The Atlantic: How Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The tragic thing about the Democrats on immigration is that they somehow ran a campaign in 2016 which inspired both anti-immigration swing voters and pro-immigration portions of their base to believe that the party supports open borders and believes that deportations are always immoral.

This is odd enough in itself, but it becomes downright surreal when poised against their outgoing president’s record, which involved millions of deportations and demonstrated a much stronger interest in creating refugees than in hosting them. (How is that for Obama’s inspiring moral leadership?)

Hispanics don't believe that the party supports open borders nor do they believe that the party thinks that deportations are always immoral. White liberals might think this but they don't matter because they'd vote for Democrats even if they droned every Mexican in the US. Immigrants and their children, particularly those who are younger and in their 20s, moved sharply towards Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein for a reason.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If Democrats moved sharply to the right on immigration, as requested by Beinart, and maintained their current stance on economic issues, I'd probably stop voting. Why would I vote for a hawkish, neo-liberal party that also panders to the racist right on immigration? I could not bring myself to vote for CEOs who talked about "controlling our borders", I'd rather die than do something so undignified.

Beinart supported the War in Iraq. I'd suggest that his ability to prognosticate is very limited and that his intellectual capabilities aren't very impressive either or, worse, he's very intellectual dishonest. I'm far from an expert on the economics of immigration - I'm barely a dilettante - but many of his statements are opinion posing as fact or conventional wisdom. Many labor economists would dispute his claims about the affects of immigration on the wages of the low-skilled/native-born - the conventional wisdom that Beinart portrays simply isn't present and quoting Krugman - a trade specialist - and Borjas - a very controversial figure to say the least - does not lend much credence to his claims.

It's fine for Beinart to inveigh against the accepted wisdom within the professional class in the US that immigration is good, beautiful and so on but he'd be better off making the case that we simply aren't honest enough about the difficulties associated with diversity and tolerance rather than arguing that immigrants strain the welfare state - they don't, that's nonsense - or that low-skill immigrants saddle the economy - has he looked at the manner in which housing prices are skyrocketing and the problems facing farmers in California? Immigration generates tremendous economic benefits. This is inarguable, it is settled science, it is a fact comprehensible by 7 year olds etc. The question is how we use these benefits; we have failed miserably to put them to good use but this is not an argument against immigration, it is an argument against the failed centrist dickheads who control the Democratic Party and the reactionary troglodytes on the right.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of people wish poverty didn't exist, but the real issue is how to address it and how much of our resources to devote to fixing it. Given the way the world is, there has to be limits. Further, it's not even like the entire country wants to fix everyone else's problems. Sure, you can disagree with them, but you must strike a balance. You can't just ignore their wishes entirely. It is their country too, and those that wish for America to play a limited role are no small bunch.

It's one thing to deport those here already and another to further lock down the borders and prevent a situation in the future where we have another 10 - 12 million undocumented immigrants. The idea that that we can have some sort of border security, but then say, "well, if they manage to sneak in, they can stay" seems kind of ridiculous. Give the people already here at this current point in time citizenship, and work to prevent a similar situation in the future.

It honestly perplexes me how this isn't the viewpoint of 90% of people.

It is the viewpoint of 90% of people...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

After looking up income inequality data and immigration data I simply could not find a chart with both sets of data put together to really see how they changed in relation to each other over time. So I had to use the raw data and put together my own chart.



http://imgur.com/a/YZdWq

While I do agree with Democrats over issues like tax rates and the decline in labor unions on their impact on income inequality, they simply refuse to bring up the issue of immigration on income inequality.

Edit: Is there a reason that imgur pictures don't show up?

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

If Democrats moved sharply to the right on immigration, as requested by Beinart, and maintained their current stance on economic issues, I'd probably stop voting. Why would I vote for a hawkish, neo-liberal party that also panders to the racist right on immigration? I could not bring myself to vote for CEOs who talked about "controlling our borders", I'd rather die than do something so undignified.

Beinart supported the War in Iraq. I'd suggest that his ability to prognosticate is very limited and that his intellectual capabilities aren't very impressive either or, worse, he's very intellectual dishonest. I'm far from an expert on the economics of immigration - I'm barely a dilettante - but many of his statements are opinion posing as fact or conventional wisdom. Many labor economists would dispute his claims about the affects of immigration on the wages of the low-skilled/native-born - the conventional wisdom that Beinart portrays simply isn't present and quoting Krugman - a trade specialist - and Borjas - a very controversial figure to say the least - does not lend much credence to his claims.

It's fine for Beinart to inveigh against the accepted wisdom within the professional class in the US that immigration is good, beautiful and so on but he'd be better off making the case that we simply aren't honest enough about the difficulties associated with diversity and tolerance rather than arguing that immigrants strain the welfare state - they don't, that's nonsense - or that low-skill immigrants saddle the economy - has he looked at the manner in which housing prices are skyrocketing and the problems facing farmers in California? Immigration generates tremendous economic benefits. This is inarguable, it is settled science, it is a fact comprehensible by 7 year olds etc. The question is how we use these benefits; we have failed miserably to put them to good use but this is not an argument against immigration, it is an argument against the failed centrist dickheads who control the Democratic Party and the reactionary troglodytes on the right.

Immigrant led families absolutely strain the welfare system. The claim that they don't is based on the fact that children of immigrant led families are often citizens but they wouldn't be citizens if their parents weren't allowed to immigrate either legally or illegally in the first place.

Also, why are you bringing up the housing crisis? That's counter intuitive. There's a housing crisis because of immigration. If there were less people, the price of housing would go down. That's not even economics, that's just basic math.

Well, what is the "welfare system"? If we use a very restricted notion of the welfare system that only encompasses benefits for prime-age workers/residents, you'd be correct, but these benefits are pretty miniscule and, frankly, compose a pretty insignificant share of federal/state outlays. The "real" outlays go to the elderly and immigrants, without question, help us maintain SS/Medicare and, more importantly, push down the cost of elderly care, healthcare costs etc. If you look at the budget and ignore second-order effects, I'm sure that you can produce a result that shows that immigration isn't fiscally prudent but this isn't economics. It's the work of fools. Immigrants can be treated as factors in production processes that generate output which composes the economy and that, in turn, is taxed along the way. It's hard to estimate the degree to which immigration fosters this process, which is why it's easy for people to believe in misconceptions that you promote, but the effects are real and inarguable.

Economics is counter-intuitive: yes, immigrants need housing but if they disproportionately are a factor in the production of housing, they actually push housing costs down. Simultaneously, if you haven't noticed, demand from immigrants for housing is reduced relative to native-born Americans. You are the one who is uneducated on these topics.

For sociological reasons, I'm willing to consider constraining immigration but, there isn't an economic argument against immigration. If you want to expand output, both in the US and abroad, the best thing you can do is to expand immigration. The "quality of life" outcomes can be debated, the effects on politics of immigration can be nasty and we can discuss these things but the arguments you are making are wrong.