The Meaning of Murders in Mexico.

Posted on July 6, 2021 by jsh54

Steven Pinker is a big believer that things have been getting better for humanity in many ways for a long time. At the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, you could look at Central and South America for signs of progress.[1] At the start of the century, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) finally yielded its monopoly on political power in favor of multi-party democracy.

From 1929 to 2000, the PRI deployed patronage to hold power. Along the way, as in any other one-party state, corruption became endemic. Obviously, in retrospect, one of the most important tasks of post-PRI government would be to build up honest and competent public administration right from the base to the peak of government. It was going to take time.

Mexico turned out not to have any time. At the same time that Mexico moved toward multi-party democracy, another improvements took place. Columbia won its long war against drug cartels. Mexican crime gangs who had served as conduits for Columbian drugs now took over production as well. Then they fought each other—and any interlopers—for control of the trade. Along the way, policemen, prosecutors, and judges “on the pad”[2] became a valuable resource. This happened just as Mexico tried to abandon the PRI’s policies. Now a “vacuum of corruption” sent public officials in search of new patrons.

The drug cartels appeared invulnerable to the normal justice system. The “narcos” even began to become celebrated public figures.[3] In 2006, the Michoacan cartel let loose a carnival of highly public, grisly killings. Also in 2006, Felipe Calderon squeaked through a close election to become president of Mexico. Calderon decided to fight the drug cartels as hard as possible. Knowing that the local police and courts were in the pockets of the cartels (and that they were incapable from long habit in any case), Calderon opted for a response from the national level. Resources were diverted from local government to the military, which had the firepower to shoot it out with the gangs. The government targeted the cartels’ leaders.

It worked—up to a point. Cartels were de-capitated over and over again. Factions formed and succession battles blazed in the streets. However, the younger and wilder new drug lords led smaller gangs than had the older cartel chiefs. They had less cash piled up; they had fewer connections with cops and judges; their connections to suppliers and distribution networks were thinner. Many of them got pushed out of the business. These losers in the Jurassic Park of Mexican drug dealing branched out into other forms of violent crime. Kidnappings for ransom, armed robberies, and extortion all rose sharply. This pushed the war between drug gangs and between the gangs and the government into the lives of ordinary civilians.

All across Mexico the government is losing not just the war against crime, but the war for its own survival. Popular revulsion against the corruption and ineffectiveness of the government is leading to gangs becoming the effective government in many places. Or it is leading to private self-defense initiatives—militias, security contractors, lynchings–that ask nothing of the state.

A failing state on the southern border should deeply concern citizens of the United States.

[1] Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “Mexico’s Record Violence Is a Crisis 20 Years in the Making,” NYT, 29 October 2017.

[2] Old NYPD parlance for crooked cops. See: Peter Maas, Serpico (1973).

[3] See for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcocorrido

The White Russians in Shanghai.

Posted on December 22, 2020 by jsh54

In this anomalous city, the White Russians occupied an anomalous position. They were a vitalizing, but disruptive, element. The First World War coincided with–if it did not create–a marked change in the social life of foreign residents in the Shanghai settlements. Before the war the foreigners, the English especially, ordered their lives around afternoon carriage-rides on Bubbling Well Road, massive meals of over-cooked food, evenings of bridge, and social events at the various nationally-based clubs. There was a golf course and stables and tennis courts for the week-ends. After the war, movies, cabarets, and a much more frantic night-life seemed to take over.[i] Many of the Russian émigrés bore with them into exile a very high level of culture and intellectual achievement. Consequently, they greatly enlivened the colonial cultural backwater of “Western” Shanghai. Music, theater, and dance all flourished with the coming of the Russians.[ii] At the same time, White Russians ran many of the nightclubs, cabarets, and restaurants in foreign Shanghai. As the nightlife grew more extravagant, more settled people tended to blame the White Russians for any trouble that arose.[iii]

The White Russians were losers in a larger community of winners. Unlike the other Westerners in Shanghai in the Twenties, the White Russians were not there by positive choice. They were refugees, with the largest group arriving in 1923 after the evacuation of Vladivostok. After 1921 they lacked the protection of extraterritoriality enjoyed by the British, French, and Americans, and were subject to the Mixed Court headed by a Chinese magistrate assisted by Western “assessors.[iv] Some among them were not merely losers, but were also the fallen. The prevalence of prostitution among White Russian women is probably much over-stated, but in the popular mind “’Russian girl’ came to mean ‘Caucasian harlot’ in the tenderloin lingo of Harbin, Shanghai, and Kobe.”[v] In addition, there was the problem of alcoholism. Valentin Fedoulenko recalled that “our one big sorrow was that there were many people who had been used to living in a certain rather prosperous way of life and who had found themselves suddenly in terrible conditions and had begun to drink very heavily. During the first ten years we had a terrible problem of drunkenness among our Russian colony in Shanghai. This was our great sorrow. This period, until they all died of drunkenness, we had a horrible time with them….They would die very frequently right on the streets, dropping themselves completely to the level of the Chinese and worse…..”[vi] Impoverished, stateless white people presented a problem for the British, French, and Americans who inhabited the “concessions.” The Western domination of Asian peoples depended a good deal upon their prestige, the sense of superiority over the Chinese that they conveyed. The other Westerners regarded the Russians as improvident and untrustworthy, fit only to be shunned, pitied, and despised.[vii] One White Russian refugee recalled the state of mind in October 1922, when the last White forces evacuated Vladivostok. “The atmosphere was such that we were getting ourselves loaded on the ships and God knew where we would end up. We had no plans, only that we could leave and go any place so as to escape the Bolsheviks. Outside of that we had no plans. Whatever would be in the future, anything would be better than to be caught by them.”[viii]

[i] Feuerwerker, The Foreign Establishment in China, p. 6.

[ii] Harriet Sergeant, Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures, 1918-1939 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1990), p. 34.

[iii] Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire, p. 73.

[iv] Ibid, pp. 6, 41, 29-30. The Mixed Court dealt with Chinese charged with crimes or engaged in civil suits, either among themselves or with foreigners, and with foreigners who did not enjoy extraterritorial protection, all within the settlements. It was headed by a Chinese magistrate, but that magistrate was effectively under the supervision of the Shanghai Municipal Council (a western institution) and westerners sat as “assessors” on all cases.

[v] Stephan, The Russian Fascists, p. 8. See Fedoulenko. Michael Miller has observed of the mind of the French public that, thanks to popular literature during the inter-war period, “Around ‘les femmes russes de Shanghai’ grew up a certain literature–pornographic, cheaply sentimental, and laden with the specter of white decline in the Orient.” Miller, Shanghai on the Metro, p. 246.

[vi] Fedoulenko, “Russian Émigré Life in Shanghai,” pp. 52-53.

[vii] Sergeant, Shanghai, pp. 38, 39.

[viii] Fedoulenko, “Russian Émigré Life in Shanghai,” p. 45.

Cyprus 15 May 2019.

Posted on May 16, 2019 by jsh54

In 1453, Constantinople—the capital of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire—fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Turks already had conquered most of mainland Greece, so all that remained was to conquer the outlying islands. Cyprus fell in 1571 and Crete followed in 1669. As part of their pacification of Cyprus, the Ottomans resettled about 30,000 Turks on the island. From the heights of their power, the Ottomans went into a long, slow, and humiliating decline. Barbarism and incompetence became the hallmarks of their rule. “Inter-communal” hostilities sank deep roots. Turks and Greeks hated each other. In 1878, Britain got the island away from the Ottomans.

During the 1950s–when the “Empire on which the sun never sets” was having gin and tonic in the back garden as dusk advanced—Greeks and Turks on Cyprus began to strike at each other and at the British. Both Greece and Turkey coveted the soon-to-be-independent island. So, blood stained the Fifties and Sixties in Cyprus.[1] Then the conflict heated up again in the 1970ss and 1980s. Vendetta became a cultural value and killers became respected men.

You wouldn’t recognize modern Cyprus. Tourism, banking, and maritime shipping are the pillars supporting its economy. The country has pulled in an estimated 60,000 workers from South East Asia. They come from the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India. They aren’t “crazy rich Asians.” Mostly they are poor women from counties that haven’t yet caught the tide of Capitalist progress. Old ways die hard. Sometimes the old intersects the new.

Mary Rose Tiburcio (c.1980-2018) grew up in the Philippines. She got married and had a child, but her marriage did not work out. Like many other Filipinas, Tiburcio moved to Cyprus along with her young daughter. Most come to work as domestic help: maids and cleaning women, and waitresses. Lonely and over-loaded with cares, she joined an on-line dating site.

In May 2018, both went missing. Well, no big deal: the Cypriot police have 80 unsolved missing person cases that run back as far as 1990. Perhaps they just left Cyprus for work on a cruise ship or went to some other country in search of better work.

Then, in mid-April 2019, a German tourist saw something unusual and notified the police. The police found Tiburcio’s body in a flooded mine-shaft. They also found another body, that of Arian Palanas Lozano (1990-2018). Then they found more bodies in a lake.

The police back-tracked through Ms. Tiburcio’s internet connections. One name that popped up an awful lot of times was that of a 35 year-old Army captain. He was questioned and eventually confessed to seven murders. No one thinks that that toll will stop there. As a result of his confession, police found the body of a Nepalese woman buried on a military firing-range.[2]

This sad case illustrates some of the features of contemporary globalization. Even among the rapidly-developing economies of South Asia, many people—especially women—get left out. Huge numbers of people—many of them women from less developed areas–migrate in search of a better life. Whether legal or illegal migrants, they perform essential, menial tasks and are prey to many kinds of abuse. Finally, the “sending” countries have neither the means nor the inclination to protect their citizens abroad. They are in the wind.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypriot_intercommunal_violence.

[2] “Cyprus in Shock After a String of Killings,” NYT, 28 April 2019; Megan Specia, “Authorities in Cyprus Face Reckoning After Migrant Workers’ Killings,” NYT, 3 May 2019.

Curmudgeon Me 2.

Posted on March 18, 2019 by jsh54

Nancy Pelosi rules out impeachment as “not worth the trouble” unless Robert Mueller’s investigation found evidence of actual high crimes and misdemeanors.[1] Mueller has not yet filed his report or possible final indictments. He might report evidence of impeachable offensives by President Donald Trump, although Department of Justice opinion seems to hold that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Attorney General William Barr might release the report or a summary of it, or he might not. Not releasing it would make me suspect that Mueller reported impeachable offenses and Barr sought to cover for him.

On the other hand, Attorney General Barr is a long-time mainstream Republican, as are most of the Republican Senators. What would damage the long-term interests of the Republican Party more, impeaching Trump and replacing him with Mike Pence or covering-up impeachable offenses and then having them revealed as soon as a Democrat becomes Attorney General?

What Speaker Pelosi may have been doing is trying to warn fellow Democrats that she doubts that Mueller will report either “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russkies or “obstruction of justice.”[2] What Mueller has achieved so far has been to get the National Security Agency to tell him who were the Russian hackers, then to indict them; to convict George Papadopoulos for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians; to convict Paul Manafort for financial crimes committed before he became Trump’s campaign manager and for tampering with witnesses to avoid subsequent prosecution; to indict Rick Gates, Manafort’s assistant in the financial crimes, and Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen; and to get Michael Flynn to co-operate. So, it looks like we are waiting on what has been learned from Flynn and anything that Cohen said in secret that he did not say in public testimony. I don’t know what that will be.

Brenton Tarrant, the accused New Zealand gun-man, was a fat boy child of divorced parents who lived with his father, didn’t like school, and acted out in non-violent ways.[3] Apparently, he was bullied in school. Also, “he was a heavy-metal fan.”[4] In short, pretty run of the mill kind of victim-kid in any high school. They rarely turn into mass murderers. If they did, most of us would already be dead. Then, he changed. After escaping high-school, he remade himself physically. He lost a lot of weight through changes in diet and exercise, and became a personal trainer at a local gym. Again, nothing extraordinary here. Men’s Health is full of stories of similar constructive transformations.[5] No one recalls him as violent or white nationalist. Then he went off to travel the world. Yet again, nothing extraordinary. British and European youth hostels are full of young Australians and New Zealanders come from the far side of the world. Same is probably true of Asia.

It looks like he was “radicalized” during his travels. This will take more digging than ordinary journalists can do. Wait a year for the story in the New Yorker.

[1] Peter Baker and Emily Cochrane, “Ruling Out Impeachment May Set Far-Reaching Precedent,” NYT, 13 March 2019.

[2] JMO, but it would be hard to call defending yourself against James Comey “obstruction of justice” if there is no underlying crime. I’m sure that I’m wrong, but there it is.

[3] Isabella Kwai, “Shock and Disgust in Christchurch Suspect’s Hometown,” NYT, 17 March 2019.

[4] Aha!

[5] Look at the “Belly Off” series for numerous examples.

Rising Tide.

Posted on March 15, 2019 by jsh54

In the 1840s, two republics contended for power in the southwestern quadrant of North America. In 1846, Mexico and the United States went to war over the issue. The United States inflicted a catastrophic defeat on Mexico. As prize of war, the United States got California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Plus the Republic of Texas was allowed to join the United States. In 1853, the United States “purchased” the Gadsden Strip from a chastened Mexico.

Until 1924, the United States pursued a policy of “open borders.”[1] That meant millions of Southern and Eastern Europeans could migrate to the USA. Big industrial cities in the East and the Midwest filled up. It also meant that there were no restriction on cross-border movements in the Southwest. Many Mexicans migrated northward toward the more dynamic economy of the United States.

Then came the Depression, which decreased wages in both Mexico and the United States.[2] When the United States entered the Second World War, the American economy began a long boom. Between 1944 and 1966, 5 million “braceros” (Mexican temporary workers) came to the United States. Not all of them went back. By 1969 an estimated 540,000 illegal immigrants were working in the United States. That number increased markedly in the 1970s and 1980s. The economy of Mexico slumped far more than did that of the neighboring United States. By 1986, perhaps 3.2 million illegals were living in the United States. Mostly they were doing work that ordinary American citizens would not do. Hard, dirty, and for long hours.

In 1979, the Carter Administration (1977-1981) proposed building a border wall. In contrast, inn1986, the Reagan Administration supported an Immigration Reform and Control Act that granted amnesty to 2.7 million of the illegals.

Under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations, it was back to “get tough.” From a dozen miles of fence between San Diego and Tijuana, the amount of fence grew to 560 miles after 9/11. In 2000, 1.6 million illegals were caught at or near the border. Then the Obama Administration added 137 miles of fence for a total of 697 miles of fence on the 1,954 mile-long Mexican-American border. Purportedly, improvements in the Mexican economy then reduced the migration of Mexicans.[3] In 2017, the Border Control arrested only 310,000 illegals. So, triumph without a—full–wall!

The recent border “crisis” arises from different sources. Many Central American countries are collapsing under the weight of gang violence and mis-government. Whole families are migrating and presenting themselves as “refugees” at US points-of-entry.

However, people crossing the Sonoran desert is a peripheral issue in so far as illegal immigration is concerned. In 2017 alone, 700,000 people obtained US tourist visas and then over-stayed their visas. They just disappeared into the American hinterland.[4] That is better than half of all the illegals.

Why should Central Americans get priority while Asians, Africans, and Muslims wait? “It’s a serious question.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vInFuLgwR1U

[1] From 1882, the United States did try to limit immigration by Asians to the Pacific Coast.

[2] “A history of the southern border,” The Week, 8 February 2019, p. 11.

[3] The huge slump in the American economy—the “Great Recession”—may also have had something to do with it.

[4] This was basically the story with the 9/11 hijackers.

Migration.

Posted on December 22, 2018 by jsh54

The United States began limiting immigration in 1924. The United States currently has an estimated 11-12 million illegal immigrants living in the country. The United States admits 950,000-1 million legal immigrants each year. Both of those realities have become the centers of political contention. Pro-foreign-life people argue that immigration is vital for America’s society and economy, that the illegals should be granted some kind of legal status (often phrased as a “path to citizenship”), and that the United States has some kind of humanitarian duty to welcome everyone who has been the victim of one of life’s hard knocks. Pro-it’s-our-choice people argue either that the immigrants are a bunch of undesirables from failed societies who will wreak havoc, or that immigration is good, but we need to pick and choose while recognizing that massive immigration will disrupt American society. Various combinations of the two views either make the most sense or are a recipe for disaster.[1]

There are about 7.7 billion people in the world. They live in 195 countries. Gallup polled people in 152 of those countries. They report that 15 percent of adults in those countries, an estimated 750 million people, would migrate to another country if they could. Of that estimated 750 million people, about 158 million people want to move to the United States.[2] Obviously, the real numbers could be much higher. For one thing, many adults have children. For another thing, there are the 43 countries where Gallup did not poll. One can imagine virtually every single person in North Korea or Syria wanting to bolt.

One distortion in the contemporary debate arises from geography. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans bar most foreigners from getting to the United States except by sea (rare) or air travel. You can’t get on an international flight from most places in the world headed for the United States unless you already have a visa. That’s not the case for Central America. People willing to run the risks of traveling the Lawless Roads can end up at the southern border of the United States. Where political stunts by all sides provide something for cameramen to do.

The 2017 population of the United States has been estimated at 325 million people. Can we take in 158 million people from foreign cultures—many of them very different in values from that of the United States—without any impact on American society? If so, at what pace? A million a year? Five million a year? Ten million a year? All of them at once? No? Then the pro-foreign life people accept the idea of immigration restriction. They just want to set the threshold at some undefined higher level. And they don’t want to talk about the social, political, and financial costs.

As for the pro-it’s-our-choice people, there are 158 million people who want to come here, but you think there aren’t any among them who would make a vital contribution to America? Red China wants to take over Taiwan, just like it did Hong Kong. So, many people from a leading Far East industrial nation are going to want to migrate. Russia and Iran are going to add Lebanon to the bag, just like Syria. Lots of Lebanese Christians will want an out.

It’s an important debate. It would be nice if we had it.

[1] I don’t have a ‘source” for this statement. It’s just my sense of all the stuff I’ve been reading for years. While there may NOT have been “good people on both side” in Charlottesville, there are idiots on both side of this debate. Just hoping that I’m not one of them. No need to tell me if you think I’m an idiot. That’s what my sons are for.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 21/28 December 2018, p. 17.

Migrants 1.

Posted on July 12, 2018 by jsh54

Social scientists posit that people experiencing disturbing social change can seize on particularist identities like ethnicity or nationality. Demographic change and economic change and shifting social values all can trigger such a response. On the other hand, cultural and economic elites in Western countries celebrate the free flow of goods and labor. They also have developed more cosmopolitan views than have many fellow citizens.[1]

Illegal immigration provides a good example of the particularist-cosmopolitan tension. In recent times, illegal migration has become easier than ever before in history. In both Europe and America bitter quarrels over immigration rack politics.[2] These controversies arise not from heavy current immigration, but from heavy prior immigration. More importantly, the general backlash against elites–who led us to war in Iraq and then into the financial crisis—has ensnared migrants.

Illegal migration to the United States dropped sharply during the Great Recession. It hasn’t picked up immensely in the past year. However, that still leaves 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Human symbols of elite failure. Liberals insisting on calling them “undocumented immigrants”—as if there is just some bureaucratic foul-up in Washington—adds fuel to the fire. President Obama’s skirting of the law angered many people. Illegal immigration in the European Union is more recent. There the flood of migrants from various failed states mixes with refugees from war-torn Muslim states.

People leave their “shithole” countries for good reasons and not just on a whim. Until conditions in those countries improve, there is not likely to be a significant drop in attempts at illegal immigration. To complicate matters further, while many of the migrants are economic migrants, the law allows them to request asylum as victims of persecution. This clogs the immigration system and delays repatriation.

In light of this reality, attention has turned to deterring them from reaching American or European soil in the first place. Europeans have negotiated with pathway countries—Libya, Sudan, and Turkey—to stem the departures for Europe. The implementation of those agreements involves a good deal of brutality that is much worse than anything suffered by Central American migrants to the United States. Mexico is unwilling to play that sort of role for the United States. The “zero tolerance” policy attempted by a Trump administration grown tired of waiting for Congressional approval of a border wall offers another form of deterrence.

Cosmopolitans sometimes phrase the choice in a misleading way: “What sort of society do they wish to be? Do they wish to be immigrant nations with continual demographic and cultural change?” First, both the European Union and the United States have long had substantial legal immigration. Second, it is legitimate to debate what kinds of immigrants best serve the interests of the community.

[1] Benjamin Barber, Jihad and McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Shaping World Society (1996). Barber’s analysis remains engaging, but it wasn’t new. Late-Nineteenth Century sociologists had identified the problem of anomie. For that matter, historians long ago diagnosed the rise of “mystery” religions as a response to the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic kingdoms.

[2] Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, “In U.S. and Europe, Conflict Over Migration Points to Political Problems,” NYT, 30 June 2018.

Halloween on the Border 2.

Posted on June 26, 2018 by jsh54

Entering the United States illegally is a crime, a misdemeanor on the first offense and a felony on any subsequent offense.[1] The courts have held that people who enter the United States illegally are entitled to due process before they can be deported.[2] The courts have also held that Congress may determine what constitutes due process. In 1996 Congress passed the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.” Among other provisions, this law allows illegal immigrants to be deported without any hearing, lawyer, or right of appeal. This is called “expedited removal.”[3]

For their part, illegal immigrants can try to dodge expedited removal by claiming asylum. To gain asylum, the immigrants must demonstrate a credible fear of persecution if they remain in their home country. What constitutes “persecution” is itself contested. Most of the people now showing up at the border are trying to escape endemic poverty, violent crime, and ineffective and corrupt government in Central American so-called countries.[4] Liberals regard these conditions as legitimate grounds for claiming asylum; conservatives want to restrict asylum to the traditional definition of people fleeing political or religious persecution by national governments.

Different administrations have applied the law in different ways. Although the 1996 law sets no geographic boundaries to where the law may be applied, the current policy has been to apply it to illegal immigrants found within 100 miles of the border and within two weeks after they entered the United States.[5] Furthermore, the government can either treat illegal immigration as a civil matter or as a criminal matter.

The Obama administration largely treated illegal immigrants as a civil matter. This allowed illegal immigrants to work through the process of the immigration courts, to be represented by a lawyer, to appeal decisions of immigration judges multiple times. This could extend the time to deportation to a year or more. While the civil procedures dragged on, the illegal immigrants were paroled, rather than detained in custody.

Recently, the Trump administration broke with the policy of the previous administration. It adopted a policy of “zero tolerance” for illegal immigration and it chose to treat illegal immigration as a criminal, rather than civil, matter. Thus, illegal immigrants, even when claiming asylum, were arrested. The government is legally-obligated to separate children from arrested parents within 20 days of arrest, then to place them in a suitable child care facility or foster family. During the Obama administration, all but one family detention facility were closed. This had the unpleasant knock-on effect that has garnered so much attention.[6]

[1] “In the United States, the federal government generally considers a crime punishable with incarceration for one year or less to be a misdemeanor. All other crimes are considered felonies.”—Wikipedia.

[2] Katie Benner and Charlie Savage, “Migrants to the U.S. Are Entitled to Due Process, With Some Exceptions,” NYT, 26 June 2018.

[3] Which is like calling illegal immigrants “undocumented.” See George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.”

[4] Ryan Duee, “Migrants Risk U.S. Crackdown to Flee Crime and Poverty,” WSJ, 26 June 2018.

[5] Obviously, there is some wiggle room here for the government. It can be pretty difficult for migrants to prove when they entered the country.

[6] On the background to the “Flores Settlement” case, see: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/flores-settlement-brief-history-and-next-steps

Chain Migration.

Posted on May 29, 2018 by jsh54

From 1789 to 1808 the United States had a policy of unrestricted immigration; from 1808 to the 1920s the United States had a policy of unrestricted immigration for people of European origins; and from the 1920s to the 1960s the United States had a policy of restricted immigration that favored people from Northwestern Europe.[1] These changes reflected struggles between economic necessity and national identity.

In 1960, 70 percent of immigrants came from Europe.[2] Early in 1964, in a little noticed part of his campaign for a “Great Society,” President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed that “a nation that was built by immigrants of all lands can ask those who now seek admission “What can you do for our country?’ But we should not be asking ‘In what country were you born?’” The election of a liberal Congress in November 1964 opened the flood-gates for a host of long-stalled reforms.[3]

A new immigration law compromised between the traditional policy that prioritized immigration from northwestern Europe and a new policy that prioritized candidates with skills and education needed by the United States. Conservatives chose family re-unification as the device for defending the traditional sources of immigration. The new “Immigration and Nationality Act” of 1965 capped annual immigration at about a million people and assigned about 80 percent of the slots to ‘family reunification” candidates, but only about 20 percent to “needed” candidates. Moreover, eligible family members shifted from spouse and small children to add adult children, brothers and sisters, and parents.

What looked to be a resounding victory for conservatives turned out to be something else entirely. While the Irish and Italians continued to migrate in droves from desperately broken societies, the rest of Europe dried up as a major source of migration to America. Britain, France, and Germany were both short of labor themselves and building “social” states that offered steadily rising standards of living for most people. Eastern Europe lay within the Soviet empire, from which few could escape. As a result, the large share of family reunification slots increasingly flowed toward the previous minority sources of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. By 2010, 90 percent of immigrants were from non-European sources.

Is there anything wrong with this approach? From the economic point of view, there is—at least in some eyes and some ways. On the one hand, traditionally, most immigrants came to America as young people seeking economic opportunity and political freedom. They found a hard and demanding land that gave nothing away and insisted that immigrants assimilate to an “Anglo-Saxon” culture. America ended up with lots of adaptable strivers. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study has reported that skill-based immigrants are more likely to be younger, better educated, more fluent in English, and quicker to get work than are the family-based immigrants. Thus, American immigration policy misses the opportunity to fully enrich the country’s human capital. On the other hand, a battle over limiting or reducing immigration is counter-productive for a country that is short of skilled labor and likely to suffer slower economic growth as a result.

So there is a case for immigration reform. However, it should involve shifting (even reversing) the distribution of slots between “family” and “skill” immigrants. Of course, even this solution dodges the question of whether the United States should be aggressively recruiting from countries with a dim future—like Taiwan.

[1] From 1808 the involuntary immigration of African slaves was restricted; from the 1880s Asian immigration to the West Coast was restricted; and from 1924 the immigration of people from southern and eastern Europe was restricted.

[2] Greg Ip, “Kinship Emerges as Immigration Flashpoint,” WSJ, 18 January 2018; Tom Gjelten, “The Curious History of ‘Chain Migration’,” WSJ, 20-21 January 2018

[3] See: Julian Zelizer, “The Fierce Urgency of Now.” Greg Ip argues that Jonson saw immigrants as deserving the same right to equal treatment without regard to race that he wished to insure for American citizens.

To Europe by land and sea.

Posted on June 24, 2017 by jsh54

Lots of people in Sub-Saharan Africa want to go to Europe. As of late June 2017, 72,000 immigrants have completed the journey this year. For the most part, they are fleeing poverty above all else. Population growth dramatically exceeds economic growth in these countries.[1] The poverty is particularly serious in rural areas. “We have no machinery to cultivate the land [and] no rain,” one person told a New York Times reporter.[2] However, “fleeing poverty” has a larger meaning here. In the absence of any social security system or local pathway to an adequate income, sons are expected to support their parents. Often this means leaving home in search of work elsewhere. Many are pulled to the capital city of Dakar, where there is more opportunity and lower poverty levels. Other go to Gabon or Congo to work in mines.

Best of all is to reach Europe. Sons who have made it to Europe and found work send home part of their earnings. Even a share of the meager earnings of those working in Europe pay for “luxuries” in West Africa: concrete block houses instead of mud huts; iPhones and satellite dishes (and the electricity to power them); sometimes a car instead of a bicycle.[3] Parents or spouses often encourage men with small future prospects to migrate in search of work.

For those living in West Africa, the route generally takes them east along Route 5 of the Trans-Africa Highway system.[4] That route passes from Dakar (Senegal) through Bamako (Mali), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Niamey (Niger), and Kano (Nigeria), to N’Djamene (Chad). In its longest extent, this is a journey of about 2,700 miles. That’s like driving from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Reno, Nevada. Without the Rockies, but also without much in the way of paved roads. From there they join Highway 3 as it runs north across the Sahara to Tripoli (Libya). From Tripoli and other Libyan ports, they “take ship” for Italy.

Almost every leg of the journey is dangerous. Human traffickers organize much of the migration in order to prey upon the migrants. Travelers can find themselves extorted for further payments or abandoned en route. Africa’s transportation infrastructure is in poor condition. It’s one thing if you’re a rich Westerner (but I repeat myself). Airlines connect European capitals with important cities endowed with comfortable hotels. For ordinary people, travel is more difficult. Some roads are unpaved dirt tracks. Many paved roads haven’t been maintained for a long time. The few railroads mostly haul freight, with infrequent or no passenger service. There aren’t enough vehicles of any kind, so overloading is common-place. So are vehicle break-downs. The vast distances pose another challenge.

The sea passage is worst of all. Most of the deaths come in the crossing from Libya to Italy. Vessels starting the sea-crossing are over-loaded, under-powered, and badly crewed/captained. In the first half of 2017, an estimated 2,100 migrants have drowned in ship-wrecks on the Mediterranean. In April 2015, one terrible disaster killed more than 800 migrants.

Yet people—those who go and those who urge them to go—rarely understand the dangers involved. “We only heard success stories” said the mother of two sons drowned at sea. Death lists are sometimes published in Europe, then reported by those who made it to relatives at home. Yet still the migrants come.

[1] According to the World Bank, almost half (47 percent) of Senegalese live in poverty.

[2] Dionne Searcy and Jaime Yaya Barry, “Leaving Home, One by One, Along “Deadliest Route” to Europe,” NYT, 23 June 2017.

[3] But not more farmland or tractors? Well, perhaps. Some of the emigrants sell their land to raise the money for the trip. So, someone is buying.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-African_Highway_network

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