If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will

[Belsnickel]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/

This article was shared by a libertarian person I follow on social media, and he said how it made him question his open-borders position. I thought I would share it here. It's long, and I haven't finished it, yet, but I thought it would be a good conversation starter for those interested in such things.

[Benton]

Interesting, although I don't think it really delves into a whole lot that isn't already known. Maybe not admitted (like the parts where Democrats tend to favor immigration control over open borders or that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than locals), but known.

The whole alt-right "we've got to end all immigration now" is a goofy ideal like "we've got to end all pollution now". Find what's causing it, try to get it under control and move on.

[fredtoast]

Are there really any US Congressmembers who say we should have "open borders"?

[hollodero]

(03-11-2019, 04:34 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Are there really any US Congressmembers who say we should have "open borders"?

Oh yeah. There are also many who support crime and hate America.

As for the article, I only read into it. I don't believe a too lenient immigration policy creates a significant rise of fascism. Stupid people create a significant rise of fascism. If their rise is fueled by mostly manufactured immigration problems or by too little gold medals at the olympics doesn't really matter that much. Whoever believes Soros pays politicians to willfully ruin their own country doesn't need a valid reason for any fascist sentiment, just a skilled, anti-intellectual demagogue with a supporting network and lots of social media.

A country sure needs a meaningful immigration policy, which requires strictness and tough decisions at times. I'm sure there were mistakes made and it's legitimate to critizise them or factor that in at the voting booth. But I think it's wrong to enact certain policies just to counter the fascism danger. I think that doesn't help much and only empowers certain figures. 
(Our own socialist party, once the main force in our politics, tried that approach time after time, to get way tougher on immigration to stop the rise of the right wing populists. It didn't help.)

[Dill]

(03-11-2019, 12:47 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/

This article was shared by a libertarian person I follow on social media, and he said how it made him question his open-borders position. I thought I would share it here. It's long, and I haven't finished it, yet, but I thought it would be a good conversation starter for those interested in such things.

That's a good think piece.  Frum was a speech writer for W., a traditional conservative of the neocon variety, and generally thoughtful. He authored the "axis of evil phrase" for Bush SOTU speech back in 2002. Frequent guest on Bill Maher too.

I have some quarrels with his data on immigrant contributions to the economy, but he makes very good points about

1) our current system of "accreted" improvisations, from kicking the can down the road,

2) the need to shift our view of immigrants from the dominant economic perspective to recognition of the social and cultural issues which attend immigration, and

3) that immigration needs to be thought of as a system not populist-style as a symbol.

As far as the main argument and conclusion--that immigration will become such a problem that people will turn to fascists (by which he means, I am guessing, some form of authoritarianism) to solve it--I am still not sold on that.  Following his own source, Stenner, I think the authoritarian support for Trump-style solutions has maxed out. I get that he is looking to a future in which "dreamers" reach 65 etc. And we have millions of non-citizens without health care.  That is a looming problem, but I am not sold on the idea it could keep expanding Trump's base even after Trump is gone. I agree with the urge to think about "smart" immigration policies, though, and applaud his effort to think through a range of existing immigration and related problems.

James Kirchick makes a similar argument in his book The End of Europe (2017) and other writings.  His tack is that liberals and social democrats in Europe need to de-politicize the immigration issue and not demonize people who raise the issue of limits and quotas as "NAZIS" and xenophobes. If center-left-right politicians do not address the problem, then "the people" will chose politicians who will address it, and these will turn out to be illiberals and proto-fascists, like Orban in Hungary and Le Pen in France. 
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/03/06/ignoring-immigration-is-empowering-the-far-right/

This doesn't really account for why the tendency to illiberal politics has become so dominant in countries like Hungary and Poland, which have MUCH less immigration than Germany or certainly Sweden, while the latter are still holding the line on liberal democracy.

[Mike M (the other one)]

(03-11-2019, 01:30 PM)Benton Wrote: Interesting, although I don't think it really delves into a whole lot that isn't already known. Maybe not admitted (like the parts where Democrats tend to favor immigration control over open borders or that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than locals), but known.

The whole alt-right "we've got to end all immigration now" is a goofy ideal like "we've got to end all pollution now". Find what's causing it, try to get it under control and move on.

I have really NOT heard that, I have heard end all Illegal immigration, with I am for.

I am perfectly fine with immigrants that come here legally and stay legally.

----

He brought up some points I have said before as well.
He does contradict himself here:
"Generally, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do." Yes because of fear of Deportation.

"They cannot vote. They cannot qualify as jurors. If they commit a crime, they are subject not only to prison but to deportation. And because these noncitizens are keenly aware of those things, they adjust their behavior. They keep a low profile. They do not complain to the authorities if, say, their boss cheats them out of some of their pay, or if they’ve been attacked on the street, or if they are abused by a parent or partner at home."

Crimes committed that go unreported, thus the immigrants commit crimes at lower rates is a arbitrary statement because we do not know the actual amount.


"Immigrants are lowering America’s average skill level."
Which has also been a complaint of mine. We don't need more high school drop outs, we have enough already. We need educated immigrants. Who can contribute to make America better. Factory jobs are not as prevalent as they used to be. You need skills now.

"Central American asylum seekers say they are fleeing crime in their home countries. Yet asylum-seeking has surged even as crime in Central America has subsided. El Salvador’s homicide rate has dropped by half since 2015; Honduras’s has plunged by 75 percent since 2013."
It doesn't matter if we give aid and make their lives better to Central America countries, but they still want to come to the US where life is better. 

And also he talks about how wages for Americans are driven down because of illegal immigration.
"immigration contributes very little to making native-born Americans richer than they would otherwise."

"The gains from immigration are divided very unequally. Immigrants reap most of them. Wealthy Americans claim much of the rest, in the form of the lower prices they pay for immigrant-produced services. Low-income Americans receive comparatively little benefit, and may well be made worse off, depending on who’s counting and what method they use."

So plenty of talking points here and that I have brought up before in the past.

From the political perspective. Yep, we can only absorb so many immigrants before the services for all gets diminished and discord happens. If it's not addressed properly, then it will stay and get more hard core. Once it's addressed properly, the political pendulum will swing back to center and it will not be an issue for a while.

I don't understand why people can't use a little common sense on issues.

[fredtoast]

(03-13-2019, 06:07 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: He does contradict himself here:
"Generally, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do." Yes because of fear of Deportation.

"They cannot vote. They cannot qualify as jurors. If they commit a crime, they are subject not only to prison but to deportation. And because these noncitizens are keenly aware of those things, they adjust their behavior. They keep a low profile. They do not complain to the authorities if, say, their boss cheats them out of some of their pay, or if they’ve been attacked on the street, or if they are abused by a parent or partner at home."

Crimes committed that go unreported, thus the immigrants commit crimes at lower rates is a arbitrary statement because we do not know the actual amount.

There is no contradiction.  Unless you consider all crime stats "arbitrary".

[Mike M (the other one)]

(03-13-2019, 06:27 PM)fredtoast Wrote: There is no contradiction.  Unless you consider all crime stats "arbitrary".

Does the statistics separate Illegal from Legal immigrants?

The beef is with Illegal immigrants, not the legal immigrants who's numbers make the Illegals look better.

[Dill]

(03-13-2019, 06:07 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: He brought up some points I have said before as well.
He does contradict himself here:
"Generally, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do." Yes because of fear of Deportation.

I don't see any contradiction here.   There is only a contradiction if, after saying immigrants commit crimes at lower rates, he says at a later point that they DO NOT commit crimes at lower rates.

(03-13-2019, 06:07 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: "They cannot vote. They cannot qualify as jurors. If they commit a crime, they are subject not only to prison but to deportation. And because these noncitizens are keenly aware of those things, they adjust their behavior. They keep a low profile. They do not complain to the authorities if, say, their boss cheats them out of some of their pay, or if they’ve been attacked on the street, or if they are abused by a parent or partner at home."

Crimes committed that go unreported, thus the immigrants commit crimes at lower rates is a arbitrary statement because we do not know the actual amount.

The reference here is to crimes AGAINST immigrants that go unreported.

In any case, crimes by citizens also go unreported. That doesn't prevent us from making reliable estimations about unreported crime caused by citizens.  That undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than citizens is a reliable indicator that such immigrants also commit fewer unreported crimes.

(03-13-2019, 06:07 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Does the statistics separate Illegal from Legal immigrants?
The beef is with Illegal immigrants, not the legal immigrants who's numbers make the Illegals look better.

Yes. That is why Frum says "they are subject not only to prison but to deportation. . .. . keep a low profile . . . and do not complain" if cheated, attacked, or abused.