{"id":8160,"date":"2018-02-03T23:39:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T05:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=8160"},"modified":"2018-02-05T11:00:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T17:00:43","slug":"do-we-need-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/02\/do-we-need-immigrants.html","title":{"rendered":"Do we need immigrants?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6165\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/03\/ITALIAN_IMMIGRANTS_1905_ELLIS_ISLAND_NY.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"359\" height=\"637\"><\/p>\n<p>In my twitter feed this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">if you think robust immigration is necessary for growth, Russia is bad, the FBI is good, democratic norms should be respected you'll need to leave the GOP or the GOP will need to rid itself of virtually all its elected leaders<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jen 'now @jenrubin9' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JRubinBlogger\/status\/959803469543723009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">February 3, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>which got me to thinking about her claim, \u201crobust immigration is necessary for growth\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>In the first place, I suspect, though admittedly without digging out the data today, that what\u2019s being claimed as \u201cimmigrants cause economic growth\u201d is really \u201ca growing\u00a0economy is a magnet for immigrants\u201d; in other words, that the causation runs in the other direction.\u00a0 In a recent column, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/01\/29\/opinion\/east-germany-immigration-usa.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">David Brooks claimed<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>About 500 counties, mostly in metro areas, have embraced diversity \u2014 attracting immigrants and supporting candidates who favor immigration. About 2,600 counties, mostly in rural areas, have not attracted immigrants, and they tend to elect candidates who oppose immigration and diversity.<\/p>\n<p>. . . Between 2014 and 2016 the counties that embrace diversity accounted for 72 percent of the nation\u2019s increased economic output and two-thirds of the new jobs. The approximately 85 percent of counties that support restrictionists like Donald Trump accounted for a measly 28 percent of the growth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Never mind that the math is goofy because not all counties have equivalent population, and, as we all saw from those maps of votes for Trump vs. Clinton by congressional district, there are enough sparsely populated, pro-Trump areas as to make it visually appear as if Trump won the majority of the country, when the loss of the votes in the densely populated urban areas produced a very close vote instead.<\/p>\n<p>But beyond that \u2014 well, consider Detroit.\u00a0 Detroit\u2019s boosters are very eager to welcome immigrants \u2014 they celebrate their positive contributions and, indeed, the greater Detroit area, especially Dearborn and Hamtramck, is a popular destination for Arabs.\u00a0 But the jobs which, elsewhere, are filled by immigrants, are filled in the Detroit area by poor Detroiters, taking buses out to the suburbs.\u00a0 The immigrants are not coming because there is no \u201cpull factor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other claims of \u201ceconomic growth\u201d really seem to be the trivial statement that, the more people there are living and working in a given locality, the higher its total GDP will be.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the claim made, for instance, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/06\/opinion\/sunday\/to-be-great-again-america-needs-immigrants.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">New York Times<\/a>, when Ruchir Sharma argued bluntly that economic growth comes directly from population growth, and that America therefore needs immigrants in order to grow its population, and, consequently, its GDP.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since 2005, per capita gross domestic product has grown on average by 0.6 percent a year in the United States, exactly the same rate as in Japan and virtually the same rate as in the 19 nations of the eurozone. In other words, if it weren\u2019t for the boost from babies and immigrants, the United States economy would look much like those supposed laggards, Europe and Japan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And, when you look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/data.worldbank.org\/indicator\/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=JP-KR-CA-US\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">World Bank\u2019s charts<\/a>\u00a0on the subject, it doesn\u2019t really seem obvious to me that low-immigration countries such as Korea and Japan are mired in stagnation or decline.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it\u2019s considered an established fact that immigrants boost the economy because they have more energy, entrepreneurship, vitality, drive, determination, grit, and so on.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Kristie de Pe\u00f1a at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolicy.com\/articles\/2017\/05\/13\/america_needs_immigrants_110245.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Real Clear Policy<\/a> last year:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Countries with higher levels of immigration do better than those that close their borders. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada take in the most immigrants worldwide and have the strongest economies. By comparison, even historically wealthy countries such as Japan have been struggling for nearly a decade with a steadily declining workforce and an aging population because they do not accept immigrants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In fact, according to the World Bank charts, Japan\u2019s GDP per capita continues to increase.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, to claim, \u201crobust immigration is necessary for growth,\u201d pretty much has a corollary:\u00a0 countries without \u201crobust immigration\u201d cannot grow.\u00a0 Which further says that countries which are experiencing high levels of emigration will be doomed to stagnation, even though they are precisely the countries which urgently need growth, to lift themselves out of poverty.\u00a0 Does this make any sense? Why bother with development, then?\u00a0 Why not just say that these sh**hole countries are nothing but people-farms, forever doomed to poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there\u2019s a toned-down version of the pro-immigration argument.\u00a0 Either immigrants are meant to remedy the decline in population because we otherwise won\u2019t have enough workers to fund the care the elderly need, or developed-world societies are too complacent and need immigrants to remedy the complacency.<\/p>\n<p>But the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2015\/10\/05\/future-immigration-will-change-the-face-of-america-by-2065\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">latest Pew forecast<\/a> predicts an increase in population of over 1\/3 by 2065, from 324 to 441 million, based on current immigration patterns. Is this the right amount of growth?\u00a0 Too much?\u00a0 Too little?\u00a0 Is there an end point to population growth?\u00a0 It seems to have become taboo to ask this.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Image:\u00a0\u00a0By Lewis W. Hine(Life time: 1874-1940) \u2013 Original publication: Photo-studyImmediate source: Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=51292180<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my twitter feed this morning: which got me to thinking about her claim, \u201crobust immigration is necessary for growth\u201d: In the first place, I suspect, though admittedly without digging out the data today, that what\u2019s being claimed as \u201cimmigrants cause economic growth\u201d is really \u201ca growing\u00a0economy is a magnet for immigrants\u201d; in other words, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-8160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-immigration"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Do we need immigrants?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In my twitter feed this morning: which got me to thinking about her claim, &quot;robust immigration is necessary for growth&quot;: In the first place, I suspect,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/02\/do-we-need-immigrants.html\" \/>\n<meta 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