established principle that ignorance of the law (in this case, trespassing on government grounds) is no defense.

Third, I see no valid argument for going after individuals who were simply present on the Capitol grounds outside the building and stayed outside, and even less of a case for action against those who simply attended the Trump rally that preceded the attack. And this includes actions taken by public or private employers.

Fourth, too many important, disturbing, and unanswered questions about Capitol security procedures and preparations remain unanswered. Principally, why weren’t the big metal doors on the Capitol’s ground level closed immediately after it became obvious that a crowd was milling about that included folks with bad intent? And why was the security presence so light to begin with?

Fifth, Nothing said by Trump at the rally qualified in legal terms as incitement to riot. Consequently, that argument for impeachment and removal was always bogus. Another argument was stronger, but in my view still inadequate – Trump’s delay (which I described as “reckless”) in urging the Capitol breachers to cease and desist at once, and in condemning their actions. It’s inadequate because it was a delay (in carrying out his Constitutional duties to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”), not a refusal or a failure.

It’s possible that the investigations into the January 6 events by the (Biden) Justice Department or Congress’ January 6 committee might uncover stronger evidence of Trump culpability on any of these counts. But we simply haven’t arrived at that point yet.

These positions led to the three main political conclusions I drew about January 6:

>the former President would remain influential in Republican circles (particularly at the grassroots level), but that these favorability ratings would fade;

>Republican political fortunes would take a major and possibly lasting hit, as Democrats would miss no opportunity to remain voters about January 6, especially as elections approached; and

>support for Trump-ian positions on his core issues, notably China and trade policies, and immigration, would be significantly undermined.

As of today, however, these quasi-predictions are looking overblown at best, at least if numerous major national polls are generally on target.

Is Trump’s standing in Republican ranks diminished? As it’s been throughout the year (see, e.g., here and here), the evidence continues to be all over the place. For example, this CBS News survey shows that only 56 percent of self-identified Republicans want the former President to seek reelection in 2024.

At the same time, a new Reuters poll shows that no other likely alternative candidate is even close to him as the GOP’s favorite in the next White House race.

Does this mean that Trump’s only looking good to Republicans because his intra-party competition appears so unimpressive? That’s possible. Yet this Pew Research Institute poll shows that these same voters rate Trump’s presidential performance as nearly as highly as that of the revered Ronald Reagan.

Some similarly, seemingly contradictory, trends can be found in the national electorate’s views of Trump. That aforementioned CBS survey reported that a mere 26 percent of all U.S. adults want Trump to run again in 2024 (including only 23 percent of independents). According to recent RealClearPolitics.com averages, though (which combine the results of several individual soundings), Trump would beat President Biden in the popular presidential vote if the contest were held today.

And public opinion on the blame for January 6 seems pretty irrelevant. How else can you explain this Washington Post-University of Maryland finding that 60 percent of American adults believe that Trump bears “a great deal” or “a good amount” of blame for the riot?

Nor are there many signs that the GOP’s image overall has been tarnished by January 6 or by the party’s response to the Capitol attack or its reaction to whatever responsibility Trump deserves. The strongest evidence: Since November, Democrats have fallen behind Republicans in RealClearPolitics‘ gauge of which party Americans would support in a “generic” race for a seat in Congress. 

Most alarmist of all have been my fears that the public would turn against Trump-ian trade and immigration policies. Indeed, hard lines on China (which Mr. Biden has largely embraced) and on border security (which the President has clearly botched) are more popular among the electorate than ever.

In my defense, my initial reaction to the politics of January 6 did include the caveat that any damage to the Trump or Republican images could be limited, and even overcome, either if Americans’ characteristically short memories simply reasserted themselves again, or if they soured big-time on Mr. Biden. Clearly, the nation has seen a good deal of both.

Yet could outrage over the Trump and Republican January 6 roles and responses still be successfully stoked by Democrats going forward? To date, that doesn’t seem likely. Democrat Terry McAuliffe tried this tack in last November’s Virginia governor race – explicitly warning that a victory by Republican rival Glenn Youngkin would boost Trump’s future presidential prospects. He failed miserably. And these two polls (here and here) reveal only middling-at-best national trust in the fairness of the January 6 committee. 

Again, future bombshell revelations can’t be ruled out. But for the time being, it looks like for better or worse, the American public is steadily moving on from January 6. Will the Democrats? Can they?       

       

Im-Politic: Latinos Flocking to a (Still Trump-ian) Republican Party

Tags

Axios-Ipsos Poll, Biden, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2016, election 2020, election 2022, election 2024, exit polls, Glenn Youngkin, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, Latinos, NPR-Marist Poll, Pew Research Center, polls, public opinion, Republicans, The Wall Street Journal, Virginia governor's race

Remember all those those charges that former President Donald Trump made clear from the very beginning of his 2016 presidential campaign that he was an anti-Latino bigot, and the predictions that any political success he enjoyed would doom Republican chances of winning support from this increasingly important group of voters?

Apparently, many Latino voters themselves don’t. Or they’ve concluded that Trump and now dominant Republican views on sensible controls on immigration matter less to them than views on other issues. Or that they actually like Trump and the Republicans on some combination of these subjects – including immigration. Or that maybe the Republican positions aren’t terrific, but that what the Democrats have stood for lately is a non-starter.

That’s the message being sent lately by several recent polls on Latino political views that could decisively shape American politics for the foreseeable future.

First, though, some context. There’s little doubt now that four years of Trump-ism wound up boosting the former President’s support among Latinos, now further shrinking it. In 2016, Trump won 28 percent of their presidential vote. In 2020, this figure had grown to 32 percent according to the eixt polls. (This subsequent study pegs his 2020 total at 38 percent.)  And of course, in some key states, the exit polls showed, his 2020 performance was far better – notably Florida (46 percent) and Texas (41 percent). So the racism and xenophobia charges were showing signs of flopping while throughout Trump’s term in office.

Even so, the results of a Wall Street Journal survey conducted in the second half of November came as a major shock. They showed that if Trump was running for the White House against President Biden today, he’d lose by only 44 percent to 43 percent among Latino voters. And they said they’d be even split at 37 percent in their votes for Democratic and Republican Congressional candidates.

As noted in this analysis, the poll’s sample size was very small, so serious doubts in its accuracy are justified. But similar results have been reported elsewhere. Yesterday, notably, National Public Radio and Marist College released a survey showing that just 33 percent of Latino adults approved of President Biden’s performance in office, versus 65 percent who disapproved. These Biden Latino numbers were worse than his ratings from American adults as a whole (41 percent approving and 55 percent disapproving).

Moreover, only 11 percent of Latino adults “strongly approved” of Mr. Biden’s presidency so far, versus 17 percent of U.S. adults overall, and when it came to strong disapproval, 52 percent of Latinos marked that column compared with 44 percent of the total national adult population.

Nor does the evidence stop there that the longer Mr. Biden has been in office, the less Latinos like his perfomance. As this Washington Post column reminds, “In late May, Biden’s job approval among Hispanics averaged 60 percent, with a net approval margin of 32, a bit larger than his vote margin the prior year.”

Biden backers and Democrats can point to a new Axios-Ipsos survey reporting that “The Democratic Party enjoyed huge advantages over the Republican Party when Latino respondents were asked which party represents or cares about …..” But after that ellipsis comes the finding that “those advantages evaporated when it came to the economy and crime.”

Democrats own a clear edge among Latinos on one major issue, though: the CCP Virus pandemic. According to the Axios-Ipsos results “respondents were much more likely to say Democrats were doing a good job of handling COVID-19 as a health challenge — 37% to 11% for Republicans, with another 17% saying both are doing a good job.” 

But Axios-Ipsos has been a major outlier lately, as made clear in this analysis that looks not only at this year’s polls but the Virginia gubernatorial election, which saw victorious Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin actually win the state’s Latino vote.  The conventional wisdom seems to hold that Youngkin prevailed in large measure because he held Trump at arm’s length. But in light of all the other survey results, maybe that’s wishful Mainstream Media thinking?      

It’s still a long way even to the 2022 Congressional elections, much less the 2024 presidential race. But unless the President and his party can turn their sagging fortunes around, it looks like they’re rapidly running out of time with Latinos – who are increasingly flocking to a Republican Party still strongly influenced by Donald Trump.  

Following Up: The Latest on the Virus and the Border

Tags

Biden border crisis, Border Crisis, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Following Up, hospitalizations, Immigration, migrants, mortality, Open Borders, public health, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wuhan virus

This past Saturday, I upbraided New York Times editorial writers for claiming that the CCP Virus pandemic had eased enough to justify admitting into the country more illegal aliens who may be carriers and therefore spreaders of the disease. The basis for my criticism was data from the Times itself indicating that the pandemic wasn’t easing any more – and strongly suggesting that the paper’s Open Borders-like immigration policy stances had become extreme enough to rationalize worsening already serious dangers to public health.

Five days later, it’s clear that, although the paper still has a lot to answer for publishing this piece (like its insistence that there was never a compelling public health rationale for putting such virus-related immigration restrictions into effect), my use of the word “indicating” to describe the virus’ status was well chosen. For the latest figures paint an oddly contadictory picture of the pandemic threat.

When I wrote the November 13 post, nearly a week’s worth of statistics on virus deaths showed them on the upswing again after the seven-day averages (7DA) had been falling – often by double-digits percent per day – since late-September. But on November 9, they began rising again, and two days later the figure was again approaching double digits: 9.72 percent. By Friday, the 12^th, however, they’d started retreating again, and yesterday were down an encouraging 12.74 percent. So by that metric (which isn’t perfect), the situation is looking reasonably good. (My source, as usual, is The Washington Post‘s very user-friendly virus tracking feature.)

The same, however, can’t be said for virus-related hospitalization rates. These numbers aren’t pefect, either (see here for a good explanation why), but they’re probably the best available for gauging progress against the virus. Moreover, they tend to prefigure death rates (because hospitalized patients don’t die right away). But although they started trending down according to the 7DA numbers starting on September 6, that decline began slowing in late October, and the 7DA for daily new hospitalizations went back into growth territory last Friday. By this metric, therefore, a return of tough virus times may lie ahead. So does the return of winter.

This impressive case for pessimism doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my opposition to indiscriminate anti-CCP Virus policies like current mask and vaccine mandates, let alone sweeping shutdowns and lockdowns. But it also reenforces the case for preventing the situation facing Americans from becoming worse still – including by protecting the country from illegal migrants whose health status will always be at best uncertain (because of weak public health and record-keeping systems in most sending countries). That is, unless, like The New York Times, you think American and their health should come last when making immigration policy.

Im-Politic: More Americans-Last Immigration Tripe from The New York Times

Tags

CCP Virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Immigration, public health, The New York Times, Title 42, Wuhan virus

It looks – embarassingly – like New York Times editorial writers don’t bother to look at the newspaper’s comprehensive vaccine tracker feature. Or at least they didn’t bother when preparing today’s editorial calling for an end to a regulation called Title 42, “an emergency public health order that allows the government to turn away migrants at the nation’s borders during a pandemic.”

According to the edit, a big part of the reason is that “the Covid-19 pandemic is receding.”

But flip to the paper’s “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count” section, and you see that one of the most reliable (though far from perfect) indicators of the pandemic’s virulence – hospitalizations – are no longer declining as steeply as they had been starting in early September. And the daily death count is showing signs of stabilizing after falling rapidly starting in mid-September.

Moreover, the numbers are likely to keep worsening in the coming weeks because winter is coming, and because the CCP Virus in all its variants is seasonal – like many other infectious diseases. In other words, now that the weather is getting colder, some kind of new wave seems sure to arrive.

Incidentally, the edit’s other stated prime rationale for ending Title 42 is just completely bonkers. The Times writes of evidence that’s recently surfaced of an official for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supposedly making clear that “there was little public health rationale for instituting the policy, since the virus was already spreading in the United States by the time the Title 42 order was signed” in March, 2020 under the Trump administration.

In other words, a then-little known and therefore greatly feared disease was metastasizing among the American population, and it was – xenophobic? racist? choose your own disparaging adjective? – to minimize the odds that infected foreigners would make the problem even worse?

And in fact, this last argument illustrates the most fundamental problem with the editorial – and the paper’s overall position on immigration. Times‘ ownership obviously favors an Open Borders-like policy, which is of course perfectly fine and its inalienable right. What’s neither is its unwillingness to show some intellectual honesty and openly say so.

Following Up: The Cheap Labor Lobby Looks Ever Shadier

Tags

Aman Kapoor, Biden administration, Cato Institute, Cecelia Rouse, Chronicles, conflict of interest, David Bier, economics, economists, Following Up, FWD.us, George J. Borjas, idea laundering, Immigration, Immigration Voice, Jeremy Beck, Koch Brothers, NumbersUSA, Open Borders, Pedro Gonzalez, think tanks, wages

In late September, I posted on evidence that one of the supposedly most authoritative studies on the effects of large-scale immigration on the wages of the existing U.S. workforce came up with an answer (in a phrase, “no big deal”) based on no hard evidence whatever.

Since then, I’ve come across material indicating that the intellectual fraud committed by the Biden administration economists and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) “experts” team involve was much worse – along with documentation apparently showing that a leading U.S. private sector think tank whose research has armed much of the corporate Cheap Labor Lobby agitation for Open Borders-like policies is literally shilling for that powerful interest group.

As I wrote in that previous post, a mid-September blog item lead-authored by President Biden’s chief White House economic adviser Cecelia Rouse attempted to calm fears that the kinds of juiced up immigration inflows sought by the administration wouldn’t significantly harm already hard-pressed low-income and low-skill U.S. workers. But its case boiled down to nothing more than the kind of appeal to authority that typically seeks to cover up for a paucity of facts and figures – and indeed, an appeal to (NAS) authorities who the White House blog admitted themselves can’t cite much concrete evidence for their conclusions themselves.

But a month later, a post by Jeremy Beck of the immigration realist organization NumbersUSA spotlighted a much more serious problem with the NAS’ immigration analysis. It relied on mathematical models that didn’t actually find or conclude that Americans today holding or seeking poorly paying jobs have nothing important to worry about from big immigrant inflows. Instead, these models proceeded from this assumption.

Beck’s post was based on a conference presentation made by Harvard University labor economist George J. Borjas, who’s not only one of the world’s top specialists on immigration economics, but one of the very few noted economists critical of any aspect of what might be called pre-Trump U.S. immigration policies. So maybe his word shouldn’t be taken as gospel? Maybe not, but it’s noteworthy that the conference panelist he was paired with (another prominent labor and immigration economist) uttered not a word of objection. Nor did the moderator of the session, a Cato Institute analyst who could not be more enthusiastic about mass immigration. (Beck conveniently supplies the full video of the event.)

And speaking of the Cato Institute, that’s the think tank accused of hiring itself out to U.S. corporate interests anxious to pump up the supply of workers available them, and therefore drive down the wages they can command.

The charges appear on the website of the journal Chronicles. The publication and its contributors, like NumbersUSA, are definitely on the restrictionist side of the immigration policy debate. But the post, by Chronicles Associate Editor Pedro Gonzalez presents what it purports to be emails from an organization called Immigration Voice complaining that Cato immigration analyst David Bier has been writing less on the issues it paid him to focus on (boosting the numbers of foreign tech workers that can be employed by firms in the United States) and more on subjects of concern to another group seeking to increase immigration inflows that began paying him more.

According to a bitter message allegedly sent by Immigration Voice president Aman Kapoor, “this guy is like mercenaries, working to push the agenda of the highest bidder. We have [sic] him money when no one knew him and he was fresh out of Congress as a staffer, and no one was willing to support him. Now he has become an influencer because of the papers we suggested him to write any [sic] gave him money to do that….” And because the other Cheap Labor Lobby group, FWD.us, “is giving them money,” Bier is “only pushing” its favored topics.

In other words, there’s no honor among hired gun employers.

It’s not as if the Cato Institute wouldn’t be supporting Open Borders-like policies without Cheap Labor Lobby funding. It’s a libertarian outfit, and its platform strongly opposes pretty much any government interference in any aspect of the economy. But as Gonzalez observes (making points that, as I’ve written, apply to pretty much all of America’s major think tanks to varying extents), “Cato presents itself as providing independent policy research. Kapoor’s allegations raise concerns about the integrity, independence, and transparency of this research, which can have an outsized influence on policy debates.”

In other words, these financial ties create exactly the kind of appearance of conflict of interest that every organization with any integrity seeks either to avoid or to deal with by making crystal clear which of its products are literally made-to-order – and need above all to please the client rather than seek the truth.

And the two main reasons that think tanks like Cato that engage in these practices are so influential directly distort and therefore corrupt national policy debates and the decisions they produce. First, the big bucks provided by donors like Immigration Voice and FWD.us give it the wherewithal to spread the word about its work with some of the best public relations that money can buy. Second, the lack of donor transparency enables the funders to take advantage of what I’ve called idea-laundering: using think tanks to issue materials that push their particular agendas while garbing them in quasi-academic raiment to create the impressions of objectivity and intellectual respectability.

At this point I need to acknowledge that I myself have spoken at Cato conferences and written chapters for Cato books. They’ve concerned foreign policy, a field in which the Institute’s non-interventionist positions would be difficult to match with any corporate or other selfish private ends. In fact, I’ve heard that in at least one instance, Cato’s opposition to the first Persian Gulf War, they’ve cost the organization contributions. And in 2012, the Institute resisted for a time what some staff and board members viewed as an attempt by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and the late David Koch to politicize the organization excessively.

I’ll also give Cato credit for hosting the aforementioned Borjas presentation. But Cato’s immigration work in general now looks a good deal less than principled – and about as reliable as that of the academic specialists who seem determined to deal with some of the biggest problems caused by supercharging immigration inflows by simply defining them out of existence.

P.S. Thanks to U.S. Tech Workers, an organization pressing to reform U.S. immigration laws to promote the hiring of Americans in specialty positions, for alerting me to the Chronicles post. 

Making News: Back on National Radio on the Supply Chain Mess — & More!

Tags

Cato Institute, decoupling, economists, globalization, Gordon G. Chang, Immigration, IndustryToday.com, Jeremy Beck, manufacturing, Mark A. Milley, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, NumbersUSA, supply chain, Ted Galen Carpenter, TheHill.com, Trade, wages

I’m pleased to announce several new recent media appearances.

Yesterday, I returned to the nationally syndicated “Market Wrap with Moe” to talk about those supply chain snags that are roiling the entire economy and pushing up prices, and about whether we’ve seen peak U.S. domestic manufacturing at least for now. Visit this link and click on the play button under “Current Market Wrap” to listen to the podcast.  My segment starts at about the 21:30 mark.  

In his Tuesday op-ed for TheHill.com, Gordon G. Chang quoted my views on whether or not the world economy is going to resume globalizing and generally coming together economically, or keep de-globalizing. You can read the article here.

Also on Tuesday, IndustryToday.com re-posted (with permission!) my RealityChek report on how the new Federal Reserve industrial production figures indicate that, at least for the time being, domestic manufacturers have succumbed to recent CCP Virus-related and other obstacles to growth. Here’s the link.

On September 30, Jeremy Beck of the immigration realist organization NumbersUSA posted an item on the group’s website that took off from a prior offering of mine to spotlight the intellectual fakery of many mainsteam economists on the subject of mass immigration’s impact on the wages of U.S. workers. Click here to see that the situation is even worse than I thought.

Finally, on September 28, a post by the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter (full disclosure: a close personal friend) used some of my arguments on China phone calls made by U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley, President Biden’s top uniformed military adviser, to explain why they should worry the heck out of all Americans. Click here to read.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! The Washington Post’s Open Borders Deniers

Tags

Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden administration, Border Patrol, border security, Department of Homeland Security, FoxNews.com, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Haitians, illegal aliens, Immigration, migrants, Open Borders, Republicans, The Washington Post, United Press International

“The numbers belie the Republican claim that Haitians have been

admitted into the country wholesale.”

– The Washington Post, October 13, 2021

“Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday

that as many as 12,000 Haitian migrants who made their way to the

U.S.-Mexico border have been released into the United States.”

– United Press International, September 26, 2021

Number of migrants overall released into the United States since

August 6, according to leaked Border Patrol documents:  c. 72,000

– FoxNews.com, October 13, 2021

 

(Sources: “How the Biden administration can help Haitian migrants without sending the wrong message,” The Washington Post, October 13, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/13/how-biden-administration-can-help-haitian-migrants-without-sending-wrong-message/; “DHS secretary: Up to 12,000 Haitian migrants released into U.S.,” by Daniel Uria, United Press International, September 26, 2021, DHS Secretary Mayorkas: As many as 12,000 Haitian migrants released into United States – UPI.com; and “Leaked Border Patrol docs show mass release of illegal immigrants into US by Biden administration,” by Bill Melugin and Adam Shaw, FoxNews.com, October 13, 2021, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/leaked-border-patrol-docs-release-immigrants-us-biden-administration)

Im-Politic: A Labor Shortage Story Short on the Facts

Tags

Bloomberg.com, Boris Johnson, Brexit, editing, European Union, globalism, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Mayes, journalism, labor shortages, media bias, Open Borders, truck drivers, truckers, trucking, United Kingdom

Is Bloomberg.com trying to make yours truly look good? It certainly seems that way. Exactly two days after I wrote that American journalism has long been suffering from an editing crisis (and subjecting readers and viewers to a flood of ineptly reported and reasoned articles, posts, and broadcast segments), this news site ran a piece illustrating perfectly two of this so-called profession’s biggest (and intimately related) flaws: pushing narratives largely by ignoring information that provides crucial context.

The lead paragraph tells you all you need to know where Joe Mayes’ September 22 story was going (and where he and his editors believed it should go): “The red lines of Boris Johnson’s Brexit project are starting to crack as voters face growing shortages of food and fuel, as well as a marked rise in living costs.”

As the second paragraph elaborated, “Despite riding to power on a Brexit campaign that pledged to cut immigration from the European Union, the prime minister [Johnson] and his cabinet are now preparing for what would be a significant and politically damaging U-turn: Tapping those same EU workers to plug the labor shortages crippling parts of the U.K. supply chain.” And “the most immediate and pressing concern”? “A major shortage of truck drivers.”

What could be more revealing – and embarrassing for supporters of the United Kingdom’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union (in large part to gain more national control over immigration inflows)? Immigrants from the same EU are now being recognized even by the Leaver-in-Chief as that country’s last hope for staving off starvation, freezing to death this winter, and raging inflation.

No question Brexit was a landmark decision, and no doubt there were plenty of valid reasons to be skeptical (as the close 2016 referendum results indicate). But this Bloomberg piece plainly suggests that the countries that have decided to remain in the EU literally have truckers to spare the British.

Which insinuates that the Brexiteers deserve to have insult added to injury. Except this story line is a crock. As an internet search that took me mere minutes revealed, there’s lots of info out there making clear that truck driver shortages are a global problem – that is, they’re not limited to countries that left the EU. Indeed, this industry website reports that trucking companies in Europe are expecting a 17 percent driver shortfall this year.

Further, the survey it’s based on found that any number of steps could be taken by trucking companies and governments in shortage-afflicted countries to increase driver supply without importing foreigners. Like raising pay. Like lowering the training age to encourage more young people to replace retiring truckers (a big problem in a sector with an aging workforce). Like creating safer parking areas, which would be especially helpful in attacting more women into the business. (They currently make up only two percent of drivers globally, according to the survey.)

In fact, finding such ;material is so easy that it raises the question of whether the main problem (and all the others I’ve spotlighted on RealityChek – e.g., here) doesn’t reflect simply a competence crisis. It also reflects a bias crisis, with the target being any measures or information that clash with longstanding globalist orthodoxies – in this case, Open Borders- friendly policies on the immigration and labor shortage fronts.

Those Stubborn Facts: Haitian Migrants Not Present or Accounted For

Tags

Biden adminisration, Biden border crisis, border security, catch and release, Del Rio, Haiti, Haitians, Immigration, migrants, Open Borders, Texas, Those Stubborn Facts

Biden administration count of number of Haitian migrants living

under Del Rio, Texas bridge at peak: 14,000

Biden administration count of Haitian migrants at Del Rio as of

yesterday: 4,000

Biden administration count of Haitian migrants from Del Rio

returned to Haiti as of yesterday: 1,400

Number of Haitian migrants from Del Rio released into the United

States despite Biden administration claim that “our borders are not

open”: 8,600?

 

(Sources: “Biden administration defends handling of Haitians amid uproar,” by Morgan Chalfant and Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill, September, 23, 2021, Biden administration defends handling of Haitians amid uproar | TheHill and “Secretary Mayorkas Delivers Remarks in Del Rio, TX,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, September 20, 2021, Secretary Mayorkas Delivers Remarks in Del Rio, TX | Homeland Security (dhs.gov) )

Im-Politic: In Case You Doubt Biden’s Immigration Plans Will Hammer U.S. Wages

Tags

Biden, Biden border crisis, Breitbart.com, budget reconciliation, chain migration, Council of Economic Advisers, demand, economics, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jobs, labor market, labor shortage, migrants, Neil Munro, supply, wages, workers

We’ve just gotten a bright, flashing sign that, despite some recent stopgap steps (like this and this) obviously meant to convey the impression that the Biden administration hasn’t completely and dangerously lost control of America’s southern border, the President is just as determined as ever to open the floodgates to seemingly unlimited numbers of foreigners.

Worse, the development I’m writing about also makes clear that the President cares not a whit about the likely economic harm his policies will inflict on workers legally in the country at present – too many of whom haven’t exactly been killing it economically for decades now.

That sign consists of a post on the White House’s website by the Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and three other government economists touting “The Economic Benefits of Extending Permanent Legal Status to Unauthorized Immigrants.” Just so we’re totally clear on their intent, in plain English, the title would read, “The Economic Benefits of Giving Amnesty to Illegal Aliens.” And the strength of the administration’s Open Borders ambitions is clearest from the utterly threadbare manner in which the authors deal with a central question: whether amnesty would drive down the wages of workers who live in America legally now.

This question of course is especially salient now because, due to the labor market turmoil generated by the CCP Virus pandemic and resulting behavior changes and official responses, U.S. employers are experiencing problems hiring enough workers, and consequently, these workers are enjoying major new leverage in bargaining for higher wages.

As pointed out in the CEA post, “Permanent legal status is likely to increase the effective labor supply of unauthorized immigrants” and that, “Given that providing legal status to unauthorized immigrants would increase their effective labor supply, critics of legalization argue there could be adverse labor market consequences for native and other immigrant workers.”

Here of course is where you’d expect the highly credentialed experts who wrote this post to respond with reams of evidence (or at least citations of scholarly works), decisively proving that, however commonsensical it seems to conclude that increasing the supply of anything (including labor) all else equal will reduce the supply of that thing, it ain’t so in the case of illegal aliens.

But as initially (at least to me) pointed out by Breitbart.com‘s Neil Munro, nothing of the kind happened. Here’s what the CEA said:

“While there is not a large economics literature on the labor market effects of legalization on other workers, in a well-cited National Academies report on the economic and fiscal impact of immigration, a distinguished group of experts concludes that in the longer run, the effect of immigration on wages overall is very small.”

I could write an entire blog post on what’s jaw-droppingly wrong with this sentence’s methodology. Chiefly, it’s not only an appeal to authority – which logically is an implicit confession that the appealers don’t know much themselves about the subject they’re writing about. It’s an appeal to authorities who themselves don’t seem to know much about their subject, or can’t cite any evidence. Therefore they can only offer an evidently unsupported conclusion.

But what’s most important to me about this CEA point is that it never challenges the wages claim made by those “critics of legalization.” All the authors can counter with is a contention that, at some unknown point, the wage depression resulting from amnesty will become “very small.” That’s some comfort to Americans workers today. And for possibly decades.   

Also crucial to point out is how narrow and thus misleading the post’s analytical framework is. It clearly assumes that amnesty won’t stimulate ever greater inflows of foreign laborers who compete against the domestic worker cohort that exists at any given time – which would include the millions of amnestied illegals. Yet everything known about the impact of looser immigration policies – and even official announcements thereof – demonstrates that they exert a powerful magnet effect on other foreigners. Nor do you need to take my word for it. That’s what many migrants themselves have said about the Biden administration’s approach. (See, e.g., here and here.)

The so-called magnet effect of the Biden roll-back of its predecessor’s immigration policies isn’t the only reason to expect the White House’s current approach to supercharge the supply of American workers. To mention just one example, his immigration reform bill and budget reconciliation bill would ease Trump-era limits on “chain migration” – a policy that enables immigrants into the country legally if a spouse, parent, child, or sibling already lives here legally. Further, once these chain migrants arrive, their own relatives receive the same easy entry. And so on. Special bonus: The restrictions on chain migration-related visas granted for employment reasons will be eased even further.

If a better way to keep a huge share of American workers underpaid (especially those in low-wage portions of the economy, which heavily rely on the kinds of low-skill employees who dominate the illegal alien population), let me know. And of course in the cruelest irony of all, as the CEA post shows, among the leading advocates of these wage-hammering measures are the very liberals and progressives that have for decades claimed to be champions of Americans left behind.