Immigration
Mar. 28th, 2013 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akashiverGreen Card!!!
It arrived when I was at ICFA. It is, in fact, green! Apparently I'm supposed to keep it on me at all times. I'm going to ask other immigrants about this, because I don't like taking important, hard-to-replace documents with me to the gym.
Green Card!!!
As I sat down to write this post the following Guardian article popped up in my Facebook feed: Why the Left is Wrong about Immigration .
I read it with interest, obviously. And I was left scratching my head. Maybe it's because I'm in the USA rather than Britain, and I don't know Britain's cultural immigration battles that well. But as an argument I thought it was deeply flawed.
First of all, Goodhart assumes that people who support immigration do so because they subscribe to a model of global citizenship in which "they seem to feel few national attachments. Indeed, they feel no less a commitment to the welfare of someone in Burundi than they do to a fellow citizen in Birmingham."
1) In my 18C day we called this ideal "cosmopolitanism." And then, as now, only a minority of people practiced it.
2) Er, what? I haven't met these people. People who care deeply about aiding a different country - sure. Environmentalists who see themselves as inhabitants of a planet - sure. People who support immigration because nationalism is so 20thC??? Not so much.
Mind you, I live in the USA. All the Americans I know come from immigrant families at some point, and the ones who enthusiastically support immigration do so because they believe that's an essential part of their national history and identity.
In other words - nationalism and immigration support aren't incompatible. But Goodhart assumes that they are.
In the second part of this article Goodhart discovers "brain drain:"
"Desperately poor countries cannot afford to lose their most ambitious and expensively educated people... Just as rich countries can become over-dependent on immigration, which then reduces the incentive to improve the training or work ethic of hard-to-employ native citizens, so poorer countries can become over-dependent on emigration... Rich countries should be saying... we will also agree not to lure away your most skilled people..."
1) Wait. At the beginning of the article, the problem is that immigration supporters aren't selfishly nationalist enough. Now the problem is that the thing they're supporting -- immigration -- benefits their own nation at the expense of others. So... it's too nationalist? This for me is where Goodhart's argument just breaks down.
2) The old "our own citizens have 'poor work ethic'" argument... First, I doubt that's really the problem. Second, if it is, how is the government supposed to fix it? If losing "their jobs" to immigrants isn't enough to make the lazy Briton (or American) get up off the couch... what is?
As an argument against easy immigration, I give this article a C- . Being what Americans would call a "big government" person, I'm for the government exerting careful control over immigration,* but I'm anti-stupidity.
At some point I'm going to post a reflection on my immigration experience & American politics. But not today.
*P.S. Americans: Why is it that the same people who support small government and free markets tend to be the ones calling for more government control over the mobility of international laborers -- mobility that's dictated by the supply and demand of the free market?
It arrived when I was at ICFA. It is, in fact, green! Apparently I'm supposed to keep it on me at all times. I'm going to ask other immigrants about this, because I don't like taking important, hard-to-replace documents with me to the gym.
Green Card!!!
As I sat down to write this post the following Guardian article popped up in my Facebook feed: Why the Left is Wrong about Immigration .
I read it with interest, obviously. And I was left scratching my head. Maybe it's because I'm in the USA rather than Britain, and I don't know Britain's cultural immigration battles that well. But as an argument I thought it was deeply flawed.
First of all, Goodhart assumes that people who support immigration do so because they subscribe to a model of global citizenship in which "they seem to feel few national attachments. Indeed, they feel no less a commitment to the welfare of someone in Burundi than they do to a fellow citizen in Birmingham."
1) In my 18C day we called this ideal "cosmopolitanism." And then, as now, only a minority of people practiced it.
2) Er, what? I haven't met these people. People who care deeply about aiding a different country - sure. Environmentalists who see themselves as inhabitants of a planet - sure. People who support immigration because nationalism is so 20thC??? Not so much.
Mind you, I live in the USA. All the Americans I know come from immigrant families at some point, and the ones who enthusiastically support immigration do so because they believe that's an essential part of their national history and identity.
In other words - nationalism and immigration support aren't incompatible. But Goodhart assumes that they are.
In the second part of this article Goodhart discovers "brain drain:"
"Desperately poor countries cannot afford to lose their most ambitious and expensively educated people... Just as rich countries can become over-dependent on immigration, which then reduces the incentive to improve the training or work ethic of hard-to-employ native citizens, so poorer countries can become over-dependent on emigration... Rich countries should be saying... we will also agree not to lure away your most skilled people..."
1) Wait. At the beginning of the article, the problem is that immigration supporters aren't selfishly nationalist enough. Now the problem is that the thing they're supporting -- immigration -- benefits their own nation at the expense of others. So... it's too nationalist? This for me is where Goodhart's argument just breaks down.
2) The old "our own citizens have 'poor work ethic'" argument... First, I doubt that's really the problem. Second, if it is, how is the government supposed to fix it? If losing "their jobs" to immigrants isn't enough to make the lazy Briton (or American) get up off the couch... what is?
As an argument against easy immigration, I give this article a C- . Being what Americans would call a "big government" person, I'm for the government exerting careful control over immigration,* but I'm anti-stupidity.
At some point I'm going to post a reflection on my immigration experience & American politics. But not today.
*P.S. Americans: Why is it that the same people who support small government and free markets tend to be the ones calling for more government control over the mobility of international laborers -- mobility that's dictated by the supply and demand of the free market?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-03-28 07:24 pm (UTC)Because they're not really in favor of small government or free markets. Really, they're pro-capital. As such, they do all they can to disempower labor. This is one of the reasons, though not, I think, the main one, that they also favor government interference in my reproductive system.
I sound like my father. But sometimes he's right.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-28 07:42 pm (UTC)On the 'right' losely speaking I see three clumps:
big business: favors low government controls on them, easy immigration, for cheap labor
social conservatives/Religious Right: favors low government on business for reasons unclear to me (perhaps related to opposition to Godless Communism, or the history of the South), stronger government on sex, generally hostile to immigration of Those People.
libertarians: favor low government controls on everything, including immigration, because they actually believe that's moral.
Honest to god libertarians aren't that common, so it's mostly Big Business vs. nativist "America for God-Fearing Americans".
Krugman had a nice division:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/the-curious-politics-of-immigration/
no subject
Date: 2013-03-29 12:25 am (UTC)Legal immigrants have traditionally voted progressively and have traditionally powered many union organization efforts. But the US wants the cheap labor. So what's the solution for the right?
It is to the advantage of business owners to maintain a pool of workers who cannot legally organize, cannot demand the protections legally afforded to workers by the state, have such limited opportunities for advancement that they have to take whatever jobs are offered, cannot vote in order to advance their interests, and cannot access welfare, disability, unemployment benefits. In other words, undocumented immigrants.
The point isn't to halt immigration. The point is to maintain and increase the number of immigrants whose presence in the US is illegal.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-29 01:32 pm (UTC)Also, re: illegal immigration: to keep up the number of "free" taxpayers, who pay taxes but are afraid to use the facilities their tax dollars are funding.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-29 02:22 pm (UTC)And yes to the taxpayer thing as well.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-30 05:21 pm (UTC)