If you’re indeed pro immigration(both legal or illegal), why such animosity towards Cubans? I have sympathy for your ordeal to get US citizenship. But wishing the same suffering on Cubans as a result is something different.
3 Likes
I suspect the recent animosity towards immigrants, legal or illegal, is largely racial in nature. Besides, one can also use the same economic argument against letting in more legal immigrants, like it will drag down natives’ wages etc. So I don’t expect Trump will turn around and let in one legal immigrant for every one he kicked out, let alone 10.
2 Likes
Innate human behavior.
When there is plenty to share, they won’t mind sharing. That’s what happen in early globalization, outsource jobs, get H1Bs, and happy with undocumented immigrants to do the low pay low skilled jobs.
When job opportunities are not sufficient for themselves (because of automation mainly), they behave aggressively. First obvious thing to do is to try to get back the outsourced jobs and H1B jobs for higher skilled guys, and jobs taken by undocumented immigrants for not so highly skilled guys. Next they would kill each other i.e. civil wars. That is why Trump solution is dangerous, it speeds up to next stage. I prefer Elon Musk push for UBI. Is a matter of time, why not just start now.
The racist card is unfair…The blue collar hard working Mid West rust belt got screwed by the corporations, liberals, internationalists and freetraders…No wonder they went nuts and voted in the Orange Man.
2 Likes
As explained in earlier post, racism is incidental… just so happen the outsourced to nations/ H1Bs/ undocumented immigrants are of different races. Is all about jobs which we know is going to disappear fast, just give those midwest guys UBIs, and see how it goes. The nation can learn from midwest experience.
Midwest is not exactly teeming with immigrants. For immigrants to be scapegoats it definitely helps they are of different races. It’s much easier to hate the other guys than one of your own.
2 Likes
I appreciate it. I hope I can, without any insult, give some kind of lecture about the f’ed up current immigration system. I am somebody who seeks fairness wherever possible and the links I brought were to point at the hypocrisy of the republicans who take advantage of an agenda to put a discriminatory immigration laws to work for the purpose of gaining voters. And that worked in Florida as we see the results of the elections. Have we heard that before in this forum? You know, liberal allowing illegal immigration for votes, etc. How about turning illegal Cuban entries into votes ready for the next or the following election?
In 1996, the immigration laws were changed. Prior to that, anybody, no matter their legal/illegal entry could apply to a green card by marrying an American citizen, divorce 6 months later, no questions asked, and some other stuff that is too much to discuss here. Now, there’s a battery of questions, and the spouse goes through some length of time to make valid of that holly matrimony. The main objective of that change in the law, was to punish “forever” anybody, everybody entering the country illegally. That is, stepping in American soil without any documentation. That would disqualify anybody from ever getting an immigration benefit.
Are you following me?
Then, since we know that the law changed punishing anybody entering this country illegally, do you see my point here? I’ve said it many times, either we enforce the law across the board on everybody or don’t.
Now, the Cubans. The Cuban adjustment act, I may wrong on the issue here, was enacted to help those in the island to leave because of Castro becoming friendly with Russia, and, perhaps, my opinion, make better of their lives by seeking freedom. But, what it has done is to create an entitled type of immigration that has helped more the Castros than the people stuck in that island. Nobody fights, nobody does anything for the liberation of their country. They don’t better their country by leaving. Have we heard that opinion from the opponents of illegal immigration anywhere? What have they done for Cuba? Of course, that questioning can be applied to anybody coming to this country.
After my ranting, here it is, this is the point. The Cuban adjustment act, gave any Cuban landing on the beaches of Florida, the most sought and closest place at that time, the right to receive a green card within a year of their illegal landing if they applied to the refugee status. Those caught in that ordeal, no matter if on water or on foot, would be deported. Then, I forget the date, Google it, Bill Clinton, yes, that president hated by republicans and the same Cubans, gave them, instead of denying any green card to them, he, in the bottom of his hearth gave them the right to reach that benefit by putting a foot on American soil. That was, in spirit, that anybody landing on the beaches of Florida would have, with no vetting (remember that word, vetting from Trump?) the right to get a GC within one year and one day of their illegal entry. This was then called “wet food-dry foot” program. .
What did the Cubans do then when they realized that it was almost impossible to beat the coast guard? They started a trend of traveling to that…leftist country of Ecuador, and from there they planned their trip all the way up to the US. No papers, no visas, crimes, rapes, all sorts of activities done and committed by them, including the burning of jails and many criminal activities. They put Nicaragua and Costa Rica against each other, they were in a stand by and, Central America, with Mexico, finally allowed the 8,000 to continue to their destination. They then traveled to the US, like many other thousands of illegal immigrants from around the world, except that the Cubans just needed to show at the border, place a foot on this soil, and say “I am a Cuban national” and heaven would open its doors to them.
Obama, certainly, with a vision, ended it. Remember, he was helping Trump to do good of his words by stopping illegal immigration, and the Cubans voted for that stance, stopping illegal immigration. Now, they are at the end of the stick, and are suffering the consequences of their own shooting on their foot. That’s where most of my friends are saying “how does it feel now”?
Manch touched something about animosity. Yes, as you read, Central America allowed the Cubans to come to the US. Such a noble thing. But, if you read, hear, and watch videos of Cubans calling my peasants, my people Indians, criminals, thieves, rapists (sound familiar?) after they came through my former country and other countries, it becomes an insult to the community that treats them with good heart. Cubans don’t accept to be called Latinos-Hispanic. They feel superior to anybody in Central and South America.
Please, watch this video, not for the video, but for the comments. Cubans and Mexicans and the likes pitting against each other. Read the entitlement attitude of some Cubans and others as well.
Arizona got really tough with undocumented immigrants starting in 2007. Employers are required to verify job applicants’ immigration status, and undocumented are denied most government services. We can probably learn from its experience. WSJ article from 2016:
Moody’s Analytics looked at Arizona’s economic output for The Wall Street Journal, with an
eye toward distinguishing between the effects of the mass departures of illegal immigrants
and the recession that hit the state hard beginning in 2008. It concluded that the
departures alone had reduced Arizona’s gross domestic product by an average of 2% a year
between 2008 and 2015. Because of the departures, total employment in the state was
2.5% lower, on average, than it otherwise would have been between 2008 and 2015,
according to Moody’s.
Wages did indeed go higher for low skilled workers, but the whole economy took a big hit. So at least in the short term, Trump’s tough immigration policy can easily sink the economy into a recession.
2 Likes
Plenty of immigrants in the Midwest. .Michigan has a large Arab population. .Chicago has more Latinos than most US cities…http://www.chicagonow.com/chicanisima-latino-politics-news-and-culture/2013/08/chicago-has-5th-largest-hispanic-community-in-u-s/
1 Like
Moody’s rated subprime MBS as AAA.
UBI is being tested some places. Time will tell if it actually works.
Goldman Sachs economist Daan Struyven wrote: Immigration Restrictions: A Downside Risk to the Economy’s Speed Limit. Here are few excerpts from his note:
The contribution from net immigration to total population growth has risen from 30% in the 1990s to 40-50% recently as the natural increase in population has slowed. The effect of immigration on growth of the labor force is even more pronounced as immigrants tend to be younger and therefore more likely to participate in the labor force than the native-born population. As a result, net immigration currently accounts for virtually all of the 0.5% trend increase in the labor force.
Reduced immigration would result in slower labor force growth and therefore slower growth in potential GDP—the economy’s “speed limit”. In addition, academic studies suggest there could be negative knock-on effects on productivity growth. As a result, we see immigration restrictions as an important source of downside risk to our 1.75% estimate of potential growth.
It’s possible Trump will push the country into a recession with his hawkish immigration policy. That’d truly be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We have been on a pretty solid uptrend under Obama.
HT: Calculated Risk
1 Like
If not during an economic expansion when is in your view the best time for illegal immigration law enforcement? Surely not during a recession 
is it?
Obama was the deporter-in-chief before Trump came along. I much prefer Obama’s measured way of enforcing the law.
2 Likes
I could argue the decline in labor force participation is due to immigration. The number of working age people is growing faster than the economy can create jobs. Adding more people isn’t going to help. It’s forcing more people out of the labor force and into social programs.
Also, econonomic growth has sucked since the Great Recession. The only path to real growth is productivity increases, and we’ve been almost entirely flat since 2011. The “growth” has been from massive amounts of government and consumer debt. We’ve sold the future to buy consumable products and services today. Servicing that debt is going to reduce future spending power. The only way the economy can grow without productivity is higher and higher levels of debt. That works until it doesn’t. Then you get Greece.
Labor force participation for men has been declining since end of WW2. Unless we have massive immigration since the 50s I don’t see how immigration can be blamed. Why not blame women instead? Maybe less capable men were replaced by more capable women?
2 Likes
Obama administration simply changed the definition of deportations. It started counting the people who were turned away at the border as deportations, which previous administrations did not do. Hence, his deporter in chief tag is false & the LA times published the article below to placate the immigration activists who were angry with Obama based on these “high”(false) numbers.
Link & highlights below.
But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.
Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.
On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — primarily as a result of changing who gets counted in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s deportation statistics.
The vast majority of those border crossers would not have been treated as formal deportations under most previous administrations. If all removals were tallied, the total sent back to Mexico each year would have been far higher under those previous administrations than it is now.
Until recent years, most people caught illegally crossing the southern border were simply bused back into Mexico in what officials called "voluntary returns," but which critics derisively termed “catch and release.” Those removals, which during the 1990s reached more 1 million a year, were not counted in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation statistics.
Deportations of people apprehended in the interior of the U.S., which the immigration agency defines as more than 100 miles from the border, dropped from 237,941 in Obama’s first year to 133,551 in 2013, according to immigration data.
1 Like
So you are telling me Obama was actually better than I thought? Man! Now I really miss the guy… 
1 Like
Yes he deported far fewer illegals than he claimed & he wasn’t a deporter in chief.
Brexit’s one main reason is to slow down the immigration from Eastern European countries such as Poland. British and Polish are the same race, isn’t it?
Mexico deports people from their southern neighbor. They are the same race, isn’t it?
It would make things worse to label an economic and social motivation as racism.
Real racism is bad. But overuse of racism could hurt minoroties in the long term. People may mix things up and they may even regard the real racism as poltical correctness crap.
1 Like
