Why Do We Need More Immigrants?

In this post about the economics of Brooklyn, there is this bit of data:

Kind of. In 2011, the Census estimated the median household in Brooklyn earned $42,752 a year.  In 1999 the Census estimated the median household income in Brooklyn was…$42,852 (in 2011 dollars; the listed figure in 1999 dollars is $32,135).  That’s compared to a national median household income of $50,502 (in 2011) and $55,999 (in 1999), again using 2011 dollars.  In constant dollars, Brooklyn stagnated while incomes dropped elsewhere.

In that period, we have probably absorbed 20 million legal immigrants. Some claim we have also added another 10-15 million illegal immigrants. The debate over the exact figures is pointless. Everyone agrees we have added a whole bunch new people. This at a time when Americans are getting poorer, outside the over-class and managerial class. They are doing great, naturally, but the middle class is slowly being drained away by globalism and the resulting wage constraints.

The sentimentality of immigration is tough to resist. The myth of immigrant America has been sold to us for generations. People are conditioned to think immigration is one of the great virtues of America. The mathematics of it, however, are beyond dispute. The elites are deliberately impoverishing the country by importing millions of foreigners, who suppress wages and bid up housing.

3 thoughts on “Why Do We Need More Immigrants?

  1. I live in NM. A lot of illegals are pious Catholics, blue collar, and do not like predators. They are a kind of unintended stabilization, repelling jihadists, predatory white collars, ect.

    A mixed bag, to be sure. Sort of like Ohio in the sixties, in Amish country.

    A country could do worse than to be transformed into a Northern European/indigenous admixture of migrants that adhere to a normative moral and ethical code.

    The torch gets passed, people get erased, and replaced. Politics sometimes seems to be trying to manage the rate. Or, having kids to feed.

    • I would doubt the number of single parent homes, as a percentage of the total households, increased much at all. Divorce rates topped out in the early 90’s. Then you have the sharp rise in Mexican households which have 85 people living in two bedroom apartments.

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