Perhaps, but so what? What if the immigrants who came here over the last 50 or 100 years had all been Somali natives with the same median IQ and other traits as those who've come here recently? Think we'd still be better off? If you say yes you'll get a gold star for political correctness and a zero for candor.
The United States is the most productive economy ever known.
Absolutely nowhere else raises the productivity of its workers higher, native or immigrant, of whatever generation.
That’s why they all want to move to the US!
I’m not American, and I think it’s perfectly fair that Americans set their immigration policy however they like. But it’s just science to state that more workers means a larger economy.
Sure, GDP would be increased by the value of any net increase in production of goods or services attributable to immigrant labor. But it can't be deduced merely from this that further immigration from Somalia (or anywhere else) will serve the interest of current US residents. See the graph in Emil K's blog post showing "Average net contribution of immigrants [in Denmark] by country of origin [in] 2019" as published by the Danish government, which shows that on average Somali immigrants were net "takers" rather than contributors to the Danish economy in 2019, presumably because the total economic value of their productive effort was less than that of transfer payments and other benefits they received at public expense.
It should be borne in mind here that immigrants in the US -- even those who come here illegally -- can receive monthly AFDC cash stipends for any US-born minor children in their households, supposedly to be used for the benefit of those children, but the recipient parents are effectively free to spend the money as they see fit. And there is a host of other benefits that immigrants receive at public expense from the US Federal and state governments. https://www.nilc.org/resources/table_ovrw_fedprogs/
It obviously stands to reason that those who came here when immigrants had to sink or swim on their own, without taxpayer-supported subsidies, were generally more inclined to be self-reliant and more capable of meeting the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by a capitalist society than those who came when lots of freebies were to be had at public expense. As the late, great Milton Friedman said more succinctly, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." But perhaps it's not obvious enough.
Western elites decided to engage in a program of mass immigration of third worlders in the 60's when native fertility was still decent and the biggest demographic concern was overpopulation. They didn't do it to help the welfare state they did it because they hate and distrust the native populations of european descent.
Correct. The native populations of European descent rebelled against their betters in 1642, 1775, 1789, 1799, 1848, 1861, 1917, and 1956. They will surely do so again. The betters are preparing an inverse-sepoy army.
It still hasn't been explained why we ever supported Somalia's rotten commie regime: they needed everything from us; we needed nothing of theirs; they collapsed anyway, and all we had to show for it was our providing of refuge to anti-Occidental terrorists and war criminals whose spawn now seek to destroy us from within:
It's a tragedy what is happening to the western societies. And it's sad that the destruction is peddled by treacherous politicians. Civic uprising has been long overdue.
From the article: “That covers the desire, and here’s where opportunity comes into play: Minnesota’s public programs don’t adequately guard against organized fraud. The systems intended to catch fraud are mostly designed to root out recipient fraud. It is exceedingly difficult to guard against providers who collude with recipients, which is the type of fraud most pervasive in the Somali community. It is both time-consuming and resource-intensive to investigate complex fraud schemes involving providers who work with recipients to defraud the government, though investigators have trained their eyes: The charges in the most recent Medicaid fraud case allege that the co-conspirators paid kickbacks to lure recipients to their agency.”
You are consistently wrong on the net costs of immigrants to the economy. Particularly if you think dynamically.
Developed countries have large public debt burdens which will need to be serviced by the taxpayers of 30 years hence. Having more future workers and therefore more taxpayers (of whatever quality) makes it easier to service these debts in future.
More simply, I am benefiting from public spending today that will be repaid in part by immigrant workers of the future. I’m okay with that.
The skills mix of immigrants doesn’t matter hugely, what matters is the productivity level of the host economy. Higher skills is nicer but three million low-skilled workers gives you a lot more GDP than one million high-skilled ones do.
You can always adjust benefits downwards in future, but you cannot manufacture future taxpayers these days except via immigration because reviving replacement fertility seems hopeless.
An instructive example is Bulgaria which has lost 22% of its population over the last thirty years due to outward migration to Western Europe. This has meant public spending for Bulgarians has to be ratcheted downwards as there is no future generation to service debts.
All of the above is orthogonal to the *cultural* impacts of large scale immigration. If you want to have the cultural debate go right ahead. But there is no negative *economic* impact of large scale immigration.
"what matters is the productivity level of the host economy"
This level is not any constant of nature which can't fall, for example by becoming third word by importing third world.
Just to mention some factors effecting the productivity level, are intelligence of the population and the level of trust in a society. You can't have a high trust society without trustworthy population. Cultural negative impacts are not distinct from economic impacts. Multicultural and multiracial societies have low level of trust and high level of conflict.
Netflix or Amazon are not going to forget their extremely efficient processes just because of some immigrants with low skills who they won’t even employ.
How well Netflix and Amazon will work if they relocate to Somalia with their processes? Would they need to consider changing their processes?
The effects are as far from trivial as possible. And the productivity level of an economy is not just processes of some corporations, effectiveness of which depend on context. What is effective in some place in USA is not necessarily efficient in Somalia or even all places in USA. Immigration proponents use extremely naive assumptions to promote mass third world immigration. Pseudoscientist known as economists have promoted many disastrous policies based on naive assumptions causing deindustrialization and China-dependence, finance crisis etc. but mass third world immigration is the worst of all.
They would need to import foreign engineers and other workers not only for their main operations, but also to provide them reliably electricity, sanitation, telecommunications, logistics and private army for security etc. thus creating in effect a state within a state. If relocating all of business instead of outsourcing some parts of it to any place is so simple, why the American capitalist class who despises ordinary Americans doesn't relocate to Somalia or even in China?
Immigration to USA within the period you mentioned was very different to present immigration by country of origin. The term third world itself is a cold war era concept, and could be replaced by e.g. least developed countries.
There’s no high level conflict or low level trust in the United States, and it’s most multi cultural nation since the Roman Empire. & the iq stuff is completely pseudoscience akin to astrology
There is now "only" cold civil war in the USA, which will very likely turn hot near future unless USA divides to multiple independent countries or other radical change happens. USA has big internal differences in trust level. Most multicultural places have low trust level and more homogeneous places have higher level.
Embrace "per capita." You can't make a profit on volume if you are losing money on each individual immigrant. That's just math. Unless you can show they pay more in taxes than they take out in services and benefits they are making the fiscal shortfall worse, not better.
'But there is no negative *economic* impact of large scale immigration'.
You sound like you know a lot more about this than me but surely if unemployment among immigrants, both present and future, is high enough then their economic impact will indeed be negative.
And even if they are in work, if what they take out through public services exceeds what they contribute through taxes, in what way is this not negative?
Yes, they pay VAT, sales taxes, excise duties BUT WITH MONEY THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THEM FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE! You are surely not going to count that as a contribution? If so, then the more we give them in dole money and the more they spend, the richer all of us will be. Marvellous!
I don't see anyone ever cherry-picking some good statistics, or even individual anecdotes, that make Somalis seem like a benefit for Western societies to import. I've only ever seen "journalists" write pity-pieces about how bad we should feel about the Somalis who have to live in Somalia.
i mean it’s a refugee resentment from a failed state/war. The 1st generation won’t do well, but the 2nd and third generation are adapting and doing well. Their qualifications from Somalia aren’t valid in the west. My dad was an engineer, but had to go to school again to get certified.
In Minnesota, 67% of 2nd gen Somali Americans go to school post high school, open thousands of business, and contribute more to the tax base than they take in.
The older generation also work jobs that won’t show up on census, like trucking and owning businesses but all in all, Somalis have contributed more to the Minnesota than vice versa. Some of the stats he’s using are from 2009
Just as a note, population aging, to the extent that it is a problem, is not a problem because of the welfare state, it is a problem because of the increase in dependents. Whether you have public pensions or not is irrelevant to the fact that old people will need to be cared for in some way, meaning that they will need to receive transfers of time and/or money, and whether the means of doing so are private or public does not change that fact. The key to caring for a future aging population is productivity growth. Productivity growth is the reason why most people do not have to live on the farm and grow their own food.
"Again, USA has a lot of immigration which helps it."
That is debatable. Small short-term gain...large long-term loss.
America would be a demonstrably poorer and less influential country if it had not allowed immigration in the last 50 or 100 years.
Perhaps, but so what? What if the immigrants who came here over the last 50 or 100 years had all been Somali natives with the same median IQ and other traits as those who've come here recently? Think we'd still be better off? If you say yes you'll get a gold star for political correctness and a zero for candor.
The United States is the most productive economy ever known.
Absolutely nowhere else raises the productivity of its workers higher, native or immigrant, of whatever generation.
That’s why they all want to move to the US!
I’m not American, and I think it’s perfectly fair that Americans set their immigration policy however they like. But it’s just science to state that more workers means a larger economy.
Sure, GDP would be increased by the value of any net increase in production of goods or services attributable to immigrant labor. But it can't be deduced merely from this that further immigration from Somalia (or anywhere else) will serve the interest of current US residents. See the graph in Emil K's blog post showing "Average net contribution of immigrants [in Denmark] by country of origin [in] 2019" as published by the Danish government, which shows that on average Somali immigrants were net "takers" rather than contributors to the Danish economy in 2019, presumably because the total economic value of their productive effort was less than that of transfer payments and other benefits they received at public expense.
It should be borne in mind here that immigrants in the US -- even those who come here illegally -- can receive monthly AFDC cash stipends for any US-born minor children in their households, supposedly to be used for the benefit of those children, but the recipient parents are effectively free to spend the money as they see fit. And there is a host of other benefits that immigrants receive at public expense from the US Federal and state governments. https://www.nilc.org/resources/table_ovrw_fedprogs/
"America would be a demonstrably poorer and less influential country if it had not allowed immigration in the last 50 or 100 years."
I agree, but there was some selection involved, but not anymore.
It obviously stands to reason that those who came here when immigrants had to sink or swim on their own, without taxpayer-supported subsidies, were generally more inclined to be self-reliant and more capable of meeting the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by a capitalist society than those who came when lots of freebies were to be had at public expense. As the late, great Milton Friedman said more succinctly, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." But perhaps it's not obvious enough.
Western elites decided to engage in a program of mass immigration of third worlders in the 60's when native fertility was still decent and the biggest demographic concern was overpopulation. They didn't do it to help the welfare state they did it because they hate and distrust the native populations of european descent.
Correct. The native populations of European descent rebelled against their betters in 1642, 1775, 1789, 1799, 1848, 1861, 1917, and 1956. They will surely do so again. The betters are preparing an inverse-sepoy army.
You forgot 1933.
Are we allowed to know who decided to mass-admit Somalis and to settle them in Minnesota, or is this top-secret?
It still hasn't been explained why we ever supported Somalia's rotten commie regime: they needed everything from us; we needed nothing of theirs; they collapsed anyway, and all we had to show for it was our providing of refuge to anti-Occidental terrorists and war criminals whose spawn now seek to destroy us from within:
https://sahanjournal.com/remembering-minnesotans-lost-to-covid-19/he-was-loved-by-everyone-the-somali-community-remembers-nur-omar-mohamed-who-died-of-covid-19/
It's every bit as stupid, contemptible, and treasonous as our long and shameful relationship with Pakistan.
Emil wrote: "Somalis are curiously concentrated in 3 states, and about 40% of them live in Minnesota alone"
These are states with generous welfare. especially Minnesota.
It's a tragedy what is happening to the western societies. And it's sad that the destruction is peddled by treacherous politicians. Civic uprising has been long overdue.
Saw Emil post this article in a comment on X but don’t think it was mentioned in this post: https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/07/17/a-somali-american-investigator-heres-why-youre-hearing-so-much-about-fraud-in-my-community/
From the article: “That covers the desire, and here’s where opportunity comes into play: Minnesota’s public programs don’t adequately guard against organized fraud. The systems intended to catch fraud are mostly designed to root out recipient fraud. It is exceedingly difficult to guard against providers who collude with recipients, which is the type of fraud most pervasive in the Somali community. It is both time-consuming and resource-intensive to investigate complex fraud schemes involving providers who work with recipients to defraud the government, though investigators have trained their eyes: The charges in the most recent Medicaid fraud case allege that the co-conspirators paid kickbacks to lure recipients to their agency.”
It's not expensive to find fraud if you target the "community" that you know is committing the fraud. But I guess that would be racist, or something.
There is an interesting discussion about Somali immigration in the UK, which is well worth the read:
https://www.potemkinvillageidiot.com/p/can-our-institutions-survive-migration
You are consistently wrong on the net costs of immigrants to the economy. Particularly if you think dynamically.
Developed countries have large public debt burdens which will need to be serviced by the taxpayers of 30 years hence. Having more future workers and therefore more taxpayers (of whatever quality) makes it easier to service these debts in future.
More simply, I am benefiting from public spending today that will be repaid in part by immigrant workers of the future. I’m okay with that.
The skills mix of immigrants doesn’t matter hugely, what matters is the productivity level of the host economy. Higher skills is nicer but three million low-skilled workers gives you a lot more GDP than one million high-skilled ones do.
You can always adjust benefits downwards in future, but you cannot manufacture future taxpayers these days except via immigration because reviving replacement fertility seems hopeless.
An instructive example is Bulgaria which has lost 22% of its population over the last thirty years due to outward migration to Western Europe. This has meant public spending for Bulgarians has to be ratcheted downwards as there is no future generation to service debts.
All of the above is orthogonal to the *cultural* impacts of large scale immigration. If you want to have the cultural debate go right ahead. But there is no negative *economic* impact of large scale immigration.
"what matters is the productivity level of the host economy"
This level is not any constant of nature which can't fall, for example by becoming third word by importing third world.
Just to mention some factors effecting the productivity level, are intelligence of the population and the level of trust in a society. You can't have a high trust society without trustworthy population. Cultural negative impacts are not distinct from economic impacts. Multicultural and multiracial societies have low level of trust and high level of conflict.
The effects are trivial.
Netflix or Amazon are not going to forget their extremely efficient processes just because of some immigrants with low skills who they won’t even employ.
How well Netflix and Amazon will work if they relocate to Somalia with their processes? Would they need to consider changing their processes?
The effects are as far from trivial as possible. And the productivity level of an economy is not just processes of some corporations, effectiveness of which depend on context. What is effective in some place in USA is not necessarily efficient in Somalia or even all places in USA. Immigration proponents use extremely naive assumptions to promote mass third world immigration. Pseudoscientist known as economists have promoted many disastrous policies based on naive assumptions causing deindustrialization and China-dependence, finance crisis etc. but mass third world immigration is the worst of all.
If they relocate to Somalia, they’ll just import foreign engineers to do the work and it’d run fine.
You keep mentioning third world, but 90% of immigration to the United States was third world from 1850-1920.
They would need to import foreign engineers and other workers not only for their main operations, but also to provide them reliably electricity, sanitation, telecommunications, logistics and private army for security etc. thus creating in effect a state within a state. If relocating all of business instead of outsourcing some parts of it to any place is so simple, why the American capitalist class who despises ordinary Americans doesn't relocate to Somalia or even in China?
Immigration to USA within the period you mentioned was very different to present immigration by country of origin. The term third world itself is a cold war era concept, and could be replaced by e.g. least developed countries.
Which was the intent from the outset.
There’s no high level conflict or low level trust in the United States, and it’s most multi cultural nation since the Roman Empire. & the iq stuff is completely pseudoscience akin to astrology
There is now "only" cold civil war in the USA, which will very likely turn hot near future unless USA divides to multiple independent countries or other radical change happens. USA has big internal differences in trust level. Most multicultural places have low trust level and more homogeneous places have higher level.
Embrace "per capita." You can't make a profit on volume if you are losing money on each individual immigrant. That's just math. Unless you can show they pay more in taxes than they take out in services and benefits they are making the fiscal shortfall worse, not better.
"Having more future workers and therefore more taxpayers (of whatever quality) makes it easier to service these debts in future."
Narrow-minded, short-term 'thinking'. As with everything, quality over quantity.
It’s just arithmetic, not ideology.
It’s also quite long-term thinking🙂
"It’s also quite long-term thinking."
We disagree.
'But there is no negative *economic* impact of large scale immigration'.
You sound like you know a lot more about this than me but surely if unemployment among immigrants, both present and future, is high enough then their economic impact will indeed be negative.
And even if they are in work, if what they take out through public services exceeds what they contribute through taxes, in what way is this not negative?
Yes but unemployment would want to be 2x or 3x higher and this just doesn’t exist in practice in 2nd or 3rd generation populations.
Even unemployed people pay tax via VAT, sales taxes, excise duties, etc.
Yes, they pay VAT, sales taxes, excise duties BUT WITH MONEY THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THEM FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE! You are surely not going to count that as a contribution? If so, then the more we give them in dole money and the more they spend, the richer all of us will be. Marvellous!
Cherry-picking the worst statistics about an immigrant group to vilify them is nothing more than hateful, agenda-driven garbage.
I don't see anyone ever cherry-picking some good statistics, or even individual anecdotes, that make Somalis seem like a benefit for Western societies to import. I've only ever seen "journalists" write pity-pieces about how bad we should feel about the Somalis who have to live in Somalia.
i mean it’s a refugee resentment from a failed state/war. The 1st generation won’t do well, but the 2nd and third generation are adapting and doing well. Their qualifications from Somalia aren’t valid in the west. My dad was an engineer, but had to go to school again to get certified.
In Minnesota, 67% of 2nd gen Somali Americans go to school post high school, open thousands of business, and contribute more to the tax base than they take in.
The older generation also work jobs that won’t show up on census, like trucking and owning businesses but all in all, Somalis have contributed more to the Minnesota than vice versa. Some of the stats he’s using are from 2009
Just as a note, population aging, to the extent that it is a problem, is not a problem because of the welfare state, it is a problem because of the increase in dependents. Whether you have public pensions or not is irrelevant to the fact that old people will need to be cared for in some way, meaning that they will need to receive transfers of time and/or money, and whether the means of doing so are private or public does not change that fact. The key to caring for a future aging population is productivity growth. Productivity growth is the reason why most people do not have to live on the farm and grow their own food.
You should read this new paper man it's hilarious now they're trying to ban us from using this research https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39707931/
Yeah i mean it’s fake science bro lol
You follow Emil/Aporia/Hanania and don't believe in IQ nor genetics?