How Migration Really Works, Hein de Haas, 2023, 451 pages, Dewey 325, ISBN 9781541604315
To the author, there's no crisis. He seems to be minimizing whHow Migration Really Works, Hein de Haas, 2023, 451 pages, Dewey 325, ISBN 9781541604315
To the author, there's no crisis. He seems to be minimizing what at least locally is traumatic.
WORDS
Migration: A change in habitual residence across administrative borders. Most administrative systems count a 6- to 12-month change in habitual residence as migration. p. ix.
Migrant: A person who lives in a place or country other than their place or country of birth. p. ix.
International migrant: (for this book) Foreign-born. (Other users of the term include children and even grandchildren of the foreign-born. This book calls such people 2nd- and 3rd-generation migrants.) p. ix.
"Pro-" vs. "anti-'' framing yields only bickering. p. 4.
Migration is normal. p. 4. It benefits some people more than others, can have downsides for some, but it's intrinsic to our world and can't be eliminated. p. 2.
MYTHS
Immigration is not as massive and transformative as we often think. p. 5.
U.S. border enforcement turned what had been a circular flow of migrants into a permanent population of 11 million unauthorized residents. By Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump, and Biden. p. 7. [Fraction of U.S. population born elsewhere rose from .06 in 1960 to .14 in 2015: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=... and is nearing the 1890 peak of 15%: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-rea... ]
TRENDS
MYTH 1: MIGRATION IS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH. p. 15.
International migration has remained low and stable. p. 16. The number of people habitually living in a country they weren't born in has stayed around 3% of global population from 1960 (93 M/3B) to 2017 (247 M/7.6 B). Plus, such counts are now more inclusive. p. 17.
[Here's the current list by country: fraction of population born elsewhere: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=... .256 Australia .202 Canada .144 Germany .137 United States .033 world average .017 Japan .009 Mexico .004 India .001 China
Globally, 3% of us have migrated. Few of us have migrated to /become/ victims of financial feudalism. Those 3% have migrated largely to try to escape it. I wish them well.
The author obscures what's happening by giving us only the global average.]
97% of global population lives in its native country. Weird, in light of huge inequalities. p. 19. [People must really like living at home. And/or, it's a rare Chinese or Indian who /can/ leave.]
Moving production to where labor is cheap has lessened the need for workers to relocate. pp. 29-30.
MYTH 2: BORDERS ARE BEYOND CONTROL. p. 31.
Most unauthorized residents entered legally and overstayed their visas. p. 41.
Demand for foreign workers exceeds legal quotas. This drives migration "under ground," which enables abuse of workers. p. 41.
10.5 million, 3.2% of the U.S. population, are unauthorized residents, as of 2018. p. 35.
The U.S. doesn't prosecute illegal employers of unauthorized workers. p. 35.
BRACEROS: The U.S. Government recruited 4.5 million Mexicans for farm and rail work, 1942-1964. p. 40.
[The U.S. Government still grants visas that tie immigrants to a specific employer--making it easy for that employer to underpay and overwork the migrant. ]
MYTH 3: THE WORLD IS FACING A REFUGEE CRISIS. p. 45.
No, only .1% to .35% of world population are refugees, 1950s-2022. pp. 47-48. Down from 8% after WWII. p. 57. [Worse yet after the Toba catastrophe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_... . Keep calm?] Most refugees stay in neighboring, developing, countries. p. 49-50.
8.7 million, 41% of the prewar population, fled Syria, 2012-2021. p. 56.
[The author minimizes the problem by dividing it by world population.]
Refugee flow is peaky: during a conflict, refugees flow. Afterward, there's little flow. p. 55. [Many of those refugees remain displaced.]
MYTH 4: OUR SOCIETIES ARE MORE DIVERSE THAN EVER. p. 60.
No, we've been diverse before. [Circa 1911, the Socialist Party delivered flyers in 12 languages in Milwaukee. --The Fall of Wisconsin, Dan Kaufman, 2018, p. 63. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwa... Migrants speak their native tongue; their kids are fully bilingual; their grandchildren speak English. ]
MYTH 5: DEVELOPMENT IN POOR COUNTRIES WILL REDUCE MIGRATION. p. 78.
No, economic development gives more people the ability to migrate, and infects more people with the aspiration to migrate. So migration increases. pp. 83, 85.
MYTH 6: EMIGRATION IS A DESPERATE FLIGHT FROM MISERY. p. 93.
Migration is a rational decision requiring planning and resources. p. 96.
MYTH 7: WE DON'T NEED MIGRANT WORKERS. p. 109.
People migrate when they can get jobs. p. 110.
IMPACTS
MYTH 8: IMMIGRANTS STEAL JOBS AND DRIVE DOWN WAGES. p. 129.
Immigration is a reaction to labor shortages. p. 131.
In 1980, Fidel Castro permitted 125,000 Cubans to emigrate. This increased Miami's lower-skilled workforce by 20%. Wages and employment rates were unchanged, for those workers already there. p. 133.
MYTH 9: IMMIGRATION UNDERMINES THE WELFARE STATE. p. 145.
Tax benefits or costs of immigration range plus or minus 1 percent of gross domestic product. pp. 147-149.
MYTH 10: IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION HAS FAILED. p. 160.
Latino and Asian kids now learn English faster than German or Italian kids did in the early 1900s. p. 163. [My grandparents' part of east-central Missouri spoke German from 1848 to 1914.]
MYTH 11: MASS MIGRATION HAS PRODUCED MASS SEGREGATION. p. 180.
Class disparity is the real problem. p. 193.
MYTH 12: IMMIGRATION SENDS CRIME RATES SOARING. p. 196.
In general, immigration lowers violent crime. p. 197.
MYTH 13: EMIGRATION LEADS TO A BRAIN DRAIN. p. 209.
Most countries are relatively able to retain most of their higher-skilled citizens. p. 211.
[Puerto Rico lost 5,000 physicians, about 36% of them, from 2006 to 2016, to outmigration. --/Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know/, Jorge Duany, 2017. p. 151.]
MYTH 14: IMMIGRATION LIFTS ALL BOATS. p. 222.
No, the benefits of migration accrue disproportionately to the rich. p. 224
MYTH 15: WE NEED IMMIGRANTS TO FIX THE PROBLEMS OF AGEING SOCIETIES. p. 234.
Immigration is too small to fix the effects of ageing. p. 236.
LIES & MYTHS
MYTH 16: BORDERS ARE CLOSING DOWN. p. 249.
Immigration policies have largely become more liberal since WWII. pp. 250-252.
MYTH 17: CONSERVATIVES ARE TOUGHER ON IMMIGRATION. p. 266.
There is no left-right divide on immigration. p. 267.
MYTH 18: PUBLIC OPINION HAS TURNED AGAINST IMMIGRATION. p. 279.
Public opinion has grown more positive on immigration. In 2020, for the first time, more Americans polled said immigration should be increased rather than reduced. p. 281.
MYTH 19: SMUGGLING IS THE CAUSE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. p. 291.
Smuggling is a reaction to border controls. p. 292.
MYTH 20: TRAFFICKING IS A FORM OF MODERN SLAVERY. p. 309.
Many alleged trafficking victims who were "rescued" in Italy and flown back to Nigeria did all they could to return to Italy and resume their work. p. 311.
MYTH 21: BORDER RESTRICTIONS REDUCE IMMIGRATION. p. 326.
Border restrictions make temporary migrants permanent. p. 333.
MYTH 22: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL LEAD TO MASS MIGRATION. p. 343.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The authoBailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The author was the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the 2008 Wall Street bailout.
2019 update: the $700 billion Wall Street bailout ended up costing $16 trillion. --/Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, Christopher W. Shaw, 2019: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Top financial-institution executives know that the U.S. Government will bail them out if their bets lose. Wall Street has captured control of the U.S. Government. p. 19. [Obama had to kiss Wall Street's ring to get the campaign money to win the presidency, as Charles Gasparino details in /Bought and Paid For/: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .] Obama filled his administration with bankers and let them give hundreds of billions of dollars to their firms to recover their losses from their fraudulent transactions. Same as George W. Bush's team did. pp. 90-95. Every secretary of the Treasury has a callous indifference to the public interest and a slavish bias toward Wall Street. As does the president who appointed him. p. 149.
PERVERSE INCENTIVE
Subprime loans earned the lender higher interest and fees than prime loans. The less chance the borrower had of repaying, the more the lender received. No one on Wall Street--rating agencies, accountants, banks, lawyers, brokers, notaries, appraisers, …--cared to look at fraud, as long as they were getting fat fees. pp. 13-16, 84-95.
WANT TO BET?
The big banks created, marketed, and sold (purportedly AAA but in fact junk) bonds they expected to plummet in value as the real estate market soured; the banks placed large bets that their bonds would tank; the banks reaped profits from their dishonest bond sales. The Bush and Obama administrations appointed the bankers to administer hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to their banks. pp. 91-95.
I OWE HOW MUCH?
The orgy of subprime and subsubprime lending ballooned Americans' mortgage debt from $5.3 trillion in 2001 to $10.5 trillion in 2007. p. 87. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
USELESS GOVERNMENT
U.S. Government procedure for investigations: "adopt a narrative:" define the status quo as a success. Bury all evidence suggesting otherwise. pp. 8-9. The bailout administrators ignored the many ways fraudsters could steal the money. p. 22. The Treasury Department gave banks hundreds of billions of dollars with no verification that the banks were "healthy and viable," no oversight, no terms or conditions to comply with. pp. 71-77. Inspectors general behave as lapdogs to the agencies they're supposed to watch. p. 61. Congressmen and senators enact laws without reading them. pp. 50, 96. Senators questioning administration officials don't care what the answer is. They care only about getting their question on the news. p. 30. "I had done one of the stupidest things possible. I had trusted someone." pp. 79-80. The FBI tips off the press ahead of search warrants and arrests. p. 108. If a program is unpopular, give it a new name. p. 123.
GOVERNMENT AGENCY PRIORITIES
1. Maintaining and hopefully increasing their budget. 2. Giving the appearance of activity. 3. Not making too many waves. p. 51.
PLAY TO WIN
The only way to make things happen in Washington is to make sure that Congress and the public are aware of the problems you see, so they can then pressure the agency to resolve them. The media are key. p. 65. In Washington, being loud is a virtue p. 104.
WILL 2008 REPLAY 1929?
2008: Mortgage fraud is epidemic. p. 14.
2008: 2.3 million foreclosures. p. 4.
Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed due to investments in bad mortgages. pp. 17-18, 142.
September 2008: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are about to collapse. p. 25. If all the dominoes fall, there could be another Great Depression. p. 43.
AMERICANS LOSE
September 2007 to December 2008: people's 401(k)s lost $2.8 trillion, 1/3 of their value. p. 4.
October 2008: Congress passes Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. pp. 1, 103-104.
October 2008: Hank Paulson, George W. Bush's secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, /gives/ the 9 largest banks (view spoiler)[(Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, State Street, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon) (hide spoiler)]$125 billion, instead of using the money to buy bad mortgages, as Congress wanted. p. 26. The total was $290 billion by November. By December, AIG and Citigroup would be bailed out again, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and Bank of America. pp. 43, 102-105.
November 2008: Obama wins election.
EXECUTIVE BAILOUT
AIG gave its executives $168 million in bonuses. pp. 60, 138.
WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Banks did not lend out the money they were bailed out with. So the bailouts did not help end the recession, did not help businesses nor homeowners. pp. 72-73, 98-99.
DEMOCRATS ARE NO BETTER
January 2009: Obama becomes president. Banker Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary, dismisses efforts to protect TARP from fraud. p. 113.
HOMEOWNERS NOT BAILED OUT
Though $50 billion was allocated ostensibly to help homeowners, it did not reduce the amounts they owed on their mortgages, and provided no relief to unemployed homeowners. It was a boon to the financial industry, in new fees they could charge. p. 128.
April 2010: Obama's troubled-assets relief program administrator, Wall Street banker Herb Allison, advises Neil Barofsky, the government's special inspector general (SIGTARP), that Barofsky has a choice: make the financial power brokers look good and get a plum job, or tell the truth and end up discredited and unemployed. pp. xi-xvi.
The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901, Heather Cox Richardson, 2001, 312 pages, Dewey 973.8, IThe Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901, Heather Cox Richardson, 2001, 312 pages, Dewey 973.8, ISBN 9780674006379
Class and race conflict. (Three guesses which class will win.) The prosperous elite maintained that the interests of capital and labor are the same. Those at the bottom of the vertical playing field knew that capital and labor are in conflict. pp. 113, 119-120, 124-125, 129, 131.
Elites North and South, Republican, independent, and Democratic, (and black and white!) came to believe that if disaffected workers elected the government, it would support disadvantaged groups: America would no longer strive for the equality of opportunity that permitted excellence but would settle for the equality of condition that guaranteed mediocrity. pp. 183-184, 209.
"Shall we compel the Southern states to submit to the rule of ignorant field-hands?" p. 202.
In reality, the post-1880 low-wage industrial economy kept workers poor, owners rich. pp. 189-190, 206. Industrialization created an urban underclass p. 196.
Moreover, far from the laissez-faire policy elites demanded toward the working class, government at all levels lavished aid on business owners. p. 190.
In the 1880s in the South, mills hired white workers almost exclusively; large landowners pushed small farmers into tenantry and sharecropping. p. 190.
In 1890-1903, each Southern state, with Northern approval, adopted education, literacy, or property requirements for voting. pp. 209, 220. In 1894, a Democratic Congress repealed all federal elections laws. States would do as they pleased. p. 214.
In 1895 in /Debs/, the Supreme Court virtually outlawed labor strikes. p. 215. /Plessy v. Ferguson/, 1896, okayed discrimination in public facilities. p. 220. (The Supreme Court was Southerner-controlled.)
Lynchings increased dramatically beginning 1889. p. 218.
By 1880, 5 million Americans worked in factories; nonagricultural workers exceeded agricultural workers. p. 184. Between 1880 and 1900, 6.6 million workers participated in 23,000 labor strikes. pp. xiii, 185.
The South produced nearly 4.5 million bales of cotton in 1861; production would not return to that level until 1875. Cotton prices fell in 1867 to 14¢/pound, less than the cost of production. p. 28. Freed rural blacks provided 63% to 72% of the labor forced from them under slavery. p. 32.
Black people were still whipped and sold as punishment for crimes. p. 29.
The addition of 4 million freedpeople to the census would increase the South's representation in Congress dramatically. p. 42. U.S. post-Civil-War population was 35 million. p. 72.
There was a dramatic rift in the black community between the few with property and the many without, as of 1867. p. 52.
Southern whites worked to reimpose de facto slavery. p. 53.
Freedpeople wanted land, which could've been, but wasn't, confiscated from former enslavers. p. 53. White Southerners took care to make sure freedmen did not acquire land. p. 83.
Poor Southern whites were facing starvation by late 1866, after repeated crop failures. p. 55.
Black dockworkers successfully struck for higher wages in 1867 in Mobile and Charleston. pp. 55, 92.
Propertied Southern whites feared taxation and spending if blacks voted. pp. 59-60, 92, 95-96. Northern elites likewise were unhappy with the results of universal suffrage in New York City, including the spoils-based Tammany Hall city government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamma... The Northern elite didn't want working-class immigrants to vote. pp. 78, 93-94. Elites of both sections opined that only those who owned the country should govern it, and feared for their property and position should the working class of both races unite. pp. 97-99.
The South Carolina legislature was majority black, 1867-1876. p. 89. It levied taxes. The minority of wealthy whites screamed, "taxation without representation!" pp. 112, 114, 117.
Fear of confiscatory government by have-nots realigned politics such that Democrats won a majority in Congress in 1874. p. 120.
In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes stopped using federal troops to protect freedmen--and used them instead to put down the Great Railroad Strike. p. 121
In 1879-1880, tens of thousands of blacks relocated from the South to Kansas. Chapter 5.
Heather Cox Richardson has read seemingly all the newspapers and magazines of 1865-1901, and distilled them for us in 250 pages of text.
She does the same with today's news on her blog, Letters from an American. It's a terrific summary (she's been posting at about 2am Chicago time every day; about once a week she takes a day off: "Today was an absolutely perfect July day and I'm not going to ruin it by looking at the news."--https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ) at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... Except, bizarrely, she doesn't know that (view spoiler)[the Clinton-Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris party /always/ serves the investor class, to our cost. Biden forced Mexico to consume Monsanto genetically-modified corn: (English & Spanish: https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2023... ). Clinton quietly sent bankers to arrange world trade deals that race to the bottom in environmental and worker protections, to enrich bankers and multinationals. Clinton quietly exploded the prison population. Obama quietly took /no/ action on climate change, quietly rolled out a lobbyist-written medical-insurance plan that authorizes insurers to charge us 25% more than they pay providers: they're on cost-plus, for the first time ever. Obama quietly amplified the Asian wars, and vastly expanded drone warfare. Obama quietly bailed out Wall Street and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. We can have Wall Street's left-hand puppet quietly serving up the world to the rich, saying, "yes we can!" or, "I'm the change agent!" Or we can have Wall Street's right-hand puppet doing the exact same things, loudly railing against "illegals," "socialists," "liberals", "Eurocrats." To read Heather Cox Richardson, that choice is enough. It is not. Democrats have proven they will do nothing to curb climate change, will not tax the rich, will continue to enact lobbyist-written laws they haven't read. Sure, Republicans are even worse. Democrats do not deserve the free pass Richardson gives them, merely for not being Republicans.
[image]
Even FDR, who did more than any other president to make the playing field between the rich and the rest of us less vertical, did so largely by using our Pacific fleet to prevent fuel from entering Japan, to force Japan to go to war with us, so U.S. corporations, not Japan, would control the former European Pacific and Southeast Asian colonies. (hide spoiler)]
Thomas Ray
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