Except economies of scale absolutely still matters. The reason why America is a superpower while Canada is not is because America has a much bigger population, which leads to more diverse industries, more complete supply chains, and obviously a bigger military.
The per capita GDP difference between US and other western countries can largely be attributed to the dominance of the US dollar, which gives the average American more buying power internationally than the average German or Canadian. And the dominance of the USD is downstream from US being a large and dominant superpower.
The biggest problems with immigration are productivity and assimilation, but both are solvable problems. Productivity can be solved by focusing on high skill immigration. Assimilation can be solved by preferring younger immigrants who have been educated in the US, as well as cutting back on family-based visas so that high skill immigrate workers will be forced to assimilate through intermarriage with natives instead of bringing spouses from their home countries.
No, you ignore what truly matters, countries like Switzerland (8.7 million) and Luxembourg (660,000) have much smaller populations yet boast some of the highest per capita GDPs in the world—$87,963 and $128,823 respectively in 2023, compared to the U.S.’s $81,695 (IMF estimates). While, China and India, with populations exceeding 1.4 billion each, have only recently begun to challenge U.S. dominance, and their per capita GDPs ($13,136 and $2,845) lag far behind. Clearly, population size doesn’t guarantee superpower status or economic prosperity.
Having big military is important, but for Europe that is partially solved by alliances, and tech innovations (modern drone warfare doesn't require as much boots on the ground). And of course, as stated by the author, the point of having a military is protection of nation's wealth, land, it's sovereignty, etc. Allowing mass immigration is giving it all away "without a fight".
And rarely openly discussed but very painful and important issue: as the migrant workers are always hugely disproportionately males (sometimes up to 90%), while the base male to female ration in the host country is always at around 50/50, those "young workers" will create an imbalance. The fact is, native men would never willingly put themselves in the situation where they have less opportunities and higher competition. In the end you will end up with the number of lonely men almost equivalent to the number of immigrant young workers. This of course leads to societal tensions, breeds resentment, possible ethnic conflicts, a rise of xenophobia, extremism etc.
And we already have too many examples (mainly from Western Europe) where large influxes of single male migrants have caused a huge increase in sexual crimes (for obvious reasons, young men have urges).
When we compound everything stated, it seems to me that only a malign actor would advocate for such an immigration policy.
This suggests that a sound immigration policy would be to allow in anyone who can score over 125 on an IQ test or is a woman less than 35 years old, and no one else.
All things being equal population size matters. Nothing is guaranteed of course. Luxembourg and Switzerland as examples are silly. It’s basically a gathering of rich people (who made their fortune elsewhere )and bankers. What’s the economy of these countries? What do they produce?
Switzerland's top exports are mainly specialized goods like pharmaceuticals, watches, chemicals, and precision instruments. Key exports also include machinery, vaccines, and organic chemicals. (So not just coo-coo-clocks.)
Luxembourg's main exports include machinery, iron & steel products, plastics, vehicles, and rubber. Alongside significant financial and business services.
Sexual crimes increase because the immigrant men often come from cultures where women are not respected and the men can do as they please. Native men also "have urges" but are much less likely to abuse women. Western men are taught to control themselves, as all men should.
"The per capita GDP difference between US and other western countries can largely be attributed to the dominance of the US dollar, which gives the average American more buying power internationally than the average German or Canadian."
This statement is wildly wrong. GDP is a measure of output, not consumption. We can attribute so many more things to the higher GDP per capita that the US has -- higher productivity, higher work hours, less regulation, and so on, compared to Canada/EU.
Federal spending accounts for almost 40% of GDP, and that spending power is directly downstream from reserve currency status, since we haven’t had a budget surplus in decades
I fail to see why a hairdresser in America is 10x more productive than a hairdresser in Vietnam.
The US government can inflate its currency and pay way higher wages and welfare to its residents, who can then afford to spend that money on local services at much higher price points, resulting in much higher nominal wages locally.
The global demand for US dollar can only partially be explained by US productivity. The other part can be explained by US diplomatic pressure that forces countries like Saudi to only accept USD for oil
The age of mass migration is over. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
Great article. I agree with every point being made here, and I also appreciate the sensible comparison of AI-risk with much existentially safer bio-enhancement options.
The only “economic” way to do mass migration is something similar to UAE system for guest workers, i. e. they come in, they work, they leave without any possibility of a permanent status.
Immigration worshippers in the West don’t actually care about economic arguments, sadly.
They have no political rights, there are no elections, they are not allowed into the security services or military (not allowed to get their hands on the guns).
Interesting, although I think geographic location has more to do with voting patterns of immigrants than genetics. For example, how many of those Democrat white Catholics and Jews were urban people? I'm guessing all of them.
It seems to me voting tendencies are more impacted by the rural/urban divide than anything else. I live in a rural area, and people of Anglo, Italian, Irish, German descent all vote the same way, whereas our urban cousins vote very differently.
Great article. Some things to also ponder: GDP measures are crap, and even income, tax, and redistribution numbers per capita are not that great, since you cant really measure someones actual real contribution to a society based off of that. To give some extreme exaples, let’s say you imported a bunch of immigrants who were dumb but particularly saintly. They never could earn that much money. Having them would be a net positive for a country even if it were expensive. (It would also probably be a net negative for them to immigrate if the place they came from was better in moral terms and moving corroded what was good about them over time). This example also gives the lie to the argument of the USCCB about wanting so many immigrants and claiming it is wrong for us to turn them away. By Catholic teaching it is better to be poor and good, even if it kills you than richer and turn bad. Immigrating to america makes things religiously worse for catholics who move from catholic countries, particularly in the 2nd and subsequent generations. Idk if that’s always been the case but it certainly is today.
Another example would be if you had a bunch of immigrants that did high value things for not much money. So to give a sort of extreme example lets say you had a bunch of immigrants that made oil extraction cheaper and it also depressed the price of oil, and your oil sector as measured gets less profitable, but also you get it cheaper. As an input it has more value than its price, or else people wouldnt use it, and it goes into everything. Such immigrants in this scenario would be a net positive even if the surface numbers made it look negative.
Both examples I listed are kindof extreme and unrealistic, as the saints would probably be extremely right coded in most ways, and there isnt an energy producing immigrant group like that, but I what I’m getting at is that it is probably way worse for europe than the US relative to what you can see in the raw numbers of today, even if we are more redistributive in some ways, and it is probably worse for the US in raw numbers than stated, apart from importing farm workers or something, since everyone eats (leaving aside the ways that it has skewed our ag policies), and having cheaper food is in some ways like having cheaper oil.
I keep reading from very sharp people lots of arguments about how bad it is to have a shrinking and aging population, and while I agree I dont see why we couldnt adapt. (I dont think we will though and importing immigrants makes adaptation *worse* not better). Without technology it would be an unmitigated disaster, but most people have bullshit jobs to some degree that dont produce anything that matters. A relatively small fraction of the population does all the things that keep everything going, and with technology increasing over time that is probably only going to be magnified in aggregate. An exception will hopefully be farming.
Interesting to look into how either Albanians or Chechnyans are the worst immigrants in Europe, rather than whatever you might expect. By a very wide margin. Idk if that’s true measured by rape gang propensity though.
It might solve population decline for certain parties or groups with strikingly low birthrates and political ambitions which stretch decades into the future...
"These characteristics are persistent and differences don’t disappear with cultural assimilation (they are, because like almost all human traits they are substantially genetic)."
You are so right.
"Biosingularity, as the name implies, is the biological analogue to AI singularity. Rather than smarter machines that design smarter machines that design smarter machines, you have smarter humans coming up with more effective ways to increase human intelligence."
This is something dear to my heart. One of those ways is embryo selection, but that has its limits. For me, a better way to benefit the ascendance of humanity is genetic enhancement. And not just an increase in cognitive ability but several positive human traits. Ironically, AI is an excellent tool in the quest for human enhancement.
I can see an argument for permitting AI research in very specific domains (medical research, search and rescue, and possibly space exploration.) Everywhere else it needs to be banned, and the institutes dealing with the relevant hardware should be treating it like a level-4 biohazard.
Correct. Immigration doesn’t ‘solve’ Population Decline.
Immigration is a Hail Mary Pass, which juices up Consumption & stabilizes the Median Age & the Labour Pool *for a while* until things Decline again.
But the overall numbers on the Median Age & Dependency ratios are a few percentage points max... Which the author correctly notes in this piece.
The author’s optimism about Japan is ill-founded; quite a few essays have been written on why both Japan & South Korea are tech Dystopias in the classical sense of the word... & not worth living in, given the fact that you overwork yourself to death in said societies for Oligarchs.
“Hoping technological advances bail us out” is Hopium without much substance.
As for raising Birth Rates... that will only work for a while in select contexts & locations, given Biocapacity loss. However, that will only last for a while at most.
But yes... there are no solutions here for Ecological Overshoot & its ensuing Second-Order Effects, such as Population Decline, Energy-Material shortfalls, etc. Overshoot is a Predicament with Terms of Surrender, & not a Problem ‘that can be solved.’
Thanks for an interesting read. This argument seems to rest on certain assumptions.
There are examples of immigration programs that target immigrants with higher human and financial capital. In those cases, the average age decreases, the average education increases and the household savings increase. Plus much of their childhood education was paid by a foreign country.
Concrete examples include the Indian-American community. Many came through IT worker programs and make on average way more than the average American because they are way more productive.
So, do you see that a targetted approach could in fact, in some cases, be highly beneficial?
Unlike low skilled immigrants, highly educated immigrants generally are a fiscal net positive, but every other issue mentioned still remains and in some cases can be magnified. An educated immigrant is much more likely to be able to get in to your elite and actually directly affect public policy, change the culture, etc.
I had a good friend who was a very Americanized and wealthy Indian. I remember him saying that India was positioning itself to be the next world super power. I asked who he would fight for if a war broke out between US and India. After a long and deliberate hesitation, he said, with somw degree of pain but also certainty, "it would have to be India". This is just an anecdotal story but I still found it concerning.
I believe the purpose of the original comment was to have us extrapolate loyalties to all immigrants. If we have 14 million illegal immigrants to the USA, as well as millions of legal ones, and many or most of those people will not fight to protect America, and may also be teaching their children not to bother protecting America, then we are weakening our military power and social capital.
We can already feel the effects of the decreasing levels of American patriotism. The West has been told it is hateful and evil by many poorer countries (based from actual deeds and likely jealousy), and the children of America now believe it and are actively trying to "burn it all down."
That's one theory. There are also examples of newcomers being more patriotic.
It is good to look past instincts and to look deeply to find the real answers (plural). Not every newcomer is the same. Not every American is the same.
This is one of the best articles arguing against a policy of mass immigration (or even any immigration for that matter) l've ever come across. However, there's one area in which you, for whatever reason, avoid using the obvious example. You write:
... immigration produces special interests that make foreign policy in the "national interest" difficult.
Then you give as "the classic example Florida Cubans". You then go on to mention Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese as other domestic groups that produce "special interests" that make foreign policy in the "national interest" difficult. Missing from your list is what John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously dubbed "the Isreal lobby".
While there is no question that pressure from Cuban exile organizations in Florida have made a rational American foreign policy towards Cuban all but impossible, their accomplishment in this area pales into insignificance compared to those of "the Isreal lobby". I would argue that it is only because of the pressure of "the Isreal lobby" that America can be fully implemented as a co-belligerent in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Yet, if we step back and take a look at the bigger picture, we can see that what is called euphonistically "the Isreal lobby" is nothing more than the American Jewish community acting upon what it perceives as its own foreign interests. Why, there was an "Isreal lobby" in America even before there was an Israel. And this organization:
the Zionist Organization of America
Played a pivotal role in convincing President Truman to support the creation of Isreal in the first place! In doing so, Truman reversed the pledge FDR had made to the King of Saudi Arabia, as to American never supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Truman, in backing Isreal's creation, as well, disregarded the advice of State Department experts in Near and Middle East affairs. These experts warned that America playing a pivotal in creating Isreal would have America cast in role as "betrayer of high principles" for generations throughout the Arab world. If anyone has any doubt, as to the truth of all this, l would advise reading Alison Weir's: Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Isreal.
While the American Jewish community following its own foreign policy in the area of Isreal is bad enough, it's not the only area. The first such example of the Jewish community bending American foreign policy to its own special interests was the successful lobbying of Congress, under the Taft administration, to cancel Russia's "Most Favored Nation" trading status. This was in reaction to the ongoing issue of progroms in the Russian Empire. It was not a move the Taft administration desired. Therefore, the need to lobby Congress. A need, which by the, was the major reason behind the creation of the America Jewish Congress. Thus, we see "neocon" animosity towards Russia indeed has deep ethnic roots.
In the lead up to World War II, the American Jewish community were clear partisans in the great struggle over whether or not American should back the Allied cause in Europe. It was this partisanship that led the chief spokesman of the grassroots non-interventionist organization the America First Committee (AFC), the legendary aviationist Charles A. Lindbergh, to name, in his controversial September 11th 1941 Des Moines address, the Jews as one of the three major war agitating groups in America.
The other two groups Lindbergh named were the British and the Roosevelt administration itself. As to be expected for speaking so bluntly, Lindbergh was labeled an anti-Semite and was subjected to a vilification that dogs the great man's reputation to this day. In all fairness, it should be noted at that time that other ethnic groups in America were taking strongly ethnic partisan positions on the intervention/non-intervention debate as well.
And what of the topic of this essay itself? Does the American Jewish community have something of a position on immigration? There is indeed plenty of evidence that it does. While some Jews like to claim their support for high levels of immigration has to do with "Jewish values" or even Judaism itself, a more sensible explanation is that Jews see high levels of immigration as being simply "good for Jews".
In other words, and somewhat crudely put, the Austro-Hungarian Empire good, the Third Reich bad. As Dr Kevin MacDonald has documented in his, The Culture of Critique, and at his website: the Occidental Observe, the Jews were central to the original opposition to the passing of the immigration restrictionist 1924 National Origins Act. Jews then led the long struggle for repeal and replacement of the ethnic based restrictionist 1924 act. A struggle that was finally met with success in 1965 with the passing of the Hart-Celler Act.
An instructive story from this long struggle is the ADL's recruitment, in the mid-1950s, of then Senator John F. Kennedy, to add his name to pro-immigration reform propaganda piece: A Land of Immigrants. Thus, was a born meme that plagues America to this day. The irony of all this is that JFK's father ambassador Joseph Kennedy was a well-known pro non-interventionist Roosevelt man. And
his son John was a member of the Harvard AFC chapter! So goes the complexity of politics in a diverse nation such as America.
"Making a state’s population go up for the sake of it is meaningless paper-clip maximizing."
Indeed, it is. As always, quality over quantity.
Except economies of scale absolutely still matters. The reason why America is a superpower while Canada is not is because America has a much bigger population, which leads to more diverse industries, more complete supply chains, and obviously a bigger military.
The per capita GDP difference between US and other western countries can largely be attributed to the dominance of the US dollar, which gives the average American more buying power internationally than the average German or Canadian. And the dominance of the USD is downstream from US being a large and dominant superpower.
The biggest problems with immigration are productivity and assimilation, but both are solvable problems. Productivity can be solved by focusing on high skill immigration. Assimilation can be solved by preferring younger immigrants who have been educated in the US, as well as cutting back on family-based visas so that high skill immigrate workers will be forced to assimilate through intermarriage with natives instead of bringing spouses from their home countries.
No, you ignore what truly matters, countries like Switzerland (8.7 million) and Luxembourg (660,000) have much smaller populations yet boast some of the highest per capita GDPs in the world—$87,963 and $128,823 respectively in 2023, compared to the U.S.’s $81,695 (IMF estimates). While, China and India, with populations exceeding 1.4 billion each, have only recently begun to challenge U.S. dominance, and their per capita GDPs ($13,136 and $2,845) lag far behind. Clearly, population size doesn’t guarantee superpower status or economic prosperity.
Having big military is important, but for Europe that is partially solved by alliances, and tech innovations (modern drone warfare doesn't require as much boots on the ground). And of course, as stated by the author, the point of having a military is protection of nation's wealth, land, it's sovereignty, etc. Allowing mass immigration is giving it all away "without a fight".
And rarely openly discussed but very painful and important issue: as the migrant workers are always hugely disproportionately males (sometimes up to 90%), while the base male to female ration in the host country is always at around 50/50, those "young workers" will create an imbalance. The fact is, native men would never willingly put themselves in the situation where they have less opportunities and higher competition. In the end you will end up with the number of lonely men almost equivalent to the number of immigrant young workers. This of course leads to societal tensions, breeds resentment, possible ethnic conflicts, a rise of xenophobia, extremism etc.
And we already have too many examples (mainly from Western Europe) where large influxes of single male migrants have caused a huge increase in sexual crimes (for obvious reasons, young men have urges).
When we compound everything stated, it seems to me that only a malign actor would advocate for such an immigration policy.
This suggests that a sound immigration policy would be to allow in anyone who can score over 125 on an IQ test or is a woman less than 35 years old, and no one else.
That sounds quite reasonable but neither the Left nor the Right can agree on it.
The Left wants to let everyone in, while the MAGA Right is afraid of smart foreigners taking all the high paying jobs
Why do people still use GDP instead of GDP PPP?!
All things being equal population size matters. Nothing is guaranteed of course. Luxembourg and Switzerland as examples are silly. It’s basically a gathering of rich people (who made their fortune elsewhere )and bankers. What’s the economy of these countries? What do they produce?
Switzerland's top exports are mainly specialized goods like pharmaceuticals, watches, chemicals, and precision instruments. Key exports also include machinery, vaccines, and organic chemicals. (So not just coo-coo-clocks.)
Luxembourg's main exports include machinery, iron & steel products, plastics, vehicles, and rubber. Alongside significant financial and business services.
Sexual crimes increase because the immigrant men often come from cultures where women are not respected and the men can do as they please. Native men also "have urges" but are much less likely to abuse women. Western men are taught to control themselves, as all men should.
"The per capita GDP difference between US and other western countries can largely be attributed to the dominance of the US dollar, which gives the average American more buying power internationally than the average German or Canadian."
This statement is wildly wrong. GDP is a measure of output, not consumption. We can attribute so many more things to the higher GDP per capita that the US has -- higher productivity, higher work hours, less regulation, and so on, compared to Canada/EU.
Federal spending accounts for almost 40% of GDP, and that spending power is directly downstream from reserve currency status, since we haven’t had a budget surplus in decades
Government spending accounts for 49% of GDP in the EU on average. I don't see the point you're making
But EU has to tax much more to afford it, while US can afford a much bigger deficit
EU countries that don’t have the revenue to service debt go bankrupt. The Fed can just buy treasuries if needed
I fail to see why a hairdresser in America is 10x more productive than a hairdresser in Vietnam.
The US government can inflate its currency and pay way higher wages and welfare to its residents, who can then afford to spend that money on local services at much higher price points, resulting in much higher nominal wages locally.
The global demand for US dollar can only partially be explained by US productivity. The other part can be explained by US diplomatic pressure that forces countries like Saudi to only accept USD for oil
The age of mass migration is over. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. They need to voluntarily reduce their country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stay there and work to improve their living conditions.
Great article. I agree with every point being made here, and I also appreciate the sensible comparison of AI-risk with much existentially safer bio-enhancement options.
I very much agree. See my comment below.
Amazing read.
The only “economic” way to do mass migration is something similar to UAE system for guest workers, i. e. they come in, they work, they leave without any possibility of a permanent status.
Immigration worshippers in the West don’t actually care about economic arguments, sadly.
Except many immigrants to the UAE are residing there effectively permanently.
They have no political rights, there are no elections, they are not allowed into the security services or military (not allowed to get their hands on the guns).
They can be executed with a summarily process, without eternal appeals from HR lawyers. Big difference.
Interesting, although I think geographic location has more to do with voting patterns of immigrants than genetics. For example, how many of those Democrat white Catholics and Jews were urban people? I'm guessing all of them.
It seems to me voting tendencies are more impacted by the rural/urban divide than anything else. I live in a rural area, and people of Anglo, Italian, Irish, German descent all vote the same way, whereas our urban cousins vote very differently.
Thanks for this detailed write up, bookmarked for reference.
Wow well done
Great article. Some things to also ponder: GDP measures are crap, and even income, tax, and redistribution numbers per capita are not that great, since you cant really measure someones actual real contribution to a society based off of that. To give some extreme exaples, let’s say you imported a bunch of immigrants who were dumb but particularly saintly. They never could earn that much money. Having them would be a net positive for a country even if it were expensive. (It would also probably be a net negative for them to immigrate if the place they came from was better in moral terms and moving corroded what was good about them over time). This example also gives the lie to the argument of the USCCB about wanting so many immigrants and claiming it is wrong for us to turn them away. By Catholic teaching it is better to be poor and good, even if it kills you than richer and turn bad. Immigrating to america makes things religiously worse for catholics who move from catholic countries, particularly in the 2nd and subsequent generations. Idk if that’s always been the case but it certainly is today.
Another example would be if you had a bunch of immigrants that did high value things for not much money. So to give a sort of extreme example lets say you had a bunch of immigrants that made oil extraction cheaper and it also depressed the price of oil, and your oil sector as measured gets less profitable, but also you get it cheaper. As an input it has more value than its price, or else people wouldnt use it, and it goes into everything. Such immigrants in this scenario would be a net positive even if the surface numbers made it look negative.
Both examples I listed are kindof extreme and unrealistic, as the saints would probably be extremely right coded in most ways, and there isnt an energy producing immigrant group like that, but I what I’m getting at is that it is probably way worse for europe than the US relative to what you can see in the raw numbers of today, even if we are more redistributive in some ways, and it is probably worse for the US in raw numbers than stated, apart from importing farm workers or something, since everyone eats (leaving aside the ways that it has skewed our ag policies), and having cheaper food is in some ways like having cheaper oil.
I keep reading from very sharp people lots of arguments about how bad it is to have a shrinking and aging population, and while I agree I dont see why we couldnt adapt. (I dont think we will though and importing immigrants makes adaptation *worse* not better). Without technology it would be an unmitigated disaster, but most people have bullshit jobs to some degree that dont produce anything that matters. A relatively small fraction of the population does all the things that keep everything going, and with technology increasing over time that is probably only going to be magnified in aggregate. An exception will hopefully be farming.
Interesting to look into how either Albanians or Chechnyans are the worst immigrants in Europe, rather than whatever you might expect. By a very wide margin. Idk if that’s true measured by rape gang propensity though.
Totally agree about the simplistic metrics used for drawing conclusions on a group’s contribution to a society and economy.
People should stop using GDP if they want to be take seriously.
It might solve population decline for certain parties or groups with strikingly low birthrates and political ambitions which stretch decades into the future...
"These characteristics are persistent and differences don’t disappear with cultural assimilation (they are, because like almost all human traits they are substantially genetic)."
You are so right.
"Biosingularity, as the name implies, is the biological analogue to AI singularity. Rather than smarter machines that design smarter machines that design smarter machines, you have smarter humans coming up with more effective ways to increase human intelligence."
This is something dear to my heart. One of those ways is embryo selection, but that has its limits. For me, a better way to benefit the ascendance of humanity is genetic enhancement. And not just an increase in cognitive ability but several positive human traits. Ironically, AI is an excellent tool in the quest for human enhancement.
I can see an argument for permitting AI research in very specific domains (medical research, search and rescue, and possibly space exploration.) Everywhere else it needs to be banned, and the institutes dealing with the relevant hardware should be treating it like a level-4 biohazard.
"I can see an argument for permitting AI research in very specific domains (medical research, search and rescue, and possibly space exploration.)"
AI should be treated for what it is: a tool, not a 'replacement' for humans
Correct. Immigration doesn’t ‘solve’ Population Decline.
Immigration is a Hail Mary Pass, which juices up Consumption & stabilizes the Median Age & the Labour Pool *for a while* until things Decline again.
But the overall numbers on the Median Age & Dependency ratios are a few percentage points max... Which the author correctly notes in this piece.
The author’s optimism about Japan is ill-founded; quite a few essays have been written on why both Japan & South Korea are tech Dystopias in the classical sense of the word... & not worth living in, given the fact that you overwork yourself to death in said societies for Oligarchs.
“Hoping technological advances bail us out” is Hopium without much substance.
As for raising Birth Rates... that will only work for a while in select contexts & locations, given Biocapacity loss. However, that will only last for a while at most.
But yes... there are no solutions here for Ecological Overshoot & its ensuing Second-Order Effects, such as Population Decline, Energy-Material shortfalls, etc. Overshoot is a Predicament with Terms of Surrender, & not a Problem ‘that can be solved.’
https://thefallofthewest.substack.com/p/problems-have-solutions-while-predicaments
Thanks for an interesting read. This argument seems to rest on certain assumptions.
There are examples of immigration programs that target immigrants with higher human and financial capital. In those cases, the average age decreases, the average education increases and the household savings increase. Plus much of their childhood education was paid by a foreign country.
Concrete examples include the Indian-American community. Many came through IT worker programs and make on average way more than the average American because they are way more productive.
So, do you see that a targetted approach could in fact, in some cases, be highly beneficial?
Unlike low skilled immigrants, highly educated immigrants generally are a fiscal net positive, but every other issue mentioned still remains and in some cases can be magnified. An educated immigrant is much more likely to be able to get in to your elite and actually directly affect public policy, change the culture, etc.
Good points, thanks. And that education and training might make them a bit older.
Beat me to it
I had a good friend who was a very Americanized and wealthy Indian. I remember him saying that India was positioning itself to be the next world super power. I asked who he would fight for if a war broke out between US and India. After a long and deliberate hesitation, he said, with somw degree of pain but also certainty, "it would have to be India". This is just an anecdotal story but I still found it concerning.
Then perhaps it's best if the USA and India don't go to war. After all, why should they?
I believe the purpose of the original comment was to have us extrapolate loyalties to all immigrants. If we have 14 million illegal immigrants to the USA, as well as millions of legal ones, and many or most of those people will not fight to protect America, and may also be teaching their children not to bother protecting America, then we are weakening our military power and social capital.
We can already feel the effects of the decreasing levels of American patriotism. The West has been told it is hateful and evil by many poorer countries (based from actual deeds and likely jealousy), and the children of America now believe it and are actively trying to "burn it all down."
That's one theory. There are also examples of newcomers being more patriotic.
It is good to look past instincts and to look deeply to find the real answers (plural). Not every newcomer is the same. Not every American is the same.
"sex ratio among Germans 25–49 in 150"
I assume 150 should be 1950
Thanks — fixed.
—NC
Magnificently meticulous. Bravo!
Super intense and revelatory.
This is one of the best articles arguing against a policy of mass immigration (or even any immigration for that matter) l've ever come across. However, there's one area in which you, for whatever reason, avoid using the obvious example. You write:
... immigration produces special interests that make foreign policy in the "national interest" difficult.
Then you give as "the classic example Florida Cubans". You then go on to mention Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese as other domestic groups that produce "special interests" that make foreign policy in the "national interest" difficult. Missing from your list is what John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously dubbed "the Isreal lobby".
While there is no question that pressure from Cuban exile organizations in Florida have made a rational American foreign policy towards Cuban all but impossible, their accomplishment in this area pales into insignificance compared to those of "the Isreal lobby". I would argue that it is only because of the pressure of "the Isreal lobby" that America can be fully implemented as a co-belligerent in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Yet, if we step back and take a look at the bigger picture, we can see that what is called euphonistically "the Isreal lobby" is nothing more than the American Jewish community acting upon what it perceives as its own foreign interests. Why, there was an "Isreal lobby" in America even before there was an Israel. And this organization:
the Zionist Organization of America
Played a pivotal role in convincing President Truman to support the creation of Isreal in the first place! In doing so, Truman reversed the pledge FDR had made to the King of Saudi Arabia, as to American never supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Truman, in backing Isreal's creation, as well, disregarded the advice of State Department experts in Near and Middle East affairs. These experts warned that America playing a pivotal in creating Isreal would have America cast in role as "betrayer of high principles" for generations throughout the Arab world. If anyone has any doubt, as to the truth of all this, l would advise reading Alison Weir's: Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Isreal.
While the American Jewish community following its own foreign policy in the area of Isreal is bad enough, it's not the only area. The first such example of the Jewish community bending American foreign policy to its own special interests was the successful lobbying of Congress, under the Taft administration, to cancel Russia's "Most Favored Nation" trading status. This was in reaction to the ongoing issue of progroms in the Russian Empire. It was not a move the Taft administration desired. Therefore, the need to lobby Congress. A need, which by the, was the major reason behind the creation of the America Jewish Congress. Thus, we see "neocon" animosity towards Russia indeed has deep ethnic roots.
In the lead up to World War II, the American Jewish community were clear partisans in the great struggle over whether or not American should back the Allied cause in Europe. It was this partisanship that led the chief spokesman of the grassroots non-interventionist organization the America First Committee (AFC), the legendary aviationist Charles A. Lindbergh, to name, in his controversial September 11th 1941 Des Moines address, the Jews as one of the three major war agitating groups in America.
The other two groups Lindbergh named were the British and the Roosevelt administration itself. As to be expected for speaking so bluntly, Lindbergh was labeled an anti-Semite and was subjected to a vilification that dogs the great man's reputation to this day. In all fairness, it should be noted at that time that other ethnic groups in America were taking strongly ethnic partisan positions on the intervention/non-intervention debate as well.
And what of the topic of this essay itself? Does the American Jewish community have something of a position on immigration? There is indeed plenty of evidence that it does. While some Jews like to claim their support for high levels of immigration has to do with "Jewish values" or even Judaism itself, a more sensible explanation is that Jews see high levels of immigration as being simply "good for Jews".
In other words, and somewhat crudely put, the Austro-Hungarian Empire good, the Third Reich bad. As Dr Kevin MacDonald has documented in his, The Culture of Critique, and at his website: the Occidental Observe, the Jews were central to the original opposition to the passing of the immigration restrictionist 1924 National Origins Act. Jews then led the long struggle for repeal and replacement of the ethnic based restrictionist 1924 act. A struggle that was finally met with success in 1965 with the passing of the Hart-Celler Act.
An instructive story from this long struggle is the ADL's recruitment, in the mid-1950s, of then Senator John F. Kennedy, to add his name to pro-immigration reform propaganda piece: A Land of Immigrants. Thus, was a born meme that plagues America to this day. The irony of all this is that JFK's father ambassador Joseph Kennedy was a well-known pro non-interventionist Roosevelt man. And
his son John was a member of the Harvard AFC chapter! So goes the complexity of politics in a diverse nation such as America.