Posts
You knew this post was coming.
The Simpsons took on immigration in Sunday's episode. When the barley fields of nearby Ogdenville become contaminated, the town's Swedish Lutherans, newly impoverished, flee to Springfield to "do the jobs Springfielders won't."
Let's shoot some fish in a barrel:
The personal service jobs performed by the Ogdenvillians were ones for which there had been zero market before their arrival. So it follows that their presence creates no unemployment. How the Springfielders suddenly become rich enough to afford to pay these Ogdenvillians grocery money, let alone a living wage, is not explained.
The Ogdenvillians generate no negative externalities. Being Swedish Lutherans, they commit no crimes, which make them completely irrelevant to our actual minority population.
Magically, Springfield Elementary manages to double its student body without overcrowding.
Magically, the population of Springfield manages to double without causing a spike in housing prices, a subprime fueled construction bubble, and a collapse of the banking system. Actually, the show doesn't even address where the newcomers are expected to live.
The hospital ER does overcrowd, but that's okay: Marge knows how to reset Bart's dislocated shoulder at home. Somehow, the Ogdenvillians pay for their medical care, since the hospital doesn't go bankrupt providing it for free.
When the town decides to "close the border" with Ogdenville, Chief Wiggum proves as effective at policing it as he is at policing everything else. So the Springfielders form a volunteer border patrol that goes on an alcohol-fueled shooting spree. The show explicitly compares this group to -- you guessed it -- Klansmen and Nazis.
As you can see, the episode completely takes a dive on the economics of immigration. It invents some lamely contrived social friction for which the Ogdenvillians are portrayed as completely innocent. And the Springfielders are complete boobs for resisting (eventually) the newcomers.
But let's ignore this long list of lies about immigration into the U.S. and consider the view of citizenship taken by the Simpsons' creators. They would have us believe that third world immigration is no different than "immigration" from the neighboring town. But it is different. The Ogdenvillians and Springfielders are all citizens of the United States. They are bound by a common language, culture, ethnicity, and vision of what our common space should look like. They are, in short, one nation, mutually bound by that unity to support one another, even when that means the kind of disruption that would really result from the kind of circumstances that this episode creates.
But immigrants from the third world are not fellow citizens. They are peoples with their own cultures and their own governments, rightly charged with executing their own racial and cultural destiny. I wish them well, but I see no need to share my country with them.
6 comments:
How would you feel about Swedish Lutheran immigration? :)
I don't know where you live, Phi, but do you see much effect from immigration on a day-to-day basis? As a Canadian who's never met a native Spanish speaker, I find the immigration issue in the US to be simultaneously strange, exciting, scary, incomprehensible, and probably some other things.
How would you feel about Swedish Lutheran immigration?(Just to clarify, by "Swedish Lutherans" I meant Americans of Swedish extraction.)
As a first approximation, I'm opposed to all immigration going forward. Failing that, future immigrants and their offspring should be screened for their ability to pay more in tax revenues than they extract in services, and be likely to create net positive externalities.
[D]o you see much effect from immigration on a day-to-day basis?
A fair question. The answer is no. I've never lived in one place long enough (the maximum was five years) to see the effect of immigration on communities in the long run. I am also insulated, by virtue of my education and income, from the negative effects of third-world immigration, and from NAMs in general.
But others have seen the changes:I’ve spent most of my life in Southern California. I wish you could see these little towns for the way they used to look—rather than what many of them have become.
A town like Maywood, where the average home was built in 1930, once looked like something from the imagination of Norman Rockwell. Pastel flowers, and ladies walked about wearing large straw hats and white gloves.
It's funny how experiences with immigrant groups vary from person to person.
I lived in an apartment complex for a couple years where "English is the third language, fourth if you count Ebonics." I was already mildly pro-immigration at that point, but my experiences there solidified my stance a great deal and skeptical of claims that "The Mexicans came in here and ruined everything." My wife's experiences at the charity hospital also left her more positively predispositioned to them than when she started.
Though at the same time, Sheila Tone grew up around a lot of immigrants and her experience has led her to take a much more critical view despite ascribing to (eclectic) liberalish politics on the whole. And some people at the aforementioned complex came out of it with a different take. So I try not to be too skeptical of people's self-described experiences.
This is a good point. When our East Coast establishment thinks of immigrants, it thinks of the high-achieving immigrants with whom they associate in the New York - DC corridor. Others think of the nice nannies and hardworking landscapers they can employ at a pittance. And still others see Latino immigrants ethnically cleanse the native black population, much to the community's improvement.
There is no doubt that immigration does, in fact, create both winners and losers.
Φ:
As a first approximation, I'm opposed to all immigration going forward. Failing that, future immigrants and their offspring should be screened for their ability to pay more in tax revenues than they extract in services, and be likely to create net positive externalities.Why do you prefer the former to the latter? I'm as worried as you are about the effects of giving low-skill, low-income immigrants (and natives, for that matter) access to our government services and ballot boxes, but I welcome the high-skill, high-income types with open arms. As you say, they're likely to create net positive externalities, so what's the problem?
Brandon: a fair question. I would give two reasons. First, given our political system, I am afraid that the rational administration of selective immigration would become captive to the same special interests that brought us this mess in the first place. All the business and ethnic lobbies would manipulate the criteria to their own ends, not to the end of the general welfare.
Second, as I said in the last comment, immigration creates winners and losers among American citizens, even when the net effect to the treasury is positive. Even when immigrants increase the general welfare, somebody will lose his job, or see his wages decrease, or be outcompeted. Given HBD, somebody will see the culture and complexion of his neighborhood change in ways he doesn't like.
So sure, this kind of thing happens all the time in any country, and I'm certainly not going to argue that the government should step in and enforce some kind of social stasis among our own people. But that's not the same as saying the government should create social change with immigration policy.
Post a Comment