I don't really care for arguments about the economic benefits of immigration - for the simple reason that culture trumps economics. Somewhere in After America, I quote a particularly fatuous slab of happy talk on the subject: 'Sober-minded economists reckon that the potential gains from freer global migration are huge,' writes Philippe Legrain in Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. 'The World Bank reckons that if rich countries allowed their workforce to swell by a mere three per cent by letting in an extra 14 million workers from developing countries between 2001 and 2025, the world would be $356 billion a year better off, with the new migrants themselves gaining $162 billion a year, people who remain in poor countries $143 billion, and natives in rich countries $139 billion.'
$139 billion? From "a mere" 14 million extra immigrants? Wow!
As Christopher Caldwell points out in his book Reflections On The Revolution In Europe, the aggregate gross domestic product of the world's advanced economies for the year 2008 was estimated by the International Monetary Fund at close to $40 trillion. So an extra $139 billion works out to an extra, er, 0.0035. Caldwell compares the World Bank argument to Dr Evil's triumphant announcement that he's holding the world hostage for one million dollars!!! As he says, "Sacrificing 0.0035 of your economy would be a pittance to pay for starting to get your country back."
Because culture trumps economics. If you're a Swede who likes living in Sweden what would you rather forego? The 0.0035 of spectacular gangbusters economic growth? Or the mosques and the honor killings and the no-go areas and the cross-cultural rape epidemic?
On the fault line of economics and culture comes this new paper from my old NR colleague Mark Krikorian's think tank:
More than half of the nation's immigrants receive some kind of government welfare, a figure that's far higher than the native-born population's, according to a report to be released Wednesday.
About 51% of immigrant-led households receive at least one kind of welfare benefit, including Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches and housing assistance, compared to 30% for native-led households, according to the report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for lower levels of immigration.
Those numbers increase for households with children, with 76% of immigrant- led households receiving welfare, compared to 52% for the native-born.
Those figures suggest that, in the age of welfare, America's mass immigration is little different from the Old World's. Europeans are told they need immigrants to help prop up their otherwise unsustainable social programs: In reality, Turkish immigrants have three times the rate of welfare dependency as ethnic Germans, and their average retirement age is 50. Entire industries have been signed up for public subsidy. From After America:
Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole. Does the World Bank set their welfare checks on the debit side of that spectacular 0.0035 economic growth? Or does that count as valuable long-term investment in the critical economic growth sector of fire-breathing mullahs?
Importing dependency on the present scale has cultural consequences for America that far outweigh any economic benefits. It tips us ever deeper into a bifurcated society of social immobility, with a prosperous elite, an all but extinct middle class, and a vast swamp of people with a choice of either welfare checks or low-wage service jobs - the Age of the New Servility, as Mickey Kaus sees it. If Trump et al can wrest this issue away from the Republican Party's depraved donor class, tragedy might yet be averted...
