The Great Sh*thole Debate

Donald Trump is a racist.  

That is the consensus view of the Left.  His question last week, “Why are we importing all these people from shithole countries?” leaves no room for doubt.  Not only is he racist but anyone that voted for Trump and continues to support him is racist.  They’ve been saying that consistently all along.   And now we know for sure.   Right?   And the beauty of labeling you as a racist is that it stops the conversation, stops the questioning and de-legitimizes all other points of view you may have because it is impossible to disprove.  We know that now because the MSM and academia has been beating it into us relentlessly since ’08.   “White privilege” on college campuses is what the scarlet letter was in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s time.  NYT opinion pieces have told us that it is permissible for blacks not to be friends with white people and  that it is ok to teach their children not to trust white people.  Other op-eds have asserted that even if no one can detect any racism in our overt words and actions, we still harbor “subconscious racism” that can never be eradicated.    Why, even Dr. Seuss was deemed to be racist last year.   And it is no surprise that after disclosing Trump’s remark (if indeed he did make it and there seems to be debate about what exactly was said).    Dick Durbin wasted no time lambasting Trump and even went so far as to say that the term “chain migration” itself is racist because blacks came over here in chains. 

We all know by now that Donald Trump is blunt, indelicate, course and sometimes vulgar.  Is he racist?  I don’t know for sure, but Left needs him to be and they will pounce on any phrase, wording or expression that gives them the slightest whiff of it to deny him success in advancing his campaign promises.  Now, instead of addressing serious questions about immigration and enforcement, we have devolved into a simple argument with one side accusing Trump of racism and Trump announcing that he is not a racist.

Important aspects of this issue are being overlooked, and I blame Trump, in part, for permitting the Democrats to frame the argument up that way and handing them their weapon of choice.

First of all, by convening Democratic and Republican leaders in a public forum, Trump has already done something that Obama never did on this issue--- put the issue right where it belongs, with the legislature.  Instead, Obama used executive power he did not have to jerry-rig (that’s not a racist term, is it?) an immigration policy through executive order and nonenforcement.  We do get a say in who comes into into our country (and should have a say in who comes into our bathrooms). Then, certain cities and states employed the pre-Civil War practice of nullification to blunt enforcement efforts.   Contrary to the narrative that Trump has totalitarian instincts, he gathered the legislators together and said, “You come up with something, and I will sign it,” signaling that he might even be open to some sort of limited amnesty.

Secondly, for all the flapping around, no one bothered to answer the question, which is a logical one that the average guy in Des Moines or Akron might ask.     Why are we bringing poor people from the third world here?   There is an answer, or several possible answers, but the Left refused to make a case.  Further, there are a number of questions that should be answered and deserve an answer, because those answers will determine the nature and character of our republic in the coming generations.

To ask the right questions, we need to break apart Trump’s question and tone down the language a bit.  And there are several more that must be answered to come up with a sensible immigration policy.

First, let’s delete the word “shithole” and substitute “impoverished nation.”  Second, it is helpful to separate out the economic benefits from immigration from the social norms that these populations bring with them.   There is a third aspect as well, which is providing refuge from tyranny—those that seek to come to the U.S. via refugee status.

First, on the economic front.   Immigration has benefitted the United States in the past and will continue to do so.  That should be a given.  Our economy depends on it. Yet 2018 America is not 1880 America or even 1929 America.   First of all, it has become a welfare state.  Most of our European grandfathers arrived here with no safety net.  And as Milton Friedman observed, “you cannot have open borders AND a welfare state.”   The math doesn’t work.

Trump’s question provokes a more important question.   Who is coming here?   What is their education and job skill level?   What is demand for unskilled labor now and what is it projected to be?   If most labor economists are projecting shrinking demand for unskilled labor, why bring them here in large numbers?  Many futurists are worried about robotics displacing low skill labor.  We know, for instance, that Uber has reduced demand for cab drivers.  Driverless vehicles will have a profound impact on demand for truck drivers.   “Shithole” countries tend to produce uneducated workers lacking in the skills necessary to compete in the knowledge economy.   Second, the cost of trade and transportation have plummeted, so there is less need to bring labor here-especially unskilled labor. (and that is the reason for China’s rise).   In the end, immigrants can only end up in one of three places: (1) working, (2) in the welfare system, or (3) in the criminal justice system.  We need to take care that we minimize the risk that they end up in buckets 2 or 3.

Our social welfare and benefits system is already underfunded and overburdened.  Sweden, an advanced social welfare state, is instructive here.  Because of its mass migration policies, and the costs attached to it, the retirement age was recently increased.   With social security straining, and with most American with insufficient retirement savings, do really want to replicate the same policy here?   Merely crying “racism” or “xenophobia” does little to address this issue.  It is vital that we do not bring people in that are likely to tax our social welfare system.

I will say little about our criminal justice system because we all accept the fact that we imprison at higher rates than any advanced country.   That system already is maxed out.

The second issue that no one one’s to talk about is cultural fit and crime.   And here, we cannot avoid talking about Middle Eastern immigration.  With mass migration, murder and other crimes have increased in London by double digits.  The chief of police of Vienna has warned women that they should not go out at night alone.  France and Great Britain are riddled with “no go” zones.   Sweden has now become the rape capital of Europe.  Further, we are a free and open society.   We drink beer.  We don’t have face coverings.   FGM and child marriage cannot be permitted to become social norms.   There is the increased risk of jihadism.  The reality is that there are aspects in some quarters of the Islamic word that are an anathema to Western liberalism, and more generally, it is prudent to question the wisdom of bringing large populations of poorly educated people from illiberal societies that have a long history of illiberalism.  These are things that need to be discussed with candor.

We have analogous problems filtering out bad eggs from Mexico and Central America.  The notorious MS-13 street gang from El Salvador has metastasized in many of our cities.   20% or so of our federal prison population is foreign born, and 90% of those are here illegally.  We cannot have a system in which states are free to reject enforcement of our immigration laws.   Our children are dying as a consequence.  And nowhere else is the casualty rate higher than places like the South Side of Chicago, where drugs and the battle over their distribution rages, and much of it through the distribution channels of illegal immigration.

Trump’s sin is not that he asked the question, but rather that he asked in such an imprecise, vulgar and insulting way as to invite the charge of racism, which thus obscured hard conversations about real issues.

In my view, there are four pillars for a sensible immigration policy:

1.  Pay your own way.   We need to ensure that immigrants have a high probability of being employed and that they don’t end up in the welfare system or the criminal justice system.  That means having a realistic conversation about the skill level of the people that come here.  Perhaps a starting point would be to put a cap on the number of people that will not be expected to earn enough to actually pay income taxes within 24 months of arrival.  The supervisor in Columbus trying to feed his family on $80,000 a year has no interest in paying for benefits for somebody from Senegal....or Norway for that matter.
2. Don’t kill us.  We need to have better methods of screening out radical Muslims that pose a risk and gang members and people involved in the drug trade (see #4 below) and aggressively move to expel those that come across the border that put our citizens at risk.   The notion of sanctuary cities is insane.
3.  You must adapt to our culture; we’re not adapting to yours.  While Trump’s reference to Norwegians was viewed as racist, I heard it as Western, and we should not hesitate to signal that we are much more sympathetic to immigrants that demonstrate a willingness to adapt to our Western, open, liberal society and democracy.   That means that the odious aspects of some of Islamic culture---burkas, FGM, child marriage, and such are not going to be welcomed in the U.S. with open arms.   We should not be placed in the position we have found ourselves, where Christian bakers are forced to bake cakes in contravention of their religious practices or religious orders are forced to pay for abortive contraceptives, and yet Muslims can refuse to deliver alcoholic beverages in the course of their employment and sustain a lawsuit when they get fired for insubordination for doing so.   Our house.  Our rules.
4. No nullification. Immigration affects the entire nation.   Just as the Commerce Clause is used to govern interstate commerce even if commerce is done within a state, so is it with immigration.  We have free flow across state borders.  If California protects immigrant criminals, that will effect all of us.  

If we come to a satisfactory place on these four plus a wall (enhanced by other technological security measures), I’d be willing to consider some sort of amnesty with age limitations and a lookback period (say two years).   We cannot continue with a lawless immigration policy, and there are limits to the number of people we can take in.

Israel walked from its peace deal with Arafat over “return rights”  because it knew that demography is destiny.  If it agreed to return rights, within a couple of generations, Israel wouldn’t be Israel anymore.  Its culture, its territorial integrity, its economy would, over time,  be overrun and overwhelmed by Arabs.  Israel was not wrong in this position and it has some lessons for the U.S.  Whatever country of origin or race, we have a right to expect that people that come here will assimilate into our culture and economy.

I leave you with this quote from one of my favorite economists:

“People in the poorest countries nowadays, who assume not unreasonably that their economies are zero-sum, reckon they can best advance by theft, graft, influence, corruption, rent-seeking [A/K/A “shitholes”].  People in rich countries reckon, on the contrary, that the best way to advance is invention and betterment, which is why such countries became wealthy, at any rate until government expenditures got large enough to encourage rent-seeking to take over again.”

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality.

Both Trump and the Democrats are guilty here--- of cutting off real debate of real issues.  Trump in his clumsy way walked right into the charge of racism, which was laying wait for him.  But the cynical and harmful labeling of racism and xenophobia by the Left masks the true agenda--- bring in as many immigrants as possible, try to give them victim status and/or get them hooked on government benefits.   Then you don’t have to worry about trying to get rid of the electoral college.

We need a sane, open debate from both sides about what the country needs and what it should look like in the coming generations.