Immigration: The Militant & Left Voice

Source: Amazon.com

Two articles from the Trotskyist press guide our discussion of immigration.

1. An article in The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) entitled As immigration spikes, workers look to unify the working class. The author is the competent Alyson Kennedy.
2. News, as reported in Left Voice, about the "far-right" Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The post, by Inés In interviewing Inés Heider, is Protests in Germany: “The Whole Regime Is Shifting to the Right”

Back in 2020 Ms. Kennedy ran for president on a campaign program demanding

AMNESTY FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS in the US, a life-and-death question for the unions to unite workers and cut across divisions the bosses use to drive down wages. For access to driver’s licenses for all.

Fast-forward to today, and the last two paragraphs of her current article are these: 

Under capitalism workers compete for jobs. Opening the borders would vastly intensify that competition, fueling unemployment and spreading misery among working people, immigrant and native-born alike.

Instead, the call for amnesty for all workers living in the U.S., regardless where they come from, coupled with support for revolutionary battles abroad, is the road forward for the working class.

The first paragraph suggests some skepticism about open borders and unrestricted immigration. The second reiterates the traditional Trotskyist position from 2020--along with a Kamala-Harris-like effort to solve the "root causes" of our immigration problem. These seem to be in conflict with each other: total amnesty does not look like a way to control immigration.

What gives?

The Militant, which masthead proclaims it "A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE," has long recognized that the bulk of the working class supports Trump for president. This sharply distinguishes them from the other Trotskyist grouplets on my beat, who have reduced their cause to petty bourgeois, progressive Left orthodoxy. Accordingly, The Militant has rethought their positions on any number of topics, notably Israel, abortion, and the defense of Trumpian civil liberties.

Now it seems that they're moderating their position on immigration. Ms. Kennedy's article argues by anecdote, collected while campaigning door to door in the Fort Worth area. For example:

“It’s bad what is going on,” Juanita Castillo, a retired factory worker, told this Militant  worker-correspondent when I knocked on her door and said I was the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas and wanted her opinion. “Immigrants who are coming now don’t care about the law. Before when immigrants were coming they were scared they were going to be deported or put in jail, now they are not,” Castillo said. 

Or again,

“I work with immigrants from Cuba and El Salvador. In Minnesota I worked with workers from Romania and Bosnia at a bakery,” [union steward Jerome] Crawford said. “They came from war-torn countries for a better life. You have the president telling them they are welcome and the governor rebutting this. It is a union issue because you can’t join unions if you don’t have citizenship.”

Compared to her campaign platform four years ago, her current article is a more sober analysis of some of the trade-offs of immigration. Gone is the certitude that it is always beneficial. She admits that new immigrants compete with domestic workers for jobs, thus depressing wages. More, high levels of immigration make things harder for unions. Her quote from Mr. Crawford ("...war-torn countries...") suggests that she's aware of problems of acculturation and assimilation.

Trump is very popular among the working class (which is why The Militant pursues that audience), and his hard stance on immigration is an important cause. So it makes sense that the Party is rethinking their policy.

Though she still demands total amnesty, but I don't see how unconditional amnesty can lead to any coherent immigration policy. It begs the question: is the SWP still Trotskyist? Or are they just kowtowing to their Trumpian audience? 

Left Voice, meanwhile, has participated in mass protests in Germany against a policy supported by at least some members of the AfD. It's described by Ms. Heider.

The scale of the mobilization reflected the shock provoked by the revelation on January 10 by the investigative media Correctiv of a plan initiated by the AfD and neo-Nazi activists, as well as members of the conservative CDU, to mass expel several million people from the country on the basis of their origin, as well as those who come to refugees’ aid, notably in the Mediterranean.

A clearer description can be found in a publication of an EU Agency here:

According to the “re-migration” plan, migrants will be forcefully deported to their countries of origin via mass deportation and will target citizens holding German passports who, Martin Sellner, a member of the Identitarian Movement, claims, “form aggressive, rapidly growing parallel societies”. 

I share Ms. In's and Ms. Heider's disgust at the idea of deporting citizens--either in Germany or in the US. Deporting citizens who have lived in Germany for many decades and fill important roles such as nurses and engineers, is neither moral nor good for the economy. The very idea is crazy-talk, and I'm reassured that Germans are nearly unanimously rejecting it.

Similarly, the demands to expel the 15-20 million illegals now living in the US are utterly unrealistic and very expensive. It would be the largest forced migration ever in history. Trump's promise that he could do it "humanely" is ridiculous.

On the other hand, Left Voice has long supported open borders, including the abolition of the US customs agency, ICE. Unlike The Militant, they make no mention of any downsides, ignoring the competition for jobs, the threat to the unions, and problems of assimilation.

Indeed, Left Voice's position can only be held by a bunch of college professors, whose connections to the real world are sufficiently tenuous that they can't even imagine how it could fail. If deporting millions of immigrants (either in the US or Germany) is both immoral and impractical, then the only alternative is to restrict the flow of incoming illegals.

In other words, Build The Wall! The US has to have control over its southern border.

Both articles (along with the mainstream media) miss another aspect of immigration: consumption. Immigrants not only take jobs, but they also buy things and are consumers. As consumers, they create jobs. The short-term problem arises when they first arrive: they're either not allowed to work, or they're so far in the financial hole that they can't consume as much as they earn. That's why the perception (not entirely inaccurate) is that they "steal jobs." In the long run, they don't. They just grow the economy.

The biggest consumers in any society are families with children. That obvious insight leads to this hierarchy of which immigrants to admit, listed from most desirable to least desirable:

1. A pregnant woman with husband in tow--the child will grow up in the US, will speak fluent English, and the husband will earn a living for his family. Hopefully they'll have more children.
2. A woman with one or more children, again with husband in tow--still good, but the children will be less likely to assimilate depending on how old they are upon arrival. The husband remains a financial necessity.
3. A husband and wife--here's hoping they have children.
4. A single woman--likely children in her future. Hope she finds a husband.
5. A single mother--at least there are kids, but her financial prospects are not good and she's likely to end up on welfare.
6. Unattached males--these are the guys who are gonna paint swastikas on synagogues, or join street gangs, or generally make a nuisance of themselves. They should not be admitted unless they have marketable skills in short supply.

Further Reading:

• Tucker Carlson & Martha's Vineyard
• The Lumpens Hate Eric Adams
• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?

Tucker Carlson & Martha's Vineyard

iew YouTube video Tucker Carlson: Is an

Tucker Carlson is having a field day (actually, at least two of them) talking about Martha's Vineyard. This video is 21 minutes long, but I recommend watching it. He makes the Trumpian point very clearly, though please remember that he's an entertainer first (a very good one) and a political pundit only second. He points out the stunning hypocrisy of the Vineyarders (who sport signs saying "hate has no business here") as they arranged for the military to escort all 50 brown faces off their precious island within 24 hours. One resident said it was "like taking out the trash" (though he apparently intended his remarks to be attributed to DeSantis, but that was not clear from his context. The tweet was removed).

In a previous video Tucker suggests the Vineyarders should be joyful that 50 Venezuelans were sent to join them. After all, the island is 89% white, and since "diversity is our strength," welcoming 50 diverse Venezuelans should be a cause for celebration. But no joy--diversity was gone by military escort the following day.

So Mr. DeSantis has learned trolling from the master himself. And it's worked like a charm. It wiped Trump completely off the front pages for at least two days--important since the Dems want the election to be all about Trump. It makes the Dems left look ridiculous and hypocritical, reduced to phony accusations like "kidnapping" and "human trafficking, and asserting that everybody else is racist except for the enlightened denizens of Martha's Vineyard. Apparently Mr. DeSantis' trick forced the Biden administration to actually admit to a high-level meeting about immigration. Until now they've publicly ignored the issue. 

Though I've read enough commentary to realize that the Dem counterargument isn't entirely off-base, though it's clear Republicans won the news cycle by a country mile. The best Dem talking point was that the islanders' reception was not as hostile as Tucker will have you believe. (His "Froot Loops" segment is by far the weakest part of the video.) There were islanders who worked hard to make sure the Venezuelans got fed, showered, clothed and put up for the night. Yet it's odd that they couldn't persuade even 5 or 6 of them to stay on the island. Surely, with the nationwide labor shortage, there'd be more than enough work for them to do. And with the off-season island now full of empty hotel rooms, the purported lack of housing doesn't ring true either.

It was noted (I read this somewhere) that while the seasonal residents are the privileged, ultra-wealthy Obama-types, the year-round residents of the island are not like that at all. Instead, they're the servant class: the housemaids, groundskeepers, cops, chauffeurs, local officials, etc. Thus they responded as do similar workers in red states, i.e., with hostility to a large group of people who are coming to compete with them for jobs. (Not sure I believe that, though it could be part of the story.) As Tucker points out, red-staters in such circumstances are accused of being deplorable, bitter clinging racists. Obviously the Dems can't charge their own servants with such crimes--and hence the embarrassment. 

But both Tucker and the Dems miss the elephant in the room. They both conflate the Venezuelans with our American homeless population. And perhaps that's understandable, for they are, at least for the moment, homeless. They sleep on sidewalks, they haven't showered in weeks, they walked through the Darien Gap jungle, etc. The only thing missing are the hypodermic needles sticking out of their arms.

But the refugees are as different from our mentally-ill, addicted homeless people as night is from day. For the Venezuelans were, until a few years ago, solidly members of the middle class. Recall that their country used to be the richest in South America, until Hugo Chavez (enthusiastically cheered on by Progressives everywhere) put Venezuela on a path toward economic suicide. So these poor people have now spent the very last of their assets to come to the United States.

But, lack of money notwithstanding, these aren't really poor people. They're people with substance and middle class attitudes. They will do very well in America--like the Cubans before them.

• In three months they'll have a job and a place to live.
• In two years they'll speak English and own a car.
• In five years they'll have professional jobs and some of them will be buying houses.
• In fifteen years many of them will be citizens and they will vote.

None of these people will ever vote for anything that even remotely smells like socialism! That's why I call them the Future Republicans of America. Tucker sells them short--he thinks they're gonna be indigent indefinitely (as is likely true of many Salvadorans). He's afraid that they'll never assimilate into American culture and will change the country for the worse. He is just wrong!

The Dems are also wrong--though maybe deep down they realize what's happening. Inviting a whole bunch of incipient Republicans to NYC and DC (not to mention Martha's Vineyard) puts Democratic urban machine politics at risk. That's perhaps why they actually hate the immigrants so much that they have to get rid of them as fast as possible.

Tucker is wrong in another way as well. He shows a clip of Joe Biden saying that a country of 330 million can afford to bring in another two million immigrants. For once I'll side with Joe--he's right. Not only can we do it--we have to do it. American total fertility rates since the pandemic have dropped to about 1.7--well below replacement rate. We're not having enough babies. If red-staters really are worried about being "replaced," then part of the problem begins at home, specifically in the bedroom.

So we need a lot of new immigrants--but they shouldn't have to come this way. Why should a family have to traipse through the Darien Gap, and pay their very last coin to the Mexican Drug cartels in order to come the USA? There is absolutely no reason for that. We need the immigrants, and they want to come. We have to find a way to allow for legal immigration. There is more support for that than our media (left and right) are willing to admit.

But there are some conditions. The wall is a prerequisite. Before we can accept any large number of legal immigrants, we have to stop the illegal sort. We have to get control over our southern border. Second, we can't just accept low wage immigrants--that's unfair to our domestic workers. For every Honduran and Salvadoran, we need to also accept somebody with genuine skills, like nurses (e.g., more Filipinos). 

Biden, by irresponsibly and incompetently stopping the wall, has set back the cause for a higher rate of legal immigration by at least a decade. This, along with the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, will mark his administration with shame.

Further Reading:

• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Good Trump, Bad Trump
• Book Review: Nigel Farage

The New Aristocrats

Note: It's astonishing in this age of plague and turmoil that my Trotskyist friends write nothing that interests me. So I offer this piece instead, which is mostly fiction based on a shred of reality.

My neighborhood is very diverse. Of the 150 odd homes in the subdivision, perhaps 50 are occupied by white Americans. The rest are from all over the world. There are at least a half dozen Filipino families, probably similar numbers of Chinese and Koreans, and a smattering of South Asians. 

But by far the largest demographic are folks from the West Indies and West Africa. Not all are new immigrants--I think many are second generation. But I believe the African-American population--narrowly defined as descendants of slaves brought here during colonial times--is small. One of my occasional walking buddies--I walk around the neighborhood every day--is from The Gambia. Indeed, he has several friends (perhaps relatives) living here--there are at least three houses full of Gambians. Other neighbors--acquaintances from work--are from Jamaica. I often hear Jamaican brogues while wandering around.

Occasionally I see a truly elegant couple on the street. I've never spoken to them and I don't know which house they live in. I'm pretty sure--from appearance--that they're from West Africa, of which Nigeria is the most populous country. Searching the web for common Nigerian names, I'll name the standout pair Musa and Aisha.

Musa is very tall--at least 6'5"--a full head taller than me. He's very athletic--I see him holding impromptu fitness classes on the street for neighbors. Not one to smile often, he has a proudly erect, regal bearing. Clean-shaven, he looks to be in his early 40s.

Aisha is not as tall, nor as slender, but still taller than I am--perhaps 6'. She's incredibly beautiful--buxom and full-bodied, but not at all fat. Rather, she's pure muscle--very strong and just as much in to fitness as her husband. I typically see her clad in skin-tight sweats--and it flatters. Perfect posture, proportions, features.

If people with straight backs ruled the world, Musa and Aisha would be king and queen. I'm quite intimidated by them--which is why I haven't introduced myself.

I don't know if Musa and Aisha have any children--but it would be a damn shame if they didn't. Let's award them two, and name them Prince and Princess--just to keep the genders straight. Perhaps grandma tends to them during their parents' walks.

Musa and Aisha clearly got some good genes. (Nobody in my family ever grew to 6'5", and we're definitely not known for athleticism.) That said, the pair have made the most of their endowment. Had they chosen instead a diet of french fries and ice cream coupled with a couch-potato lifestyle, perhaps Musa would still be over six feet tall. But he'd have a slouch and a pot-belly, and nobody would take him seriously as a fitness instructor. Aisha, rather than strong, would just be fat. She'd look like a pig.

These people work hard. They know they have a gift, and they haven't squandered it. In addition to physique, they're endowed with self-discipline.

Houses in my neighborhood sell for about $300K. That's well below the median cost of housing in the New York City metro region, but then we're a 90 minute commute to Manhattan. (Pre-Covid, my Gambian friend made that trip every day. Now he gets to work from home.) On the other hand, our neighborhood is more expensive than the surrounding town--partly because the houses are newer, and also because of our superb location.

So poor people don't live here. And neither do aristocrats.

To live here, Musa and Aisha need middle class jobs. Perhaps, like my Gambian friend, they work on Wall Street. To get such work they must have some education--whether learned in Nigeria or here, they have a marketable skill. For which self-discipline certainly helps, but there has to be some level of smarts besides.

I think they're relatively new to the neighborhood--I've seen them around only recently. Likely they've skimped and saved to put together the down payment. As immigrants they needed to establish a credit rating from scratch. All of which is evidence of self-discipline, smarts, and a serious work ethic.

Now imagine the lives of Prince and Princess. Children get their genes from mom and dad, and it's hard to see how this pair goes wrong either way. Something bad could've happened--birth defect, disease, accident--but most likely the kids will be like their parents: tall, dark, and exceedingly handsome. With luck the children will inherit the self-discipline trait--but even if not, they'll be taught it from an early age. I doubt slouching is tolerated in the Musa/Aishi household!

The schools around here aren't very good, but I'm not worried for Prince or Princess. Mama will certainly teach them how to read, and daddy will school them in arithmetic. Many other things they'll pick up on their own. What they'll learn from school will not be taught by teachers, but rather by their classmates. They'll learn how to earn the respect of their peers. It will be a class in Aristocrat 101.

Prince and Princess will have more advantages. Instead of growing up relatively poor in Nigeria, they'll come of age in middle class America, with all the opportunities that offers. And not being slouches they'll take advantage of them. They'll probably go to college (or whatever replaces college), and they'll likely inherit some money. If nothing else, Musa and Aisha will have paid off the house for them.

Will Prince or Princess become true aristocrats? Probably not yet. Likely it will take another generation of wealth-building before that status is reached. If they marry well--not necessarily into other Nigerian families, though that's certainly a good option--Musa and Aishi's grandchildren may well aspire to the aristocracy. By which I mean they will have the wealth, authority and wisdom to decide the fates of others.

Fortunately, America does not have a formal, hereditary aristocracy, complete with titles. But we do have aristocratic families, e.g.,

[Kenneth] Arrow was a brother to the economist Anita Summers, uncle to economist and former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers, and brother-in-law of the late economists Robert Summers and Paul Samuelson. In 1947, he married Selma Schweitzer, graduate in economics at the University of Chicago and psychotherapist, who died in 2015. (Wikipedia)

Unlike in bygone eras, the path to aristocracy includes more than just military talent. Today one can be a family of academics, artists, businessmen, politicians, sports stars, etc. Whatever the field, the talents required to be a leader of men and women are in significant part hereditary, which is why aristocratic rank follows from parents to children.

And so here we are. In Trump's America, a family of West African immigrants are founding a new aristocratic dynasty.

My story is mostly fiction. But I hope it's true.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Capitalism Alone
• The Philippines
• If You Really Care About The Poor

How Trump Wins

"It's the economy, stupid" is how James Carville described Bill Clinton's election strategy back in 1992. However apt it may have been at the time, it is senseless today.

Those pundits who claim that blue collar Americans flocked to Trump because of economic woes are wrong. For the economy is doing very well--better than any time in recent history, with record low unemployment, interest rates, and poverty.

Some Democrats argue that Trump is weak on healthcare or the environment. I suggest that these topics will move the electorate not at all--people have already made up their minds. Nor is income inequality a compelling issue--people don't care how much money somebody in Mountain View, CA, earns. The fact is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats, and that some boats are fancy yachts really doesn't matter very much.

Trump didn't win in 2016 on economic issues. Any promises to his blue collar audience about better health care or fancier pensions were brief, pro forma and without detail. Mr. Trump obviously knows nothing and cares less about health care in this country.

Instead, he won the election by flattering and entertaining his audience. He paid attention to people who typically sit in politics' back row. As Michael Moore eloquently puts it "Trump's election is going to be the biggest fuck you in human history. And it. will. feel. good."

Why did it feel so good? Because Trump's election, not about economics, was instead about status. While a rising economic tide lifts all boats, that is definitely not true about status. Status games are inevitably zero-sum--if my status goes up, then yours must relatively go down. Trump rewarded his listeners just by spending hours with them at his rallies, telling them how they were going to Make America Great Again, in contrast to the evil, dishonest media in the back of the room.

He put low-status people at the top of his list and won their undying affection as a result.

Democrats also play status games, but unlike Trump they're not strategic in their choices. The top dogs in their universe are upper middle class white women, and gay men. The leading Democratic issues are #MeToo and Gay/transgender Rights.

Of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with those issues. Women should be treated respectfully in the workplace, and gays do deserve civil rights. That's really incontrovertible, though opinions will vary on what respectful and civil rights specifically mean. The argument isn't about issues--instead it's about the enhanced status that accrues to those groups.

But if somebody's status goes up, then who goes down? The Dems seem to have forgotten the downside, and that is their Achilles heel. For people who lose status far outnumber the population of upper middle class women and gays, and they will feel their loss acutely.

Trump understands this. 62% of white men voted for Trump. More ominously, 14% of Black men voted for Trump, as compared to barely 2% of Black women. Obviously men see themselves as losers in the Democrat's status sweepstakes. And there are a lot more men than there are upper-middle class women and gays.

A couple weeks ago I heard an interview with Brad Parscale on Fox News. I don't have a transcript, but the gist was the campaign will recruit a million volunteers to pay personal visits to 20 million undecided, persuadable voters.

Undecided voters? That sounds like people on knife's edge: Are higher taxes a good trade-off for better medical care? Or Should student loans be forgiven for everybody, or just for poor people? Of course that's not how this group thinks. These instead are people who don't really care about politics--left to their own devices they might not vote at all. They don't listen to either FOX News or MSNBC.

If they do vote, they'll vote on emotion. And among those, the strongest political emotion is fear. So (and Mr. Parscale did not say this) the goal of all these visits is to make these people afraid--very, very afraid.

Obviously the undecideds do not include me--the only message I'll get from the Trump campaign is a fundraising letter. As readers of this blog, they don't include you, either. We're committed ideologues--unpersuadable by either camp. The folks we're talking about are precisely NOT part of Trump's base, and indeed, may even not have voted in 2016.

I surmise that Black men are a significant number of these undecideds, for they have a lot to lose from the Democrat's program. They are threatened with nothing less than abject servility, doomed to serve at the whim of upper middle class white women. In a word, they face emasculation. For men who historically have been lynched for looking at a white woman the wrong way, the #MeToo movement is a dire threat. Or at least that's how the Trump campaign will portray it.

Then there is affirmative action, which Black men see as their victory achieved during the civil rights movement. Yet today--with Democratic party connivance--the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action are upper middle class white women, who preferentially get jobs in academe or in the corporate suite. A less deserving population is hard to imagine.

Speaking of civil rights, the hijacking of the civil rights agenda by the LGBTQ community is, in the eyes of Black men, a complete travesty. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday: "Pink is the New Black." While I'm not sure what the driver actually intends, as a political statement it encapsulates the feelings of Black men--they're less important than gay people. Despite having fought and won the civil rights struggle, they're supposed to yield status to a bunch of spoiled sissies.

In 2016 Trump won his fraction of the Black male vote mostly by accident. That won't be true this time around--he will aggressively go after those people. The groundwork is laid--criminal justice reform, a thriving economy, Kanye West, the "what have you got to lose?" message, etc. He can't lose support from Black women, so playing the gender card has only upside for him. If he can increase his fraction from 14% to 20%, that likely puts Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan out of reach for the Democrats.

Trump has the advantage of being a very masculine, bad-ass, man. He's a great role model. Especially if the Dems nominate a woman, expect this strategy to work big time.

For different reasons Trump has an advantage among Hispanic voters (28% of whom voted for Trump in 2016), especially Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are American citizens who are now being forced to share their communities and jobs with a marauding horde of illiterate illegals from Central America. They are likely to throw more support to Trump in 2020. That will make a difference in Florida, where it is speculated that Puerto Ricans cost the Dems the election in 2018. (Unfortunately it won't matter much in New York or New Jersey, which are safe Democratic redoubts regardless of how Puerto Ricans vote.)

The immigration issue may also redound to Trump's advantage in Texas and Arizona, where other Hispanic communities are on the front lines.

In summary, Trump may lose votes among "suburban women," aka upper middle class white women, but he'll more that make up for it with additional male, Black and Hispanic support. The gender gap will work in his favor.

Further Reading:

• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?
• Affirmative Action

A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration

I'm grateful to Socialist Action (SA) for turning me on to an intriguing article by Amanda Nagle, an author with whom I was previously unfamiliar. SA's critique by Ivan Dolphy is headlined Angela Nagle’s shoddy remedies for the ‘migrant crisis.’ Ms. Nagle's contribution, published in American Affairs, is titled The Left Case against Open Borders.

Mr. Dolphy's post suffers from the disease common to my Trotskyist friends, namely an inability to treat their interlocutors respectfully. Everything descends into ad hominem attacks, accusing others of moral turpitude or laziness. The word 'shoddy' in the title sets the tone. Ms. Nagle pens a 'diatribe', she fakes a 'leftist tinge', and she's accused of purposely taking Marx out of context (I think she's not guilty).

The closing line of Mr. Dolphy's piece sums up Ms. Nagle's supposed moral failings--pejorative terms and arguably untrue accusations included.

Given that Nagle is now officially on the payroll of a rag that changed its name from The Journal of American Greatness, it poses the question of who the useful idiot to big business might be.

It's not really a serious critique.

Ms. Nagle's key point is that open borders and free immigration are really a causes for the libertarian Right, and not the Left.

She writes,

The transformation of open borders into a “Left” position is a very new phenomenon and runs counter to the history of the organized Left in fundamental ways. Open borders has long been a rallying cry of the business and free market Right. Drawing from neoclassical economists, these groups have advocated for liberalizing migration on the grounds of market rationality and economic freedom. They oppose limits on migration for the same reasons that they oppose restrictions on the movement of capital.

She could have cited Michael Clemens' 2011 article entitled Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk? The thesis is that, if the world's people could just move freely to the location where they'd earn the most money, it would immediately add trillions of dollars to global GDP.

Ms. Nagle suggests that the Leftist impulse to be kind to migrants is conflicting with what should be their loyalty to the indigenous labor movement. After all, it's hard to build a union when a whole lot of cheap, scab labor is being imported from Honduras.

In Ms. Nagle's view, the only true beneficiaries of unfettered immigration are the bosses, who get more labor at cheap prices. The fact that the migrants clearly earn more than they would in their home countries is apparently not important to her. The primary effect of immigration, claims Ms. Nagle, is to lower the wages of domestic workers. And domestic workers do suffer, no doubt.

Though Mr. Dolphy disputes her leftism, like a true Marxist Ms. Nagle sees everything as zero-sum, and ignores the primary beneficiaries of immigration--consumers. Joe Six-Pack can get his lawn mowed for $20 instead of $100, which definitely raises his standard of living. The libertarian view depends on precisely this point: a rise in GDP means that more goods and services are consumed, which is good for everybody. A trillion dollars is no small increase in consumption.

However good immigration is for the economy, completely open borders is politically impossible. The arguments against it are non-economic, and concern culture, history, demographics, and governance. For example, countries that are in serious demographic decline (e.g., Hungary, Sweden, Japan) are the least tolerant of migrants--they're afraid of being swamped. That is a factor in America's opposition to immigration as well.

Further, there is the trilemma--no less true for being old. Among the three goods--democracy, a functioning welfare state, and high rates of immigration--pick any two. Ethnic homogeneity is a precondition for democratic support for a welfare state. Lots of immigrants will be tolerated only as long as few social welfare benefits are extended to them. Or, as happens in the EU, high rates of immigration require undemocratic, dictatorial methods by the Brussels bureaucrats.

The libertarian choice is to accommodate immigration by zeroing out welfare benefits. Trump's alternative is to maintain the welfare state, but accordingly to minimize immigration. The progressive Left (including SA) defend both a generous welfare state and high immigration, but are happy to rule dictatorially (through the administrative state, or via much more totalitarian methods).

Ms. Nagle takes issue with her progressive comrades and seems to side more with Trump--at least in this context. I'm not sure she realizes that.

Ms. Nagle makes some arguments against immigration that I think are completely fallacious. For example,

According to Foreign Policy magazine, “There are more Ethiopian physicians practicing in Chicago today than in all of Ethiopia, a country of 80 million.” It is not difficult to see why the political and economic elites of the world’s richest countries would want the world to “send their best,” regardless of the consequences for the rest of the world. But why is the moralizing, pro–open borders Left providing a humanitarian face for this naked self-interest?

In other words, for the sake of Ethiopia we should prevent the immigration of Ethiopian doctors. But this makes no sense. There is no market for high-end medical care in Ethiopia, so the doctors earn a lot more money in Chicago.

Health problems in Ethiopia probably don't have much to do with doctors, but instead revolve much more about access to clean water, safe food, and appropriate sewage disposal. No doctors are required for that. What is necessary is money--and indeed, the Chicago doctors probably send more money back home than they could ever hope to earn in Addis Ababa. Also needed is good governance, which is in very short supply in Ethiopia, but has nothing to do with doctors.

Ms. Nagle asserts that NAFTA has been bad for Mexico.

Nafta forced Mexican farmers to compete with U.S. agriculture, with disastrous consequences for Mexico. Mexican imports doubled, and Mexico lost thousands of pig farms and corn growers to U.S. competition. ... By 2002, Mexican wages had dropped by 22 percent, even though worker productivity increased by 45 percent. In regions like Oaxaca, emigration devastated local economies and communities, as men emigrated to work in America’s farm labor force and slaughterhouses, leaving behind women, children, and the elderly.

She is correct that working in the US was much more lucrative for Mexican peasants than subsistence farming. I'm astonished that Leftists (including that true Luddite, Barry Sheppard) think unmechanized, backbreaking farm work represents a good future for Mexicans. In support of the "22 percent" statistic, she cites an article in People's World, a paper of the US Communist Party. That paper culls the number from a similarly dubious source.

It is certainly not true that Mexican living standards are declining. Since 2009 net migration between the US and Mexico has favored Mexico. And for good reason--the Mexican economy has been growing like gangbusters.

This past August my wife and I spent a vacation week in Mexico City. I was astonished at how rich the city was--at least as wealthy as any in Southern Europe. The notion that Mexico is being gutted by NAFTA is absurd.

The only substantive criticism that Mr. Dolphy levels against Ms. Nagle is her proposed solution to the immigration problem: a greatly strengthened e-verify. He writes,

Nagle goes on to implore the left to embrace E-verify, a policy that would place the onus on employers to verify the immigration status of all of their workers, and would punish businesses for noncompliance. Proponents of this policy claim that it’s a humane way to encourage the self-deportation of undocumented people. Basically, their reasoning is that by creating more barriers between undocumented immigrants and jobs or services it would softly encourage them to leave or not migrate in the first place.

I actually agree with him. Beyond serious privacy issues, E-verify imposes a hardship on legal workers, especially legal immigrants. Further, while illegals shouldn't be here in the first place, it's much better if they're employed than unemployed.

Here are my suggestions for an immigration policy:

1. A generous legal immigration system (the wide front door) that preferences skilled workers who can contribute to America's economy. We need to admit people "who love us."
2. Abolition of the H1-B visa that turns immigrants into indentured servants.
3. A strong border that allows our country to control who moves here. Illegal immigration has to be greatly reduced. Trump's policies, while not the answer, are at least addressing the right question.
4. We should not admit large numbers of semi-literate, unskilled people from countries like Honduras. They will not thrive in our economy and will almost inevitably end up on welfare.

Further Reading:

• The Militant Visits Manila
• Solidarity on Trump & Trade
• The "Bureau" on Immigration
• Immigration? Si!

The "Bureau" on Immigration

The Fourth International Bureau (also known as the Bureau of the Fourth International) issued a statement entitled Stop inhumane policies against immigrants (cross-posted in Socialist Action). As with most articles written by a committee it tends toward the inarticulate--full of emotion and short on common sense.

The lede paragraph, however, is mostly true. (Ellipses in original.)

Children separated from their families and caged in Trump’s USA, thousands drowning as they cross the Mediterranean, boats transporting migrants refused the right to dock by Salvini’s Italy, Orban’s Hungary declaring that helping refugees is a crime, 370 thousand Rohingya fleeing from [Myanmar] to Bangladesh after another military raid and massacres by Myanmar government, tens of thousands of economic refugees from Haiti and Venezuela spreading throughout South American countries, more than five million Syrian refugees outside the country and even more internally displaced .… Those who hold power in Old Europe and the Americas are joined in a holy witch hunt against the spectre of “migrants”: a wide ranging alliance embracing the populists of the right and what remains of the traditional Social Democrats. Salvini and Macron, Putin and Trump – chauvinists from the east and the west, French liberals and German police…

The Bureau leaves out other examples, e.g., the Banyamulenge of Eastern Congo. They're a Tutsi tribe who migrated to the region in the 16th Century. Their citizenship is hotly disputed by their neighbors to this very day--and that was the proximate cause of the Congo civil war that left five million dead before it was over.

Or the immigration of Jews into Palestine, which unlike the other cases the Bureau opposes, calling it an "occupation." They side instead with Hamas, demanding the extermination of the Jews. So much for free migration of all peoples!

There is such a thing as culture, and immigration beyond a certain point is just an invasion. Ask the native Slavs about the mass immigration of Magyars in year 850, or Native Americans about the immigration of Europeans. Some warn that Sweden will become a majority-Muslim country by 2040--after which the several thousand year old Scandinavian culture will simply disappear.

The Bureau-crats

...demand the right to migrate: freedom of movement and settlement. As internationalists we believe it is a fundamental right of every person to be able to live with dignity and enjoy all the political and social rights of the country where they reside.

This is just silly. No human society--capitalist or otherwise--has ever agreed to such a program.

The problem is most acute in Europe, adjacent to both Africa and South Asia--the only bits of the world where human populations are still rapidly growing. European fertility rates are so low that native populations are shrinking. The Bureau opines that "[t]he numbers arriving in the North – representing there between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent of the population – could easily be assimilated." They don't say as a percent of what, but I assume it's of the native population. Over twenty years, coupled with high immigrant birth rates, leads to the pickle that Sweden finds itself in right now. And no, these new immigrants cannot be easily assimilated.

The situation in the US is less dire, partly because we're such a big country, and mostly because fertility rates in most of Latin America are barely above the US average (if that high). Further, migration from Mexico is now reversing, with many returning to their home country. This is in part because of the significant improvement in the Mexican economy over the past 20 years.

To clarify the Bureau's errors, let's pick a hypothetical example. A certain Mrs. Wetback arrives illegally in Los Angeles with her six year old son. I pick that name not merely to pull the Bureau's chain (though that, too), but because it symbolizes a lot about her. She is from El Salvador, about 40 years old, illiterate, does not speak English, and has endured great hardships to come to the United States.

Mrs. Wetback's motives were not just economic, but also to avoid violence. The basic political unit in El Salvador is the street gang--and her neighborhood had become a battleground between rivals. The result was it became harder and harder for her to keep her $3/day job--she took her life in her hands just going to work.

In Los Angeles she gets a job as a nanny, caring for the children of Mr. & Mrs. Johnson. It's not a live-in position--she spends 90 minutes on the bus getting to work each morning. She is paid $7/hour in cash, weekly, but with no benefits. Her daily pay is $42, or 14x what she was earning in El Salvador!

About which the Bureau remarks:

As often in the past, migrants suffer a double exploitation, especially in some “exemplary” sectors like agriculture, logistics or social care.

By their lights Mrs. Wetback should be paid at least $15/hour with full benefits. Or better yet, she shouldn't have to work at all, but instead depend on welfare and free public housing.

Mr. Johnson is a truck driver, and is often away from home several days at a time. Mrs. Johnson is a nurse, and while she makes good money, she works overtime as often as she can. Between the two of them the couple bring home about $120K annually before taxes.

Mrs. Johnson is paid $30/hour, which after paycheck deductions yields her $20/hour. From that she has to pay Mrs. Wetback $7, leaving her $13/hour as a net profit from her labors. That's less than the Bureau's minimum wage.

If the Bureau gets its way, Mrs. Wetback will need $15/hour, plus benefits, which means that Mrs. Johnson takes a net loss. Obviously she would then stay home and take care of her own kids. Mrs. Wetback will be unemployed. The net effect of the Bureau's demands is to make everybody poorer.

So here is an interesting question: Why does Mrs. Wetback get a 1400% raise just for crossing the border? The standard answer is because American productivity is much higher than Salvadoran. Certainly Mrs. Wetback isn't any more productive--she still can't speak English, nor can she read or write. But her employers are more productive, which means they can afford to hire her (unless the Bureau succeeds in reducing everybody to poverty). In El Salvador very few people can afford nursing care or fresh fruits from foreign countries--so there's less need for nurses or truck drivers. Which means that Mrs. Wetback earns less money. Much less.

Mrs. Wetback benefits from being around rich people because rich people can afford to pay her money. The Bureau's solution is to confiscate the wealth of all the rich people, after which Mrs. Wetback's only option will be to go on welfare and become a slave of the state.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Wetback and her son settle in a Salvadoran neighborhood. As with all such neighborhoods the political unit is the street gang. As a teenager her son does what he has to do--he joins a gang, meaning in all likelihood he'll get killed or end up in prison.

So much for assimilation.

Further Reading:

• Venezuela
• If You Really Care About the Poor
• Immigration? Si!

The Eisenhower Coalition

Thomas Friedman has expressed his desire for a radical centrist to save us from our partisan bickering. He thinks our two-party system is broken (written in 2010).

My definition of broken is simple. It is a system in which Republicans will be voted out for doing the right thing (raising taxes when needed) and Democrats will be voted out for doing the right thing (cutting services when needed). When your political system punishes lawmakers for the doing the right things, it is broken. That is why we need political innovation that takes America’s disempowered radical center and enables it to act in proportion to its true size, unconstrained by the two parties, interest groups and orthodoxies that have tied our politics in knots.

Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Friedman. Because you have precisely your savior right in front of you: Donald J. Trump.

The last time we had a centrist, non-partisan president in office was Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was courted by both parties to serve as their nominee, but chose the Republicans. He believed in big infrastructure (e.g., the Interstate Highway System), balanced budgets, and American patriotism. Those were the days of beneficent paternalism (Father Knows Best) and he-man heroics (John Wayne movies). His modern critics accuse him of sexism and racism, conveniently forgetting that Ike sent in the 101st Airborne to help desegregate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.

So in Ike's image along comes Donald, nominally a Republican, though those most loyal to the Republican ideology hived off as NeverTrumpers. Likewise, a lot of Democrats have claimed to hate him, and some of them really do. But it's difficult to find much animosity between Trump and Chuck Schumer, for example. A lot of Democrats actually voted for Trump!

Trump has muddied the waters more by throwing some bones to the Democrats. Most embarrassingly for Congressional Republicans, he forced them to cave on the debt limit extension. The Dems got everything they wanted with no return favor granted or requested.

There are, I think, some not-so-subtle signs that the President is looking for bipartisan, centrist solutions. He knows he is not going to get there by simply hectoring--telling the Democrats that they're obstructionists. Instead he's put some carrots on the table and made it clear that if they bite he'll reciprocate. His debt ceiling surrender was an invitation to negotiate.

I see four general areas where the President would be happy to work with a coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans, throwing both the Tea Party and the Progressives overboard in the process.

1) Health care. Trump relentlessly challenged the Republicans to make good on their Repeal & Replace promise. They couldn't do it--and perhaps Trump even predicted that. He's gone out of his way to embarrass the Congressional leadership, saying he'll be happy to work with Democrats.

And that's true--Trump would love to strike a deal with Chuck Schumer to craft a version of Obamacare that is both financially and politically stable. It will have to be less intrusive and less comprehensive than the original, but unlike ideological Republicans, Trump definitely believes that health care is a legitimate responsibility of the federal government. In his view Obamacare was a step in the right direction, only it went too far to be practicable.

Trump's strategy is to pressure the Democrats by gradually dismantling Obamacare until they are willing to deal. Eventually (he and Mr. Friedman hope) they will. Obamacare will be saved to be renamed Trumpcare.

2) Immigration. Mr. Trump was never against immigration (see my post from early 2016 here). But he is also right when he says that a country without borders ceases to be a country. Americans will never agree to any legalization not accompanied by much stronger border security. Trump's goal, which he presented in very visceral language illustrating that trade-off, is precisely to craft a comprehensive immigration deal (such as what Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio and Mr. Friedman also want).

For that he needs Democratic support. The carrot is already there--he's offered to sign a DACA bill. But that bill also has to include a "wall", which really just means more border enforcement. Trump has indicated a willingness to legalize most undocumented people already here, but not an automatic path to citizenship.

Under Trump an immigration bill becomes politically possible--his base trusts him and the Dems can work with him. In the meantime he is going to make life as uncomfortable for the Democrats as possible by deporting dreamers and defunding their sanctuary cities. Eventually they'll come to the table.

3) Infrastructure. Personally I think this country needs more infrastructure like it needs a hole in the head, though I know Mr. Friedman disagrees with me. But then I'm not a congressman with people in my district looking for candy. Trump--a born builder--is looking for any shiny, new thing that he can attach his name to, along with the name of the local congress-critter. So it's a done deal--yet another tool he can use to bribe the Democrats.

4) The Trump Doctrine. This will replace the Cold War/containment strategy conceived and executed under the Eisenhower administration. Of course that model is now obsolete, and Mr. Trump--in his own colorful and non-intellectual way--understands that. He realizes that the United States has no real use for NATO anymore. He understands that the word "ally" only makes sense if there is also a global enemy (which there isn't). He intuits that countries as disparate as South Korea, Canada, and Saudi Arabia are no longer as strategically important to the United States as they once were. Indeed, they're all about to get thrown under the bus.

But there is one global issue that will keep the US involved on the global stage indefinitely, and that is nuclear proliferation.

In a policy that I predict will eventually be known as the Trump Doctrine, the United States will prohibit any additional country from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. The first test case is North Korea--there are only two options. Either the Norks gradually dismantle their nuclear and missile capabilities, or the United States will use military means to take them out. The Trump administration has made that abundantly clear--to North Korea, to China, to South Korea and Japan. While we hope those latter three are allies in this fight, neither their opinion nor their fate will determine our action. If necessary we will attack North Korea to destroy their bombs and missiles regardless of consequences elsewhere.

Once North Korea is disarmed we will pull our troops off the Korean peninsula. There is no strategic reason for us to be there.

Terminating the treaty with Iran is of the same piece. It doesn't matter if Iran was in compliance or not--their nuclear program is non-negotiable. The fact is that a nuclear Iran will experience the very same fire and fury that may be visited on North Korea. I think the Iranians understand that--their nuclear program is over.

So while I supported Trump in 2016 (and compared to Hillary it was no contest--also no regrets), I'm not really a Trump centrist. Count me more sympathetic to neverTrumpers ideology (though frankly they're not a very inspiring group of people).

I'm skeptical of more federal involvement in healthcare, and as stated, I generally oppose big infrastructure projects. I am pro-immigration, and I would strongly support the immigration plan I attribute to Trump above. I support the Trump Doctrine, if that's what it turns out to be.

Still, it's a strange world out there. I won't make any predictions, but if in 2020 I vote against Trump, and if Thomas Friedman votes for him I will not be all that surprised.

Further Reading:

• Good Trump, Bad Trump
• Trump & Trotsky
• Book Review: The Accidental Superpower

Good Trump, Bad Trump

The biggest problem with Donald Trump is that nobody knows just what he will really do after he becomes president. The man speaks with heart, but not with precision. Indeed, rhetoric notwithstanding, his statements are remarkably ambiguous.

Take the most famous one first:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.

The implication (since clarified) is that the ban is temporary, but he's never specified for how long. It could be for 30 minutes or 30 years. Either way it sounds cataclysmic, though the reality may be much less so.

So what the hell does this guy have in mind?

The Bad Trump is an unreconstructed nativist who really hates Muslims. Any serious effort to ban their entry into the US will wreak havoc with our foreign policy, as Jeb! made clear during last night's debate. If consistently enforced it would damage our friends more than our enemies.

For the Good Trump, on the other hand, the plea is just a ruse. The total ban (if enforced at all) will operate only for a few weeks and then be relaxed after we've figured it out. What we'll end up with is something very much like what all the other candidates agreed to, namely a moratorium on war refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Trump's bombast merely serves to open the Overton window for this rather reasonable outcome.

Though I have no clue what he really intends.

His initial comments about Mexican immigrants was even more over the top:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Of course that's a slander. I don't think there's any evidence that Mexican immigrants (illegal or otherwise) are more prone to criminality than anybody else. And they're not sent by the government. On the other hand, he may have a stronger case about immigrants from Central America, especially El Salvador.

Asked by Univision's Jorge Ramos how he would deport 11 million people, Trump said,

We’re going to do it in a very humane fashion. Believe me. I have a bigger heart than you do. We’re going to do it in a very humane fashion. 

You know what it’s called? Management … I’m a great manager. I know how to manage things. I hire unbelievable people. What we’re doing here will work great. 

Once I win, you’re gonna see things happen.

The Bad Trump really believes this. Of course it's impossible--there is no way one could "humanely" deport millions at a low cost.

But the Good Trump isn't so sure. In the same exchange with Mr. Ramos he backs down a bit. Acknowledging that many Mexicans were "good people", he adds "and they're hopefully gonna come back in very soon."

The end result may be sensible immigration reform of the sort Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio have long advocated. This combines greater enforcement at the border with a big, beautiful gate for legal immigrants. As before, by expanding the Overton window he makes a practical solution possible. Though again I have absolutely no clue what his real intentions are.

Finally, this is what Mr. Trump has to say about tariffs on Chinese imports: "I would do a tax. And the tax, let me tell you what the tax should be … the tax should be 45%," But during last night's debate he claims he was misquoted about the 45% figure. But,

"They can't believe how stupid the American leadership is," Trump said of China. "I'm totally open to a tariff. If they don't treat us fairly — hey, their whole trade thing is tariff. You can't deal with China without tariff. They do it to us. We don't do it. It's not fair trade."

The Bad Trump is a devout protectionist--something that will destroy the American economy. The whole "fair trade" wheeze is just an argument for crony capitalism.

But the Good Trump...

Here I am unable to find the Good Trump. I have no quotes where he substantially backs down from this position. So I am afraid that on trade Mr. Trump means exactly what he says. Perhaps this isn't surprising--that a billionaire favors crony capitalism doesn't shock. But it does disappoint, and to my mind nearly disqualifies Mr. Trump from the presidency.

Nearly is the key word. Of course I much prefer either Christie or Rubio as candidates. Even Bush, Carson, or Kasich are better choices (though I'd hold my nose).

But compared to Ted Cruz? Sorry, but in that case I'll vote for Trump. Mr. Trump is a deal-maker. He can negotiate with people. It seems to me his instincts (except on trade) are mostly in the right place. So I can trust him--I think, at least sort of.

Donald Trump reminds me most of FDR. Like Roosevelt, he's not a man of principal. But he has an ability to communicate with the American public that can actually accomplish something. Like FDR, Trump cares not a whit about the Constitution or any other high-minded principal. For him it's all about the Deal. So it will depend on Congress and the courts to keep him in check.

A Trump/Roosevelt presidency is a very big risk. But perhaps we're in a place where such a risk is justified.

Further Reading:

• Immigration? Si!
• Economic Predictions for the Coming Period
• Fascism!

Thundering Proclamations!

A supposed advantage of a political party is that it allows groups to speak with one voice. Presumably what they say has more authority than simply coming from the mouths of individuals. The phenomena exists across the spectrum: the New York Times has an editorial board, that issues editorials, supposedly fact-checked and sanitized, presumed to represent the intelligent opinion of the establishment. Not even Paul Krugman or Tom Friedman can pontificate with the authority of the Editors.

Political campaigns use the same trick. Candidates speak about "our campaign," and "our strategy." Often they'll invite voters to "please join us." It's the modern version of the royal We.

Donald Trump, too egotistical to refer to "we" or "us," nevertheless magnifies authority by talking about himself in the third person.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.

Trotskyist organizations are masters at this manner of speaking. They have a raft of authoritative-sounding groups. On my Beat is an otherwise unread journal entitled International Viewpoint. "International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International."  Who knows what the Bureau of the Fourth International is, but it certainly does sound weighty.

Traditionally, Trotskyist grouplets have used the language of Lenin's Comintern: titles like secratariat and political committee. Jack Barnes goes by the title National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. "Secretary" has such an anodyne ring to it--hardly befitting a long tradition of mass murderers.

Coincidentally or otherwise, this sort of language is used by the United Nations. And perhaps, if you squint, you'll find it spoken at the European Union.

On my Beat, however, the champion of thundering proclamations is Solidarity. As of today the top three articles on their website are written by the editors of Against the Current, the Solidarity Steering Committee, and an International Statement on Iraq and Syria. The latter is signed by a list of about 30 individuals and organizations from around the world, some of which may have more than a dozen members. (For whatever reason they weren't able to win the concurrence of the Bureau of the Fourth International.)

The International Statement reads like it was written by a committee. It is completely incoherent. As is typical, this proclamation concludes with a list of exhortations. The first one reads "Oppose draconian policies; defend the democratic rights of everyone." Well, that just clarifies everything, doesn't it?

The confusion starts at the top. The opening paragraph reads

We fight dictatorships, imperialist aggression, and Daesh. We reject the politics of “national security,” racism, and austerity. It’s time to mobilise!

The dictatorship is the Assad regime. "Imperialist aggression" is sponsored by Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, not to mention Russia, the USA, and European countries. Daesh is, of course, ISIS. In other words, they are against everybody!

Their solution? "Solidarity with democratic and progressive anti-imperialist forces throughout the Arab region." They never specify who those forces are, though presumably they don't include the Free Syrian Army or al-Nusra. One supposes there might be three or four people in Syria who will qualify for such "solidarity." Personally, I'd advise them to get together and form a central committee.

The editors of Against the Current also opine on Syria in a piece entitled Global Lessons of a Catastrophe. There is only one global lesson: it's all our fault. We Americans have disproportionately contributed to global warming, spent too much money on the military, have enabled ISIS, the Assad regime, Turkey, etc., and we invaded Iraq. The people of Syria are absolutely innocent of everything, like children, and bear no responsibility at all for all the death and destruction.

If only we just ceased to exist the world would be a much better place. One way to eliminate us is to let hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in to the USA (at taxpayers expense). "No Border No Nation, Freedom of Movement for All" reads a banner in an accompanying photograph. One could add "No Civilization" to that list.

The third piece, by the Solidarity Steering Committee is headlined Facing the Enemy Within. It's about Donald Trump, of course.

An enemy ideology is tunneling within U.S. society, intending to take over and establish its state and social supremacy. Most of the time it moves mainly undercover, but will seize any opportune moment to leap from the shadows and proclaim its aims openly. It is deeply hostile to democratic values, religious (and irreligious) freedom, women’s rights, and racial equality. It’s not something new in our country, but it’s capable of shifting forms and appearances as circumstances permit.

The enemy is bigotry and white supremacy.

I am no great fan of Donald Trump, but I do not believe for a minute that he represents a white supremacist movement. He does defend a way of life, and that way of life deserves to be defended. My disagreement with him is less in his goals but more in the way he proposes to accomplish them. But the Steering Committee is completely off the rails; their proposal is that "white people" should just commit suicide.

We live in a Constitutional Republic. It depends for its success on shared assumptions about what government is supposed to do, and on what the rights and obligations of citizens are. It is based on the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries, which in turn derives from a Judeo-Christian-Classical world view. Our Republic depends also on the English language as the universal language of government and public life.

As such, the American way is not a universal solution for all of humankind. While we can easily accommodate modest numbers of Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, etc., those who come to live in this country have to learn to be Americans. That is, they have to learn English and learn the basics of civic life in these United States.

The American civilization is worth preserving. It cannot survive if there are no borders. The thundering proclamations from the likes of Solidarity need to be rejected.

Further Reading:

• Refugees in Hungary
• How to Change the Climate
• The SWP Defends Civilization

Book Review: Nigel Farage

I'd love to like Nigel Farage.

But after reading Matthew Lynn's short biography, Independently Minded, I find it increasingly hard to do so.

For those of you living under a rock, Mr. Farage is the long-time leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the closest thing the Brits have to a Tea Party. And who among us Tea Party types aren't thrilled by Mr. Farage's eloquent revelation of truth to power from his perch as a member of the European Parliament. For those of us who believe in small, limited government and individual freedom, this is music to our ears.

Born in 1964, Mr. Farage hails from Downe, Kent (one of the home counties surrounding London), also famous as Charles Darwin's birthplace. He's a hail-fellow-well-met guy who loves his pub and brew, and was a semi-professional golfer in his younger years. Not much of one for school, he chose a career as a commodity trader in the City--a job where his natural gregariousness and people-skills would be put to good use. He possessed "a formidable ability to hold his drink."

Not formidable enough, apparently. In 1985, his walk back to the train station after an evening of drinking led to an accident that destroyed his golf ambitions. That pushed him into a career in politics, inspired in part by the well-known Conservative politician, Enoch Powell. He joined the incipient UKIP and soon became its leading member.

Mr. Farage loved campaigning, especially in the home counties where he could move from pub to pub and commune with the locals. But running a successful political organization was another story, and that Mr. Farage would rather have left to somebody else. The problem was that somebody else usually had ideas of his own not to Mr. Farage's liking. So while he was never interested in climbing the greasy pole, that's part of what he did, and not unsuccessfully. UKIP, while it still does not have a seat at Westminster, holds a disproportionate number of seats in the European Parliament and is a player in British politics.

In 2010 he was involved in another accident, as a passenger in a small campaign plane forced into a crash landing. It took him a year to recover, though he remains in poor health. While his previous accident inspired a career in politics, the latest one is pushing him away. We may, sadly, be seeing the end of Mr. Farage's public career.

Mr. Farage is a politician with many positive qualities. Unlike so many politicos, he really is a nice guy. He's been able to dispense with the handlers and consultants, and just be himself. There is a refreshing honesty about both his persona and his program.

His argument against the EU is compelling. It really is run by a bunch of unelected bureaucrats who have no right to be deciding how people should lead their lives. His funny criticisms of Herman van Rompuy and Jose Barroso, satirical to be sure, are right on point. The EU is a utopian vision that is doomed to fail, causing misery and suffering across the continent.

That said, the Euro has survived longer than many would have thought. Kicking the can down the road, as the EU government has done, apparently works, at least in the short term. Not that the vast army of unemployed in Greece, Italy, or Spain are better off because of it.

So what's not to like about Mr. Farage?

First, he and (especially) some of his colleagues are prone to accuse Germans of fascism simply because they are German. This is a cheap shot, and not a true one. There is a problem of fascism in Europe, but almost none of it comes from Germany. Instead, I'd finger groups like France's National Front or the overtly racist Golden Dawn in Greece. The comparable organizations in Germany are much smaller. Accusing Angela Merkel of being the second coming of Hitler (as some Greek protesters are wont to do) is as unfair as it is unhelpful. Mr. Farage should distance himself from this sentiment.

Second is that UKIP has acquired some unpleasant bedfellows. UKIP has long prided itself on being a "non-racist" party, and distinguished itself from thug groups such as the British National Party. Unfortunately, according to his biographer, Mr. Farage is now proud that his anti-EU alliance includes organizations such as the National Front and the True Finn party. In particular, Mr. Farage is increasingly campaigning on an anti-immigrant platform, which verges on racism.

Immigration is a very difficult issue. At one extreme is the dreamer, Bryan Caplan, who argues that if only people could move freely to where they could earn the most money, the world economy would instantly grow by another 2-3%. This, of course, is how it works within the United States--overtaxed New Yorkers can move to Texas without asking anybody for permission first.

Unfortunately, this very sensible economic argument runs up against cultural resistance, and so free immigration across international frontiers is simply not practicable. But it's one thing to argue for well-regulated immigration (as Mitt Romney did), and yet another to blame immigrants for all or most of a nation's problems. In extremis, the latter conforms to the fascist meme: we're poor because the foreigners stole all the money.

No prominent politician on the American scene is anywhere close to the fascist meme. The closest was Tom Tancredo who ran on an anti-immigration platform, and lost badly. But the same is not true in Europe. In particular, the National Front is against immigration per se, not just for its better regulation.

Now I understand that Europe is not the US. Relatively open borders in a big, diverse country like the US means something very different than it does in Finland. It may be the Finns have good reasons to be much more cautious about immigration. That said, I'm pretty nervous about the True Finn party, and I get pretty nervous about Nigel Farage when he comes out in their support.

Apparently Mr. Farage is proud that he has built an anti-EU alliance that includes these fascist or fascist-leaning groups. I think he's lost sight of the goal. The goal is not to abolish the EU. The goal is to expand individual liberty, toward which the EU is undoubtedly an obstacle. But replacing unelected bureaucrats with politicians who don't believe in free markets, democracy, liberty to begin with is not progress.

I'd like Mr. Farage much better if he would disavow some of his so-called allies.

Mr. Lynn's biography is a short, entertaining read. At 61 pages it is just the right length for a (so far) minor political figure. For a clear introduction to Mr. Farage and the movement he represents, this is a very good place to start.

Further Reading:

• Christie vs. Paul
• Fascism!
• Immigration? Si!

Immigration? Si!

Two specters are haunting the globe: deflation and depopulation.

The two are related, but deflation is a transient economic problem--in a decade or two it will be vanquished. Depopulation is much more serious, threatening civilization as we know it. That problem is long-term--lasting on the scale of centuries.

In southern Europe fertility rates have plunged to below 1.5--the number needed for a constant population is 2.1. In Japan, and South Korea the rate is below 1.3. In Japan they now sell more adult diapers than they do for babies. Even China isn't the teeming mass of humanity it used to be--it's down to 1.55.

Mexico and the United States come in at 2.25 and 2.06, respectively. Good by comparison, but hardly a population explosion.

Depopulation is terrible for a society. Of course the best solution is to have a stable birthrate, but failing that, a sensible immigration policy is essential. Japan dramatically illustrates the problems of having neither. The country simply will not exist 100 years from now if current trends continue. No, we don't need to wait for the last Japanese to die out--they will just succumb to invasion from one of their neighbors, e.g., the Philippines (3.1).

France illustrates the problems posed by unassimilated immigrants. Nominally, their fertility rate is 2.08. But according to Mark Steyn, the baby bulge is primarily among the very non-French Muslim population. Ethnic French (the carriers of French culture) are no better lovers than other Europeans. France, too, will simply cease to exist as France.

The world will be a much poorer place without either France or Japan.

As usual, the United States is a blessed country. Not only can we hold our own in the fertility sweepstakes, but our major source of immigrants is from Mexico. Mexicans are Christians who speak a language as close to English as any, and who share a significant part of our history. As immigrants they are not politically demanding, and they come here to work hard and accumulate capital. And yet, for all that, a lot of people want to turn them away.

Now this would be a disaster. Vitality, both economic and cultural, depends on population growth. From 2000 to 2010 we had the slowest growth of any decade in our history--a mere 10%, or 30 million people. Maybe that's sufficient, but if so, then just barely.

Of that 30 million, 11 million of them are illegal immigrants. Extremists like Michelle Malkin want to either deport them all, or strongly "encourage" them to leave ("self-deport" in Mitt Romney's unfortunate phrase). Of course that will never happen. Deporting 11 million people would be the largest forced migration in history, and it would be a humanitarian disaster. Even Ms. Malkin will flinch before actually doing that. So one way or another, we have to legalize these immigrants.

Not only should we legalize them, we should welcome them. In a world with shrinking human resources, the country with the most young people will do well.

But assimilation is essential, and unlike France, the US has a proven track record of accomplishing just that. In my youth, we Trotskyists vilified the once-famous linguist, S. I. Hayakawa. Mr. Hayakawa championed English Only laws that would make English the national language of the United States. Today I think he was on to something.

Now I'm not going the full Quebec on you--that is, unlike that province, I do not advocate government regulation of what language people use in their own private business. But the public language of the United States--the language of government at all levels--has to be English. English is the language of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, against which all laws are judged. Accordingly, for example, if Puerto Rico were to become a state (which I oppose) a condition has to be that all legislative and judicial deliberations at all levels of government be in English.

Mexican immigrants seem perfectly happy to learn English. They came to this country in part to leave Mexico--not to bring it with them (though if they bring more food, so much the better).

Two additional common arguments are made against immigration reform:

1. The moral hazard: Many, especially my friends in the Tea Party (e.g., Glenn Reynolds), maintain that amnesty now will simply encourage more illegal immigration in the future. They cite the failed reform of 1986. But the world is different--Mexico's fertility rate has fallen dramatically and continues to fall. There simply is no large excess of Mexicans waiting to cross the border. The moral hazard--valid in principle--is simply irrelevant in practice.
   
   Accordingly, I object to the billions of dollars in proposed spending for the border fence. It won't keep people out because there aren't that many people waiting to get in. And it won't make us safer. The NSA does a better job with our security than do immigration officials at the border. What people carry on their persons is the least of our worries.
   
2. Economic competition: Mickey Kaus is the most prominent advocate of this view, that low-wage Mexican workers compete against low-wage American workers. There is some truth to this, but not much. First, the illegal immigrants are already here, and because of their status receive below market wages. Hence they are worse competition now than they would be if they were legal. Employers will hire somebody below minimum wage if that person is both competent and available. Legal employees are not available at the extra-low salary.
   
   Second, low-wage workers benefit from a growing population, just like the rest of us.
   
   And third, it assumes that Mexicans will always be low-wage workers. I don't think that's true. My sense is that they hoard capital rather than fritter it. Over time, they will be a wealthy community.

Opponents of immigration reform point out the scandal that the current bill in congress is 1300 pages long and growing. "You'll have to pass it to find out what's in it," in Nancy Pelosi's immortal phrase. And this is a scandal, but it has nothing to do with immigration reform. Instead, it reflects the incompetence and corruption in congress, on both sides of the aisle.

The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good--Marco Rubio's bill deserves to pass the House. In a world of declining human resources, we can't afford to forego our last opportunity for immigration. Turning away people who are already here is huge mistake. Similarly, we need to find a way to give residency status to a large number of the foreign students now in the United States, regardless of major.

Common sense security concerns are, of course, valid. A criminal background, along with evidence of connections to terrorism, have to be disqualifying. Some border enforcement is necessary--probably at the level we currently have. But in general, people are our most valuable resource. Let's not turn them away.

Mr. Rubio has my vote for President, should he ever choose to run.


Further Reading:

• Affirmative Action: Out With A Whimper
• Free Trade Or Foul
• Where The Customer Always Comes Last