Following Up: Mercury News Treats H1B Debate as Non-News

Tags

Following Up, H1B, immigrants, Immigration, journalism, Mercury News, Neil Chase, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, tech, tech workers, workers

The story of the video of a major debate on U.S. immigrant tech worker policies that earlier this week looked like it was being kept under wraps now looks like the story of a video that never was – due to some astonishingly unenterprising journalism from the Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s main newspaper and therefore a leading source of information on the technology industry.

As RealityChek regulars know, the story began with a June 1 debate in Silicon Valley centering on the controversial H1B immigrant visas. Squaring off were the Valley’s new Democratic Member of Congress, Ro Khanna and Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. (A tech entrepreneur took part in the event, too, but in a minor way.)

Technology companies claim that the H1B and similar programs are crucial to accessing the world’s best talent. Critics charge that they’ve overwhelmingly been used to cut their costs by replacing native-born U.S. workers with much cheaper foreign counterparts. Khanna favors relatively modest changes to H1B policies; Matloff believes major surgery is needed.

Matloff, who’s become a valued friend of mine, has written that the event marked  the first time a debate has been held between an elected official and a researcher on the topic, a major event in that sense. (Khanna has not disagreed.) Matloff also noted that a videographer from the Mercury News was present and apparently recording the proceedings.

Yet the Mercury News failed to cover the debate and never posted a recording on its website. Matloff asked a reporter on the paper to find out why, and was told that a recording existed, but that “it was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this…” Matloff then speculated that the paper failed to make the video public because Khanna performed poorly – leading the Mercury News, which editorially has sided with the tech industry on H1B and related issues, to consign it to non-event status.

I emphatically agreed that the video’s import deserved to see the light of day, and last Sunday urged the Mercury News to post it both to perform a public service on a major technology policy area and to affirm its journalistic chops. Gratifyingly, the post and follow-up tweets prompted Khanna readily to agree, and to call openly for the video’s posting. (For the record, he contends that it was Matloff who was highly ineffective.)

Two days later, Matloff and I got answers from Mercury News editor Neil Chase. In the version he sent Matloff, he wrote, “We had a photographer there who captured some still photos and some video for use with a future story, but we didn’t attend with the intention of taping the full debate and did not.”

Based on information Matloff had shared with me and my own journalistic experience, yesterday, I sent Chase the following email. I had hoped to get a response from him in time to prepare this post, but no such luck yet:

Dear Neil,

Many thanks for your comment to my blog and my apologies for the short delay in responding.  

I must confess, though, that the response leaves me somewhat mystified on two counts.

First, the statement that the Mercury News videographer did not “record the whole event” doesn’t track with an email from one of your reporters, Ethan Baron, to Matloff.  Baron said, in response to the latter’s query re the video’s availability, “it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna.”  Granted he’s conveying some uncertainty here. But Matloff also has written in his blog that “the videographer seemed to be taping continuously.”  In addition, Matloff noted that “the video cam [was] on a high tripod, seemingly much for an occasional clip.”

Similarly, it sounds odd, as your email indicates, to give the videographer the responsibility for choosing the portions of the debate to be shot.  Was this the case?  If so, what were the criteria used to determine what was captured?  Or were they simply taken to get a bit of file footage of each participant, irrespective of what they were saying at the time?  

Second, I certainly don’t mean to tell you how to do your job.  But as someone with a journalistic background, I’m hard pressed to understand the paper’s seemingly offhand attitude toward this event.  After all, the H1B issue has been described as crucial by the dominant industry in the region served by the Mercury News, and it’s surely of comparable importance to all your tech worker subscribers.  The new Congressman from your area, Rep. Khanna, has been touted by several national publications as a rising star in the Democratic party, and possibly all of national politics.  To his credit, he was willing to appear in public with an outspoken, prominent critic of the H1B and related programs – a rare event at the very least, according to Matloff.  And of course, H1B and other immigration issues have become even greater controversies nationwide since the last presidential campaign heated up.  So from all appearances, the leading paper of Silicon Valley would be expected to view the debate was highly newsworthy from the get-go.  And yet it seems from your email that no coverage was ever planned.  

Now it’s clear that some fur was flying at the event, and that Rep. Khanna and Matloff are begun feuding in public over what was said and over their qualifications to claim expert status on the issue.  I.e., because of this aftermath, their debate has become by any reasonable definition even more newsworthy.     

So I respectfully make the two following requests:

1. Would you check whatever video archive you have – including whatever the videographer might possess – to determine conclusively whether a full recording of the debate is indeed available?  (If not, I would hope to find out how it was disposed of, and why.)

2. Would you assign a reporter to cover this emerging Khanna-Matloff dispute — in which a local Congressman who’s increasingly prominent nationally has publicly gone after a critic on an issue that’s one of his top legislative priorities, and a major national concern?  The Mercury News would get an excellent scoop, and perform a valuable public service at the same time.  

Thanks for your consideration, and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Alan

As per the email, I’m still hoping that the Mercury News finds a recording and shares it, and that it reports on the differences between Khanna and Matloff, which cut to the heart of the debate on H1B and broader questions and arguments concerning the future of the domestic workforce in an age of rapid innovation. At a time when Fake News abounds, it would amount for welcome coverage of some real news.

Im-Politic: How I Scooped The Times on Trump and Nationalism 25 Years Ago

Tags

America First, Democrats, elites, environmentalists, foreign policy, globalism, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, internationalism, interventionism, middle class, minoriites, nationalism, politics, Populism, Republicans, sovereignty, The National Interest, The New York Times, Thomas Edsall, Trade, Trump, working class

However conceited it sounds, it really is time – again – 🙂 to pat myself on the back. This morning’s New York Times featured a long analysis by contributor Thomas Edsall titled “The End of Left and Right as We Knew Them.” The main thesis (as per a quote from the director of the “International Institutions and Global Governance Program” at the Council on Foreign Relations):

“The most salient political division today is not between conservatives and liberals in the United States or social democrats in the United Kingdom and France, but between nationalists and globalists.”

Edsall himself elaborates:

“By now it has become quite clear that conservative parties in Europe and the United States have been gaining strength from white voters who have been mobilized around issues related to nationalism — resistance to open borders and to third-world immigration. … On the liberal side, the Democratic Party and the center-left European parties have been allied in favor of globalization, if we define globalization as receptivity to open borders, the expansion of local and nationalistic perspectives and support for a less rigid social order and for liberal cultural, immigration and trade policies.”

Moreover, at the heart of these new divisions are class distinctions: The nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic are likeliest to be relatively poor and relatively uneducated – although Edsall does present research findings showing – unconvincingly in my view – that classic “racial resentment, more than economic anxiety, influenced the [U.S.} presidential election.”

Yet the author also unmistakably believes that the left “In recent decades…both in Europe and in the United States [has] begun to include and reflect the views of large numbers of well-educated elites — relatively affluent knowledge or creative class workers….” Indeed, he coins a nice phrase: “The rise of the affluent left.”

So what does this have to do with yours truly? Plenty. Because nearly 25 years ago, I predicted the development of exactly the same trend. My forecast came in an article for the journal The National Interest that was called (wait for it) “Beyond Left and Right” – and it got a fair amount of media attention from both liberals and conservatives. (The National Interest itself is on the right end of the spectrum.) 

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find versions on-line that aren’t behind pay walls, but here are a few excerpts from a dog-eared xerox:

“…a new underlying fault line [replacing the old left-right divisions] is already emerging in American foreign policy, dividing what might best be called nationalists and internationalists. In terms of American diplomacy, this new alignment will pit a generic model of foreign policy-making that long predates the Cold War – one based at bottom…on the belief that international activism itself is the key to American security and prosperity – against a rival approach…whose supreme goal is consolidating American military and economic strength, and enhancing America’s freedom of action. In the realm of economic policy, those who argue that the nation-state, as an economic player, is obsolete or dangerous will vie with those convinced of its continuing relevance and legitimacy. In electoral politics, sharp differences in economic interests and cultural outlooks will produce a widening rift between business, professional,and government elites on the one hand, and wage-earners on the other. The issue of class, in other words, is re-emerging in American politics.”

I added that these divisions were arising from “the different impact of world economic trends on different classes” and were producing “a foreign policy debate [that] increasingly pits social and economic classes against each other, focusing on the questions of who pays the costs and who incurs most of the risks involved in competing economic and security policies.

“Polls repeatedly show that the best educated and wealthiest Americans are the staunchest internationalists on both security and economic issues. The surveys also show strong support for internationalist policies to be lacking nearly everywhere else on the social spectrum. “

And there’s more. I wrote that “At the mass public level,” the nationalist faction would be comprised of “blue collar union members, white collar middle managers and small businessmen from the Perotista ranks; family- and community-oriented immigrants; and grassroots environmental activists.”

As for their rivals, “The social base of internationalism would include many big multinational businesses and their upper level managers, financiers, professionals, and retailers. Journalists and the rest of the mass media, as well as academics, also tend to support an idealistic globalism. Other members of a new internationalist coalition might include minorities whose fear of cultural conservative nationalists outweighs their qualms about job-destroying internationalist free-trade economics, and affluent, mainstream environmentalists.”

And there was more on the role of the media: “Much of what they lack in numbers, the internationalists would make up for in money, influence, and the aura of respectability that their media allies will continue to provide.”

What would happen to liberal and conservative internationalists in the process? The former

“may wind up permanently alienating labor, minorities, and the white-collar middle class whether they intend to or not – and lose their identity as champions of the underdog and as agents of progressive change in the process. Internationalists of the Right will face similar problems. Without offering their voters something more than NAFTA, the continuing “creative destruction” of their jobs, endless foreign interventions, and Marilyn Quayle’s definition of family values, it is difficult to see them avoiding George [H.W.] Bush’s political fate.”

For good measure, I added that if they do crystallize, the resulting new coalitions are likely to be “less inclined to compromise than their predecessors….”

Clearly, I didn’t get everything right. But I’m kind of amazed at how many developments I absolutely nailed. Further, we’re only a few months into the Trump era. In other words, the American political realignment I anticipated still probably has a long ways to go.

Following Up: Progress in Freeing the Mercury News H1B Debate Video

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Following Up, H1B, Immigration, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, social media, tech workers, Twitter

What a day it’s been for RealityChek on Twitter today! Yesterday, I posted on the peculiar failure of the Mercury News, the top newspaper in technology industry center Silicon Valley, to post a video it made of a landmark and apparently heated recent debate on the H1B visa program. Under this controversial feature of U.S. immigration policy, American employers can secure foreign workers they can demonstrate are needed because they boast special talents that generally can’t be found in the U.S. workforce.  

Thanks to this item, and to some tweets today, I seem to have persuaded the most prominent participant, Rep. Ro Khanna (D.-Cal.) to ask the paper to release the full version.

Another participant in the event, University of California, Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff, had already made such a request, but got a “Thanks, but no thanks”-type answer.

So this morning, I decided, via Twitter, to ask Khanna to join the campaign. It was great to see him respond, and after a few tweets back and forth, at about 1:45 PM EST, he declared, “I have told them [the Mercury News] I would welcome the release of the tape if they have one. I would love for this to be public. I’m all for transparency.” So let’s hope that a request from a Member of Congress will do the trick. And let’s also hope that the paper still has the video!

I’ve asked Khanna to let me know the Mercury News‘ answer as soon as he can, and of course, I’ll pass the word on to you – ideally with a link – right away. And FYI, you can get in on this kind of action first-hand yourself by following me at @AlanTonelson. As with RealityChek, feedback is always welcome, and that includes heavy doses of snark!

P.S. Just for a bit of context, a major point of contention between Khanna and Matloff is a bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa that attempts to address H1B-related problems.  Khanna is another sponsor of the legislation; Matloff considers its remedies inadequate.

Im-Politic: Free the Mercury News H1B Debate Video!

Tags

H1B, H1B visas, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, media bias, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, technology companies, technology workers, Voice of America, wages

There’s been no shortage of controversy stirred up by the H1B visa program that brings immigrants to the United States to take jobs allegedly requiring special talents – mostly in technology companies. So when what could well have been the first public debate ever that centers on this subject is held that included a researcher on the visas (who has charged that they overwhelmingly go to foreign workers who simply lower wages for companies who want to replace more expensive Americans) and a politician who’s been strongly in favor, you’d think a major newspaper would find that pretty newsworthy.

In the case of the Mercury News, however, you’d be wrong. And much worse, it looks like the San Francisco Bay area daily is keeping a video of the event under wraps because it makes the politician – whose views closely mirror the paper’s pro-H1B editorial stance – look absolutely terrible.

Here’s the skinny on the event. Precisely because there’s no recording available, I’m relying on this account from participant Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, a leading national authority on immigration issues and the H1B program in particular, and a strong critic of the latter. Joining Matloff on a panel convened at the newly opened offices of the Voice of America’s Silicon Valley bureau were freshman Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna and Kamran Elahian, who Matloff describes as “an immigrant tech entrepreneur.”

According to Matloff, most of the H1B exchanges took place between him and Khanna, who has been characterized in the press as “the favorite of the tech industry since he tried to first overtake incumbent Mike Honda in the 2014 election” in large part because of his defense of the domestic tech industry’s H1B practices.

As Matloff describes it, Khanna – who has also been described in the national media as a rising Democratic party star and champion of pragmatic fixes for economically besieged middle class Americans – was stunningly ignorant about recent H1B-related news developments. More troubling: Khanna sunk to thinly disguised personal (and completely unjustified) attacks on Matloff and several times seem to have flown off the handle when presented with evidence that clashed with his preconceived ideas.

I’d say “Don’t take my (or Matloff’s) word for it; see for yourself” – but I can’t. The debate was filmed by the Mercury News, but in response to a query from Matloff about whether the video would be posted, a reporter he knew at the paper told him that

“it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this, but I know videos of such events are often just used in bits and pieces…”

As Matloff noted in an email to me, “Certainly it would have cost the Merc nothing to put the video on the Web, quite easily and simply.” And it’s hard to disagree with his judgment that the paper “would be performing a major public service by placing the video online (in full, of course).”

So it’s necessary to take seriously Matloff when he speculated, in that same email to me: “I can certainly see the Merc wanting to protect Rep. Khanna. They had endorsed Khanna, and generally feel their loyalty is to the tech industry. Their coverage of H-1B has been fair, but their editorial position has always been pro-H-1B.”

Matloff’s views are hardly dispositive – though I have always found him to be scrupulously honest. What could not be clearer, however, is that the Mercury News could reenforce its claims to objectivity by posting the video. With every passing day that it fails, the case for questioning its motives can only grow.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: And the Labor Shortage/Immigration Beat Goes On

Tags

CNN.com, fake news, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Immigration, labor shortages, productivity, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s yet another Open Borders- and amnesty-friendly article from the Mainstream Media that simply doesn’t add up – this time from CNN.com. In this story about a small San Francisco-area manufacturer who claims that he lost a tenth of his employees due to a 2011 government raid in search of illegal immigrant workers, one whopping inconsistency in particular stands out. It concerns the wages paid by the employer Emerald Packaging of Union City, California.

Emerald’s owner, claims that the company is still suffering from the personnel losses because he can’t find adequate replacements. And the CNN reporters’ sympathy for his supposed plight – and the obvious difficulties encountered by his illegal workers – was made clear by the article’s melodramatic headline: “RAIDED: Immigration agents showed up at Kevin Kelly’s factory and he lost his star workers.”

RealityChek regulars know by now that such claims of labor shortages due to restrictive immigration policies are usually open and shut tip-offs that the business in question is paying inadequate wages, or has refused to automate and become more productive. As I’ve noted repeatedly, mainstream economic theory teaches that when the demand for anything – including labor – exceeds the supply, the price of that commodity (in this case the wage and/or non-wage benefits) tends to rise until a new equilibrium is restored. Alternatively, businesses tend to substitute capital (typically in the form of technology) for what they view as overly expensive labor.

Kelly emphatically denied to the CNN reporter that he’s been skimping on wages by using illegal workers: “When people say these companies are hiring illegal labor because they want to keep their costs down… in our case that argument is complete bulls–t.”

In fact, according to Kelly, the jobs that illegals were filling – and that in some cases have remained unfilled – “aren’t cheap positions.” He added that “They range from $15 an hour entry-level jobs to $35 an hour for experienced mechanics. ‘With overtime of $27 to $35 an hour, you can make pretty good money of $75,000 to over $100,000 a year.’”

But his claims started to fall apart – not that CNN picked up on this – the instant he started discussing in detail the employee whose departure he felt most keenly – an assistant foreman named Miguel Gonzalez.

As the CNN article tells it, “Gonzalez had worked for Emerald Packaging for over 20 years. He started as a box handler, moving and storing product pallets and factory supplies, and worked his way up to assistant foreman. He was a gifted mechanic and Kelly relied on him to help keep the factory running.” Further, he could:

>”walk into my office and tell me what’s going on in the facility.”

>Gonzales was “Keen to learn and move up the ranks [and] routinely took on extra work and hours. He also rarely missed work, even returning to the factory floor just two days after his first child, Casandra, was born.”

>Soon after Gonzalez’ hiring, “he showed initiative by tinkering with and fixing up the machines on the factory floor on his own time to help them operate better. Two years into the job, he was promoted into a role where he learned to set up, repair and maintain the factory equipment.”

>”Over time, [he] taught himself every aspect of the business, including payments and shipping.”

>In Kelly’s words, “He was the single best machine mechanic we had.”

>”Losing him had an immediate impact on production because there just wasn’t anybody of Miguel’s caliber to replace him. There just wasn’t,” said Kelly.

And what was this supremely talented “star worker” making in 2011, after twenty years of superlative performance? Twenty-two dollars per hour. (He also received healthcare and retirement benefits.) According to the Labor Department’s data, that wage is somewhat ($2.50 per hour) more than the average hourly wage (before inflation) for all workers in the plastics packaging manufacturing sector that year, and a little over six dollars an hour more than non-supervisory workers alone make. (It’s not clear whether an assistant foreman qualifies in the Labor Department’s eyes as a supervisory or a non-supervisory worker.) But that $22 per hour is also about $13 dollars an hour less than what Kelly said he pays “experienced mechanics” nowadays (five years later).

There’s no doubt that some businesses that hire illegal immigrants need every body they can get, and there’s no doubt that some illegal immigrants are earning good wages largely as a result. But when a news organization plainly convinced of the desperate need for illegal workers touts a single alleged example of this dire situation that’s so full of gaping holes, Americans are more than entitled to start wondering whether this narrative as a whole is fake news.

Im-Politic: Fakeonomics on Illegal Immigration From CNN

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California, CNN, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Octavio Blanco, Sanctuary State, taxes, welfare

When I was learning the journalistic ropes, one of the first lessons taught was never to present a piece of information totally devoid of context. So, for example, if you were writing about how much a national economy grew during a given time period, you’d also include something about how that growth compared with that country’s past performance, or with the performance of other countries. How else could the reader take anything useful away from such a report?

Apparently, however, CNN doesn’t always follow this practice. Or maybe more accurately, it doesn’t follow this practice when it covers immigration issues, and especially when even minimal context would cast doubt on widespread claims that America’s illegal immigrants are so valuable that Trump-like restrictionist policies are tantamount to economic suicide. How else could one interpret the May 18 post by Octavio Blanco on new legislation aimed at establishing California as a sanctuary state?

Blanco, for example, properly reported the claim of the bill’s sponsor that the illegal workforce “contributes some $180 billion to the state’s GDP.” I’d have liked some verification of this figure, or even a source, but at least Blanco associated the contention with a figure who’s clearly taken one side of the issue.

Other omissions are less justifiable. Is this a net figure? That is, does it include any costs resulting from the state’s illegal workforce, or families of these workers? The author doesn’t say. And what about some perspective about that $180 billion figure? Obviously the legislator who fed it to Blanco hoped to convey the impression that it’s a staggering sum. Yet it begs the question of how big that state GDP actually is. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, last year, it was a little over $2.6 trillion (unadjusted for inflation – and that took me four seconds to look up.) So if the $180 billion is unadjusted for inflation as well (something else the author doesn’t tell us), the illegal immigrant share is about 8.2 percent.

That still sounds like a lot. Except as the author also notes, another source pegs illegals as nearly 10 percent of the California workforce. So even if the $180 billion figure is accurate, that would mean that the state’s illegal workers are punching below their weight in terms of productivity.

That, however, wouldn’t be the last word, either. The $180 billion figure would be more impressive if it was a growing share of state output, and less impressive if it was shrinking or stagnant. But Blanco’s article gives readers no way to know.

Another statistic cited by Blanco sheds a little light on these questions, but not nearly enough, because it suffers the same shortcomings. The author reports that a “Washington, D.C.-based research group,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), has determined that “In 2014, almost $3.2 billion of California’s state and local taxes came from undocumented immigrants….”

Again, that “billion” word sounds like a major sum – but sharp-eyed readers might notice something that’s apparently eluded Blanco. If both ITEP and the lawmaker who introduced the Sanctuary State bill are right, then the tax revenue generated by California’s illegal workers amounts to about 1.78 percent of their contribution to the state economy. That looks distinctly unimpressive.

Just as unimpressive: the share of the state’s total annual tax haul represented by illegal immigrants, if ITEP is right. For according to the state government, the $3.2 billion claimed by ITEP for 2014 would come to 4.83 percent of personal income tax revenue. Remember – this is from nearly 10 percent of the state’s workforce, so that’s disproportionately low.

A least as important, when talking about illegal immigrants – the $3.2 billion figure is clearly not a net figure, in terms of the impact of this population on the state’s resources. Specifically, it omits illegal the use of state services by illegal immigrants and any family members who are legal (e.g., anchor children). This issue will keep looming larger and larger as the state pushes to extend eligibility for welfare and other state resources to illegals – which has already happened with in-state tuition to and financial aid for California public universities.

It’s true that income tax revenue isn’t the sum total of state tax revenue. The state government says the share was 65 percent in 2014. The remainder comes from corporate income taxes, sales taxes, and an “other” category. Illegal workers (and their families) are probably paying some of those types of taxes, too, but the article doesn’t provide any information on that score, either.

Give Blanco some credit: He reports that “not everyone agrees on the sanctuary state bill.” If only his article focusing on the legislation’s economic impact gave readers any sense that not every fact portrays it as an economic winner, either.

Im-Politic: Immigration Hypocrisy (Literally) Hits Home

Tags

amnesty, Clio Chang, domestic workers, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, middle class, Open Borders, public services, The New Republic, wages

Thanks to New Republic staff writer Clio Chang, we now know that those resisting the evil President Trump and his particularly evil policy of stepping up deportations of illegal immigrants have begun taking the Sanctuary City (and County and State) one courageous and virtuous step further. They’re starting to create Sanctuary Homes movement to help all the illegal immigrants who they employ as maids, nannies, and in other domestic service positions.

As explained by a leader in this emerging movement,“It’s about creating safe and welcoming homes and communities,” including “simply starting conversations with their employees about the election, giving them time off to be with their own children, finding and sharing legal resources related to immigration and deportation, and offering safe rides home from work.”

Sounds incredibly special, doesn’t it? And Chang reports that “the enormous backlash to Trump has brought many such employers to the table, some of whom may not have been politically active beforehand. The relationship that people have already established with their caretakers and nannies often acts as a good starting place for further action.”

But actually, the Sanctuary Homes movement is just one more example of the naivete (at best) and hypocritical virtue-signaling (at worst) that’s become so characteristic of so many of advocates of more lenient immigration policies.

For as Chang herself notes, the (overwhelmingly affluent) families who employ these domestics have paid them wages that are among the lowest in the nation. And data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics make clear that, during the last decade, as the Open Borders crowd has grown in both numbers and self-righteousness, these rock-bottom wages of the domestics employed by its urban and suburban liberal wing have risen much more slowly than those of the typical worker. From May, 2007 to May, 2016, they’re up only 4.90 percent – versus a 17.95 percent rise for American workers as a whole.

In fairness, as Chang details, and as suggested above, the Sanctuary Homes movement is about much more than helping illegal immigrants. It’s targeted all domestics, who clearly have gotten the short end of the fair labor regulatory stick in the United States.

But in addition to forgetting the admonition that charity begins at home, the domestics’ employers who are jumping on the amnesty bandwagon also overlook how Open Borders, legalization, path to citizenship and other such proposals are bound to strengthen the jobs magnet that keeps attracting to the United States so many workers from very poor countries. If they have reason to think that they, too, will be amnesty-ied down the road if they can make it into country illegally, their numbers will continue to challenge even the most effective border controls. As a result, the labor glut that’s helped limit domestics’ wages will swell even further.

And there’s another effect neglected by immigration advocates: Even if every employer of every domestic paid them significantly higher wages either voluntarily or because the workers somehow manage to organize effectively (tough to accomplish in labor over-supply conditions), the workers’ families would continue to live in lower income areas. For that reason, and because upper income households are much likelier to capitalize on tax reduction options than lower income households, the burden of paying for the schooling and other government services used by immigrant domestics will inevitably be paid mainly by their neighbors, not by their wealthier employers.

As I’ve written, since America’s upper classes benefit so disproportionately from mass immigration, they should be hit with a hefty special tax to support the newcomers as long as the border remains so porous. Until immigration advocates recognize this glaring inequity and the need to eliminate it, it’ll be fair — indeed, charitable — to describe developments like the Sanctuary Homes movement as (at best) economically clueless showboating, not genuine compassion.

Im-Politic: New Evidence that “Hamilton” is (Embarrassingly) Fake History

Tags

"Hamilton", Alexander Hamilton, diversity, Forbes, Founding Fathers, history, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, liberals, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike Pence, Ralph Benko, Trump

American elites’ views on immigration issues are just the gift that keeps on giving if you suspect that way too …

Continue reading →

Following Up: The Establishment’s Pro-Mass Immigration Bias Goes On and On and…

Tags

crime, deportations, drunk driving, Ed O'Keefe, Following Up, ICE, illegal immigration, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post

Last Thursday, I wrote about how a combination of Trump Derangement Syndrome and a determination to uphold America’s current mass immigration policies had apparently driven no less than the U.S. Supreme Court to equate committing war crimes with speeding tickets. Two days ago, the Washington Post made appallingly clear that its hard news staff, including its editors, also ranks mass immigration – in this case, illegal immigration – uber alles. Specifically, in an article purporting to show how unreasonable the Trump administration’s deportation policies have been, the paper decided that drunk driving should not be considered a serious crime.

The article’s tone was set by the headline: “ICE data shows half of immigrants arrested in raids had traffic convictions or no record.” And in case you doubt that the piece’s aim was to demonstrate that President Trump’s policies are squandering precious immigration enforcement funds on residents of the country who are clearly no danger to their communities, here’s the lead written by reporters Maria Sacchetti and Ed O’Keefe:

“About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.”

Obviously disgraceful, right? Except the Post account could only get even close to this conclusion by belittling the importance of drunk driving. Here’s how. The article analyzes the backgrounds of immigrants rounded up in early February by agents from regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio and New York, and contends that the records reveal 139 to have been convicted of assault or involvement with “dangerous drugs.” That’s over 20 percent of the total. Only about 26 percent of those rounded up (177 individuals) had no criminal convictions on their record, though 66 of them (more than 37 percent) had charges pending (“largely immigration or traffic offenses).

Sacchetti and O’Keefe went on to write that “The largest single group — 163 [were] immigrants convicted of traffic offenses….” Kind of trifling, right? We all speed or something to that effect now and then. But it turns out that more than 90 percent of these traffic convictions were for drunk driving – which outside the Mainstream Media is surely and rightly viewed as anything but trifling.

In fact, just to remind, during the last full year for which data is available (2015), 10,265 Americans died in “alcohol-impaired crashes” – 300 more than in 2014. And from what we already know, 2016 will see an even higher toll.

So of the 675 immigrant pickups analyzed by the Post, it looks like 139 were convicted for crimes that even the Post evidently considers serious, and at least 147 (90 percent of 163) were drunk drivers. So more than 42 percent had been convicted of crimes that any thinking person would consider serious. And then there were 66 more currently being charged with “traffic offenses” (mainly drunk driving?) or immigration offenses (which could well include such unmistakably serious matters as reentering the United States after being deported or lying on an immigration form).

If only half of the 66 belong in the serious crime category (which seems to be low-balling the issue, based on the other data we have), then more than 47 percent of the pickups looked at by the Post were, by any reasonable standard, menaces to public safety.

But the article’s original claim indicates that this number is actually much higher. After all, Sacchetti and O’Keefe contend that “About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes….”

In other words, a substantial share of the immigrants picked up could have been convicted of crimes perhaps less serious than drunk driving, homicide, assault, or dangerous drug involvement, but still legitimately seen as major offenses. Unfortunately, the piece itself was so poorly written (and edited) that it’s simply not possible to tell. But in a tweet on the article, the Post itself cleared up the mystery, stating that the share of the 675 pickups with no criminal convictions at all was only about 25 percent.

So it’s plain as day that this article’s real message is that the great majority of the individuals being picked up by the Trump administration have taken or endangered American lives, and would remain in positions to do so without federal intervention. The rest, even if they’re simply “undocumented,” have violated the nation’s laws. And that’s a record to condemn?

Im-Politic: Trump Derangement Syndrome Breaking Out on the Supreme Court?

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Balkan wars, Bosnia, citizenship, deportation, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Citizenship Services, John Roberts, Muslims, naturalization, refugees, Reuters, Serbs, Srebrenica, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court, Trump

Question: When is serving in a military unit that’s committed horrendous war crimes the legal equivalent of getting a speeding ticket? Or absentmindedly bringing a key-chain pen knife into a government office building? Or maybe even jaywalking? Answer: When the U.S. Supreme Court nowadays is evaluating an immigration case.

Think I’m kidding? Then check out this Reuters account of a hearing held by the high court that dealt with an immigrant from Bosnia who was deported and stripped of her citizenship last October. The reason? She had lied on her application to enter the country as a refugee. Now, Divna Maslenjak is seeking to restore the status quo ante. And according to the Reuters piece, several Justices are concerned that in defending the U.S. government’s previous decision (made, mind you, under the Obama administration), President Trump’s Justice Department is laying the groundwork for revoking citizenship for false statements that had no significant influence on the original refugee decision.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Everyone, for example, forgets things or gets details confused. These lapses are particularly understandable in the chaotic conditions with which most refugees struggle. Nor could any reasonable person quibble with Chief Justice John Roberts concern that the Trump administration position (even though it’s drawn straight from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ naturalization form) could enable the government to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for lying or for omitting information about minor legal infractions that even the most scrupulously law-abiding folks everywhere are hard-pressed to avoid completely.

As Roberts noted, “in the past he has exceeded the speed limit while driving. If immigrants failed to disclose that on a citizenship application form asking them to list any instances of breaking the law, they could later lose their citizenship, the conservative chief justice said. ‘Now you say that if I answer that question ‘no,’ 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, ‘Guess what, you’re not an American citizen after all?'”

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who is viewed as considerably more liberal than Roberts, agreed, “noting he had once walked into a government building with a pocketknife on his key chain in violation of the law.”

Added Breyer: “It’s, to me, rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that Congress is interpreting this statute and wanted it interpreted in a way that would throw Into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalized citizens.”

Fair enough. But the lie in question did not concern a speeding ticket or an innocent failure to check the contents of one’s pockets. Nor did it concern an intrinsically legal but possibly questionable act that had no important bearing on Maslenjak’s application for refugee status. In fact, it concerned a subject central to her request: Despite telling the government that, as ethnic Serbs, she and her family feared ethnic persecution by Bosnia’s Muslims, she never mentioned that, as the Reuters article reports, her husband (who had received refugee status when she did) served “in a Bosnian Serb Army brigade that participated in the notorious 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.” And P.S.: He lied about the matter as well.

Now it’s possible that the husband was completely uninvolved in this, or any other, atrocity (another subject about which the naturalization form inquires). It’s also possible that, whether he was complicit or not, that’s what Divna, his wife, believed. Or he simply could have lied to her. If he was innocent, he might have been afraid that the relevant American authorities simply would not have believed him. Certainly, no one could blame inhabitants of countries ruled by oppressive and/or corrupt governments for not trusting U.S. officials right off the bat.

But apparently, neither spouse has offered any such excuses. Nor did any of the Justices apparently mention them. Both the Maslenjaks and Roberts and Breyer (and possibly some of their colleagues) seem to be focused on technicalities – and perhaps the former and their lawyers are counting on the Trump administration’s “anti-immigrant” reputation and the resulting backlash to help sway the Court.

The Justices’ final decision isn’t due until late June. It could be a great test of whether they, like so much of the rest of the country, have succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome.