The Washington Post finally prints a positive immigration story [gift link]
Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
They pair it with a piece about angry Arizona Democrats who don’t like Biden’s immigration message (worth a read, gift link).
“It’s not just Republicans. Democrats, too, like to push the narrative that we’re being invaded — and as a registered Democrat, it’s really hurtful to see because my parents came here wanting to seek a better life,” Villafan, 23, said just a three-hour drive north from Arizona’s shared border with Mexico.
Anyway, AOC was on MSNBC the other night
and here’s her immigration message:
But the idea that Republicans, in order to win an election, say we need to hermetically seal the border when they know it is economic self-sabotage to the U.S. economy, and they are saying, ‘Let’s do it anyway.’ And to compensate for the negative effects, we are going to allow and throw peoples’ kids into factories. This is what they are doing in rolling back child labor laws while being as xenophobic and anti-immigrant as they are. […And] by them blocking and preventing any legislation that will provide not just a path to citizenship, but a path to work papers, a path to allowing people who want to work to be paired with American businesses who need people to work. […] There is no moral calculation. There is no economic calculation. There is no logical calculation. There is only a political calculation, and that political calculation is: we are going to keep whining about it. We are going to keep pretending this is a crises while contributing to actual problems. And we are going to block the solution so that we can campaign on it over and over and over. And we can call it caravans, we can call it migrant crisis, we can call it family separation. And they will just recycle it over and over and over again in order to gin up so much animosity and destruction in this country. And racism in this country. Because that’s the only thing that the Republican Party even is standing on at this point.
AOC also says that Democrats need to “grow a little spine” over immigration, so run to your fainting couches and clutch your pearls if that kind of talk offends you. It doesn’t offend me, because trying to fund border security at the level Republicans want isn’t a position on immigration that does Democrats any good. Pointing out that immigration helps the economy, that it helps businesses that have jobs non-immigrants don’t want, and that some kind of reasonable work permit program is far more constructive than more walls, barbed wire and border cops, is messaging that is true and doesn’t alienate a good portion of our base.
Final point: a good part of the white, rural MAGA base knows damn well that immigration is essential for our economy, because they live near slaughterhouses and packing plants that need immigrants to do the dangerous, backbreaking work on offer there. They’re more than happy to have their town benefit from the presence of a large number of immigrants — they just want them to be non-voters who are scared every time a cop drives by.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
So while I’m definitely not anti-immigrant, I’m pro reasonable limits on immigration. There’s only so many people we can process, feed, and house at a given time. However, I do feel like sometimes the characterizations coming from our side leave out some things. Closing the labor gap means you no longer have a shortage of workers that is pushing up wages or giving labor leverage in negotiations. Wages went up substantially and almost enough to make up for inflation because of that labor shortage. As with every single issue Democrats care about, one policy that helps part of our coalition can hurt other parts of our coalition.
FelonyGovt
There are also all those business owners in agriculture, construction, etc who benefit by having compliant, cheap immigrant labor but keep voting for Republicans.
ETA and homeowners who employ immigrant gardeners, maids, nannies…
$8 blue check mistermix
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: FWIW modern labor union policy is pro-immigration: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/02/this-day-in-labor-history-february-17-2000
RaflW
Meanwhile, apparently Harvard is testing out having AI teach a college course. Because we need to un-employ some random PhDs in America, I guess? Can’t afford the pay + benefits, Harvard? You’ve got $49,400,000,000 in the bank. Yes, an endowment of basically 50 BILLION dollars! WTF.
trollhattan
If at first you don’t succeed, fail again, California whiny Republican (but I repeat myself) edition. It will only cost us all another $200 mil.
Xavier
I’m just going to give all my political donations to AOC because she’s obviously better at all this than I am.
Antonius
James McMurtry askes the musical question, “How they gonna build a wall without Mexicans, anyway?”
Anyway
The framing to push back is that Ds want “open borders” – that’s bullshit. We haven’t had open borders in a century at least. What we have is managed immigration that serves the country well – economy, business etc. Need more D pols speaking up against Faux News fearmongering
Old School
@Antonius: Unless there’s more than one song, it was Tom Russell who asked that musical question.
Frankensteinbeck
Yes, there is. As always, the cruelty is the point. Some of them are smart enough to politically calculate, but mostly they hate brown people and want to keep brown people out and make brown people who dare to try to be American suffer as much as possible. That’s what the base wants, and the electeds were chosen by the base to be just like them.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: You make a great point, especially the last sentence. Even if higher immigration levels don’t reduce the existing labor pool’s leverage, lots of people think they do. As far as I can tell, there’s no solid Democratic consensus, and it’s not just Repubs who are buying the “crisis” framing, which I believe is way overblown but not completely fictional due to the higher numbers of people arriving at the southern border last year. There are better solutions than more barbed wire and border cops, like more work permits and resources to handle asylum claims, but of course Repubs aren’t going to agree to or fund it. Meanwhile, anti-immigration demagoguery is an effective tool, which is why Repubs are loathe to make a deal. I see firsthand all over Florida how well it works, even in immigrant communities.
David Fud
@RaflW:
@RaflW:
Maybe Harvard should turn the endowment over to AI and see how that goes for them.
piratedan
I think that the GOP would be in favor of Open Borders as long as it meant that “those people” (i.e. not white) were never allowed to be citizens. It’s an apparent issue in that ‘someone” has to be othered in their worldview and it’s not gonna be white people.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Laffy has/had a live thread on the Willis case testimony today:
Doesn’t sound like it’s going too well for Squeaky and Team TIFG.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
Doesn’t offend me, but I think I’ve outgrown being moved by machismo-style rhetoric as a means to force action from others. YMMV.
Josie
That last sentence is the ball game–they want workers, not voters. They want them hidden away until it is time to give them the horrible jobs that Americans won’t do for wages that Americans won’t accept. If they can’t vote, they can’t complain or have any power over their circumstances. A perfect setup for our MOTU.
Ten Bears
Ignoring that our deteriorating atmosphere, the thin layer of no longer potentially toxic gasses we live in enveloping the only world we know of we can live on does not recognize the boundaries of “nation/states”. Nation/states, religions of man and time as we know it
Not going to stop the migrations. Ask the Neanderthal …
UncleEbeneezer
This is why we should never lionize Business Owners:
So he understands that a liberal approach to immigration is the only thing keeping him in business but he still blames the Govt and wants less immigrants? Make that make sense…and that he is an immigrant himself just makes it (chef’s kiss)…
Ruckus
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I believe that no matter what, legislation will always have winners and losers. It isn’t often intended that way but it does happen that way. Some say the best for the most. Some say whatever it takes to lower my taxes, including others starving. But this is a big country and we can, and on occasion have, done very well for the vast majority. But we have a coalition in our legislative branch that wants to shut down any concept of any kind that helps – them. Them being anyone/any group but those of the coalition. They are selfish dicks who have zero concepts of humanity.
Rant over.
rikyrah
Republicans don’t want Immigration resolved. They don’t want any constructive solutions.
If there was a constructive resolutions, then they can’t use it to fan the flames of White Supremacy ,
Never forget – Shrub lied us into TWO wars…but, couldn’t get Comprehensive Immigration reform done.
Dahlia
@Old School: The line comes from “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call” by James McMurtry.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jamesmcmurtry/ftwaltonwakeupcall.html
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: One of the things anti-immigration politicians all over the world like to do is narrow down the avenues for border processing so that things back up and it creates a crisis.
laura
Comprehensive Immigration reform can be done as soon as 2025 if we can deliver in November, so we should definitely work on that.
I’m just fucking done with the CA recall process. My State is facing a budget deficit due to the tanking of commercial real estate- and the current movement to put the kibosh on work from home is directly tied to the low occupancy rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Also, we could use a split-roll and reassess commercial property on a every five year basis or ditch prop 13 entirely.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Great point! That’s exactly what’s happening here.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
Many humans have a closed mind to only what benefits themselves directly and immediately.
They don’t see that in this country, immigrants have always had a part in making it what it is today.
Chris
Repeating my statement from a few weeks ago: a ton of American anti-immigration politics makes perfect sense once you see it for what it is, namely an effort to ensure that there will always be a large part of the workforce to whom all the worker protections and benefits that we gradually built over the course of the twentieth century would never apply.
And while I don’t insist that every Republican in hysterics about immigration knows this, it’s also a lot more than just the rich suits in penthouse boardrooms that we think of as “businessmen.” It’s every small business owner whose shop runs on illegal labor, not to mention a stupendous number of ordinary middle class citizens who want cheap maids, lawn mowers, baby sitters – or just like cheap food. There’s a reason why every referendum that suggests harsh punishments for employers of illegal immigrants goes up in smoke.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Catherine Rampell’s Feb. 13 article in the WaPo fits in this discussion. gift link- The surge in immigration is a $7 trillion gift to the economy
UncleEbeneezer
@Ruckus: But that’s the thing. He’s admitting that less immigrants would actually hurt and possibly ruin his business. So if he’s purely looking out for his own self-interest he should want things to stay as they are, not try to reduce immigration.
Geminid
@Baud: Tough talk comes easy when you represent a D+50 congressional district.
Chris
@Anyway:
The fact that so many people have obsessively fixated on “open borders” when no Democrat within a hundred miles of an elected office has advocated anything like it is kind of a tell.
Namely, “I really want to complain about Democrats on immigration, but any kind of reasonable immigration policy I could propose is exactly what they’re advocating, so I desperately need to pretend they stand for something else so I can continue to oppose them.”
topclimber
@Geminid: Also comes easy for those who are articulate and unafraid.
Chris
@Josie:
As with so much else about right-wing politics, their immigration policy can be summed up as “they want their slaves back.”
Old School
@Dahlia: Thanks! I guess I need to listen to that album again.
(Although Tom Russell does have a song with a similar sentiment.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The only way we get immigration reform is a D trifecta. Talk is cheap, what we need is votes.
Someone should ask the tough talking Congresswoman about her mentor’s anti-immigration stance all throughout his congressional career. A stance he softened only when he ran for President in 2016.
He was a guaranteed anti-immigration vote like Mr. Sessions on the R side.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
Absolutely all true.
But life rarely has a single side to anything positive or negative.
His hate drives what he believes, his wallet drives what he needs.
Miss Bianca
@Chris: Right.
And while I am not AOC’s biggest fan, I applaud her statements here. Of course, I am one of those who goes around saying, “the problem isn’t that we have ‘Open Borders.’ The problem is that our borders aren’t open *enough*”.
I really wish Democrats could get out of “defensive crouch” mode on a whole host of issues. We are getting there on abortion, finally – but pretty much only post-Dobbs. After the damage has been done.
I would like to see some more pushback on the immigrant-bashing and border hysteria. More than just, “We gave the Republicans everything they said they wanted!”
Martin
California is 27% immigrant. Over ¼ of all the people who live in this state were not born in the US. And they make up over ⅓ of the workforce because they are generally younger than the average resident. Not that many retired immigrants here. We are the 5th largest economy in the world, now nipping at the heels of both Germany and the UK for 3rd. The whole fucking state of California is a positive immigration story – whether it’s an immigrant picking grapes or the founders of Google or Intel.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca:
I think we’re already there. For instance:
topclimber
@schrodingers_cat: Here I thought her mentor was Ted Kennedy, who she interned for. But if you say it was Sanders, it must be true.
Harrison Wesley
@UncleEbeneezer: “Pourquoi?” That’s his real name?
schrodingers_cat
@topclimber: I was speaking of the leap year Democrat, who was a frequent guest on the immigrant bashing Lou Dobbs show in the aughts not Kennedy in case it was not clear.
If you want to argue that AOC is not politically aligned with the said senator be my guest.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
To be fair, the problem there is at least partially dictated by public opinion. Public opinion on abortion was squishy as hell before Dobbs, because of the usual amount of centrist nitwits preaching the importance of finding middle grounds on everything, underlined by the usual amount of sexism telling us that it’s unseemly to care so much about an issue with cooties all over it. It’s precisely because Dobbs smacked enough people in the face with the reality of why access to abortion is important that Democrats can finally go on the offensive.
None of which is to ding AOC for what she said. The party needs people needling it to do better even when doing better is difficult, if only because otherwise more and more people stop thinking they need to even pretend to care. But I do have sympathy for the needle the Democrats are trying to thread.
Chris
@Martin:
Heck, the whole United States is a positive immigration story – it was key to our growth model as a nation. More than that, it was also key to the North’s growth model for the first eighty years or so of the country’s existence – large-scale immigration means a large and rapidly growing pool of new citizens who are both motivated and grateful, which was good for the region’s industrialization, good for the region’s population growth, and good for keeping the loyalty of the underclass in a way that the South… ahaha, no.
Blue states should absolutely take note of that.
Chris
@topclimber:
Some day in forty or fifty years, I’m going to be in a hospital, and the doctors are going to tell me “hey, we found your problem, and we can fix it if we install a pacemaker, but frankly, at your age that’s just kicking the can down the road a few more months. Want us to do it, or should we take you off life support?” And I’ll say “gee, I don’t know, can I have a day or so to think about it?” And they’ll say “sure.”
And then I’ll turn on the TV to think about something else for a minute. And the first thing I see will be some shithead who’s still re-litigating the 2016 primary.
And then I’ll shout “Doc! Get back here! Forget the fucking pacemaker. If being dead means I’m finally done listening to this shit, let’s get on with it.”
Steeplejack
@RaflW:
As someone on the Web said, Harvard is basically a hedge fund with a side hustle as a college.
Miss Bianca
@Chris: I certainly concede your points, but I guess *my* point is that perhaps if we had *been* more forceful and full-throated about being unabashed supporters of abortion rights – and not spent so much time trying to thread a *non-existent* needle about abortion rights – less time trying to parse “good” abortions from “bad” abortions – those centrist fucksticks might not have got as much traction.
I think Kay’s point is right on – all those years spent wasted trying to find a “compromise” position with fanatics trying to overturn Roe v. Wade,, when all along, Roe *was the compromise*. We never made that point forcefully enough.
I dunno, maybe I’m just bitter from having watched this crap since the 80s. And damn glad I was lucky enough that my reproductive years were spent in a Roe reality, rather than a post-Roe reality.
Geminid
@topclimber: Ruben Gallego is as articulate and unafraid as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, probably more so. Gallego wouldn’t say what she said because he knows more about border conditions and policy than the Congresswoman from the Bronx.
RaflW
@trollhattan: Also from the most recent PPIL poll:
Joe Biden 55%
Donald Trump 32%
Someone else 10%
Don’t know 2%
Neither/would not vote for president 1%
Given the trouncing Trump can expect in November, I don’t think Newsom polling at not very alarming 48% favorable bodes well for any recall effort.
And it definitely fits a national narrative of the GOP having nothing to offer, only stunts and negativity.
topclimber
@Geminid: 8$BCM quoted her remarks from MSNBC. I don’t know what you didn’t like about them. Sounded cogent and comprehensive to me.
As for the paraphrase about Dems growing a spine, I give you the benefit of the doubt that you found it a cheap shot, delivered with no recognition of the tight spot border state Dems are in over the issue. Of course, with thousands of amnesty seekers being dumped from red to blue states, with no way to handle them, urban Dems also know about this issue, if they didn’t before.
And three cheers for Reuben Gallego. I am glad our party has his voice in our party, as I am for AOC’s.
Geminid
@topclimber: I did not say I found it a cheap shot, you did.
As for Gallego, he represents a safe blue district like Ocasio-Cortez does. One big difference: Gallego could win a purple district just like he’s winning a purple state right now.
We’ll never know how brave Ocasio-Cortez would be if she represented a purple district because she could never win one to begin with.
gene108
The recent mass migrations through the southern border have overwhelmed the immigration system, especially unaccompanied minors.
Increasing funding to more smoothly process asylum claims, have better staffed and resourced holding facilities while they await initial acceptance of their claims, and more resources for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to move them into society is worth doing even without a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Salty Sam .
Back in my construction trades days, there was a joke that went around:
Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and Col. Travis were standing on the ramparts of the Alamo, surveying the thousands of Mexican soldiers massing around the fort. Travis turns to the other two and says, “I didn’t know we were gonna pour concrete today!”
“Pouring concrete” was interchangeable with “installing landscaping”, “painting”, “framing”, “hanging Sheetrock”… really, any construction trade could take the place of any other. It’s a funny joke if you have spent any time on a construction job site.
There was a 2004 movie called “A Day Without a Mexican” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377744/) that explored what would happen to our economy if all undocumented workers disappeared. Spoiler alert: the economy grinds to a complete halt.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Also meant we had more than enough people to completely overrun any Indian resistance to our expansion. Having been reading a book about Tecumseh and his brother and they never really had a chance against us.