The hugely industrious blogger Katie’s Dad has provided a welcome relief from watching Senate sausage-making today, with a characteristically abrasive discussion of the usually-shunned question of immigrant quality:

If genetics, IQ, ability and innovativeness are kept off the table for discussion about who we will be in the future, then perhaps we’re too dumb already to keep this republic.
I’m not going to shy away from posting about quality. Even if our Latino invaders were somehow able to bring their mean abilities up to those of Geraldo Rivera, we’d still have a mass of mal-assimilated fifth columnists, not Americans. But we don’t have to worry about legions of Riveras at all. We do, however, have to worry about legions of third-generation Latino gangbangers

Katie’s Dad centerpieces a remarkable essay by the proprietor of the ultra-high brow website Gene Expression, which is mainly interested in developments in genetics. “Razib” (who is a Bangladeshi immigrant) writes

…generally politics doesn’t arouse much interest for me. But I have followed the immigration reform debate closely, mostly because like Ross Douthat I’m a moderate restrictionist. Now, people might find that strange seeing as how I’m a naturalized American myself, but really I don’t have much empathy for other immigrants as immigrants because I view myself much more as who I chose to be (an American) than what I am (an immigrant). ..immigrants to the United States are not refugees, we voted with our feet, and those of us who are naturalized abjure our ties to foreign states

As for why I am a restrictionist, the reason is simple: I think America needs to absorb the current Great Wave….

I am not generally positively inclined toward the clannishness which extended immigrant families in the United States indulge in. I’ve seen it in my own family as relatives have moved to this country over the past 25 years. The initial years where my parents had to reach out and forge friendships with those outside their “ethnic zone of comfort” has given way to a withdrawal from the outside world into their own comfortable cocoon, which has only developed thanks to the beauty of family reunification.

Razib is particularly unsympathetic to the demand for plentiful cheap immigrant labor:

Frankly, I’ve been shocked a little by the arguments made by those who oppose a strong tilt toward high skilled workers…Most of the objections have come from the Left, which I found peculiar because they seem to be arguing for a system which will structurally maintain socioeconomic inequality…My first simple answer is this: a nation is not a market, a market is a sector of a nation. There is a large underclass in the United States which we lay off and replace with some industrious Mexicans, but that isn’t going to happen, you don’t lay off citizens, or export them. That’s a reality, so one of the major priorities (in my opinion) should be choking unskilled labor so that wages rise for that sector.

He offers a valuable chart.

Some years ago, when Gene Expression was more political, VDARE.com had an exchange with a then contributor, which resulted in a comment from him we treasure:

“…I think VDare is useful in that it opens up the space for more moderate organizations, like FAIR, NumbersUSA, and CIS. They’ve railed against this triangulation strategy in the past, but the fact is that triangulation works to inject ideas into the debate…In plenty of publications (such as this one and this one), VDare is cited as the bad cop to CIS or FAIR or NumbersUSA’s good cop. What many people don’t understand is that if VDare wasn’t present, CIS would be demonized as the bad cop.

(links in original)

Food for thought, contemplating those now crowding onto the once-empty immigration control ship!

Katie’s Dad discusses postings from two other websites, and concludes in his usual blunt style:

Immigration has been a success for this nation for only one reason: Historically, we have only allowed those to come who have ancestors that our ancestors knew - often in the biblical sense - for thousands of years. Before Teddy Kennedy started screwing this nation in 1965 for being mean to some of his ancestors, those who came here weren’t different enough from us to actually displace us.
Now they are. Not getting rid of them, even harshly if necessary, will represent the stupidest thing a nation has even done to itself in all of recorded history. If this nation ever fails, I guarantee that history will record its demise as being caused by the importation of incompatibles.

VDARE.com comment to the Treason Lobby: when you are stealing someone’s country, you can’t complain when those who notice get irritated.

Jacob Sullum of Reason Magazine has a post in which he says that

In the debate over the immigration bill, left-liberal Democrats are emerging as champions of the free market.
[ What Is the Way a Market-Based Capitalist Economy Works Best?| June 6, 2007]

This should make him more suspicious than it does. He quotes former immigration lawyer, now California Congresswomen Zoe Lofgren in the New York Times:

But Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said she had found no one in her Silicon Valley district who thought it was a good idea.

“The point system is like the Soviet Union,” Ms. Lofgren said. “The government is saying, in effect, ‘We have a five-year plan for the economy, and we will decide with this point system what mix of skills is needed.’ That is not the way a market-based capitalist economy works best.”A Point System for Immigrants Incites Passions, New York Times

Sullum goes on to say

Lofgren is right, but I’m not sure she’s willing to follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is not somewhat more flexible central planning but a system in which employers and consumers decide which skills are needed. If only we had a catchy name for that.

The political point here is that Democrats, and here I include both Lofgren and the New York Times, want to import more poor people. They like poor people, who vote Democratic, and they feel that they’re being charitable in admitting them. The point system is intended to select people who will be net taxpayers–engineers, computer people, business owners.

Of course, all this does is displace a better class of people, but it doesn’t add to the welfare rolls.

But if “employers and consumers” want to import a poor person, they’re volunteering to add to other people’s tax burden. It’s rent-seeking by employers, and imported voter-seeking by Democrats, and that’s why it’s legitimate for the government to interfere in the market–because it’s a market in tax dollars.

While routinely checking the Billings Gazette for immigration-related articles, I happened upon “Hard work overcomes language barrier,” from June 6, 2007.

The locally-generated article is of mild human interest. More interesting are the half dozen (as of early June 9) readers’ comments. Despite the fact that the article’s protagonist is a legal immigrant, four of the comments are casually caustic about “illegals,” a phenomenon I see associated with most Gazette stories having any connection with immigration. With this article, I can’t tell if most commenters are Montanans, but with many articles it’s clear that they are, indicating that even “remote” Montana has been sensitized to the immigration invasion.

This time, the sixth comment, by “Bobo,” is actually educational:

“Should the Gazette want to portray the flipside of immigration, there are plenty of leads on the FBI website. Of the 73 people wanted by the FBI for murder, 39 are foreign nationals (32 Mexicans). www.fbi.gov/wanted/fugitives/vc/murders/vc_murders.htm”

That link provided by Bobo is to the FBI’s “Wanted for Murder” web page, which was new to me. And quite astonishing in its explicitness that 44% of those on the federal wanted-for-murder list are Mexican born. (A spot check suggests that Bobo’s statistics are correct.) Ah, the benefits of exposure to foreign cultures!

Save that page for your own use! It’s hard data, a welcome departure from the endlessly chain-emailed, bogus statistic that “95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.”

The smaller companion list of those wanted for other violent crimes is also generously sprinkled with foreign born.

The fiscal impact of the Senate Bill? Well, if you live inside the Beltway and read nothing but government reports, it looks like no big deal.

A few days ago CBO reported that S.A. 1150 would increase federal spending by $10 billion over the next five years (2008-2012), mainly due to higher income tax refunds and Medicaid payments to the newly legalized. Revenues over that same period would be $15 billion higher, largely from greater Social Security payroll taxes. [Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate June 4, 2007 Senate Amendment 1150 to S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007]

That’s an average deficit reduction of $1 billion per year. So go back to sleep.

On an inside page, however, CBO acknowledges that this happy calculation ignores the costs of implementing S.A. 1150. After factoring in the new government employees needed to administer the de facto amnesty, grants to help state and local governments cover the costs of apprehending and detaining illegals, a beefed up employer verification system, and other Senate bill items, the $1 billion/year deficit reduction becomes a $3/billion deficit increase.

A little further on CBO unburdens itself further, admitting that “The net cost of the legislation would grow after 2017, as more of the affected immigrants became eligible for benefits and the per capita benefits rose……” CBO estimates that federal outlays attributable to S.A. 1150 could reach $10 billion in 2027, more than double the 2017 amount.

Remember, this is just the incremental impact of Senate 1150 on Federal spending. In recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Rector, the reigning domestic policy expert at Heritage Foundation, provides a more comprehensive accounting.

Rector finds that the average uneducated immigrant household:

• Receives $30,164 in federal, state, and local benefits
• Pays $10,573 in federal, state, and local taxes
• Generates a fiscal deficit of $19,588 ($30,164 less $10,573)

There are about 4.5 million such households, implying that total deficit (benefits received less taxes paid) for all poorly educated immigrant households equals $89.1 billion (4.5 million times $19,588). More than half of this deficit-$49.1 billion-occurs at the state and local government level.

Bottom line: Eighty-nine billion dollars a year, or about 0.6 percent of GDP, is transferred from native taxpayers to immigrant beneficiaries.

CBO’s deficit is a mere add-on to this much larger figure.