Ten Points on Immigration
I have written a number of posts, some using data and some not, on immigrstion. Some of those posts attracted vitriol in comments, including from some who keep accusing me of hiding my punchline. Personally I find myself repeating myself, or trying to restate a point yet a different way so it will sink in. I figured it is probably time to put everything in one place, so here it is:
1. Some cultures prepare their people to function well in the US, some don’t.
2. Ability to function well in the US is not the same thing as intelligence. As an example, consider me. I lived almost a third of my life in South America. I have never been to Central Asia. All else being equal, I can hit the ground running more easily in Argentina than in Iran. In Argentina I know how to behave in a seamless way that won’t raise eyebrows. In Iran, I would need to put effort into day to day activities. Additionally, my communication skills wouldn’t work as well. It isn’t just a matter of not speaking Farsi, but also being unable to unconsciously read and display the myriad of social signals Iranian society uses. Therefore, my productivity will be greater in Argentina than Iran (again, all things being equal). And yet my traits – the degree to which I am or am not intelligent, creative, diligent, sane, honest, etc. – will be the same whether I am in Buenos Aires or in Teheran. Most of my work related skills (less those involving communication) will also be the same in both places. The difference between my productivity in Argentina v Iran will be due entirely to differences in cultural compatibility.
3. Cultural compatibility runs the other way too. Arriving in the US doesn’t automatically confer respect for Western values. In many countries, anti-Christian or anti-Semitic attitudes are common. In the West people argue about gay marriage. In some countries, the debate is whether gay people should be stoned or thrown off tall buildings. Similarly, the treatment of women and children in some countries would be criminal in the US. Think honor killings, child’s marriages, FGM or bacha bazi. (And yes, we are seeing those things happening here now.) Writing again from the role of someone who was a guest in other peoples’ countries for a third of his life, it should be the responsibility of the newcomer to adapt to his/her new home, and not of the residents of his/her new home to adapt to the newcomer.
4. In Western countries, immigrants who don’t manage to bridge cultural gaps are more likely to end up dependent on the taxpayer. Immigrants are disproportionate users of welfare. In general, it seems (at a minimum) to be bad form to request entry into another society only to become a burden on its people. It is one thing for refugees with no other option to do it, but most immigrants to the US are not refugees.
5. Being overwhelmingly reliant on government largesse in a foreign society built by strangers has got to be dispiriting to most thinking adults. It can only add to a person’s feeling of alienation. That in turn can lead to various dysfunctions – vices, crime, anti-social behavior and even terrorism. It is no surprise that some of these issues exist disproportionately in some immigrant communities.
6. Countries whose emigrants generally do well in the US also tend to be countries with Western values and strong economies. More precisely, countries whose immigrants do well in the West have economies which thrive from the skills of its people, and not countries whose economies is based mostly on raw material extraction directed by foreigners or on financial transfers from wealthier nations.
7. Countries whose emigrants generally have good outcomes (e.g., high incomes, low unemployment, low crime rates) in the US also have good outcomes in other Western countries. Conversely, countries whose emigrants don’t generally have good outcomes in the US also generally don’t have good outcomes in other Western countries.
8. Within any society, there are some who are more able to function in the US and some who are less able to function in the US. To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries. Place of origin shouldn’t be enough to, by itself, weed out one potential immigrant or guarantee entry to another to another.
9. The fact that there are people in the US who do not have good outcomes (e.g., are in poverty, are criminals, etc.) is not a good argument for immigration of other people who also have do not have good outcomes.
10. There are far more people who would like to immigrate to the US than we allow into the US. Given that, it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are unlikely to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US.
I note that none of these points are new. I have stated them all before, but not all in one place.
Update: Minor edits to Point 7 and 9.
“Some of those posts attracted vitriol”
Got the wrong verb there. “contained” is more accurate
EMichael,
Please demonstrate my vitriol on the subject of immigration by quoting something I wrote on the topic. I have written a lot on the subject lately and you have been calling what I am writing racist for a while. So if there is something evil in what I wrote you of all people should be able to quote it easily. But make sure it is something I wrote, not something you or somebody else hallucinated into existence. I can only be responsible for what I write. What you understand is on you.
Mein kampf
Mike, I understand your beliefs clearly. Just as clearly, EM is unable to understand and accept that there are alternative views. His view(s) are colored by racism, whether it exists in the instance or not.
I found some of your math containing posts interesting because they use concepts similar to what I used as a process engineer. I had a huge advantage in looking at the results because I could actually run experiments. I had another advantage in that I had a team that shared my goals to brainstorm with me.
I think your thesis that culture matters is valid. I don’t think your math is ever going to show that it matters to a great extent, There are just too many others confounding factors. Your analysis is not very helpful because it fails at step one, which is to identify as many factors as possible.
People are amazingly adaptable. Teaching a person to make new stuff is much easier than programming robots to make new stuff. Teaching them to deal with cultural differences may be more difficult, but there is a lot of effort going on within businesses to teach just that.
Even if you had identified that the persistence of cultural differences is a factor worth pursuing, the team here indicates your brainstorming for solutions is incomplete.
I note that some of your factual assumptions e.g. “Immigrants are disproportionate users of welfare” appear to be wrong and may be drawn from corrupt sources (FAIR and/or AIC, in particular Steve Camarota). See https://newrepublic.com/article/122714/immigrants-dont-drain-welfare-they-fund-it.
Exception of course are refugees (which one could say we have some moral responsibility to rescue since our 15 year war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria (since we are bombing quite a bit in Syria), and many other places has more than done or bit fan disorder and violence from which the refugees flee rather than die, ditto the children fleeing Mexico and Central America where our war on (some people) who use drugs has created both right wing Governments and drug gangs and associated violence.)
I think it is bad form when left wing sites repeat right-wing memes (falsehoods and half-truths), particularly when the new right-wing authoritarian kleptocrats who are taking over the Government are talking about rounding up, placing in concentration camps, and deporting millions of people, citizens and non-citizens alike..
Just out curiosity, since Mr. Kimel used the example of Iran, there was a huge Iranian immigration to the U.S. In sense they both support (since many of the these people were high skill immigrants) and rebut his point (since they came from a culture he marks as particularly “foreign” to U.S. culture. http://xpatnation.com/a-look-at-the-history-of-iranian-immigrants-in-the-u-s/ It has actually been an amazingly successful immigration, with many now millionaires (a mark of “success” that I find rather reflects the worse part of America, the presumption by Americans, Rich, Middle, or poor, that if you are not rich, you are nothing, a loser; but still it appears to be a marker that Mr. Kimel is using.
I think “EMichael” probably could find the following paragraph racist, false, and objectionable. There may may some half truths in it, overall as far as I can tell it is completely false.
“Being overwhelmingly reliant on government largesse in a foreign society built by strangers has got to be dispiriting to most thinking adults. It can only add to a person’s feeling of alienation. That in turn can lead to various dysfunctions – vices, crime, anti-social behavior and even terrorism. It is no surprise that some of these issues exist disproportionately in some immigrant communities.”
Except for emergency rooms, including births in emergency rooms, and education for minor children, there is not a benefit that an illegal immigrant can collect. And even legal immigrants have far more restrictions then native born.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-undocumented-immigrants-sometimes-receive-medicaid-treatment/
It should be noted that immigration over the last 8 years, both legal and illegal, has been lower and (especially with illegal) has been offset by emigration from an increasingly hostile, authoritarian, racialist, United States. Also social dysfunctions, such has crime, has been falling through much of the years of the so called immigration crisis.
I like Angry Bear and was bit shocked by this post and hence my multiple responses.
(I am a bit of a student of the Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 1840s and 50s and I can almost lift word for word the slanders made against the Irish and insert them word “Mexican” or “Syrian” and use them today for propaganda purposes on Breitbart and apparently “Angry Bear.”
EMichael,
Hitler was born in 1889 and The Boys From Brazil is fiction. Of course there is cryo. Or necromancy.
Arne,
I agree that I haven’t covered many variables yet. But the ones I have covered do seem to have a fair amount of explanatory power. If they don’t explain, say, earnings of immigrants to some degree, then they are highly correlated with those variables that do explain those earnings.
Culture of course is a bit vague. I haven’t tried to define it numerically. Yet.
Rickstersherpa,
1. According to the Census database I have cited a few times, 12.7% of Households defined as Native receive Food Stamps/SNAP. For foreign born households, the figure is 16.5%. Cash public assistance is also higher for foreign born than native. (2.6% v 3%). Census.gov is not known as a purveyor of right wing propaganda.
2. For some groups, of course, figures are much higher. See the table in this post (which also leads you to the Census database): http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2016/11/the-bottom-10-performing-immigrant-groups-in-the-us-lessons-learned.html
3. Iran can be thought of as two countries. People arriving in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution were from a pro-Western country. Recent immigrants from Iran come from a completely different culture vis a vis the West.
4. Your last comment quotes me but then disputes something different than I wrote. To that, please see my first response to EMichael upthread.
To add to Rickstersherpa’s comments, I’ll also point out that among the Muslim immigrants who’ve committed acts of terrorism in this country, none to my knowledge was on welfare nor were their parents on welfare, None.
This post is just the latest in what is now many-months-long series of white supremacist/ white nationalist posts by Kimel, whose original bailiwick at this blog was standard left-of-center economics but obviously is something close to the opposite now. He left the blog for two or three years, and came back earlier this year unrecognizable and with a vengeance. Literally.
I was a blogger here for six-and-a-half years until earlier this month, and was among regulars who comment in the Comments threads who repeatedly expressed dismay. Kimel’s last few posts, lik this one, are published directly under his name. Before that Dan Crawford and run75441 were posting them for him and crediting him with the posts.
In my comments int those threads, I’ve suggested as you did here that this blogger belongs at Breitbart, or more accurately, you say that this blog is providing the same type of voice as Breitbart.
But at least Breitbart hasn’t been known as left-of-center blog. Allowing these posts on a blog that has misleads readers into thinking, if only for a moment, that maybe this guy’s saying something that you’re missing, or not saying something that you think he’s saying. It’s really jarring.
Since 9/25/2016.I did not want you to have to guess and be wrong.
Sorry, but leftists were the originators of anti-immigration. They blasted classical liberals and their “open borders” to buy talent on the market rather than “building within” and using the state to develop talent.
“right wing” Christians are some of the worst people in terms of helping the underground railroad for immigrants in the US.
Beverly, Breitbart loves illegal immigration and wants it to stay, indeed quite illegal.
You represent the problem of modern politics. Anyone you don’t agree with, you start making dialectical points rather than going under the hood to find out the point.
Kimel,
Your points leave out any consideration of the cultural variabilities of this host country. Given that the USofA is a country made up of immigrants from a wide variety of places across the globe I would think that there is some benefit to varying the sources of immigration in the present given the past. Some of the cultural distinctions that you suggest as different from our own are not homogeneous within our own culture. For example, I wouldn’t choose to live in some parts of the US because of the degree of antisemitism that I might find even though I am what one might call an agnostic Jew. There are many Americans that don’t make that distinction.
Face it Mike, there is probably a place for just about anyone from any place that would be suitable for their emigration within the US. We don’t all have to share the same values with the new comer. We don’t share values amongst ourselves as it is. We’ve got large numbers of immigrants and their off spring from the Far East, South East Asia, Africa, South America and the middle East. We even have many Europeans. Keep in mind that that last category is made up of people who have spent the past two thousand years trying as hard as possible to kill one another. So who is to say what immigrant group is best for the US? We’ve been moving backwards for the past several decades. Maybe we need some new blood to get thinks going forward again.
Apparently you aren’t able to distinguish between racist proclamations and fears unrelated to racism and ethnicity bias masquerading as “cultural” differences, on the one hand, and immigrants willing to work for lower wages irrespective of their race and ethnicity, on the other hand, The Rage. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
In my opinion, the rate of legal immigration by country should be limited by the rate at which that country/culture has traditionally fully assimilated into society. Societies have problems when the rate of immigration is greater than the rate of assimilation.
That is nice but the population is aging faster than the median age is going down. One needs to maintain a young work force.
CORRECTED COMMENT: Apparently, The Rage, you aren’t able to distinguish between racist proclamations masquerading as “cultural” differences, on the one hand, and fears unrelated to racism and ethnicity bias, that immigrants willing to work for lower wages will put downward pressure on wages in this country, irrespective of the race and ethnicity or the immigrant willing to work for the low wages. Even when the writer is extremely open, clear, and repetitive about his claims.
Rickstersherpa and I are able to make that distinction, and have done so.
(Definitely a cut-and-paste issue there with that first comment, which I accidentally clicked “Post Comment” for before it was ready for posting.)
Mike:
Good to see you in good form.
Emichael, a decent chap, has gone bonkers due to the election result.
I will accept one category of immigrant for exclusion. No identifiable criminals allowed. We haven’t always done so well on that trait. So let’s do a better job of excluding those seeking admission who can be shown to be actively involved with any form of criminal behavior. That goes for Euros, Russians, Chinese, South Americans, etc. That also includes very wealthy criminals whose wealth is the result of their positions of authority in their home country.
“The fact that there is homegrown dysfunction isn’t a good argument for importing more dysfunction.” What manner of dysfunction beyond criminality did you have in mind?
” it makes sense to be selective, both for our sake and the sake of those who are unlikely to function well and would become alienated and unable to fend for themselves in the US.” Please define “unlikely to function well” more precisely. Remember that the goal of our immigration quotas is to allow a reasonable balance of people from varying countries to achieve admission.
“To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries.” That statement is generally problematic. What measure of attitude do we use here? Is it the rabble rousers that you want to give preference to? Then why only from non Western countries?
Beverly Mann, I’m sorry to learn you will no longer be blogging at this site. I enjoyed your essays and comments through the years–interesting and informative. I wish you well in your new endeavors.
Well, Mike
at least it’s organized
but are you seriously going to exclude an immigrant because “immigrants” have about a 1% higher rate of use of public assistance?
this is indeed racism. racism is a way of thinking about people that counts race as everything and the individual as nothing.
Bad use of statistics:
According to the Census database I have cited a few times, 12.7% of Households defined as Native receive Food Stamps/SNAP. For foreign born households, the figure is 16.5%. Cash public assistance is also higher for foreign born than native. (2.6% v 3%). Census.gov is not known as a purveyor of right wing propaganda.
Mike does not think to ask “how long are these people on Food Stamps or public assistance?”
to get generational poverty you need to have been exposed to American “culture” for two hundred years.
Jack,
I too am an agnostic Jew. Or perhaps an atheist Jew. Unlike you, perhaps, I lived in one of the more anti-Semitic parts of the country for four year. My job required me to do a bit of travel. I remember one particularly interesting day in which a colleague (and still one of my dearest friends) and I thought we were going to be spending the night in a town where the Klan was reputed to still be active. (My colleague is originally from Sierra Leone, so as you can imagine, we were both making nervous jokes.) But truth to tell, I never experienced anything that bothered me in 4 years. Truth to tell, while there are the odd skin-heads and the remnants of organizations like the Klan, the image we have of anti-Semitism we have in this country is not right. Think about France – it isn’t French skinheads that are making life unsafe for Jews in France. It is immigrants from countries which are extremely anti-Semitic.
But here’s an example of selectivity… ask questions such as these:
“Do you plan to perform FGM on your daughter?” or
“Do you feel that people from group X should be subjugated or killed?” (X of course, can be a number of groups, from Christians to Jews to Gays to Women.)
I’m perfectly happy weeding people out who see nothing wrong with child abuse or killing you or me or the guy down the street. There is no dearth of people wanting to move to America. What is wrong with weeding out people who want to do harm to others?
As to this: “To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries.”
Perhaps I should have stated it differently: “In Non-Western countries, such people are typically dissidents.”
Beverly,
With respect, I would think twice about lecturing other people about their reading comprehension skills. As you point out, I have repeated myself many times. As I noted, my position is very similar to that held by Democrats in the not-so-distant past.
Tom (Rusty),
Thanks.
coberly,
With respect, you’ve gone from “you’re a racist for wanting to treat different immigrants differently” to asking me a question that assumes I want to treat every immigrant the same in terms of likelihood of being on welfare. As stated in the post, some cultures prepare their people to function well in the US. Typically, people from those cultures are unlikely to be on welfare.
It is not really that clear on whether immigrants cost us more in welfare payments than do natives. Poorly educated immigrants appear to cost us less.
https://www.cato.org/blog/cis-exaggerates-cost-immigrant-welfare-use
Kimel, are you seriously saying that it’s immigrants from anti-Semitic countries who run and hang out at Aryan Nation blog sites in THIS country, not in France? There’s been a rash of anti-Semitic incidents in the last month or so, here in this country, such as one in which a Jewish professor from Texas visiting at Harvard got a postcard saying something like “we kicked your kike ass. Now its time to get the hymies out of Harvard Law. Juden. Do you think that was sent by a Middle Eastern immigrant Harvard Las student?
Not sure who you mean by “we,” but the image I have of anti-Semitism in this country is exactly right. In both senses of that word.
And do tell why you think that the fact that you’ve repeated your expressly racist claims many times means that I have a reading comprehension problem. I comprehend your statements perfectly, every time you make one and I read it. So do roughly 10 other commenters.
And while Dale will respond for himself, I’m sure, I expect that he will say that the reason he’s gone from “you’re a racist for wanting to treat different immigrants differently” to asking me a question that assumes I want to treat every immigrant the same in terms of likelihood of being on welfare, is that YOU’VE gone from wanting to treat different immigrants differently to wanting to treat every immigrant the same in terms of likelihood of being on welfare. And back again. And forth again.
Societies have problems when the rate of immigration is greater than the rate of assimilation, Fred? Yup. Shoulda kept out all those damn Irish, Italians and Jews—who any good Brahmin coulda told you back then weren’t assimilating at rates as high as their rate of immigration.
Beverly,
Honestly, I’ve weathered insult after insult from you, and I’ve been mostly polite, but at this point I am concluding you are willfully misunderstanding. You may have nothing better to do with your time, but I have stuff that needs get done.
Mike
praise Allah that you will be doing better stuff.
Beverly was exactly right about my reasons for changing what i am criticizing you for. Fact is, you change what you say faster than i can turn the pages.
But I believe my “two” criticisms were the same: you believe in treating people according to race and not according to “the content of their character.”
Or have you now decide to administer a blindfold exam to potential immigrants asking them what people they want to kill?
Good thing we know All Cretans Lie All The Time and No Non-Cretan ever lies.
Mike,
I think…. No, I’m sure that a large measure of the problem this thread is exposing is that there is a good deal of potential discrimination suggested in your several posts on the topic of immigration. While I could agree that there is a worthwhile basis for discriminating on who to let in, or who to throw out for that matter, the issue for me is that I don’t trust anyone to do the choosing.
It’s something like capital punishment, which I oppose. My opposition is not a moral decision. There are people who deserve killing. I simply don’t trust our systems to make such choices. Send me individual profiles on applicants for the green card and I’ll let you know who’s in and who’s not. That goes for whole categories of potential emigres. I can only give you one category of those who don’t meet my requirements and I’ve already done that. Criminals can be kept out, but even as I type that exclusion I know full well that some jackass in an administrative position to decide will obscure the rules.
Keep in mind that no matter how closely a culture may be to our own, or how successful members of specific cultures may be expected to be, its not the cream of the crop of any culture that will seek to emigrate and start over again as a new arrival to our culture. Immigrants are generally looking for a better life than the one the live in their home countries. People from cultures that seem unsuited to our own may be seeking to leave in order to escape the cultural characteristics that you have pointed to as unsuitable.
Jack, ” People from cultures that seem unsuited to our own may be seeking to leave in order to escape the cultural characteristics that you have pointed to as unsuitable.” is what Mike is trying to point out with his: “As to this: “To be blunt, some people have attitudes that allow them to function well in the West. Typically they are dissidents in non Western countries.”
Perhaps I should have stated it differently: “In Non-Western countries, such people are typically dissidents.”
I can not understand your points when you start with:
“I’m sure that a large measure of the problem this thread is exposing is that there is a good deal of potential discrimination suggested in your several posts on the topic of immigration. While I could agree that there is a worthwhile basis for discriminating on who to let in, or who to throw out for that matter, the issue for me is that I don’t trust anyone to do the choosing.”
The confusion is around placing the importance of POTENTIAL “discrimination” over the “POTENTIAL increased costs and DANGER” to the US. It just seems the emphasis is wrong.
CoRev:
“placing the importance of POTENTIAL “discrimination” over the “POTENTIAL increased costs and DANGER” to the US.”
That is called the Southern Strategy. I can not directly discriminate; but, I can attack the PPACA, Medicaid. SNAP, free Lunches in school, ADC, etc. all of which impact minorities and the poor of which immigrants may be a part of today. This in itself IS discrimination. Many of these programs have time limits on them. Coming from you, I am not surprised at this remark. Advocated by others, I am wondering.
When you come from Iraq, you are Iraqi. When you come from Syria, you are termed Syrian. When you come from Iran, you are termed Iranian. When you come from Somalia, you are termed Somalian. With in those groups, one may be of a different religion and even Christian. The vetting process in long to be allowed to immigrant to the US and I posted the requirements before.
Immigrants do assimilate into US society over generations. We see it here in Detroit and other parts of the country. While many of the new comers may not shuck off traditional garb or characteristics, the later and younger generations do indeed embrace Americanization. As far as work, What is the PR in the US today? That is still a factor in spite of U3.Jobs may not be abundant; but, we should not close the doors to people who have no where else to go either. Furthermore, we spend way to much of Defense/War which history has shown will place countries doing such on the path to becoming a Tier 2 or 3 nation in the future. Time to spend on productivity, infrastructure, and jobs rather than War.
coberly & Jack,
First, I am not talking about discriminating against people by race, but rather by country. Second, it is already the policy of the country to discriminate by country, and has been for a long time. Back in the 1980s there was a Doonesberry cartoon where a would be asylum seeker who was talking about the his fear of death squads. When it turned out he was from El Salvador, an American character discretely told him something along the lines of, “You mean Nicaragua.” For the same fear of death squads, Nicaragua got you asylum, El Salvador got you sent back. That isn’t distant past either. Think the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. Additionally, as anyone who has worked in an office where there are foreigners working, some countries run out of Visas much earlier in the year than other countries, and some don’t run out of Visas at all. If you accept discrimination by country (and it seems to be the case that we do – heck, here at Angry Bear some people have posted on legal issues multiple times a day, but I don’t remember anyone putting any effort into railing against this) then you might as well do it on the basis of how people fit in when they arrive in the US. If two thirds of the immigrants from a given country are on food stamps, and that community supplies a disproportionately large amount of the people leaving our shores (or trying to go) to fight for Al Shabaab or ISIS, clearly the vetting we are doing in that community (and as a country we do vet) is not focusing on relevant issues.
Additionally, I would point you to item #8 on my list above.
Or, alternatively, we can change the rules a different way. What exactly is your suggestion for how immigration should be done? Come up with something better. But it has to be realistic, and take into account who and how many people want to move here. If you have nothing better than what we have in place now, expect a lot more FGM as well as violence against women, gays, and groups like Jews in our country in the future. (As I said, people don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive here.) If that is the price you want to pay, then be upfront about it. I’ve been upfront about my choice.
Thank you so much, EL. I really appreciate your bothering to post that.
Best,
Beverly
Run, ” I can not directly discriminate; but, I can attack the PPACA, Medicaid. SNAP, free Lunches in school, ADC, etc. all of which impact minorities and the poor of which immigrants may be a part of today. This in itself IS discrimination. …. Coming from you, I am not surprised at this remark. Advocated by others, I am wondering.”
If it’s still not clear, the election turned on differences in priorities just as these. Discrimination = racism, immigration = workers gained, workers gained = lower salaries, lower salaries and workers gained to immigrants = jobs lost to existing citizens.
Finally much of the reaction to the Dem agenda stemmed from the inherent ridicule contained in ” Coming from you, I am not surprised at this remark.” for which there is no justification except for the arrogance that one perception is more true/valued than the other.
Mike is an immigrant and his views are from first hand experience, but for many others their feelings are based upon the discomfort from their own PC reactions raised by Mike’s (and others’) views.
Some of us just trying represent other view points. View points alien to your own, and from which this election’s results sprung.
CoRev:
There is plenty of justification as you have made the “Southern Strategy” argument very clearly. Your rebuttal is not much CoRev. Has nothing to do with the election, has nothing to do with priorities, has nothing to do with the Dem platform or agenda. It has to do about you and your views.
“Your” viewpoint is The Southern Strategy” and you are attempting to ride on Mike’s coattails rather than state it alone.
CoRev,
Clarification. I was born in Michigan and have never held or even considered getting non US citizenship. My father is an immigrant. I have a sibling with dual citizenship (US and Brazil).
I did live abroad about 15 years and have had the opportunity to do some consulting abroad. I have also hired foreigners, some of whom have since become citizens. As a result of all this I have the chance to see how the system works here and abroad.
Mike, thanks for correcting my assumption.
Jack
your points are very similar to what I believe.
but if you are going to exclude criminals, would your really want to exclude Jean Valjean?
similarly for capital punishment. while i certainly don’t trust the courts to get it right, i don’t even trust myself.
that jew they executed in Palestine 2000 years ago was a convicted criminal, a traitor in fact. supposed to be some kind of moral in there somewhere.
Mike
it is extremely frustrating to argue with you because your logic is so bad you can deny you said something even as you say it again.
i don’t use “racist” as an insult. race based thinking is the default standard for all humans. it takes an effort not to think that way.
i am not, i hope, a pollyanna or a knee jerk PC pedant. but I like to think I can tell bad logic from better, and policy proposals that are more emotional than we can accept without extreme danger to ourselves….. even if you and CoRev think you are being logical and prudent.
racist thinking and the policies that grow out of that… or of pandering to that… are far more dangerous to US than the odd potential terrorist in our midst or the family that relies on food stamps while it figures out how to survive in a country that is generally more unfriendly to labor than the rest of the civilized world.
Wow again. All I can say is that I had to learn rather quickly and young that there are all kinds of people from all kinds of races and backgrounds that will make your head spin if you try to be bias they can sense it real fast. I mean at home and at work. I always found that the people who were the most worried about “it” all the time were usually the ones who were the most biased because they were the people who had the least life experiences dealing with other races, people or cultures …Real simple common sense math here again no calculus required, only if you are tying to prove something that is not provable in the first place…I say vet,m and forget’m but if you step to far out of line expect the consequences of your actions…
Kimel, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that your father was a German refuge to Brazil as a child, or that his parents were, in the 1930s, when this country and most others—South Africa and Argentina being the exceptions I know of, at least until the late ‘30s—refused Jewish refugees entirely or severely restricted them. Your surname is distinctly German and, with the one “m” rather than two, retains the German (non-Anglicized) spelling.
You’re not obligated to respond one way or the other to this comment, and I have it on good information that you have other things you need to get done, so you might not have time to respond even if you want to.
Beverly,
My father was born in Argentina. Family lore suggests against any German ancestry as far back as anyone seems to know. A genetic ancestry test that my wife (an ancestry buff) had me take a few years ago turns up zero German ancestry as well. If it matters, according to what I have been told, most of my forebears a hundred and fifty years ago could be found in the Baltics or in what is now Ukraine. I do not have an explanation for my last name.
A great deal of truth in this post to go along with some over-generalizations. It seems that many people commenting are oblivious to the fact that immigrants from certain parts of the world are discriminated against because their culture values and prioritizes education: see liberals labeling Asian-Americans as overrepresented minorities in the college application process.
I don’t think there’s any particular connection between the list of social incompatibilities that you identified and the ten or eleven million Mexicans that Trump said he wanted to deport during the campaign.
They’re predominantly Catholic, they have similar family values to other Americans, they fit the pattern of European migrants very well (some come for safety due to local conflict, some come to work temporarily, and will eventually go home, and are only here illegally because of our failure to design effective guest worker programs).
Mexicans aren’t honor killing child rapists who hack people’s arms off with machetes (except the criminals, WHO ARE CRIMINALS).
Meanwhile, the places where these social ills are still frequently found despite laws to the contrary are providing a lot of high functioning and integrated migrants (middle eastern countries have a lot of educational immigrants to the US, people who came because of the quality of university education available and who chose to stay for career reasons, you would count these as positive examples). Similarly for a lot of migrants from India, which has similarly negative cultural backwaters (of course we have them in the US too: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/14/us/new-york-church-assault-case/index.html ).
It was a quite common occurrence until recently for Jewish families in particular to change their last names as an attempt to integrate into society, even if they were still relatively insular communities. I’m sure it was true of other groups as well. Genetic tests don’t do a good job of identifying people who migrated to/through a place but remained genetically segregated.
Run, it is comments like this that fails to make a point: “Your” viewpoint is The Southern Strategy”. For some reason you seem to think that focusing on a subset of supporting voters is bad. It is called identity politics and currently is the core of Dem political strategy: blacks, Hispanics, women, sexual orientation, urban residents, etc are the Dem constituencies. Identity politics is the core of all political campaigns, focusing on sub-groups of supporters.
You seem to think I use “code words” but then accept they are my own views. Yes, they are my views but not code words. An example of code words is your use: ” I can not directly discriminate; but, I can attack the PPACA, Medicaid. SNAP, free Lunches in school, ADC, etc. all of which impact MINORITIES (my emphasis) and the poor of which immigrants may be a part of today. This in itself IS discrimination. Discrimnination is the code word, a red flag to minorities. Pandering to MINORITIES is identity politics and the Dem strategy.
What I have tried to do is point out how/why that MINORITIES-centric strategy has failed. Fundamentally it centralizes Dem support in the urban centers, and we end up with elections where popular votes may not actually support the electoral college votes.
It appears you are reacting to the success of a particular political strategy which “identified” and expanded a group of political supporters, identity politics the core of political strategies, and using a code word, “discrimination”, to denigrate it.
“I agree that I haven’t covered many variables yet. But the ones I have covered do seem to have a fair amount of explanatory power. If they don’t explain, say, earnings of immigrants to some degree, then they are highly correlated with those variables that do explain those earnings.”
This is not good math. Any number of confounding factors can eliminate all of the explanatory value. Given what you have provided so far, it could be that prevalence of color televisions.
“Pandering to MINORITIES is identity politics and the Dem strategy. ” CoRev
So exactly what is the nature of this pandering, as you put it? In what way has any political party done things for minorities that could be described as pandering? How about voicing concerns about the questionable police killing of an innocent black person? Or the devious acts of some elected officials to marginalize minority voters? Are those concerns the same as pandering? Has all of this pandering put minorities ahead of everyone else? Is it now better to be a member of a minority group due to so much pandering?
The “southern strategy” was, and still is, an effort to play working class white voters against minorities and against one another. It is a strategy that plays upon people’s darker character rather than uphold the rights of people’s darker skin. And now Trump has apparently figured out how to expand the boggey man group to include the Washington elite, whomever they may be.
yes . . .
Jack & Run, your concerns are misplaced. The “Southern Strategy” is not any different than the Democrat strategy of “racial minority, millennial, and majority women” identity politics. As I said earlier identity politics is the core of political strategy. Which simplified is to message to lock in the support your party’s core constituencies and message to strip off some portion of the opponent party’s core constituencies.
This resulted in: “The Democratic Party is losing support among key demographics they were convinced were a lock. Exit polls showed YUGE gains in support for Trump among Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters, and the left is struggling to explain why. It’s simple, really: Trump talked about jobs, immigration, and draining the swamp – things which matter most to downtrodden Americans who trust their bank-bailing government less than ever. Democrats responded by going low, branding half of America as racist and vomiting hate all the way into the election.” From here: http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/2016/11/19/the-democratic-party-is-on-life-support-after-years-of-pandering-to-minorities-and-millennials/
Clearly, all the parties’ Presidential candidates were flawed. Which leaves messaging is the key in this election.
“Exit polls showing Republican improvement among blacks, Hispanics and Asians suggest regression to the mean—people considered minorities behaving more like the national average than they had previously. The results also suggest that when you keep telling white Americans that they soon will become a minority—a message that sometimes sounds like “hurry up and die”—then many non-college-graduate “deplorables” may start acting like members of a self-conscious minority, and vote more cohesively against your own side.” From here: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-not-yet-emerging-democratic-majority/article/2607812?custom_click=rss
Republican messaging was better. Republican strategies which did not alienate portions of all constituencies, but Democratic/HRC strategy did with the “deplorable” claim.
Democratic identity politics strategy uses race (minorities), sex (women), locale (urban) and education, etc to create several minority constituents. Setting up many constituency groups fragments the messaging. It also makes it easier to pick off a few % points off several larger opponent’s constituency.
oddly enough
i think CoRev is right here, or at least has a point.
in any case the Dems failed to deliver on “hope and change” and should not have been surprised that people (humans) turn to “hate the other” and buy the lies of the dictator wannabe… especially when some Dem rhetoric (mostly from people who call themselves “progressives”) sounds an awful lot like “hate the other.”
Cob,
Right up until the point where protecting a voter’s right to vote includes white voters. Right up until the point where labor protections protect white workers. Right up to the point where (fill in the blank)
EMichael
I really didn’t get your point.
That CoRev has a point in his thoughts that the Dem Party caters to minorities.
EM
actually MY point was that the Dems failed to deliver for working class people while trying to sound oh so concerned about racism and sexism… and failing to deliver for blacks or women, other than sympathetic words, while the “progressives” run around sounding like they hate old white men and other minorities.
CoRev
EM and I have gone round and round about this. Now I have EM calling me a racists and Ryan calling me a PC fundamentalist.
As you know, I have disagreements with you also.
No wonder I’ll never be President.
Cob,
You should probably consider who has ran the US government for the vast majority of the last 36 years.
Let me know which GOP policies helped the working class. Let me know which party all but destroyed unions, and keep fighting against unions. Let me know which party is for a minimum wage increase, and which party is against it. Let me know which party is about saving, and even increasing the safety net, and which party is against it. Let me know which party is for providing education from K-College, and which is against it.
This idea that Dems are the enemy of the working class is beyond absurd
Oh, and CoRev is a racist in addition to being a climate change denier, and both facts should keep real human beings from talking to him unless of course it is an insult.
EM
you apparently never heard of “good cop bad cop.”
i have voted for the Democrat since1964. Because I believe that by voting for the lies I like best the politicians will be under some pressure to keep their credibility. Instead I got Vietnam. A President who wanted to draft women. A President who ended “welfare as we know it” and thought it was “obvious that the fix to Social Security was to raise the retirement age.” And a President who saved the banks, but not the people defrauded by the banks, and who thinks the way to fix Social Security is to cut benefits by a “technical adjustment” to the CPI.
And as far as I know Obama is still President but we have the Standing Rock demonstration that oil is more important than water.
Or, as that famous racist said, “There’s not a dimes worth of difference between them. I think he was referring to Roosevelt’s picture on the dime.
I can’t remember if CoRev is a racist, but since you call me one, and everyone else who votes against your candidate, I suppose he might be.
But I have disagreed with CoRev about climate change, and I have serious doubts about his ability to tell the difference between what makes sense and “what i want to hear.”
But he is right that people like you yelling racist in a crowded theater are not helping the Democrats win friends and influence people.
several commenters are quick to point out the Southern Strategy at the drop of the hat and even quicker to call out policy objections as being grounded in racism.
Emichael cites party support for unions and minimum wage, as examples of who is for the working class. Both of which have their sordid past in explicit or implicit racism. Some opponents of SS argue that it’s discriminatory because the expected life span of minorities is shorter than of whites. College scholarships disproportionately benefit the middle class not the lower classes.
I don’t believe that EM is racist for his policy views despite the history of many of those policies being used to disenfranchise minorities. It would be mature for run and EM to consider the same of CoRev and myself when we advocate for other policies, but perhaps that’s expecting too much.
jed:
There is no consideration for CoRev and he is making the same racist commentary as you do using the Southern Strategy as you do. He is just quicker than you in reversing the argument the same as Pollack did in distancing Steve Bannon from Breitbart. My comment stands. If you do not like it, then leave. The same applies to CoRev who is as EM called him.
You and CoRev could always “whine” to Dan; but, I am betting he will back me up and I have banned people before.
Coberly,
While I agree with your description of the many undone things that Democratic Presidential administrations have left in their wake, you need to consider that candidates offered by the Republicans either promised to do worse, or actually did do worse. Also, regardless of who sits in the White House it is essential to have the Congress to actually pass the laws needed to enact policy. Mitch McConnell said it all when he vowed to make Obama a failed President. I don’t think that McConnell was fully successful in what he promised, but just having the audacity to come right out and say that he and all of his cohorts were going to work tirelessly to obstruct a full eight years of an Administration is, in my view, virtually an act of treason.
As EMichael has pointed out, there are so many flaws in the Republican Party policy apparatus for the working middle class. Trump has wasted no time in completely coming about face and rather than cleaning up any swamp he is merely stirring the mixture flotsam and jetsam that fills that swamp. A banker’s administration abetted by a corporate counciliary. If it weren’t a portend of some truly harsh tax and regulatory revisions that are headed down the pike I’d be happy to see Trumps supporters get their just desserts even sooner than I would have expected.
Forget about the racism and who may demonstrate more or less of that characteristic. It’s only a smoke screen. It isn’t, and never has been, black or white. It’s the have too much against working America. Black and white is just a distraction because it is so easily done in our racist society. And I’m not referring to anyone’s small circle of friends.
Jack
as almost always, I agree with you almost entirely. not sure why you seem to think you are disagreeing with me.
I am well aware of the evil that is at the heart of the Republican Party. I am afraid that much of that evil has affected the Democratic brain.
Although Obama can sound very intelligent and well intentioned, I don’t see any policies that have really made a difference for the working class, and I really didn’t see any ideas from Hillary that had a chance of making a real difference. But I still voted for them because the R was worse, and in Trump’s case much, much worse… we will see.
And as far as I know, I have been the voice here pleading with people to drop the “racist” meme and figure out how to get those working class votes back for the Democratic Party where they belong.
I don’t think O can blame McConnell for everything. But in any case from the point of view of the workers, O did not help them.
That they would turn to a thug for relief is scary, but should not be surprising. People have always been this way.
Yeah, how can you possibly blame Reps for filibustering the Free Choice Act? Or for killing it in committees for 6 years?
Or how do the actions of the NLRB have any effect on labor?
Wake up and smell the roses
“The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become a lightning rod for controversy under President Obama, with its aggressive actions fueling sustained warfare between business and labor.
From the labor board’s bitter fight with Boeing, to the creation of new union election rules, the NLRB has repeatedly moved to the forefront of political debate, drawing in Congress, the White House and even the Supreme Court.
The NLRB’s latest bombshell was dropped on Thursday, when the board determined the waste management agency Browning-Ferris should be considered a “joint employer” of temporary workers.
The decision expands the definition of what it means to be an employer in the United States, and could put companies on the hook for labor violations committed by business partners and contractors.
Business groups condemned the decision, portraying it as the latest example of the NLRB blatantly favoring unions during Obama’s tenure.
“I’m pretty much amazed when unions say the Obama administration hasn’t done very much for them,” Michael Lotito, an employment and labor attorney. “There’s perhaps no labor board that has done more for organized labor than this one has.”
Beth Milito, senior legal counsel at the National Federation of Independent Business, said the labor board has “really put the wind back in the sails of unions.”
Labor unions say the actions taken by the NLRB — an independent agency — are long overdue, and have cheered the board every step of the way.
Here’s a look at five of the biggest controversies involving the NLRB during Obama’s presidency.”
http://thehill.com/regulation/labor/252232-enraging-industry-labor-board-asserts-its-power-under-obama
EM
i thought i was pretty clear what I thought about the R’s
To those not following the details, it looks like Obama has let them down.
Me, I think Obama let them down. If nothing else he wasn’t smart enough to beat them. But there is plenty of reason to think he likes the Golman Sachs way of running the country.
Your comments would profit if you could leave out the nasty cliches. I’ve been smelling the roses, or coffee, for fifty years. Also looking at the worms in the bud. And I can tell canned from home brew every time.
EM
oh, yeah. since apparently you have NOT heard of good cop bad cop it’s where the cops take the suspect into the interrogation room and the bad cop is very scary and not-nice. then the bad cop leaves the room to answer a call, and the good cop offers the mark… er, suspect… a cigarette and talks nice to him, explaining he better cooperate or the bad cop will really hurt him.
sounds like American elections to me. but I still vote for the good cop, every time.
from the point of view of those who vote for the bad cop, he is really the good cop, and the good cop is really the bad cop. to them you sound like the bad cop.
it’s that point of view thing.
“But there is plenty of reason to think he likes the Golman Sachs way of running the country.” -Cob-
And thus we have the main reason that the Gop wins elections. Progressives simply cannot figure out that there are two choices. And if by some miracle they do, they simply cannot figure out how their rhetoric depresses the enthusiasm for the side they have picked.
You could say that Obama was not aggressive enough on reigning in “goldman Sachs”. Just like you could say that Obama has not done enough for the working class. But you have to understand that both of those statements are not close to saying
“But there is plenty of reason to think he likes the Golman Sachs way of running the country.”
or
“I don’t see any policies that have really made a difference for the working class”
Neither of course is true, and the effect on people of spouting such is an incredible negative for the progressive movement. It is why we have Jill Stein with her rants, and while she did not attract many voters, I will wager she affected more people to stay home than voted for her.
BTW,
I am thinking the “goldman sachs” group were not real happy with Dodd Frank, nor were they real happy with Obama raising their marginal tax rate by 60%.
Both of those things will change under Trump and the GOP. Yet we have progressives that vote for the “good cop” comparing Obama and the Dems to Trump and the GOP.
geez
EM
the MAIN reason GOP wins elections?
apparently you haven’t heard me yelling at the progressives that they needed to vote for Hillary because Trump could win if they did not turn out.
and in general it is progressives who run around calling everybody racists and dirty old white men.
and the subtlety of “made a difference” appears to be beyond your willingness to make fine discriminations. how about “real difference” or difference TO working people… one they could perceive making a real difference in their lives?
i couldn’t figure out the logic of your last sentence.
Cob,
What I am saying is that it is not enough to tell people to show up and vote, the need is to make sure that turnout is not depressed by inaccurate criticisms of DP actions.
Some people cannot add like you can.
EM
during the fight over free speech it was evntually decided that leaving “truth” as a defense to seditious libel was not good enough. free speech had to allow even for “error” if it was to be free enough for democracy to work. proponents argued that free speech would allow truth to correct error.
i can understand your dismay at seeing error discouraging people from voting for your candidate, but i think the answer is for you to try to correct the error and not just complain in general terms about half-friends “suppressing the vote.”
i am amazed, in dispair, and even disgusted that people on “our” side did not vote against Trump whatever disappointments… real or erroneous… they may have had about Obama/Hillary.
Trump was too evil to take any chance that he might win.
Even I, no political wonk, predicted that he could win if his people turned out and ours did not.
i suspect.. probably erroneously… that those “progressives” who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary are much the same progressives who can’t bring themselves to tell workers that they could save Social Security by paying for their own Social Security (as they already do) an extra dollar per week, because “the rich” must be forced to pay “their fair share.”
the people who invented democracy knew that “the people” can’t add, so it would take something else to make it work. i don’t know that they counted on total domination of “the free press” by those with all the money.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/latinos-income-growth-business-entrepreneur-donald-trump-130106344.html
Hmmmm.
But, but, that can’t be accurate. Culture, and all, y’know.
Beverly
you sound like someone who doubts the eternal truth of statistical analysis. it’s just the math, you know.