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Friday, June 24. 2016

Yesterday's question


A reader gave a response to my question about unemployment among young black males in the US. He or she made an interesting comparison with the government's approach to American Indians - give them stuff and hope for the best.


When has that approach ever worked in the world?  Now, the US like Europe offers government benefits to new (including illegal) immigrants. Is that a good idea? It has never been tried in the US in the past, and immigrants did very well over time.


From 1925 to 1965 the US permitted essentially no immigration. The people had decided, and the politicians had agreed, that we had enough of them. The country thrived.

Posted by The Barrister in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 14:28 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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A few months back I came across some contemporary articles on the early 20th century immigration....and the impact of foreign criminals on NYC. Although the latter is a plea to be granted permission to employ a "secret service" or, undercover officers.

Both articles, in my opinion, provide useful perspectives upon our current debates.


QUOTE:
Immigration has been debated in the United States ever since the adoption of the Constitution. For many years the foreigner, and what to do with him, shared doubtful honors with the slave in arousing popular excitement. He became, in deed, a political issue, and was principally responsible for the Know-Nothing Party which contested the election of Eepre sentatives in Congress, Governors, and State legislatures. In 1856, the candidate of this anti-immigration party for President, Millard Fillmore, polled nearly 900,000 votes.

A Common-Sense View of the Immigration Problem
Author(s): William S. Rossiter
Source: The North American Review, Vol. 188, No. 634 (Sep., 1908), pp. 360-371 Published by: University of Northern Iowa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25106201

QUOTE:
So much for the criminal element that the Police Department of New York is paid to keep within bounds, and now to consider the method of dealing with it. Take the most dangerous malefactors, the ex-convicts of Naples, Sicily and Calabria and their following. It is estimated that there are at least 3,000 of these desperadoes in New York, among them as many ferocious and desperate men as ever gathered in a modern city in time of peace?mediseval criminals who must be dealt with under modern laws. In a spirited article in the number of this Review for last April, in which he demonstrates that the " Black Hand Society " as a definite organization is a myth, Gaetano d*Amato quotes Robert Louis Stevenson's characterization of the gangs of thieves that preyed upon nocturnal Paris three and a half centuries ago to describe conditions existing among the Italian criminals in New York to-day--"independent malefactors, so cially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some se rious operation, just as modern stock-jobbers form a syndicate for an important loan."

Foreign Criminals in New York
Author(s): Tiieodore A. Bingham
Source: The North American Review, Vol. 188, No. 634 (Sep., 1908), pp. 383-394 Published by: University of Northern Iowa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25106203
#1 JK Brown on 2016-06-24 16:22 (Reply)
Immigration with benefits cannot work. Benefits will, and do, attract just the wrong kind of immigrant --those who seek to consume what the nation has produced, rather than adding to the wealth of the nation. immigration without benefits will attract those capable and willing to contribute, and has always done so in the past.
#2 dmcram on 2016-06-24 16:30 (Reply)
Open immigration also is incompatible with business strangling regulation and licensing. If we are to bring a lot of people in, the business climate must be laissez faire to promote the creation of new enterprises and new jobs.

Similar with free trade. It is the strangling regulations that is inhibiting the adaptation and creation of new jobs to replace those lost to less productive and lower cost workers.

In short, open immigration and free trade that the Progressives and Libertarians want is incompatible with the socialism they built up earlier.
#3 JK Brown on 2016-06-24 21:17 (Reply)
The giving of stuff to the American Indians was usually, at least in the early days, accompanied by extreme corruption of the government agents charged with doing the 'giving', to the point of actual malnutrition of the reservation residents in many cases.


Also, of course, the 'giving' was not out of charity but was supposed to be in fulfillment of treaty obligations.

There is much less public concern about the current situation of the American Indian than about any other minority you can think of: I guess to be a minority that matters, you can't be all that 'minor' in terms of population and geographical presence.
#4 David Foster (Link) on 2016-06-24 21:47 (Reply)
I posted some thoughts about the relevance of the American Indian experience to the current debates about immigration--Two Views of Immigration:

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/49641.html
#5 David Foster (Link) on 2016-06-24 21:52 (Reply)
Attention all:

A propos the discussion of the Black citizen's failure to thrive in the modern US, I strongly recommend watching this recent speech from ex-communist David Horowitz. He gets to the red meat at about the 13 minute mark, and onward. It is one of the most candid and illuminating discussions of the problem you are ever likely to see:

https://vimeo.com/171217703

If the link gets lost, it's on Vimeo and was published Wednesday Morning Club. May 13, 2016.
#6 ahem on 2016-06-26 11:38 (Reply)

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