Matthew Yglesias » Where the Foreigners Are

Sep 30th, 2009 at 11:28 am

Where the Foreigners Are

An interesting fact about Sweden is that an extremely high proportion of its population is foreign born. It’s not the highest in the world—Canada and Australia take the crown—but the foreign-born are a larger proportion of the population than in the United States:

A large number of those immigrants are from other European countries, but apparently Sweden has one of the world’s largest Assyrian populations.

Comments
78

Filed under: Demographics, Sweden,

78 Responses to “Where the Foreigners Are”

Pan Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Sweden took in many Iraqi refugees that we wouldn’t let into the US. Good for them. And Australia and Canada’s high percentage of immigrants is a reflection of their lower population to begin with, and the large number of Asian immigrants in recent years.
Hector Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Re: Sweden has one of the world’s largest Assyrian populations

Most of whom were living perfectly comfortably in Iraq (at least ever since the Turkish genocide in the 1910s) until Dumbya Bush decided to invade, destabilize the place, and let loose the hounds of hell.

What a f*cking jack*ss.
DAS Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:37 am
One of the undergrads whom I met when I was in grad school was from Sweden. His parents were actually Polish Jews. Evidently, Sweden has (or had) a large Polish Jewish refugee population — you could grow up in Sweden speaking Yiddish to pretty much everyone you’d know.
godoggo Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Canada and Australia? Huh. I would have guessed Saudi Arabia or one of its neighbors.
Hector Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:38 am
By the way, Michigan and greater Detroit _do_ have a large number of Chaldeans (=Assyrians who reunited with the Church of Rome) though my understanding is that most of them came over generations ago, long before Dumbya’s Iraq War.
alphie Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Gah!

Back to the bastard scales on the y-axis??

Yes:
0-2-4-6-8-10
0-5-10-15-20
0-10-20-30-40-50

No:
0-7.5-15.0-22.5-30

Never!
kafka Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Another difference between Sweden and the U.S: their immigrants enter legally, most of ours don’t.
doofman Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Also lots of Indian immigrants in Stockholm. There are some excellent Indian restaurants in Sodermalm.
Platypus Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Here in Toronto, the majority of residents were born outside of Canada. It’s even more skewed in the university community where I work. Of the 10 faculty in our division we have emigrants from Czechoslovakia (1), Israel (1), Palestine (1), United States (1), South Africa (1), England (2), Germany (1) Columbia (1) and a native Canadian (the daughter of Asian immigrants).
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Kafka is simply wrong –Americans invite roughly 1 million legal immigrants a year, while even the highest guesses at illegal immigration top out at a few hundred thousand a year.

But MattY begs the question: virtually ALL of America’s foreign-born population, and their children, BECOME Americans.

What percentage of the foreign-born (and their kids) are ever accepted as Swedes or Australians?
DCBob Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I did not know that! Great factoid. The so-called land of immigrants is outdone by the most ancient Germanic homeland. Ha!

kafka’s point about legal and illegal immigration is important as well. It’s telling that our public infrastructure is so poorly funded and managed, even compared with the Swedes, that we can’t manage our immigration well. Sure, the Swedes don’t have several thousand miles of border to watch, but I’ll bet they don’t have to argue with business interests and right-wing morons about national IDs either.
Ryan Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I have long found it amusing that Sweden’s biggest soccer star is named Zlatan Ibrahimovic (a child of Bosnian and Croatian immigrants).

It’s not unusual to see this in Europe of course, but his name really stands out in a squad which is otherwise almost entirely very Nordic-sounding.
Bob Oso Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
kafka’s point about legal and illegal immigration is important as well

Yes, because he is wrong.
Chris Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Well, let’s also consider that the total population of Sweden is around 9 million. By every estimate that I’ve ever seen the US has an illegal immigrant population well North of that.
kafka Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
“Kafka is simply wrong –Americans invite roughly 1 million legal immigrants a year, while even the highest guesses at illegal immigration top out at a few hundred thousand a year.”

This is complete bullshit. The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is estimated to be between 12 and 20 million. Most of these arrived after 1987 when the last amnesty was signed into law. At your assumed rate of a “few hundred thousand a year” – well you do the math. It doesn’t add up.
soullite Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Really, if you could choose between America and any other industrialized, first world nation and you had neither cultural nor familial ties in any of them, you wouldn’t pick America either unless it was already right next door.

I doubt MOST of our immigrants are illegal. Unfortunately, it doesn’t require that “most” of them be illegal for them to drive down wages, reduce worker protections, and destabilize the lower class. We have room to grow, I don’t think anyone denies that. That growth must be made at a sustainable clip, however. Plopping this many workers into our economy is causing hell both politically and economically for most Americans. Kafka is right, though. Your math doesn’t add up when it comes to even the lower range of estimates.
Jason L. Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I think a large part of this is that immigrants move to cities, and basically no one in Sweden or Australia lives anywhere but in cities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Urban_population_in_2005_world_map.PNG

I’m actually surprised that the U.S. is this far up. Someone moving to the U.S. has to either come from Canada or Mexico or cross the better part of a continent or a whole ocean. Someone moving to, say, Belgium can come without restriction from the 97% of the rest of the Schengen area that isn’t Belgium. Granted the Schengen area has only recently been so large, but still. . .
ajay Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
kafka, if you took ten seconds to check this, you’d see that there are about 550,000 illegal entries a year, and the total II population of the US is about 11.5m, (figures from the GAO and the DHS respectively).
Of course, if you have 550,000 a year every year since 1987, then you get to 12.1 million. So I have done the math, and it does, in fact, add up.
Incidentally, according to the census, legal immigration is running at about 1 million a year.

Basically, everyone was right except you – you were wrong about everything.
Ikram Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
And Australia and Canada’s high percentage of immigrants is a reflection of their lower population to begin with, and the large number of Asian immigrants in recent years.

No, not for Canada. Immigration has been high since th 1890s, with a breif moratorium between 1914 and 1945. Post WWII, British and Italian immigrants flooded Canada. Until 2001, Britons were still the largest foriegn-born group in Ontario. I think Italians are #1 now.
Ginger Yellow Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I suspect, without any evidence to back it up right now, that a pretty huge proportion of Sweden’s foreign born population are Finns.
urgs Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“Really, if you could choose between America and any other industrialized, first world nation and you had neither cultural nor familial ties in any of them, you wouldn’t pick America either unless it was already right next door.”

Thats not true. Suppose you are a young healthy high German that just finished a Doctorate in Chemistry at a German University. Odds are arround 1:6 that you will leave for the USA. And why not? Salery is much higher than in Germany, taxes are lower, healthcare discrimination works your way and you already speak English. Those people wont go to Sweden. Inequality and lack off public funding can work your way too.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
LOL — flunked math, Kafka?

The foreign-born population of the United States is currently in the 30 million range, and includes large #s of naturalized US citizens, a small # of US citizens born abroad, legal permanent residents of the United States, and foreigners living here illegally. (Those who are legally here on temporary visas, like students, are not counted.)

The consensus estimates of foreigners living illegally in the United States have FALLEN dramatically in the past year because of the recession — from as much as 12 million, to perhaps a bit under 11 million. (Try Jeff Passel’s work at Pew, and contrast with Steve Camarota at CIS, all extensively covered by the likes of the NYTimes, the Washington Post, the AP, etc..)

The wilder guesses up to 20 million illegals that you refer to, but don’t understand, to the extent they have any validity at all, essentially count short-timers as if they’re permanent — that is, people who enter without inspection (i.e., sneak across the borders) but stay less than a year. That’s a bit of a stretch, since it counts a guy busted by the Border Patrol in Nogales on the day he drove across the border the same as a guy who has been working under the table for a decade. The bigger share of the extra #s are overstayers — the roughly 40% of illegal residents who had valid visas or were otherwise legal to stay here for a time, but chose not to leave or otherwise violated the terms of their permission to remain here.

The latter is a famously complex phenomenon, because it would include a foreign student who marries a US citizen, and can’t keep the paperwork straight while she is deciding whether the napkins should match the tablecloths and where to register, the guy who tries to start his own business (and hires a dozen Americans) while he’s here on an H-1B, and so on.

So it actually helps to know the issues and do the math.

As noted, ANNUAL legal immigration to the US is roughly 1 million a year — most of them close family members (spouses, kids, and siblings) who are invited by US citizens and green card holders; 140,000 invited by employers, and 55,000 who, I kid you not, win a lottery; with a few score thousand refugees and political asylees on top.

Even the craziest estimates for foreigners who remain illegally in the United States don’t go much above 250k-300k a year: period. So every 3 or 4 years, the illegally resident population increases by roughly 1 million — which is the ANNUAL increase in legal immigration.

‘Course, that doesn’t count two key factors: first, as much as 40% of the illegally resident population is ALREADY legally entitled to green cards — but the system is so backlogged, particularly for nuclear families, that the spouses and kids of LEGAL immigrants choose to obey their marriage vows and obligations as parents, rather than our dumbass immigration laws.

Breaking it down in easy-to-understand chunks: if you take 12 million as the consensus #, roughly 5 million are kids. Another 2 million are stay at home moms. That leaves 5 million (or so) who are foreigners working illegally in the US. Of ALL those totals, the bulk who are legally eligible for immigration visas which they cannot get are spouses and kids — that is, Dad is LEGAL, he has a green card, but he couldn’t wait 8 years for mom, so she came illegally. After a year, even if her green card is available back in Juarez, should she leave to get it, she’d be exiled for a decade. So she stays — legally eligible for immigration, but permanently outlawed cuz she refuses to accept exile from her husband and kids — of whom it’s not unusual that the two oldest are illegal, while the youngest are US citizens.

Got anything to say about your innumeracy?

And even more importantly, as I noted above, the key difference between America and most other countries with substantial foreign-born populations, is that OUR immigrants become Americans. “They” become “us”, and who “we” are, as in “We, the People” changes and expands to include ‘em.

I couldn’t move to Sweden and become a Swede any more than I could pick up a racket and become Bjorn Borg.

Get it now, Kafka?
rusty Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Sweden actually came under some criticism from other EU countries for having too generous of an asylum policy. The country took in large numbers of Iraqis (both in 1991 and more recently) as well as from the Balkans during their conflict.

Other EU countries wanted to establish universal criteria for asylum applications to prevent en masse labor migration (i.e. north africa to Italy/France, Turkey to Greece, Polish plumbers to England) that didn’t mesh with the more generous Swedish process.

I don’t have current information, though, on how the impasse was resolved. MY?
KJ Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Americanist,

Wow. So much bluff and bluster, and not a shred of actual information. Well done. You are a bullshit artist of the highest order.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
LOL — things like numbers and sources confuse you, KJ?
KJ Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Shorter americanist: I don’t need to provide any actual data. I can just make shit up.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
LOL — man, you’re a dope. I cited the Census, Pew, the Center for Immigration Studies, as well as the AP, the NY Times, and the Washington Post.

If you have any particular # or source or analysis you doubt, say which it is, and why, and I’ll be glad to sort it out for you.

But ya might begin here: Kafka said “Another difference between Sweden and the U.S: their immigrants enter legally, most of ours don’t.”

That’s simply, wildly untrue. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security publish their #s every year (in the DHS Statistical Yearbook), which counts — as I noted — about a million legal immigrants a year. I broke down the #s, where the total comes from.

There are a wide range of estimates for “illegal immigration”, and I’m familiar with all of ‘em: FAIR, CIS, Numbers USA, etc. NONE of ‘em claim more than a million illegal immigrants a year.

Not.One.

I noted what’s wrong with Kafka’s idea that the illegal population is 12-20 million. The consensus # is 12 million foreigners living illegally in the US, and the difference between the consensus figure and the higher one is whether you count short-timers, and how you count overstayers. (That is, if somebody overstays and then gets a green card, they are still here: but are they counted as “illegal”, or as “legal”?)

But the simplest error the guy makes is that he was comparing a TOTAL, with an annual. One million a year is a LOT bigger than a few hundred thousand a year. (Likewise, 30 million is a lot bigger than 12 million.)

Be an asshole if you want, KJ, but if you’ve got a real question, ask it.
Ryan, legal immigrant Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
KJ, you’re embarrassing yourself. Either provide an alternate set of numbers and cite your sources, as Americanist did, or clam up, because you’ve contributed nothing so far.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
OUR immigrants become Americans. “They” become “us”, and who “we” are, as in “We, the People” changes and expands to include ‘em.

I think that’s a little idealistic: in large parts of the US, the descendants of slaves, or of pre-US Hispanic settlers, are still not considered part of that “us”.

On the other hand, your numbers are sound, and KJ’s an asshole.
eric k Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
But wait the right wingers keep telling us that we can never do Swedish style social democracy here because we are full of immigrants and Sweden is full of nothing but a homogeneous group of people who all look like they will be trying out for the next production of Mama Mia.

Your telling me that once again the right wing is full of shit and lying? Will the disillusionment never end…
Jasper Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Although theAmericanist obviously knows his numbers (an immigration lawyer, perchance?), it should be pointed out that many — (maybe even some years most?) — of the “immigrants” he refers to are people who have already immigrated to the US — that is, people who live here who finally get their green cards. The definition of “immigrant” has morphed over the years to now mean “a person whose legal status in the eyes of the US government changes.” But I would argue a better, plain meaning definition of “immigrant” is simply “a person who arrives in the country for more than a temporary (ie tourist) stay.”

I’d be interested to know what the total net inflow is counting all non-tourist new arrivals (work visas, student visas, etc., green cards) minus non-tourist departures. I suspect we’d learn that total immigration is higher than official figures demonstrate. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, mind you — I’m an immigration booster and among other things would like to see us handing out more green cards — but it would imply that a growing share of the people who live in the US are here on the basis of some type of “non-immigrant” visa (I use scare quotes because that’s what the US government calls such documents — it’s certainly not how the immigrants themselves typically see things; and yes, obviously some of these people overstay their visas and “go illegal”). I’ve never been able to find these figures. I think it would be fairly easy to find out how many non-immigration visas the government gives out, but not very easy to find out how many such people are leaving. Also, in a country of 300+ million, there are bound to be hundreds of thousands of American citizens and legal residents each year who emigrate. They, too, would have to be counted to come up with accurate net-inflow figures.

And yes, to echo the others, KJ and Kafka don’t have the faintest inkling of what they’re talking about.
Jasper Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
But wait the right wingers keep telling us that we can never do Swedish style social democracy here because we are full of immigrants and Sweden…

One suspects the renewed viability of the Swedish model (IIRC Swedish economic performance has come back fairly strong over the last 15 years or so after going through the doldrums in the 80s and early 90s) partly flows from the stimulative effects of the country’s more generous immigration policies.
too many steves Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Where the Foreigners Are

The foreigners tend to be located in foreign countries. I would bet that Sweden is close to 100% foreigners.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Even though I don’t think that the children of immigrants born in Sweden become Swedish citizens automatically, they do seem to have a much easier path to naturalization than in many other European countries. Their laws seem to encourage immigrants to become Swedish, unlike the laws in, say, Switzerland, where an immigrant family can live for generations and still not be Swiss.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
“an immigration lawyer, perchance?”

God forbid. Their bar association is not numbered among my fans. Besides, knowing the #s is a policy wonk’s gig, not a practitioner’s.

When ya talk #s, too, it’s important to remember the distinction between those that are counted, and those that are estimates.

Illegal immigration #s are a series of estimates — most of ‘em quite reasonable, and lots of ‘em inter-related. That’s why I noted that roughly 40% of the illegally resident population entered legally, as distinct from the majority who are “EWI’s”, those who entered without inspection. The former we have better #s for (cuz they had visas, mostly, or were admitted from countries where we waive the visa requirement, but were counted at the airport). The EWI estimates aren’t counts, but they’re not made up out of nothing, either: we’ve had a LOT of experience with it.

Legal immigrants are COUNTED. You don’t get to be a “legal immigrant” without a formal recognition by the US government that even though you were a foreigner, you now have a legal right to remain permanently in the United States unless you commit crimes or leave for more than 6 months straight.

So I use the term precisely — which is why Jasper is thoughtful, but wrong, and wrong in a significant way. “Immigrant” has a meaning — a foreigner with legal permission to live and even work here temporarily is NOT an “immigrant”, if only because they have a “non-immigrant visa”.

This can seem like a technical point, but it gets at why our ‘debate’ on all these issues is such a mess. For example, much of the latter half of the 1990s, the Congress debated “immigration” in terms of the H-1B visa — which is one of those ‘non-immigrant’ visas.

Likewise, Kafka reflects a choice made in the early 1990s by both the anti-immigration side, the FAIR and CIS and Numbers USA crowd, AND (oddly) the self-declared pro-immigration side, to blur all differences between “legal” and “illegal” — they were ALL “immigrants”, so far as they were concerned.

That’s why we see such Orwellian nonsense as discussions over the ease with which the “un-documented” can get, er, forged documents.

It’s actually pretty simple: Legal immigrants are people we want. That’s why they’re legal. They are foreigners that We, the People, have INVITED. Individually. By name. US citizens and green card holders invite spouses and kids, and citizens can invite siblings and parents; employers can sponsor skilled workers for green cards, plus there’s a lottery. That’s it — that covers ALL legal immigration. (Refugees and asylees also get green cards, but they’re not invited — they’re people running for their lives, whom we won’t turn away.)

Foreigners living illegally in the US are people we do NOT want. That’s why they are illegal. So it’s bullshit to pretend that We, the People wanted ‘em to come here, even though we happily hire ‘em to pick strawberries, work off the books construction jobs, and the like.

See, the American immigration mess isn’t about THEM. It’s about US — what WE want. We can have an immigration system that fails, as long as we want. We can even have an immigration system that is the most egregious anti-marriage, anti-family set of American laws — in fact, we do.

But do we WANT that?

That’s why I noted the important immigration difference between the US and Sweden, or Australia, or Japan, etc., is that in THIS country, immigrants become Americans.

But, to be as clear as possible, all citizenship depends on the rule of law. It quite directly depends on the LEGAL status of the immigrant — a foreigner has to have been a legal permanent resident for several years before they can become a US citizen.

So, despite all the bullshit “no human being is illegal”, the distinction between legal and illegal is not insignificant. It is literally a matter of what we are, as a people, and who we become, as a nation.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Oh, yeah, Jasper asked: “I’d be interested to know what the total net inflow is counting all non-tourist new arrivals (work visas, student visas, etc., green cards) minus non-tourist departures. I suspect we’d learn that total immigration is higher than official figures demonstrate…”

No, not in the ways that count. But it’s worth thinking about. In ballpark #s –

Last #s I saw suggested 30 million or so temporary visitors to the US every year — tourists, mostly, along with business travellers and a million or so foreign students at any given moment. Virtually all of the first two categories leave when they are supposed to.

The single largest changed factor is the burst in H-1B visas that started in the late 1990s. Basically, while you can find exceptions the rule is that ALL H-1B visa holders intend to stay permanently as green card holders, and perhaps even US citizens. To the extent there is a valid split, it’s between those who get advanced degrees from American universities and then H-1B visas so they can work here, and those who are brought here by contractors on H-1B visas to fill outsourced jobs. The former are more important, the latter are a nuisance.

The former folks are forced to take the H-1B because getting an employer- sponsored green card takes too long. (The IEEE-USA was the first organization to point to this, and has stuck with it: Green cards, not guest worker visas is their position.) We should restore the Ellis Island model, the direct connection between getting here (what you’re calling immigration) and belonging here, which is what AMERICAN immigration is all about. We’re not a nation founded on guest workers.

Some guy at CIS crunched the #s on this about 8-9 years ago, concluding that the H-1B expansion was essentially putting 1 million people onto a train headed for a tunnel that was only 60,000 people a year wide. (Look up the three Op-Eds in the SF Chronicle, complete with cartoon, one by DIanne Feinstein, one by Lamar Smith, and the other guy.)

But those #s don’t quit fit on the 60/40 split between those who sneak across the border and those who enter legally and never leave, because Congress has essentially provided an “indefinitely temporary” status to H-1Bs whose visas “expire”.

It just doesn’t make Americans out of ‘em — which is the point I keep hammering on.

The whole issue suffers from a lack of candor and common sense. Americans simply don’t want large #s of low-skilled immigrants — and guess what? The laws don’t provide for ‘em. THAT’s why illegal immigration is bad — we don’t want it.

We DO want family-based immigration — and yet we have backlogs for various family categories measured in years, and even decades. That makes no sense — far better to deliver on our promises, than to keep making more promises we don’t keep. If we kept our family immigration promises in a timely way, nearly half our illegal immigration problem would disappear.

And we DO want high skilled immigrants. They create jobs. Hell, the ultimate arbiter of who gets to be a 21st century immigrant to the US isn’t the DHS, nor the Department of State — it’s the admissions officers at American universities.

The whole “amnesty” nonsense isn’t about the 12 million who are here. Americans are remarkably generous — so long as we are confident that we’re not being played for suckers: we don’t want ANOTHER 12 million. “We, the People” believe in the distinction between legal and illegal, because we believe in the rule of law — hell, we believe in sovereignty, and no approach to immigration that disses our right to choose for our own country will ever work.

The key to stopping illegal immigration based on jobs is also simple: fine or even jail employers who hire illegal workers on purpose, the same way the IRS goes after employers who cook the books, or hire off the books. The key to THAT, is not only to verify work authorization for new hires, but also to authenticate identity.

LOL — simple, see?
The Lorax Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Sweden has been good in taking in Iraqis. But it has been hard for immigrants to break in to such a homogenous society, or so I’ve heard from every Swede I know (though all the Swedes I know have been there for many generations). Stories of immigrants changing their last names to something more typically Swedish in order to get job interviews are pretty common. Of course, all that is anecdotal.

Sweden is not without problems. But it is an amazingly just and decent society, very unlike the US (or the UK for that matter). It really is pretty much as American European fetishists imagine.
Max424 Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hector wins the thread.

Just kidding. Hector made a good point @2 but he sure has been swearing a lot lately.

Thanks, theAmericanist, for the effort and the words.
Marcus Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I’m not sure you should hold up Sweden as any kind of role model when it comes to immigration, Canada is probably a better example. It may not have hit the international news but there are large problems with unemployment and crime. Car burning and stone throwing are becoming rampant in the city suburbs.

Anyway – as a native Swede, I am a bit envious of the fact that in US it is possible to have a normal discourse on the nuances of immigration policy. And not just on blogs on the intertubes but by actual politicians!

Our current generous immigration policy is made possible not by popular support but by an extreme climate of political correctness which makes any critical position or critical policy debate unpermissible. This is supported by all the established political parties. The two left-most parties are running on a immigration platform where the goal is to have free admission for any and everyone who wants to come here. The leader of the largest party, having previously worked as “integration minister” has famously said native Swedes should try harder to emulate/integrate with the culturally superior immigrants. Meanwhile, our current ruling right-wing coalition – given the chance – likes nothing more than to talk about how fantastically enriched Sweden have become by “multi-culturalism”.

So any critisism of the rate of immigration from any politician would be a career-ending move. This is enforced across the spectrum of establishment, including the media. Apart from active support in columns, the media have all policies to withhold publishing/depicting anything that may enflame xenophobia. This can lead to absurdly transparent obfuscations but it rarely backfires, since everyone that matters agrees it is the proper thing to do.

The most aburd/funny effect of this climate is imho the euphamisms. Acceptable words that may be used to attribute the current state of immigration are usually so detached from reality – straight out of 1984 newspeak – they have been embraced fully by people critical of the immigration policy. Immigrants are refered to as Cultural Enrichers or Pension savers. The act of becoming culturally enriched (to experience an “indicent” involving immigrants) will end up in the dictionary if this continues to spread.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
LOL — priceless.

It’s not about Sweden (puh-leeze, let the record show I did not compare the one to the other), but one of my favorite immigration tales has to do with Norway.

A few years back, I was part of the tour: when foreign officials came to the US and wanted to talk about immigration, I was one of the people they were sent to talk with. I had a basic rap about the issues that I would do, and to my surprise, the Norwegians perked right up when I talked about “Americanization”, the way They become Us.

So I asked what made ‘em so interested. They explained that they had admitted a few hundred thousand “temporary” guest workers from Pakistan, who had never left — so now, they were struggling with how to Norwegianize ‘em.

Prior to this, the ethnic tensions in Norway were literally invisible to outlanders — show me someone who is not Scandinavian who can tell a Lapp from a Finn at a glance. And religious diversity? The Norwegian Lutheran Church is an actual agency of the government. (which may explain why nobody goes to church.)

And into THIS society, somebody injected a couple hundred thousand Pakistani-Norwegians, most of ‘em Muslims, who not only became citizens of Norway, but are now a decisive voting bloc in the parliament.

I hate using a foreign word for schadenfrued, so I coined an American word for the guilty sense of fun I have at this: mispleasure.
Alex Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
A large number of Sweden’s immigrants are from other Nordic countries so it doesn’t have the ethnic variety that you’d find in a country like the US. Walk around Stockholm and you’ll definitely see some Middle Eastern immigrants and those from other non-Scandinavian countries but the population is still overwhelmingly Nordic
Thlayli Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I have long found it amusing that Sweden’s biggest soccer star is named Zlatan Ibrahimovic (a child of Bosnian and Croatian immigrants).

He inherited the title of “Sweden’s biggest soccer star” from Henrik Larsson.

Notice anything interesting about that picture…?
The Lorax Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Btw, Zlatan is awesome and is beloved in Sweden. He even has a song about him. Here it is in English.
Witt Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Wow, The Americanist is burning up this thread. Pay attention to the definitions and distinctions s/he is making, because they’re important. Particularly when it comes to arguments over who is here and which categories they fall into — “foreign born” comprises a host of different immigration statuses, including U.S. citizen. The data from DHS, the Census Bureau, and the Pew Hispanic Center are all really useful in their own ways.

I also want to echo the critical point that the U.S. is unusually good at *integrating* immigrants. Not perfect, and I could make a laundry list of ways we could be better, but the sheer impact of 1. birthright citizenship (children born here are automatically citizens), and 2. guaranteed public education (Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe) have a huge, huge impact on whether immigrants “become American.” Their kids do. Guaranteed.
nolaboyd Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Thanks, Americanist, you asshole. Now I’m late for dinner because I fell into your bloghole.

I notice you conveniently keep leaving out Canada from your “become us” comparisons. As a Canadian who’s been on visas here in the US for 10 years and is starting the green card process, I’m interested in why (500 words or less, please!).
Jasper Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
So I use the term precisely — which is why Jasper is thoughtful, but wrong, and wrong in a significant way. “Immigrant” has a meaning — a foreigner with legal permission to live and even work here temporarily is NOT an “immigrant”, if only because they have a “non-immigrant visa”.

I’m not in the least “wrong,” theAmericanist. I’m just interested in different aspects of the immigration issue than (apparently) you are, and so I use different terminology. I’m well aware of what the US government considers and doesn’t consider to be an immigrant. And that’s fine. They’re welcome to their definition, and I’ll keep mine (the dictionary doesn’t mention anything about “legal permission” as it happens).

What I’m getting at is: with respect to immigration, I’m most interested in questions of economics, sociology, demographics and culture (and what these subjects tell us about how and whether our immigration policies need changing). To put it another way, the “effects” flowing from the arrival of an immigrant newcomer to our shores don’t commence the day he/she is recognized as an immigrant by the United States government and receives a green card. Said “immigrant” might have arrived nine years previously with, say, a student visa. I would argue I’m interested in the big picture. Or, if you like, I’m interested in the (historical, sociological, economic, demographic, etc.) various effects flowing from the migration of foreigners. Whether and how these migrants received permission from the government to stay here is obviously an important question of policy; it’s simply not the whole picture, is all I’m saying.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Two reasons: first, Canada is essentially a legacy of the British Empire, and former British colonies generally have a peculiar immigration dynamic — New Zealand, Australia, etc. Hell, even outliers like South Africa show the marks — Gandhi was radicalized when he went to South Africa as a British citizen, only to discover he was actually an Indian kafir. (a particularly weird multicultural word) Lots of people remark on how different Britain is now because of immigration, but they rarely add that virtually all of those immigrants are people who would have been Victoria’s subjects.

The US doesn’t share that dynamic because we moved across the continent AFTER we stopped being British subjects, and attracted people from all over Europe, first, and finally the planet as we did it. By the 20s, the largest range of national origin for Americans was German, not British, and yet — even for the Germans — the ethos was always that people came here and became Americans, viz., Teddy Roosevelt, who dissed even the British immigrants (like The 400) as latecomers, and insisted that the real America was formed on the frontier, no matter who came from where.

Second, Canada is explicitly multicultural in a political sense, which the US emphatically is not. Part of that is Quebec, which you guys acquired by conquest but could not assimilate, by treaty. (Contrast Texas, which Americans invaded, then revolted to make an independent nation, and then became part of the US — not unlike California, and with real similarities to Vermont and Hawaii.) Another part of that is your First Peoples, which is an altogether more civilized way to deal with the Indians and decidedly unlike the way the Brits, and later the Americans dealt with the Pequots, Abenaki, Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee, much less the Plains folks.

Multiculturalism in Canada is a strange concept — I remember a history professor at UBC who told me once that his students were baffled when he explained the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the US Congress, because they couldn’t imagine what an Un-Canadian activity could possibly be.

But let’s face it, the real distinction is the weather. Who was it, Laurier? who wanted to attract immigrants to fill up all that wide open space in Canada, and discovered that while he might be able to get people to come to Canada for a year or two, once they had experienced a Canadian winter, they moved to California.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Jasper, it’s not the whole picture. It’s the FOCUS.

Use words to make distinctions. Use distinctions to make sense. If you won’t make distinctions, you cannot make sense.

In the broadest sense, anybody who comes from one place to live someplace else is a “migrant”, and thus (depending on which way you’re looking) an “emigrant” or an “immigrant”. Those words are only useful if they MEAN something useful.

Teddy Roosevelt was born in New York, and he moved to Dakota territory to run a ranch for awhile. In a sense, he was an “immigrant” — but what on earth sense would it make to talk about him in the Dakotas as if he was the same as a guy born in Norway or the Netherlands?

I had what diplomats call a frank and candid exchange with a noted scholar on the subject once, when he referred to people born in Puerto Rico as “immigrants” to NYC — and, to his credit, he publicly backed down and acknowledged that he was flat-out wrong to use the term: people born in Puerto Rico do MOVE to NYC, but they are US citizens and can move anyplace in America they damned well please — and nobody in the Dakotas (or Danbury) can keep them out: it’s THEIR country.

All of it. He’s never referred to Puerto Ricans as immigrants since.

So, yeah — you’re not just using the word differently than I am, you’re simply WRONG, because the way in which you use the word leaches the meaning out of it.

The essence of American immigration is the Ellis Island model — people come here from anywhere in the world, and become Americans. That is a cultural process, it involves language and lots of other stuff, but more than anything else it is a LEGAL fact: citizenship. If someone is not a US citizen, to that extent they are not an American, not matter how long they have lived here.

That depends entirely on the distinction I am making, which with your use of language is not possible to make.

That’s why you’re wrong.
Hector Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Re: because they couldn’t imagine what an Un-Canadian activity could possibly be.

Drunker bar fights.
JonF Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Re: Suppose you are a young healthy high German that just finished a Doctorate in Chemistry at a German University. Odds are arround 1:6 that you will leave for the USA.

If you’re a German who is fed up with Germany and wants to emigrate, it’s a lot easier to to do so to another EU country, or even to Canada, than it is the US, which has all sorts of stumbling blocks in the path of would be legal immigrants.
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
“Drunker bar fights.”

Over the designated hitter.
Links: September 2009 « Consider the Evidence Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
[...] Where the foreigners are, by Matthew Yglesias [...]
theAmericanist Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
See, JonF exemplifies the dumb-ass progressive prejudice against thinking about immigration: “If you’re a German who is fed up with Germany and wants to emigrate… the US… has all sorts of stumbling blocks in the path of would be legal immigrants.”

Who invited this German? America is not HIS country. It’s OUR country.

He has no right to decide that he’s fed up with Germany, and doesn’t like Canada, so he should just move to the US and get a job.

You can argue that We, the People actually WANT this German guy — hey, he has a Ph.D. in chemistry!

But you sorta skipped the part where it is OUR decision, not his.
Hoops Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Henrik Larson’s mother was a Swede. While “Sweden’s biggest soccer star” is a nice title it pales in comparison to the King of Kings.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
@ #53;

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Martin the Aussie Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Americanist at 10 asks:

What percentage of the foreign-born (and their kids) are ever accepted as Swedes or Australians?

Well, pretty much all of them, the Italians, Greeks, Turks, Yugoslavs, Chinese, Turks, Vietnamese etc are all pretty much Aussies now, in fact of my students from these backgrounds, I’d class some of them as being more Aussie than me, who’s of Irish/Scottish/English with even some convict ancestry mixed in way back.

I don’t think Australia is any worse in embracing different nationalities than the US, why we even welcome Yanks
Aqua Regia Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Yeah Australia was a pretty terrible example for him to use there, its very much an immigrant nation. Even Sweden seems much better than, say, Switzerland or Germany.
yank_in_oz Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
10. I don’t have the figures on the number of foreign born who become Aussie citizens, but it is very much encouraged. They run TV commercials asking non-citizens to take out citizenship. Basically if you are there legally for 3 years, you can become a citizen. They want you to sign up.

Of more interest to me was the idea that if you are in Australia legally, you are entitled to Medicare, whether you are a citizen or not. I signed up for insurance, visited a doctor, and had my low cost prescription filled within about a 3 hr period. And this was just two weeks after I arrived.
Aqua Regia Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Of more interest to me was the idea that if you are in Australia legally, you are entitled to Medicare, whether you are a citizen or not.

Works the same way in Canada.
CG Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:19 am
Chicago has the country’s largest Assyrian (non-Chaldean) population, with some precincts on the far North Side being majority Assyrian. The Patriarchate of the Assyrian Church of the East, the main Orthodox Assyrian body, has been in Chicago for quite a while – thus the Chicago patriarch is the head religious authority for Assyrians worldwide. Around the intersection of Kedzie and Lawrence you see signs in Syriac (modern Aramaic), and <a href="http://badflags.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/assyrian-flag.jpg")Assyrian flags fluttering from car antennas. The Assyrian Kings, affiliated with the Latin Kings, are a major street gang (not to be confused with Detroit’s notorious Chaldean Mafia).
Urgs Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:08 am
“If you’re a German who is fed up with Germany and wants to emigrate, it’s a lot easier to to do so to another EU country, or even to Canada, than it is the US, which has all sorts of stumbling blocks in the path of would be legal immigrants.”

Who says he is fed up? Maybe he just picks the most attractive job on a global scale? There are just more factors to global population movements than just which country is the most attractive for the median local or how complicated immigration procedures are. Its a mix of many factors. Sweden will always have a huge disadvantage considering immigration attractivness due to their language alone. A shithole like Dubai is still attractive for many, just to give an example.
JonF Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:40 am
Re: Sweden will always have a huge disadvantage considering immigration attractivness due to their language alone.

How do you figure? Learning any foreign language is not easy (unless you start in childhood and learn it naturally). But Sewdish is not especially diffiuclt. In fact, I would say in some ways it’s less difficult than English (where our appalling mess of a spelling system is very off-putting to just about everyone). Also you were talking about a German speaker– Swedish is also a Germannic language, so the German is half way there. (That’s somewhat true of a German learning English, but much of our vocabulary is Latin/French not Germannic).
And also, why do you assume an American job is always and everywhere superior to a job in Sweden or elsewhere in the EU? The fact that the American labor market has fewer protections and we lack universal healthcare (with our health dys-system operating as a strong drag on wage growth) would be a deterent to a person from the EU.
JonF Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 6:42 am
Re: Who invited this German? America is not HIS country. It’s OUR country.

Who invited my mothers’ grandparents from Germany? Who invited your ancestors (assuming you are not native American)?
theAmericanist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 7:26 am
Careful, there, JonF, much less Aquia: you’re perilously close to learning something. Although as a rule, when somebody asks you a question you don’t want to answer (because you’d have to concede their point) it’s smarter not to respond with a question that they CAN answer.

If your great-grandmother came from Germany but your great grandfather was an American, most likely HE invited her. My earliest American ancestor fled the Famine — and he had been invited by, among many others, no less than John C. Calhoun, himself. To understand how that works, ya gotta know something:

Prior to 1965, American immigration law was essentially negative in character. That is, anybody could come (across the Atlantic, anyway), unless we had specified a reason to keep you out. So we had a very long list of reasons to keep people out — the first one was as a captive in the trans-Atlantic slave trade (which was the first immigration restriction in American history — in 1809, IIRC), then ships had to have a list of passengers and their professions (1819), and so on. Before the Civil War, we began to check for diseases, and shortly after the Civil War (because America had finally to the Pacific) for the first time we began to exclude people because of their national origin: the Chinese Exclusion Acts, followed by the Asiatic Barred Zone. (Calhoun agreed to Irish immigration before the Famine, despite their Catholicism, when he was assured that Irish immigrants would not agitate for abolition.)

In percentage of population as well as absolute terms, the peak years of American immigration were 1880-1914 or so: the abrupt drop that followed was primarily due to the First World War rather than to US law. And during WW1, hyphenated Americanism (Swedish-American, etc.) became extremely unpopular — Bismarck Street in Cincinnati became Atlantic Street, every German language paper (there were hundreds) closed.

In the 1920s, some knucklehead came up with the idea that immigration should not alter the ethnic makeup of the United States. So every ten years the Census would tell us what % of Americans were ethnically German, or British, Irish, Italian, etc., Then Congress would set a #, and immigrants would be allowed into the US within that # in proportion to their overall % of the population. Within those narrow limits, preferences were given to immigrants with family here — spouses (like your great grandfather), parents, and siblings: the siblings of citizens category, which is now regarded for some reason as specially Asian-American, was called “the Italian preference” for many years, and defended as such by Peter Rodino.

Yet by the 1930s, the overall # was set quite low, historically (coinciding not only with the Depression, but also with the highest percentage of what’s called “foreign stock” — immigrants AND their kids — in American history: 30%). There was a loophole, in which anybody who was a “scholar” was allowed in — this exception is how Fermi, Teller, Szilard and many others managed to get away from Fascism. Possibly that is how your great grandmother was invited.

Or she may have been admitted under the various pre-refugee act rules for letting in people fleeing persecution. In that sense, she wouldn’t have been invited as an immigrant, but we didn’t turn her away because she was fleeing for her life.

But the truth is, the biggest obstacle for coming to the US throughout the 19th and well into the 20th centuries was simply the oceans. The real problem for millions of people wasn’t GETTING here — it was BELONGING here.

Until 1943, it was not possible for anyone who wasn’t “white” to become a US citizen. The 1790 Naturalization Act limited citizenship to “free, white persons”. If it wasn’t for the 14th amendment’s creation of a birthright for “all persons born” in the US, there would have been no such thing as a black or a Chinese US citizen until well within living memory.

Yet during WW2, mostly because of the Americanization movement that began in WW1, hyphenated Americanism was PATRIOTIC — think of the mail call scene from every war movie: Kowalski! Schmidt! Donofrio! O’Rourke! There was a wave of Central Europeans admitted as refugees in the 50s, but the whole system was still exclusive: more braceros were deported than were admitted.

In 1965, this wholly negative system was replaced by an affirmative one: THAT is when “who invited this person?” became — properly — the most important factor.

If you want to dispute that, think about it — because it REALLY makes you an asshole. My wife can’t come, because some German is fed up with Germany?

In the end, your “who invited your ancestors?” is just about the stooopidest, and literally un-American argument imaginable. (For one thing, I dunno as citing the First Peoples’ experience with immigration is the smartest pro-immigration analogy: Powhatan, call your office. Crazy Horse wants to talk to you.)

Either you believe in American sovereignty, or you don’t. Either you believe that as Americans, we have the right to decide who gets to join us in OUR country, or you don’t.

If you want to argue that we should invite some German Ph.D. who is fed up with Germany (now, THERE’s a recommendation for a new patriot! Let’s welcome this guy, cuz he doesn’t like his own country!) to become an American, go ahead.

But I note you haven’t done it. You’ve done the lazy, and essentially un-American argument that PRESUMES he has a right to choose which country he lives in (and becomes a part of?) and that We, the People have NO prior right to decide whether we want that guy, or not. Whether you know it, and still less whether you like it, that asshole assumption on your part erodes the essence of American immigration, which is whether that guy becomes an American at all.

Cuz throughout the 130 years or so during which American immigration was all but unlimited (1790-1922), American CITIZENSHIP was actively exclusive.

Eroding our sovereignty, and blurring the difference between legal and illegal (between invited, and crashers), permanent and temporary, does not exalt immigrants. It degrades immigration. It makes it about THEM — not about us.

It’s really not complex: if you can’t say “no”, your “yes” becomes meaningless.
too many steves Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:49 pm
You’ve done the lazy, and essentially un-American argument that PRESUMES he has a right to choose which country he lives in

If the idea that people should be free to live where they please, unless there’s some good reason to keep them out, is “un-American,” then we have very, very different ideas of America.

My great-grand-parents came here from Italy without being invited by anybody. They heard America was awesome, so they decided to get a piece of that for themselves and their descendants. They were “legal” but only because the laws at the time allowed it.
Aqua Regia Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I wonder how much of this difference in attitude between Americanist, and people like myself and steves, has to do with the time that their family arrived in north america. I have memories as a child of my grandfather telling me about coming to Canada by boat with his entire family in the 30’s, and getting jobs here building highways and working in the nickel mines. I’m aware that I am the descendant of fairly recent immigrants. I don’t want to pull the ladder up behind me so that others have less choices than my family had. Some people view things differently, I guess.
theAmericanist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Honest, do you guys even believe what you write?

Steves sez: “They were “legal” but only because the laws at the time allowed it.”

No kidding? And what do the laws NOW allow? How would you change ‘em?

Or would you just ignore ‘em?

And Aquia, you do NOT know who you’re talking to: I played a small role in passing the last permanent increase in LEGAL immigration back in 1990 (40%), so I have an infinitesimal responsibility for, at last count, 6 million new Americans.

Think about that before you assume that folks who believe in American sovereignty are necessarily anti-immigrant: got any cred to match my pro-immigration record?

I ask you, the same thing I asked JonF: do you REALLY think that my wife should not get in, because some German is unhappy with HIS country, so he wants to try ours?

That wasn’t a rhetorical question. It’s a real choice, framed in the law. The MINIMUM wait for a green card holder’s spouse (that is, somebody gets a green card,. then gets married) is 5-8 years. When have you done a damned thing to fix that?

It precisely frames the political issue in terms of the law: that green card holder’s wife has been INVITED. We’ve promised her an immigration visa — but we haven’t delivered it.

And you guys have said… nothing, about it.

Instead, you want to preen about some German guy who has NOT been invited, when there are REAL issues — that you don’t care about, cuz it would mean you’d have to make distinctions between people we want (who HAVE been invited), and people we don’t — who have not. That’s the politics of immigration — poseurs avoiding real choices.

So when confronted with actual choices — somebody’s wife gets in cuz she’s invited, but some guy with a Ph.D. does not, cuz nobody’s asked for him — you sniff: well, you don’t want to pull up the ladder.

Bullshit. You’ve dumped the ladder overboard so it’s fouled the rudder, and you can’t understand why the boat is doing donuts.
too many steves Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
And what do the laws NOW allow? How would you change ‘em?

Or would you just ignore ‘em?

I’d change the laws to be pretty close to what they were in the early 20th Century (minus the racism that excluded non-white people, of course). You’d be welcome to immigrate to this country unless you were wanted for a serious offense or you carried a serious contagious disease.

Our current immigration laws are unjust, so I would certainly ignore those.

I know we’re arguing from different principles and I’m not going to change your mind, but you asked, so I answered.
too many steves Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
To amend: if you’re considered a security threat for some reason other than a conviction, I’d still keep you out. Basically, if you don’t mean us any harm or you aren’t bringing unintentional harm via disease, you’d be welcome.
theAmericanist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Okay, Steves: you bought the ticket, take the ride.

1) ‘You’d be welcome to immigrate to this country unless you were wanted for a serious offense or carried a serious contagious disease…”

Fair enough: how many people are you talking about? Do you have any idea?

Fox Butterfield finished his book on China in the 1980s “Alive in the Bitter Sea”, by noting that literally EVERYBODY he met would have moved to the US, if they could: “even the lampposts would go.” I will spare you the estimates I made for a Census report a couple years back, suffice to note that there are ways to get at a global # for annual immigration to the US, if we opened our borders.

So it’s a real question: how many people do YOU think would immigrate to the US each year, under your rule?

2) The great temptation in American history is NOT to close our borders, but to allow people in to work, while excluding them from citizenship. It’s a very nearly unbroken chain — first slaves, then Chinese laborers, extended to Japanese and Koreans, then the braceros, and now illegal workers.

I won’t let you have the out that YOU think all the folks you’re willing to accept in your first # (what IS that #?) should become citizens. I’m going to ask you the hard question — are you willing to let people in to work, IF your fellow Americans are only willing to let ‘em in as workers while denying them citizenship? Which is more important to you?

which sets up

3) Oddly enough, you’re not the only American. You consider current laws unjust — although I note you don’t say WHY. (I’ve cited a couple examples, based on the who’s been invited rule.) Why DO you think current immigration laws are unjust?

Here are a couple mutually exclusive explanations: A) you think they are unjust because Americans have no right to exclude foreigners who want to come to OUR country, because even though they are foreigners it might as well be THEIR country, or B) you think they are unjust because those with the best claim on inviting people to OUR country (cuz it is also THEIR country) are made to wait.

Which is it? Or do you have some third explanation for why We, the People have screwed up our immigration laws so badly — that is, without looking into a mirror?
too many steves Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I’ll take #2 first: I’d rather let people in with a “path to citizenship,” but a guest worker program is better than nothing. Immigration is the best anti-poverty program there is. Nothing improves the welfare of someone in a poor country more than allowing them to move to a rich one.

This is where statistics can be misleading: if our country accepts a bunch of poor immigrants, our median wealth/income goes down. But that doesn’t mean anyone is worse off. We’ve just got more poor people moving here, so that drives the #s down. Thing is, those people are way less poor than they would be if they didn’t come here.

As to #1, I really have no idea. It’s an empirical question that I’m not remotely qualified to answer. If I have time later maybe I’ll google for some demographic study on the question.

With #3, I wouldn’t say that a country has “no right” to put strict limits on immigration, but I would say a country is “unwise” to do so. In other words, I’d change our current policy, but I don’t think it’s unconstitutional or anything.

I think it’s unjust because I don’t think keeping out people who pose no harm is a proper use of our sovereignty. I don’t think the U.S. government owes me or you protection from labor competition just because we were born here. I think people should have the freedom to choose where they want to live, and if we’re going to limit that, the limitations should be … well, limited, and we should have good reasons for them.

I’d be totally open to a system that puts relatives of current U.S. residents first in line, but as I said, I think there should a place in line for the people with no family here, too.

It’s been a good debate but I have a feeling no one’s reading this thread anymore, and I don’t think I’ll have time to write anything else.
theAmericanist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
LOL — well, you DID try.

So we know that you’re happy to lie to the American people about what it is they are getting with their laws: the concept of “guest worker” with a path to citizenship is simply, a lie. (Ask your wife if she’d mind if your girlfriend moved in, with a ‘path to’… well, you get the idea.)

First: There has NEVER been a guest worker program that has ever worked — anywhere, at any time. Turks in Germany, Filipinos in Kuwait, Chinese and Koreans in Japan, America’s own bracero program and (my personal favorite, cited above) Pakistanis in Norway — in EVERY case, substantial numbers of the “guests” never left. In the US, 4.6 million braceros were admitted from 1942-1964 — and 5.2 million were deported.

Surely THAT can’t be what you want — or is it?

Second: your economics are full of shit. Mexico has tried for decades to export their workforce, and import their wages (so has El Salvador). It is an UTTERLY failed scheme for economic development. The BiNational Study done by the US and Mexico in 1997 established that when you compare sending communities in Oaxaca and Jalisco (not all communities send workers north) with those close by that do not export workers, the sending communities have NO local economy, because even though they receive remittances they have no customers.

The non-sending communities have local economies. You want to condemn less developed countries to poverty and dependence, not to mention exploiting the workers themselves — middlemen (including the Mexican government) take huge percentages of remittances.

Third — beyond your eagerness to lie to the American people (whose decision this ostensibly would be), and your bogus economics, you back off your idea that everybody ought to be able to come… in favor of an idea that you’ve thought through even less: instead of no limits, now you are only against “strict” limits…

Ye gods. This is current law: US citizens sponsor spouses, parents, kids and siblings. Legal permanent residents sponsor spouses and kids. Employers sponsor skilled workers. (There’s also a lottery, and refugees.)

What do you propose to add? A cheap worker category?

You SAY that Americans would be unwise to keep out cheap immigrant labor — ever talk to a union rep? There used to be a strong janitor’s union in LA, employed mostly African Americans: it was broken by cheap foreign (illegal) labor. Is THAT what you want?

Meatpacking used to happen in Chicago and Wisconsin, cuz that’s where the workers were — also heavily unionized, a good job with solid wages and pensions. The meatpackers broke the unions by moving the plants to where there were NO workers, and brought in illegals to fill the jobs (as in Postville, Iowa): lousy wages, no pensions — and a 40% injury rate from repetitive stress.

Is THAT what you want? Face it — cuz that’s what your ideas SAY you want.
too many steves Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
There’s no lying involved: as I said, my first choice would be real immigration, my second would be guest workers.

When I say it’s the best form of economic development, I mean it’s the best way to make people better off. People who immigrate, whether they’re driving cabs, picking crops or doing janitorial work, are typically better off than they were in their home country, by a lot.

Sure, I feel bad for a union meatpacker who loses his job, but someone living dirt-poor in a third-world country gets more sympathy from me, because they’re much worse off.

You say: This is current law: US citizens sponsor spouses, parents, kids and siblings. Legal permanent residents sponsor spouses and kids. Employers sponsor skilled workers. (There’s also a lottery, and refugees.)

What do you propose to add? A cheap worker category?

Sure, I’d add a cheap worker category, as a start. The market is a better judge of what kind of workers we need than the U.S. govt is.

OK, this time I’m serious, no disrespect, but I don’t have time to continue the debate. You’re more fun to argue with about immigration than most of the people I disagree with.
theAmericanist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Most likely the thread IS played, but just to keep the record straight: employment-based immigration is ALREADY about the market (sort of). If a company wants to sponsor a foreigner for a green card, they can do it — there are some hoops to jump through, but it is essentially the EMPLOYER’s call.

The US government does NOT choose the immigrant. Yet that was actually a Republican demand during the 2007 Senate debate, in which employERs would have been replaced by a point system, by which foreigners and government bureaucrats would choose who gets green cards, regardless of what the market would indicate.

With low-skilled workers, something else is going on: if I can grow amoebae into microchips, I can pretty much walk into a job (or start a business) anywhere in the world. So I’m not particularly concerned about genuine competition — that is, on an equal footing — among US citizens, green card holders and newcomers with skills like that.

The great problem the US has with high skilled immigration is that first, we don’t have enough of it, and second, we make people wait too long for their green cards, indenturing ‘em to employers through the H-1B guest worker program. (Another reason to loathe the guest worker model that Steves likes: it’s NEVER equal footing.)

But if I’m a union janitor, say, it is both wrong in itself, and politically astonishing, to insist that America owes somebody from El Salvador MY job, because I’ve priced myself out of “the market”.

Sez who?

Put it this way: it’s one thing to bring a third world guy here, cuz our wages and working conditions are better. I insist that this is OUR choice, but if we make it, I’d surely demand that we treat the guy like one of us: Steves is shakier on this point than he knows.

Cuz it is another thing entirely to bring third world wages and working conditions HERE, which is what Steves is essentially proposing. It’s a bizarre, Ayn Rand notion of the world — if there is anybody, anywhere, who would do my job for less money than I can competitively get my employer to pay me, then I am overpaid, that foreigner (says Steves) has a right to come and take my job away cuz he will work for less, because anything else is a violation of ‘free market’ principles.

That’s nonsense on a skateboard. Immigration is a GOVERNMENT policy. It’s not a market phenomenon. (The economist sez: First, let’s assume a world with no borders, or for that matter, oceans.) When the government supplies a workforce, that’s a subsidy. When it supplies a workforce at less than market wages and working conditions (which is what a “cheap labor category” would necessarily be), it’s a BIG subsidy.

And when that workforce is motivated by an extra-economic incentive (say, a green card, the right to live in the US) which can only be supplied by a government policy, that is an intervention in the market on a par with price controls.

On skilled immigrants — hell, I spent the better part of a dozen years fighting to deregulate employment-based immigration entirely, to have employers simply BUY green cards for the foreign workers they wanted. As Milton Friedman pointed out to me, employers preferred their guest worker subsidy.
Nora Helmer Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
eric k said: “But wait the right wingers keep telling us that we can never do Swedish style social democracy here because we are full of immigrants and Sweden is full of nothing but a homogeneous group of people who all look like they will be trying out for the next production of Mama Mia.

“Your telling me that once again the right wing is full of shit and lying? Will the disillusionment never end…”

Immigration to Sweden from non-Nordic countries, esp. non-European countries, did not start happening until the ’80s, and really didn’t pick up speed until the ’90s. The success Swedish style social democracy is based on the fact that Sweden was very homogenous up until the ’90s — but things are starting to crumble now. (Eg.: Immigrants behind 25% of Swedish crime “One quarter were committed by people born overseas, while [in addition!] almost 20 percent were committed by those born in Sweden to one or two parents born abroad.”)
Matthew Yglesias » Prestige in America Says:
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
[...] cites my recent item on how Sweden has one of the largest immigrant populations in the world—more than in the United [...]
Matthew Yglesias » Education in Sweden Says:
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] countries are often said to be highly homogeneous, which is true of Finland, but Sweden has more immigrants than the United States though of course much less poverty and [...]
I Hold The Swedish Chief In Very High Regard, Despite His Low Pay As An Auxiliary Muppet « Around The Sphere Says:
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] Scheiber’s next post, he links to a Matt Yglesias post. Here’s Yglesias: An interesting fact about Sweden is that an extremely high proportion [...]

Matt Yglesias

Where the Foreigners Are

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