Wednesday Morning Rant

With the ongoing disaster at the southern border and US immigration policy more generally, one question comes up more than any other: why? Why does the government want this state of affairs with all of its tremendously destructive downsides? "Why" is a big question. Like all big questions, it will generate tremendous numbers of answers from all corners of all sides.

But there is no one "why." There are many "whys" and while most or all of them align to the same final answer of "MOAR INFLUX," the "whys" themselves differ wildly. Some of the motivations are independent of or contradictory to each-other, but here are what I think are some of the major motivations underlying the constant drive toward an ever more open border.

The most straightforward motivation is simple hatred. Hatred for America specifically and the West generally is strong among the elite and especially the academic elite. They are indifferent to outcomes because the elite that makes these policies don't face the consequences of the policies and despise those who do bear the consequences. There are also the dupes who think this is the "right thing" to do, but they're blind slaves of the hatred crew. For the haters, all the rapes, murders, drugs, and cultural erosion that come from an open border are not costs to be managed but benefits to be pursued. Gotta defeat that White Supremacy and Christofascism somehow! Hatred is a powerful motivator, and there are many in government who have pathological hatred for this country and her people.

Another major motivation is mercenary. These guys are the Chamber of Commerce types who see nothing but upside through the importation of a low-skill (or low-price, depending on mechanism) labor pool. The most recent headline example of this is Tyson Foods planning to hire tens of thousands of new "migrants" for the more miserable jobs in their processing plants. The CoC types in the government are happy to enable this, and to make sure businesses face no consequences for hiring illegals. This is the point of the "asylum" dodge: to provide pseudo-legal cover for hiring illegals. The H-1B disaster is the higher-skilled side of the same coin. Bring in cheaper people with few options and displace citizens for fun and profit. Downsides? What downsides? Their expenses went down and their dividend yield went up. No downsides here!

There's also the game of simple electoral power. Whether the illegals get to vote or not - and the power players in government are doing everything they can to encourage non-citizen voting - they still get counted in the census and apportionment takes them into account. Masses are power, even if they don't or can't vote. Making sure that Colorado gains representatives and that Mississippi does not is a win/win for the Party. This probably motivates some of the open-borders crowd, but I'd bet that this is a secondary motivation.

Another is based on a serious and long-term problem that is only meaningful to the handful of people - likely very powerful people, but not many of them - who know math. The motivation is a simple number: 1.78. That is the US fertility rate this year, and it's likely to go down rapidly over the next decade as the Zoomers and Alphas inherit their cultural ashes. Fertility rate can be hard to visualize, so how big a deal is 1.78? Out of 100 people, they will have about 89 children, 80 grandchildren and just 71 great-grandchildren (with rounding) - and that assumes that 1.78 doesn't get any worse. The smart people in policy positions who know math see doom in this. Masses are power, but inter-generational masses keep the wheels of state and economy turning. Some see importation to overcome the deficit as the most effective approach to solving this gigantic problem.

Nobody knows a sure way to improve the fertility rate and experiments in culture, law, housing, education, economy, etc. are all too expensive or politically untenable. It would also take decades to play out, and that's too long. Yet they have to do something, because nobody knows how to manage a declining population and they can't wait around to see if whatever Japan - a country that is notably not pursuing importation - does is going to work. Just import more people, shore up the numbers and damn the consequences. Even if the new people are chronically unproductive, even if the whole entitlements system crashes, they'll have the numbers. We'll all be much poorer and weaker, but they will have their masses to keep things humming along. That's the gamble, and they're happily making it.

These are just some of the manifold motivations and some of them contradict each other. The electoral masses types and math-aware demographic types want to retain power, while the academic hatred types want to see it destroyed and the CoC-type mercenaries don't care either way so long as the ROI is good. All of the various motivations, however, lead their adherents to the same answer: keep the border open.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

| Access Comments