I think that you are far too credulous about pro-immigration claims, even in writing about highbrow misinformation. Take crime rates: what I have read is that U.S. law enforcement does not routinely collect information on whether people accused of crimes are immigrants. And immigrants charged with crimes are often deported, so counting immigrants in jails and prisons results in an under-estimate, as those who were deported aren’t counted. Immigrants are also less like to report crime, so immigrant on immigrant crime is undercounted.
Furthermore, second-generation immigrants, I.e. the children of immigrants, is often where the trouble shows up. The immigrants themselves are both to some extent a select, motivated group, and rooted in the values of the old country. Their children, however, are not selected, and find themselves trapped between two cultures. It’s often the children of immigrants who who wind up in gangs or who are drawn to terrorist movements. That crime isn’t literally committed by immigrants, but it is caused by immigration. Finally, immigrants commit a vast amount of mostly-undetected crime in the form of using false documents and such in order to work.
The fact is that we don’t track some criminal-justice statistics nationally as well as people assume. At least until recently there was no national tracking of killings by police, for instance. You’d think we’d have good numbers on how many guests in our country commit crimes. Seems like a good thing to know! But we don’t. We have estimates. And for the reasons given above, those estimates are probably far too low.
You raise several valid points, and I actually agree with more of this than you might expect. US immigration-crime data is genuinely messy, and the second-generation point is important--some of the most concerning European patterns involve exactly this dynamic. The best recent research, like Abramitzky et al.'s work, does try to grapple with these measurement issues, though as you note, the limitations are real. If you're interested in someone on the pro-immigration side who discusses these tradeoffs honestly, I'd recommend Daniel Di Martino's work (https://riponsociety.org/article/the-high-cost-of-sanctuary/).
Interesting. Almost everyone I knew growing up were the children of second generation immigrants and they were the salt of the earth Americans living the dream.
While politicians may not acknowledge tradeoffs willingly, economic tradeoffs are an explicit part of many ballot propositions in subnational policymaking. If a US state or city wants to raise taxes to fund some kind of integration or immigrant support program, they sometimes put it to the voters.
I can understand many of the mentioned criticisms. What I don't understand is the 'misinformation' nitpick. If people would rather, you could use my preferred terminology instead. I would call carefully selected information used to present a narrative to influence policy (and public support of said policy) propaganda. Perhaps an individual is not responsible for the totality of the so-called discourse, politicians, or policy. That is a lot easier to argue when "Hey guys, we produce knowledge we must share our findings" is popular.
Across much of the Western world consumers perceive contentious bill of sale as having arrived at their table. If you're the restaurant's knowledge producing manager, it's probably best you be honest with the patrons. Whether a mistake was made or not, you do not want them to leave angry. They do own a stake in the restaurant.
I’m trying to understand something in the Texas data. It appears to me that if an individual had multiple arrests/convictions during the period covered each one would add to the total- that the data reflects total arrests/convictions not the number of individuals arrested/convicted. Since a small number of offenders commit a much larger number of offenses this would over count the actual number of individuals in the reports. Now maybe the percentage of serial offenders in native born and immigrant populations is similar but for those here illegally at least some percentage would then be deported and so not get the chance to reoffend. Of course they might return and reoffend and there might be illegal immigrants in this study who have multiple offenses but I have to think that the number of serial offenders in the native born population is going to be much higher and of course a number of them have such lengthy records that they could really skew the numbers. Am I correct in looking at the data this way?
I was involved in the first study of “unreported crime” in the early 1970s and so this is always on my mind when looking at these kinds of data sets. Since crimes are overwhelmingly confined to the offender’s immediate community the likely victims of illegal immigrants will be disproportionately illegal themselves and less likely as a result to report such crimes at least those that are not the most serious. Has anyone looked at the data with this in mind?
It seems to me that from the point of view of assessing "what's the risk to natives of the current immigration-cum-deportation policy" both these limitations you point to make the measurement more faithful to what's being measured.
> Now maybe the percentage of serial offenders in native born and immigrant populations is similar but for those here illegally at least some percentage would then be deported and so not get the chance to reoffend.
As an individual native interacting with a person and wondering what that person's immigration status tells you of the chance that they will commit a crime against you, the deportation-induced combating of repeat crimes is something you want to factor into the risk.
> Since crimes are overwhelmingly confined to the offender’s immediate community the likely victims of illegal immigrants will be disproportionately illegal themselves and less likely as a result to report such crimes at least those that are not the most serious.
If you're a native concerned about crimes against you (qua native), then this kind of measurement bias makes the data a better fit for your purposes.
I've also come across an "immigrants as shields" argument (e.g., at https://www.richardhanania.com/i/149349244/immigrants-as-shields) that immigrants often take up jobs in more crime-prone areas (even where the crime is committed by natives) and are therefore effectively displacing natives as crime victims. I have not looked into it myself.
My problem with these numbers is that what is generally taken from them is that a higher percentage of native born people are arrested/convicted than illegal immigrants. If I’m correct about what these numbers represent, and if the number of repeat offenders is much higher among native born, that simply isn’t correct.
That was the source that led to my questions. It’s just not clear whether they aren’t using the total number of arrests/convictions versus the number of individuals arrested/convicted as the numerator. I suspect you’d agree that these would likely be very different numbers.
> "telling only half the story year after year eventually backfires, because people experiencing the downside of tradeoffs are not blind. Ignoring their experience doesn’t make it disappear; it just makes the messenger look dishonest..."
When you write about selection by origin, consider what it means to be an American (or participant in any liberal democracy). Principally, that it implies a capacity for self-governance. While that capacity would be hard to evaluate on an individual basis, it speaks well of an applicant if they have been successful in a country with a good history of at least decent self-governance. On the other hand, the presumption would be against applicants from countries with disastrous experience of self-governance.
Also, try not to be too dismissive of xenophobia. It is rational and probably virtuous to wish one's own culture to be propagated rather than diluted and destroyed.
Just a note on "throat-clearing". My experience is exactly like yours, need to cut it because whoever wants to misunderstand, will. Still, I find, for me (and you can decide if valid for you, not trying to overanalyse) it has an internal, sort of a conscience dimension. As long as I know I tried to make clear where I stand, being misunderstood is not my fault. But if I am accused of being the opposite of my core belief -- just because, say, I show that people I agree with on basics are not being sensible alienating everyone else -- that hurts, and if I feel I have not done my best to make sure people can know where I stand, that will feel bad. Because there are now people out there thinking me something I am absolutely not, because I did not hedge enough... So I end up keeping it longer than necessary I guess.
Thanks, I'll check it out! My general impression is that brain drain is real in some contexts, but the exceptions to the zero-sum framing are too numerous to sustain it as a general argument--remittances, changing incentives, return migration, and diaspora networks all complicate the picture. I'd also note that, strategically, telling people on the left "your compassion is actually hurting poor countries" has a poor track record of persuasion, even when there may be some truth to it.
I was honestly surprised that my comment surprised people. I suspect that at least some of it comes from people lacking sufficient real-world experience to understand the difference between saying "I would like policy X" and "therefore policy X is easy to recommend as a rational choice without regard to how the costs of said policies are borne." You might sell potato chips at that level, but you probably won't sell a computer, and you **certainly** won't sell a serious services contract without being able to clearly articulate the tradeoffs in a way that the customer can recognize as both honest and consultative.
"Customer" in this case consisting of angry voters who are quite tired of being talked to like they're idiots by politicians and "influential types" across the political spectrum.
--------------
In left-coded speech: every policy, no matter how high-minded, inflicts externalities, and equity demands that those advocating for a policy address those externalities, particularly when they affect those least able to participate in policy formation and public debate.
In right-coded speech: TANSTAAFL. Anybody who says differently is selling you a bill of goods.
I'm not 100% sold that people want to get preached at for a post, but sure, I can unpack it and walk the dog if you think it's valuable. I'll write up something today and link it.
I mostly disagree with the framing of "Here are the things my side gets wrong" because it feels like an attempt to gain status by throwing a bunch of people under the bus for views that you are attributing to them, that they may not hold.
I prefer the framing of "here's specific argument I've seen at specific places, and here is my counter-argument on why I think it's wrong. [Optional] Here is my meta-argument on how I think many people come to hold these views that I think are wrong." I feel like that advances discourse, facilitating a productive effort to figure out what's right at both the object level and meta level, without attributing views to people that they may not actually hold and without doing anything that can come across as moral grandstanding.
Thanks, Vipul, for this and the thoughtful discussion on Facebook. I generally agree with you, and my goal was exactly to offer a meta-argument about a pattern without singling out individuals. I clearly didn't thread that needle perfectly. What makes it especially tricky is that the biggest complaint from the pro-immigration side was the opposite--that I didn't offer enough concrete examples.
I guess one way to reconcile this is that there is no single "pro-immigration side" (or anti-immigration side, for that matter), and different people within each camp hold quite different versions of their ideal policy and the claims I was pushing back on.
> I particularly liked Justin Schon’s point that there exists an asymmetry where “the burden of proof seems to fall on people to prove positive effects” of immigration, while negative claims face lower evidentiary standards.
I think this exists primarily because the pro-immigration side has eroded its credibility for exactly the reasons you've outlined. In opposite-world, I think negative claims on immigration would see increased evidentiary standards.
Just wondering if you saw the series of three lectures at the LSE on immigration from economist Prof. Alan Manning ? Third one is this Monday. Link to second one below. Reading your post and watching this lecture gave me some hope that academics can now help us move away from the two sides that make broad brush ‘two legs good, four legs bad’ arguments. Towards instead to a more fact- based public policy discussion that the general public can connect with on how to select immigrants in a liberal value based manner but focused on predicted net social benefits to receiving country….
Great article. People like to categorise everything and put things in tidy boxes in their minds. Usually it's this or that, black or white etc etc. Life is a big grey area. There are advantages and disadvantages of everything. Politicians play to the gallery, have a tendency to oversimplify and advocate for issues which they think will win them the most votes. Add to this social media and algorithms picking up and amplifying extremist views because it will generate more content, nuanced argument or discussion takes a back seat.
Data, statistics, analysis, economics, etc. All of that aside, hasn't anyone ridden the Paris Metro in the last few years and been pained that there are no longer any French?
I think that you are far too credulous about pro-immigration claims, even in writing about highbrow misinformation. Take crime rates: what I have read is that U.S. law enforcement does not routinely collect information on whether people accused of crimes are immigrants. And immigrants charged with crimes are often deported, so counting immigrants in jails and prisons results in an under-estimate, as those who were deported aren’t counted. Immigrants are also less like to report crime, so immigrant on immigrant crime is undercounted.
Furthermore, second-generation immigrants, I.e. the children of immigrants, is often where the trouble shows up. The immigrants themselves are both to some extent a select, motivated group, and rooted in the values of the old country. Their children, however, are not selected, and find themselves trapped between two cultures. It’s often the children of immigrants who who wind up in gangs or who are drawn to terrorist movements. That crime isn’t literally committed by immigrants, but it is caused by immigration. Finally, immigrants commit a vast amount of mostly-undetected crime in the form of using false documents and such in order to work.
The fact is that we don’t track some criminal-justice statistics nationally as well as people assume. At least until recently there was no national tracking of killings by police, for instance. You’d think we’d have good numbers on how many guests in our country commit crimes. Seems like a good thing to know! But we don’t. We have estimates. And for the reasons given above, those estimates are probably far too low.
You raise several valid points, and I actually agree with more of this than you might expect. US immigration-crime data is genuinely messy, and the second-generation point is important--some of the most concerning European patterns involve exactly this dynamic. The best recent research, like Abramitzky et al.'s work, does try to grapple with these measurement issues, though as you note, the limitations are real. If you're interested in someone on the pro-immigration side who discusses these tradeoffs honestly, I'd recommend Daniel Di Martino's work (https://riponsociety.org/article/the-high-cost-of-sanctuary/).
Interesting. Almost everyone I knew growing up were the children of second generation immigrants and they were the salt of the earth Americans living the dream.
While politicians may not acknowledge tradeoffs willingly, economic tradeoffs are an explicit part of many ballot propositions in subnational policymaking. If a US state or city wants to raise taxes to fund some kind of integration or immigrant support program, they sometimes put it to the voters.
This is a good point!
I can understand many of the mentioned criticisms. What I don't understand is the 'misinformation' nitpick. If people would rather, you could use my preferred terminology instead. I would call carefully selected information used to present a narrative to influence policy (and public support of said policy) propaganda. Perhaps an individual is not responsible for the totality of the so-called discourse, politicians, or policy. That is a lot easier to argue when "Hey guys, we produce knowledge we must share our findings" is popular.
Across much of the Western world consumers perceive contentious bill of sale as having arrived at their table. If you're the restaurant's knowledge producing manager, it's probably best you be honest with the patrons. Whether a mistake was made or not, you do not want them to leave angry. They do own a stake in the restaurant.
Yep. Incidentally, I just saw a whole post where the author argues that most scientific communication is propaganda unironically (https://rbnmckenna86.substack.com/p/science-communication-as-propaganda)
I’m trying to understand something in the Texas data. It appears to me that if an individual had multiple arrests/convictions during the period covered each one would add to the total- that the data reflects total arrests/convictions not the number of individuals arrested/convicted. Since a small number of offenders commit a much larger number of offenses this would over count the actual number of individuals in the reports. Now maybe the percentage of serial offenders in native born and immigrant populations is similar but for those here illegally at least some percentage would then be deported and so not get the chance to reoffend. Of course they might return and reoffend and there might be illegal immigrants in this study who have multiple offenses but I have to think that the number of serial offenders in the native born population is going to be much higher and of course a number of them have such lengthy records that they could really skew the numbers. Am I correct in looking at the data this way?
I was involved in the first study of “unreported crime” in the early 1970s and so this is always on my mind when looking at these kinds of data sets. Since crimes are overwhelmingly confined to the offender’s immediate community the likely victims of illegal immigrants will be disproportionately illegal themselves and less likely as a result to report such crimes at least those that are not the most serious. Has anyone looked at the data with this in mind?
It seems to me that from the point of view of assessing "what's the risk to natives of the current immigration-cum-deportation policy" both these limitations you point to make the measurement more faithful to what's being measured.
> Now maybe the percentage of serial offenders in native born and immigrant populations is similar but for those here illegally at least some percentage would then be deported and so not get the chance to reoffend.
As an individual native interacting with a person and wondering what that person's immigration status tells you of the chance that they will commit a crime against you, the deportation-induced combating of repeat crimes is something you want to factor into the risk.
> Since crimes are overwhelmingly confined to the offender’s immediate community the likely victims of illegal immigrants will be disproportionately illegal themselves and less likely as a result to report such crimes at least those that are not the most serious.
If you're a native concerned about crimes against you (qua native), then this kind of measurement bias makes the data a better fit for your purposes.
I've also come across an "immigrants as shields" argument (e.g., at https://www.richardhanania.com/i/149349244/immigrants-as-shields) that immigrants often take up jobs in more crime-prone areas (even where the crime is committed by natives) and are therefore effectively displacing natives as crime victims. I have not looked into it myself.
My problem with these numbers is that what is generally taken from them is that a higher percentage of native born people are arrested/convicted than illegal immigrants. If I’m correct about what these numbers represent, and if the number of repeat offenders is much higher among native born, that simply isn’t correct.
These are good questions. I'm not an expert on this, but my sense (and hope) is that other have looked pretty thoroughly at this and other data, so I'd suggest reading them first (https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117)
I sent an email to the author. I’ll post his response if I get one.
That was the source that led to my questions. It’s just not clear whether they aren’t using the total number of arrests/convictions versus the number of individuals arrested/convicted as the numerator. I suspect you’d agree that these would likely be very different numbers.
> "telling only half the story year after year eventually backfires, because people experiencing the downside of tradeoffs are not blind. Ignoring their experience doesn’t make it disappear; it just makes the messenger look dishonest..."
shouldn't be surprising, and yet...
When you write about selection by origin, consider what it means to be an American (or participant in any liberal democracy). Principally, that it implies a capacity for self-governance. While that capacity would be hard to evaluate on an individual basis, it speaks well of an applicant if they have been successful in a country with a good history of at least decent self-governance. On the other hand, the presumption would be against applicants from countries with disastrous experience of self-governance.
Also, try not to be too dismissive of xenophobia. It is rational and probably virtuous to wish one's own culture to be propagated rather than diluted and destroyed.
Just a note on "throat-clearing". My experience is exactly like yours, need to cut it because whoever wants to misunderstand, will. Still, I find, for me (and you can decide if valid for you, not trying to overanalyse) it has an internal, sort of a conscience dimension. As long as I know I tried to make clear where I stand, being misunderstood is not my fault. But if I am accused of being the opposite of my core belief -- just because, say, I show that people I agree with on basics are not being sensible alienating everyone else -- that hurts, and if I feel I have not done my best to make sure people can know where I stand, that will feel bad. Because there are now people out there thinking me something I am absolutely not, because I did not hedge enough... So I end up keeping it longer than necessary I guess.
Thanks, this is a good point. I certainly felt this was necessary to do for me personally.
Thanks for the article. This may be of interest:
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-fundamental-problem-for-immigration-929
Thanks, I'll check it out! My general impression is that brain drain is real in some contexts, but the exceptions to the zero-sum framing are too numerous to sustain it as a general argument--remittances, changing incentives, return migration, and diaspora networks all complicate the picture. I'd also note that, strategically, telling people on the left "your compassion is actually hurting poor countries" has a poor track record of persuasion, even when there may be some truth to it.
I was honestly surprised that my comment surprised people. I suspect that at least some of it comes from people lacking sufficient real-world experience to understand the difference between saying "I would like policy X" and "therefore policy X is easy to recommend as a rational choice without regard to how the costs of said policies are borne." You might sell potato chips at that level, but you probably won't sell a computer, and you **certainly** won't sell a serious services contract without being able to clearly articulate the tradeoffs in a way that the customer can recognize as both honest and consultative.
"Customer" in this case consisting of angry voters who are quite tired of being talked to like they're idiots by politicians and "influential types" across the political spectrum.
--------------
In left-coded speech: every policy, no matter how high-minded, inflicts externalities, and equity demands that those advocating for a policy address those externalities, particularly when they affect those least able to participate in policy formation and public debate.
In right-coded speech: TANSTAAFL. Anybody who says differently is selling you a bill of goods.
You should write a post about this and your thinking, I feel like it'd be of value to many folks here
I'm not 100% sold that people want to get preached at for a post, but sure, I can unpack it and walk the dog if you think it's valuable. I'll write up something today and link it.
Seem like the errors you uncovered were applying European problems worth immigration to the US. That is an imporatn distinction. Well done!
I think you raise many valuable points.
I mostly disagree with the framing of "Here are the things my side gets wrong" because it feels like an attempt to gain status by throwing a bunch of people under the bus for views that you are attributing to them, that they may not hold.
I prefer the framing of "here's specific argument I've seen at specific places, and here is my counter-argument on why I think it's wrong. [Optional] Here is my meta-argument on how I think many people come to hold these views that I think are wrong." I feel like that advances discourse, facilitating a productive effort to figure out what's right at both the object level and meta level, without attributing views to people that they may not actually hold and without doing anything that can come across as moral grandstanding.
Thanks, Vipul, for this and the thoughtful discussion on Facebook. I generally agree with you, and my goal was exactly to offer a meta-argument about a pattern without singling out individuals. I clearly didn't thread that needle perfectly. What makes it especially tricky is that the biggest complaint from the pro-immigration side was the opposite--that I didn't offer enough concrete examples.
I guess one way to reconcile this is that there is no single "pro-immigration side" (or anti-immigration side, for that matter), and different people within each camp hold quite different versions of their ideal policy and the claims I was pushing back on.
> I particularly liked Justin Schon’s point that there exists an asymmetry where “the burden of proof seems to fall on people to prove positive effects” of immigration, while negative claims face lower evidentiary standards.
I think this exists primarily because the pro-immigration side has eroded its credibility for exactly the reasons you've outlined. In opposite-world, I think negative claims on immigration would see increased evidentiary standards.
Yep. That's very unfortunate.
Great reflective post, thanks.
Just wondering if you saw the series of three lectures at the LSE on immigration from economist Prof. Alan Manning ? Third one is this Monday. Link to second one below. Reading your post and watching this lecture gave me some hope that academics can now help us move away from the two sides that make broad brush ‘two legs good, four legs bad’ arguments. Towards instead to a more fact- based public policy discussion that the general public can connect with on how to select immigrants in a liberal value based manner but focused on predicted net social benefits to receiving country….
https://lselive.eckoenterprise.net/events/20260209/login
Thanks, I'll check it out!
Great article. People like to categorise everything and put things in tidy boxes in their minds. Usually it's this or that, black or white etc etc. Life is a big grey area. There are advantages and disadvantages of everything. Politicians play to the gallery, have a tendency to oversimplify and advocate for issues which they think will win them the most votes. Add to this social media and algorithms picking up and amplifying extremist views because it will generate more content, nuanced argument or discussion takes a back seat.
Great and thoughtful piece
Data, statistics, analysis, economics, etc. All of that aside, hasn't anyone ridden the Paris Metro in the last few years and been pained that there are no longer any French?