Tag Archives: immigration

free trade vs. migration

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“Free trade” seems to have gone out of fashion at the moment. But this article in The Conversation makes the point that easing trade restrictions with countries sending large numbers of migrants to the U.S. could help. And not just at the margins – the study this article says that reducing restrictions on just textiles from just six countries could potentially reduce migration to the U.S. by two-thirds. This seems like a political win-win to me – there is something in it for the anti-immigration racists, the pro-cheap-labor big business interests, and the average Joes who just want cheap stuff. This worked brilliantly when we were trying to support our Cold War allies in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan back when they were developing countries. It worked when we were trying to rebuild Western Europe. It can work again.

immigration by the numbers

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This post on a blog called Demography Unplugged is a nice piece of data journalism. I have been trying to figure out if there is really a “border crisis”, or if challenges that are typical at the border are being exaggerated and cherry picked in an election year.

Measuring immigration is tricky, and this article explains how people try to do it. Basically, you want to know net migration, which is determined both by people coming in and people leaving, which both happen constantly. The Census Bureau surveys the foreign born population periodically and changes in this number are one way to do it.

Immigration really is up significantly over the past year or so. This is partly post-pandemic recovery, but it is also up significantly compared to what it has been historically even in comparably good economic times. They are coming to work. They are not coming disproportionately to commit crimes, although take a large enough group of people and there are going to be some crimes that can be cherry picked and publicized by disingenuous media outlets and political campaigns. There is no evidence I am aware of that terrorists are trying to sneak across the southern border, although of course we need to be alert for this at all ports of entry.

Some are sneaking in, but many are legally applying for asylum, after which most are allowed to enter the country while they wait for a decision on their case. This can take years, and even after a decision is made, there typically are not aggressive efforts made to find and deport them.

They are probably not taking a lot of American jobs that Americans would actually want. They are taking low wage jobs, paying taxes, and not receiving government benefits in return. Unemployment is low. Remember the labor shortage during and after the pandemic, when immigration was mostly shut off. And remember how prices shot up at least partly as a result of that labor shortage? I suspect the uptick in immigration is one factor holding wages and prices down now. The business community loves low wages, which presents somewhat of a dilemma because they also hate taxes, and the same party that advocates for low taxes also advocates for low immigration. This party generally is fine with having a dysfunctional immigration system as long as they can pin the blame on the other party.

So if you want to decrease immigration, you can let people apply for asylum at the border but not let them in until/unless their cases are decided in their favor. That exports the problem to Mexico and creates a humanitarian dilemma, which is what Trump chose to do and will do again if he gets the chance. Eventually word would get out and people would stop coming in such large numbers, but people would (and were) hurt in the meantime. You could drastically scale up whatever processes allow people to apply at U.S. embassies in their home countries. And finally, you could just try to help those countries solve some of their issues that make people want to leave, which would also be solving some of your own issues at home.

Also remember, these are relatively good economic times, and the climate change shit has not really hit the migration fan yet.

RAND solves the border crisis!

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RAND has all the answers on what we need to do at the border.

While politically challenging, a holistic update to U.S. immigration laws based on a better understanding of American immigration needs and the factors that are driving people to make the dangerous trek to cross the border would help reduce the numbers of migrants arriving daily to the U.S.-Mexico border and the challenges migration poses to receiving localities. This would require building on the current efforts to provide lawful pathways, easing the burden on host communities, matching immigration policies with the needs of the labor market, and addressing root causes of migration, while adhering to American legal and humanitarian responsibilities.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/the-crisis-at-the-border-a-primer-for-confused-americans.html

There you go. This sounds like a decade-long project at least, so politicians with 2-4 year election cycles would need to sell voters with 20 minute attention spans on it now, then competently implement it over the course of a generation.

August 2023 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Immigration pressure and anti-immigration politics are already a problem in the U.S. and Europe, and climate change is going to make it worse. The 2023 WEF Global Risks Report agrees that “large scale involuntary migration” is going to be up there as an issue. We should not be angry at immigrants, we should be angry at Exxon and the rest of the energy industry, which made an intentional choice not only to directly cause all this but to prevent governments from even understanding the problem let alone doing anything to solve it. We should be very, very angry! Are there any talented politicians out there who know how to stoke anger and channel it for positive change, or is it just the evil genocidal impulses you know how to stoke?

Most hopeful story: Peak natural gas demand could happen by 2030, with the shift being to nuclear and renewables.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: There are a number of theories on why “western elites” have not been (perceived to be) effective in responding to crises in recent years and decades. Many have to do with institutional power dynamics, where the incentives of the individual to gain power within the institution do not align with the stated goals of the institution. Like for example, not killing everyone. The possible silver lining would be that better institutions could be designed where incentives aligned. I have an alternate, or possibly complementary, theory that there has been a decline in system thinking and moral thinking. Our leaders aren’t educated to see the systems and or think enough about whether their decisions are on the side of right or wrong.

climate change, migration, and right-wing politics

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Climate change is already causing displacement in poorer countries in Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East, and this is clearly already fueling the rise of anti-immigration politics in developed countries including the United States and western Europe. The rational response, beyond dealing with climate change, is two-fold and fairly obvious. (1) Rational immigration policies based on the economic needs of the more developed countries, and (2) the more developed countries ponying up to help people in the less developed ones where they live.

The labor-market shortages in advanced economies are not some temporary or short-run phenomenon. In the US, a recent Brookings Institution study documents a shortfall of 2.4 million workers as of December 2022, relative to the 12-month average ending in February 2020. Most of this decline would have happened without the pandemic, owing to changes in the age and education of the population. But there was also a decline in the average weekly hours worked, producing an additional labor-supply shortfall equivalent to another 2.4 million people…

A well-designed immigration policy that allows for the controlled entry of willing workers, and that helps integrate them into host countries, would go a long way toward easing labor-market tightness and preventing humanitarian tragedies caused by smugglers’ shameless exploitation of migrants and refugees. But policymakers will need to look beyond the next election cycle and rise above partisan political interests.

At the same time, it is neither possible nor desirable to move the entire populations of low-income countries to America and Europe, so it is imperative to reject short-sighted economic nationalism. Advanced economies must do more to address the huge imbalances that still exist across the world economy. Reducing global inequality is essential to a sustainable future.

Project Syndicate

This is rational and fairly obvious, and yet politically very, very difficult. Anti-immigrant sentiment and fears over job displacement are common. And anti-immigrant sentiment is not just among people who consider themselves “native born” for several generations. Recent immigrants do not always support the idea of more people following them, especially if they perceive that the more recent immigrants might have an easier path or that they may have to compete with them. Combine that with legitimate fears of job loss and low wage growth among the general population, and sprinkle in some right-wing assholes, and the general apathy toward foreign aid when we have plenty of problems at home, and you have a pretty potent coalition. On the other side, big business generally favors immigration because they like low wages. So maybe there is something there you can work with, but unfortunately on this one issue it seems like politicians pay serious attention to the perceptions of voters and not just deep-pocketed big business. Maybe big business could divert some of their propaganda efforts from voters to support war and pollution and instead work on this issue. Or what about declaring war on climate change. That worked for drugs and poverty, right…ruh-roh!

more free time at home = more babies?

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The answer is no. Early in the pandemic, I heard people suggesting that having healthy young couples home more with time on their hands would result in a baby boom. The data show that the opposite is true. On aggregate, people actually make somewhat rational economic decisions about having children. When times are uncertain, a fraction of people decide to postpone plans they might have had to have children, and a certain fraction of those people either miss their window or just change their minds. This shows up in the data.

The article acknowledges that immigration is a potential answer to this. But it is difficult politically, and even if you can convince your population that it is a good idea, you need a good plan to make sure the immigrants can make a positive economic contribution, and you need a plan to ease them into your culture. This doesn’t mean erasing their culture, religion, or language, of course, but nor do you want your culture, religion, or language to change massively in a short time or your country may lose its sense of national identity. Having a sense of national identity while still being relatively trusting and tolerant is a balancing act, and my thought is that you want to allow change but try to make it slow and gradual. Maybe we need a Federal Reserve of Cultural Change to manage this rate.

As a working parent, I also recognize that spending more time at home does not mean more free time for everyone. Working from home full time and taking care of young children who are also home all the time, with no babysitters or minimal support from grandparents and extended family, has been very difficult for many people, including yours truly. If you are not in this situation, those of us who are may chafe a bit when you tell us how “bored” you are. But I also recognize there have been no happy mediums, with part of the population stressed out of their minds and half bored out of their minds, and some of the people who are bored (like grandparents) wishing they could help more but unable to.

climate, conflict, and migration

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A new paper explores causal links between climate change effects (like drought, famine, and high food prices), violent conflict, and mass migration. And yes, the conclusion seems to be that climate change can be a big driver when the seeds of social and economic instability are already in place.

Climate, conflict and forced migration
Despite the lack of robust empirical evidence, a growing number of media reports attempt to link climate change to the ongoing violent conflicts in Syria and other parts of the world, as well as to the migration crisis in Europe. Exploiting bilateral data on asylum seeking applications for 157 countries over the period 2006–2015, we assess the determinants of refugee flows using a gravity model which accounts for endogenous selection in order to examine the causal link between climate, conflict and forced migration. Our results indicate that climatic conditions, by affecting drought severity and the likelihood of armed conflict, played a significant role as an explanatory factor for asylum seeking in the period 2011–2015. The effect of climate on conflict occurrence is particularly relevant for countries in Western Asia in the period 2010–2012 during when many countries were undergoing political transformation. This finding suggests that the impact of climate on conflict and asylum seeking flows is limited to specific time period and contexts.

Who’s really crossing the U.S. border?

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This article is from Lawfare, and the answer is interesting.

First off, while the current administration has tried to tie Central American migrants to MS-13, government data reveals that gang members crossing irregularly are the rare exceptions. Since the Trump administration took office, the Border Patrol has detected fewer gang members crossing irregularly than during the Obama administration. In FY2017, these detections amounted to 0.075 percent of the total number of migrants (228 MS-13 members out of 303,916 total migrants). When combined with MS-13’s rival, the Barrio 18 gang, the number rises only slightly to 0.095 percent. This is far from the “infestation” of violent gang members described by the president…

The face of migration has also changed. Back in 2000, Mexican nationals made up 98 percent of the total migrants and Central Americans (referring to Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran migrants) only one percent. Today, Central Americans make up closer to 50 percent.

A declining Mexican birth rate, a stable economy, and the U.S. border buildup have all contributed to the decrease in migration from Mexico. But as Mexican irregular migration has plummeted, Central American migration has simultaneously picked up. Until 2011, Central Americans constituted less than ten percent of total U.S.-Mexico border apprehensions, but by 2012 they constituted 25 percent, and by 2014 they numbered half of all illicit border crossers. While migration from each country within the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) has fluctuated over time, each country has sent roughly similar numbers of people in the aggregate. From FY1995 to FY2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended around 500,000 citizens from each country. In other words, it’s not a coincidence that most recent news stories about migrant parents separated from their children feature families from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

People from Honduras and El Salvador are often fleeing urban gang violence, while those from Guatemala are often fleeing rural poverty.

 

facts and figures on illegal immigrants

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The Week has some surprising facts and figures on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Just for fun, I’ll state it in the form of a quiz:

  1. About how many illegal immigrants are there, and what percentage of the U.S. population is that?
  2. What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years?
  3. Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing?
  4. What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican?
  5. Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right?
  6. What percentage work? What percentage pay taxes? What percentage are receiving public assistance?
  7. What percentage have committed criminal offenses?

Answers (and I’ll repeat the questions, because it would be annoying if I didn’t):

  1. About how many illegal immigrants are there [Answer: 11 million], and what percentage of the U.S. population is that [Answer: 3.5%]?
  2. What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years? [Answer: 66%]
  3. Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing? [Answer: decreasing, from a peak of about 12 million in 2007. ]
  4. What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican? [Answer: 50%]
  5. Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right? [Wrong: about 60% did, but 40% entered legally and overstayed their visas]
  6. What percentage work? [Answer: 73%] What percentage pay taxes? [Answer: 50%] What percentage are receiving public assistance? [Answer: 0% of adults, although children who are not citizens may receive public schooling and emergency medical care]
  7. What percentage have committed criminal offenses? [Answer: 7.5%]

U.S. Muslims: Facts and Figures

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This article from The Week has some interesting facts and figures on U.S. Muslims.

The Pew Research Center estimates that 3.3 million Muslims live in the U.S., which makes Islam the nation’s third-largest faith, behind Christianity and Judaism. It’s a diverse population primarily divided among African-Americans, South Asians, and Arabs, and a well-educated one: About 40 percent of U.S. Muslims hold college degrees, as opposed to 29 percent of Americans overall. Though Muslims represent 1 percent of the population, they account for 10 percent of the nation’s physicians…

As many as 30 percent of Africans enslaved in the U.S. were Muslim. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Muslim immigrants arrived from Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, largely settling in the Midwest; later waves came from Bosnia, Albania, and other parts of Europe. In the 1960s, the Muslim population began to swell as the government lifted immigration quotas and many African-Americans began converting to Islam. Muslim immigration surged at century’s end — 45 percent of today’s Muslim-Americans arrived after 1990; between 1994 and 2011 the number of U.S. mosques more than doubled, from 962 to 2,106…

More than 80 percent of U.S. Muslims expressed satisfaction with life in America, and 63 percent said they felt no conflict “between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.” About 70 percent of Muslim immigrants go on to become U.S. citizens, compared with 50 percent of other groups, and almost 6,000 Muslims serve in the U.S. armed forces. Most of the tips about radicalized Muslims in the U.S. come from the Muslim community itself, the FBI says…