Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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Pointedstick
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Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

Post by Pointedstick »

Today's Fred On Everything column introduced me to a couple of really excellent internet sources of alternative, long-form, intellectually challenging news and analysis. In one of them, I found this absolute bombshell of an article. It is a very long and rigorous piece, but I highly recommend the whole thing for anyone who is remotely interested in the subjects of immigration, race, and crime. Once I got to the sections I've excerpted, it felt like all the puzzle pieces suddenly fit into place.

http://www.unz.com/article/race-and-crime-in-america/

(highlighting mine)
America’s ruling financial, media, and political elites are largely concentrated in three major urban centers—New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—and all three have contained large black populations, including a violent underclass. During the early 1990s, many observers feared New York City was headed for urban collapse due to its enormously high crime rates, Los Angeles experienced the massive and deadly Rodney King Riots, and Washington often vied for the title of American homicide capital. In each city, the violence and crime were overwhelmingly committed by black males, and although white elites were rarely the victims, their fears were quite palpable.

One obvious reaction to these concerns was strong political support for a massive national crackdown on crime, and the prison incarceration of black men increased by almost 500% during the two decades after 1980. But even after such enormous rates of imprisonment, official FBI statistics indicate that blacks today are still over 600% as likely to commit homicide than non-blacks and their robbery rate is over 700% larger; these disparities seem just as high with respect to Hispanic or Asian immigrants as they are for whites. Thus, replacing a city’s blacks with immigrants would tend to lower local crime rates by as much as 90%, and during the 1990s American elites may have become increasingly aware of this important fact, together with the obvious implications for their quality of urban life and housing values.

According to Census data, between 1990 and 2010 the number of Hispanics and Asians increased by one-third in Los Angeles, by nearly 50% in New York City, and by over 70% in Washington, D.C. The inevitable result was to squeeze out much of the local black population, which declined, often substantially, in each location. And all three cities experienced enormous drops in local crime, with homicide rates falling by 73%, 79%, and 72% respectively, perhaps partly as a result of these underlying demographic changes. Meanwhile, the white population increasingly shifted toward the affluent, who were best able to afford the sharp rise in housing prices. It is an undeniable fact that American elites, conservative and liberal alike, are today almost universally in favor of very high levels of immigration, and their possible recognition of the direct demographic impact upon their own urban circumstances may be an important but unspoken factor in shaping their views.

[...]

But consider that support for very high levels of foreign immigration is an impeccably liberal cause, and such policies inevitably displace and remove huge numbers of urban blacks; it is easy to imagine that Yglesias quietly redoubled his pro-immigration zeal in the wake of the incident. Multiply this personal example a thousand-fold, and perhaps an important strand of the tremendous pro-immigration ideological framework of American elites becomes apparent. The more conspiratorially-minded racialists, bitterly hostile to immigration, sometimes speculate that there is a diabolical plot by our ruling power structure to “race-replace”? America’s traditional white population. Perhaps a hidden motive along these lines does indeed help explain some support for heavy immigration, but I suspect that the race being targeted for replacement is not the white one.

[...]

Indeed, the strong support of our political elites for Section 8 housing vouchers may be less connected with any alleged social benefits these provide than with their important role in moving large numbers of impoverished urban residents away from the near vicinity of wealthy neighborhoods out into the remote suburbs of the middle class. Several years ago the Atlantic published a major article by Hanna Rosin on the rapid changes in the geographical pattern of crime induced by these demographic shifts, and the piece provoked much discussion even though the author avoided unduly emphasizing the troubling racial aspects. Elite selfishness is hardly surprising and a policy of exporting those populations with a strong link to crime into other localities seems a natural strategy, especially if this can be accomplished under the altruistic guise of socially-uplifting anti-poverty programs.

[...]

On rare occasions, the mask slips and the underlying mental workings of our national elites are momentarily revealed. Consider New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of our most vocal pro-immigration voices on the national stage and a man whose vast wealth and influence often allow him to be far more candid on controversial topics than most other public figures. In May 2011 Bloomberg was interviewed on Meet the Press, and explained that if he had full authority, he could easily fix the seemingly insoluble problems of a city like Detroit at no cost to the taxpayer. He proposed opening wide the floodgates to unlimited foreign immigration on the condition that all the additional immigrants moved to Detroit and lived there for a decade or so, thereby transforming the city. I suspect this provides an important insight into how he and his friends discuss certain racial issues in private.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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I wouldn't call these excerpts "rigorous"; it reeks of a pompous blowhard's paranoid conspiracy theory.
It is an undeniable fact that American elites, conservative and liberal alike, are today almost universally in favor of very high levels of immigration, and their possible recognition of the direct demographic impact upon their own urban circumstances may be an important but unspoken factor in shaping their views.
Conservative elites are in favor of high levels of immigation?  Hello???
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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MachineGhost wrote: I wouldn't call these excerpts "rigorous"; it reeks of a pompous blowhard's paranoid conspiracy theory.
I mostly excerpted sections after the part where the author presents evidence and does statistical regressions, as they're less interesting to read. But they support the sections I excerpted. Again, it's an article that I think is worth reading.
MachineGhost wrote: Conservative elites are in favor of high levels of immigation?  Hello???
Business leaders and many politicians, like Jeb Bush, who we are discussing in another thread... Maybe not "conservative" as in "tea party" but the mainstream right-of-center elites definitely seem to agree with the leftist elites on immigration nowadays.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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Okay, I'm halfway through the article.  Color me impressed.  This is just damning to black people.
And for these campaigns, the racial lines are clearly established, with the modern Republicans being the “white party,”? drawing over 90% of their support from that demographic group, while over 90% of blacks regularly vote the Democratic ticket, which also usually attracts the overwhelming majority of other non-white voters.
Is this just semantics?  Because there's no way Republicans get 90% of the white vote with pro-choice white women voting Democrat.

Looks like craigr is wrong with his immigration hypothesis:
Indeed, although restrictionists routinely denounce that legislation for having flooded America with Hispanic immigrants, the facts are precisely the opposite. While the 1924 Immigration Act had drastically curtailed immigration from Europe (and Asia), the entire Western Hemisphere was totally exempted, and the U.S. retained its previous “open borders”? policy for Mexico and the rest of Latin America until strict quotas were finally introduced as part of the 1965 law.
So I guess the $64K question is now that this Immigration-Gentrification has been going on for decades to the point of transferring black crime to their own private enclaves where they do it to each other, do we as non-blacks really need to care???  My "liberal" radical tolerance stops at criminality.

The only thing bugging me is he didn't appear to account for the abortion effect.  But if the crime was still continuing to rise or stayed high after the mid-1990's how to explain the disparity between these results and that of Freakconomics?

Another thing I just learned that is really interesting is that a whopping 64.5% of black men have "The Warrior Gene" where they have above average levels of adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin.  The very worst allele of the gene is represented in black men 5500% more than in whites.  Ladies, hold on tight to your purses! 
Last edited by MachineGhost on Sun Dec 07, 2014 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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I just got through the entire article.  Truly eye opening!  Everybody, please do go and read it.

One oft-repeated theme struck me:  the author kept saying that "black removal/replacement" was an effect of heavy Hispanic immigration.  I don't believe that's the case; the black population stays put, but is diminished only percentage-wise by the influx of new immigrants.  I wonder if "black removal" hasn't been more due to the high rate of incarceration.  Not only does it take all those black males out of the picture, but they also aren't fathering children.

I also wondered why the article ignored the "Freakonomics" factor - i.e. a carefully researched thesis that access to abortion was a major factor in the crime drop, and far more significant than police tactics.  I do wish the author had taken a biostatistics course, where he would have learned about regression analysis for addressing multiple related factors.  Wish he'd taken his analysis of NYC one step farther and done that...it is interesting that the crime rates here are so low despite the presence of a large underclass, and it may or may not be the case that NYC's policing innovations explain all of that.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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WiseOne wrote: One oft-repeated theme struck me:  the author kept saying that "black removal/replacement" was an effect of heavy Hispanic immigration.  I don't believe that's the case; the black population stays put, but is diminished only percentage-wise by the influx of new immigrants.  I wonder if "black removal" hasn't been more due to the high rate of incarceration.  Not only does it take all those black males out of the picture, but they also aren't fathering children.
Yes, and I think he mentions that they are only "removed" from the perspective of elites who live in cities with large black underclass population, where "removal" means "they become somebody else's problem." It's also interesting that dilution with new hispanics and Asians doesn't actually seem to be effective in actually reducing the percentage of blacks on a national level; as of today, the percentage of Americans who are black is 12.6%; it was 12.1% in 2000. Perhaps it has been successful in reducing the growth of this number, though. And as the author points out, hispanics and Asians have levels of criminality that are equal to or lower than those of whites. Whites definitely seem to get along better with hispanics and especially Asians--and especially among the elite.

And yeah, this also explains the heavy black incarceration. In a way, jailing as many black men as possible for as long a time as possible is sort of the only way to durably remove them from American society without killing them or putting them all on busses or boats and kicking them out of the USA. And killing them works too; you just amp up police tactics and hope nobody notices or cares.

It's all pretty depressing, but the truth often is. :(
Last edited by Pointedstick on Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

Post by Lowe »

Pointedstick wrote:
MachineGhost wrote: Conservative elites are in favor of high levels of immigation?  Hello???
Business leaders and many politicians, like Jeb Bush, who we are discussing in another thread... Maybe not "conservative" as in "tea party" but the mainstream right-of-center elites definitely seem to agree with the leftist elites on immigration nowadays.
Economic elites mostly support increased immigration, regardless of the party they support.  Sheldon Adelson comes to mind.  Elites are also mostly left-wing, anyway.  Once you climb the ladder, you kick it away.
Simonjester wrote: i suspect the (both party) establishment support of open borders is less about racism or crime than it is about being able to "gruber" ...all the public all the time... or at least a majority of the public all the time. Its about dumbing down and lowering the education level, and especially the american civics level of enough voters that they can continue to do the will of the special interests (military industrial, banksters, prison/police-state industrial, and big business) who pay to get them elected and pay for their control of the policies...
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

Post by Jwinders »

WiseOne wrote:
I also wondered why the article ignored the "Freakonomics" factor - i.e. a carefully researched thesis that access to abortion was a major factor in the crime drop, and far more significant than police tactics.  I do wish the author had taken a biostatistics course, where he would have learned about regression analysis for addressing multiple related factors.  Wish he'd taken his analysis of NYC one step farther and done that...it is interesting that the crime rates here are so low despite the presence of a large underclass, and it may or may not be the case that NYC's policing innovations explain all of that.
My impression from reading around interested authors is that the claims in freakonomics generally and the abortion theory specifically were not quite as carefully researched as levitt claimed.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113314261192407815 (you may need to google the title "Freakonomics' Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists").  Also Steve Sailer has had a lot to say about the matter.

but if you know differently i would certainly be interested in hearing about it.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

Post by WiseOne »

I suggest reading the Freakonomics book directly.  The research & numbers are all reported there.  The only fault I detected could be said for the unz.com article as well: there may have been other contributed factors that were not evaluated.  I suspect a lot of the objections & furor raised over that conclusion was motivated by deep-seated religious beliefs surrounding abortion.
Simonjester wrote: Economic elites mostly support increased immigration, regardless of the party they support.  Sheldon Adelson comes to mind.
This is true, although I think the reasons are different from what is stated in the article and the ensuing posts, and it's quite simple:  CHEAP LABOR.  This is CraigR's thesis and I think he's correct about this.  Without all those Hispanic immigrants, hotels and meat packing plants would have to hire more Americans, and the resulting competition for labor would drive up wages, benefits, working conditions etc.  This in turn would drive up costs and lead to a wage-price spiral, so I guess you have to pick your poison.

Wow, I just now realized something:  Don't stop buying those 30 year Treasuries as long as the flood of immigrants from Latin America continues.  It amounts to a persistent deflationary force.

BTW...how do you define "elite"?  I'm probably technically one of them and so are many of us here on this forum.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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WiseOne wrote: BTW...how do you define "elite"?  I'm probably technically one of them and so are many of us here on this forum.
It's all pretty subjective, but I imagine that it probably involves a lot more political and social power to shape events than most people like us have. In addition to living in NYC or LA, you should probably also have a net worth of several million dollars, own a powerful firm that employs a lot of people and produces media of some sort, have been interviewed on TV news, have written a memoir, be on the board of one or more foundations, think tanks, or nonprofits, know many politicians in your family and personal social network, be a current or former politician, etc.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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Ah got it.  Not it!  ;D
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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Just let me know where I can sign up for Team Them.  Not that you guys aren't great.  :)
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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Lowe wrote: Just let me know where I can sign up for Team Them.  Not that you guys aren't great.  :)
I'm one of them.  Join us.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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WiseOne wrote: BTW...how do you define "elite"?  I'm probably technically one of them and so are many of us here on this forum.
I would say they are the Super-Rich Statists.  In a position to influence and broadly profit from public policy.  I aim to join the ranks some day.

Okay, it looks like we can put the "abortion effect" to bed now.  Great find, PS!  There's a lesson in there about highly popular fad authors and sloppy research.  And I'm sure the anti-abortionists will be so pleased. ::)
Last edited by MachineGhost on Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Immigration: it all makes perfect sense now.

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MachineGhost wrote: Okay, it looks like we can put the "abortion effect" to bed now.  Great find, PS!  There's a lesson in there about highly popular fad authors and sloppy research.
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