Vox Popoli

The real cost of low-skill third-world migration:

Roughly one third of immigrant households are now headed by immigrants without a high school degree. My research, based on Census data and other government sources, shows these “low skill immigrant” households receive, on average, $30,160 per year in government benefits while paying $10,573 in taxes. Thus each such household costs the taxpayer $19,588 per year. Overall, the net cost to U.S. taxpayers is $89 billion per year. My report suggests that the country would benefit fiscally by having fewer low skill immigrants, who are net tax consumers, and more well educated immigrants who are net tax payers.

So my previous calculations underestimated the BENEFIT of repatriating invaders by a factor of five. Not only would repatriating every single illegal and low-skill legal immigrant be extremely affordable, from a financial perspective it is a complete no-brainer.

I note that even in the New York Times very loaded poll question, 33 percent favored deportation of illegals who have been here more than two years. And that 67 percent who favored some means of allowing them to stay drops to 26 percent when the actual amnesty plan is considered.

Some 25 over-65s, with an average age of 70, took part in the study and trained at a gym. Not only did they acquire new strength, but the molecular machinery powering their muscles became as active as that seen in people of 20 or 30…. Measurements of muscle strength showed that before training, the pensioners were on average 59 per cent weaker than the young adults. Afterwards, they were only 38 per cent weaker – an improvement of almost 50 per cent. But the most remarkable change was hidden in the mitochondria, the rod-like ‘power plants’ that sit within every cell and generate energy.

This is clearly a sign to go for the Holy Grail: the 21-inch guns. If you’re already a mental freak of nature, why not become a physical one as well? I’ve always wanted to have an excuse to get into a confrontation with police and shout “my arms are more powerful than your guns!”

I have noticed that people who lift weights regularly do tend to look significantly younger than their age. Not in the face, but in how their body looks and how they move. And for women, I’ve seen 50- and 60-year olds who have butts like 17-year old girls, or at least what 17 year-old girls used to look like before they all got fat.

Conservatives often forget that the two-party charade cuts both ways:

I was disgusted to learn that Congressional Democrats relented Tuesday on their demand for a timetable for United States troop withdrawal from Iraq. I am utterly baffled that an incompetent president responsible for an illegal and drastically destructive war still has the political upper hand in this shameful debacle. What is going on here?

Of course they did. I don’t know why this surprised anyone. It’s not like Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ or Clinton were averse to the occasional military adventure. Hillary’s presidency doesn’t necessarily mean an end of the Iraqi occupation in 2009. In fact, she’ll likely continue it unless we pull out as part of an invasion of Iran later this year.

In which I take a break from Dawkins and the Summa to deal with Merkur’s response.

I have no idea how many immigrants it’s possible to deport from the United States in any given space of time.

If you have no idea, then I suggest that you should stop speaking in ignorance. The empirical evidence is that a number between 221 thousand per year and 840 thousand per year can be repatriated without harming anyone. The only pertinent logistical question is whether the gap between 840 thousand per year and 1.5 million per year can be surmounted without resorting to Nazi/Communist methods.

Regardless, 12 million aliens can clearly be repatriated without harm in 14 years, if not necessarily the eight years I originally projected based on the “crass” analogy.

a) it won’t be politically acceptable to a huge number of people. Your response to this has been to fume about how “anti-American” politicians control the government. Considering that a number of people commenting here believe that all politicians are “anti-American”, is it realistic to expect that those politicians will be removed from power?

Amnesty isn’t politically acceptable to a huge number of people, and yet the politicians are repeatedly going after it. It would seem unlikely that enough anti-American politicians will be removed from power to begin mass repatriations in the near future, but then, that’s part of the democratic process. I note that the move for amnesty has more people talking openly about mass repatriation than ever before. 2008? No. 2012, maybe. 2016, very possibly.

b) that it won’t be sustainable without throwing even more money at the border. While you may have discussed it in other places, you haven’t introduced any proposals here. Is it realistic to expect sufficient funds to be put into such a scheme considering the lack of political support mentioned above?

I estimate that repatriating every single illegal alien would cost less than five years of the tax-benefit delta. From a financial point of view, we can’t afford to NOT repatriate the illegal population.

c) that it can’t be done without destroying people’s livelihoods and undermining basic civil rights. Your response to this has been to talk about how much it would cost to buy comfortable buses, which should tell most people all they need to know about the depth of your thinking. Is it realistic to expect that this would go without mass protests – not just by the immigrants themselves – and continuous legal challenges from civil rights groups?

The mass protests would make Americans more pro-repatriation, not less, as evidenced by the subdued pro-illegal demonstrations this year after the political blowback from the protests the previous year. And considering how the US government doesn’t respect the rights of its actual citizens, I’m not terribly concerned about the nonexistent rights of non-citizens.

d) that it would undermine relations with the Mexican and other Latin American governments. You appear not to care about this in the slightest, which is nice for you but not much use for actual politicians who have to think about these things. Is it realistic to expect that those governments will simply accept such an operation?

Yes. What is Mexico going to do, threaten to invade us?

e) that from a logistical perspective this is a huge operation not just because of the size but because of the scope. Contrary to what you believe, the logistics of mass deportation (or repatriation, for that matter) are not just a question of awarding contracts – you’re dealing with a huge number of actual people who generally don’t co-operate when their livelihoods are under threat. Oh, it’s possible to deport them piecemeal, which is what is being done right now – 6 million of them between 2001 and 2006 – but is it realistic to expect the government to sweep the country, when they can’t even track the displaced from Hurricane Katrina?

They’re not even trying to track the displaced, that’s irrelevant. As numerous folks have pointed out, we probably wouldn’t have to repatriate one million, as most illegals will head home before getting picked up.

f) that the basic reason why immigrants arrive in the US is to work. You have nothing to say about this, except to let everybody fume about how they’re coming in and using the resources of a welfare system that you don’t even agree with. Is it realistic to expect them to stop trying to come to the US by whatever means they have available?

I don’t care why they came here, that’s irrelevant. They are here where they have, quite literally, no right to be. There’s no shortage of illegals who don’t work, if they were working then they wouldn’t be on welfare or in public schools. We can probably get half of the 12 million to go home simply by refusing to provide social services to them.

Completely eliminating the welfare system is an excellent idea, we can nail two or more birds with that single stone. I have no doubt that the US military is perfectly capable of defending the nation’s borders if it is commanded to do so, if it isn’t, we might as well retroactively surrender to Japan and Germany.

John Derbyshire quite liked Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle:

A novel stands or falls by the pleasure it gives to the thoughtful and attentive reader. By that standard, and setting aside the minor blemishes noted above, the Baroque Cycle is a very fine work of popular fiction. The more you know about math, logic, and computing, the more you will find in it; but any reader who, at a bare minimum, does not mind mathematical and technological topics will find something. If you have been wondering whether you should tackle Neal Stephenson’s three big volumes, I urge you to do so.

So did I. I don’t know if it’s quite as superficially entertaining as Cryptonomicon, but it’s a more impressive literary feat and one that I suspect will eventually come to be considered his masterwork… unless we’re fortunate enough to see him again surpass himself.

I thought Liverpool outplayed the rossoneri tonight, but you can never count out Pippo, the ultimate fox in the box. It was a great move by Ancelotti to start him tonight; I was delighted when Juventus let him go a few years back and I never understood why he was so underutilized in Euro 2004 and the last World Cup.

The second goal, a lovely little through pass from Kaka, was straight playground calcio and Inzaghi’s slow, rolling finish put an excruciating end to a decent match. Rise was a step offside on the final goal, but it was a good no-call and didn’t matter anyhow.

Courtesy of that famous historical black college alumnus, Bane:

My colleagues and I were witnessing the result of low admission standards. Were we expecting too much of young people who scored poorly on the SAT, who were rarely challenged to excel in high school, who were not motivated to take advantage of opportunities to learn, who could not imagine where a sound education could take them?

An unfortunate truth was that most of my colleagues and I never got an opportunity to teach the breadth of our knowledge. I had great difficulty, for example, teaching something as simple as the distinction between “historic” and “historical” or between “infer” and “imply, ” distinctions that careful writers, especially journalists, want to know.

I wasn’t the only one. A white professor labored to get her students to critically read the assignments. She could not discuss the major themes and literary conventions when her students did not read. When she got nowhere with Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she asked me to speak to the class. Perhaps a black professor would have more success talking about one of the best-known black authors.

A few minutes into my exchange with the class, I realized the white professor was not the problem. The students simply did not – or could not – read closely….

The majority of my students in the English class failed to complete most of the assigned readings. Most of their essays were unacceptable, and attendance was low. I had a choice: Abandon my syllabus or flunk more than half of the class.

I abandoned the syllabus.

Of course he did. Because he’s an educator. I was amused by Dr. Helen’s and Ann Althouse’s concern that there are are fewer and fewer men attending college these days. BFD! One will learn more by spending $1,000 at Amazon and reading for six months than one will by spending $150,000 and four years at an Ivy League university.

Sure, college degrees are required now for a lot of jobs. But that’s only going to last as long as it takes for businesses to realize that clueless HR departments who use pieces of paper in place of a demonstration of competence to be a fundamental structural problem that prevents them from hiring the most capable employees.

And if you’re genuinely capable, doesn’t it make more sense to pick up a piece of paper from an Internet paper mill for a few hundred dollars instead of blowing four years to get a more recognizable piece of paper?

St. Paul of the Good Fraters indulges in some righteous Schadenfreude:

If it’s one thing I hate, it’s sports guys popping off about politics. I read sports as a refuge from the constant conservative beat down that is the front page and most MSM political reporting. Plus sports guys typically don’t know squat about anything besides sports. They’re idiots, only feeling the need to talk about politics because they’re bored with a job that typically takes them about 1 hour per day to finish up. And finally, they’re always Democrats…

The Celtics FALL 3 positions to number 5, out of the Durant/Oden jackpot! Take that Simmons! It will be a pleasure to read his suffering for at least another half decade of Celtic futility. My work here is done.

I quite like the Sports Guy, and I like Dr. Z and Peter King, but the way they all occasionally take shots at the Republican Party is both annoying and unprofessional. And I’m no Republican.

Keep politics off the sports page.

Are there any regulars here who attended the academy? I’m interested in obtaining a description of the course program for the four years there. I’m also interested in knowing how pilots are sorted into their various occupations.

Mara Liasson poses a stumper:

Critics of the bill as amnesty have to answer the question, What would you do with all the illegal immigrants here if you’re not going to deport them all?

Um, deport them all. I find it amusing that the anti-American pro-migrationists continue to assume that no one wants to deport them all. There’s certainly a lot more people that want to deport every single illegal alien – and possibly more than a few of the legal ones – then want to continue occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate a single-issue anti-migration party. Once America is assured of remaining America, we can then argue over what America should do. Because otherwise, Republicans and Democrats are opening up the discussion to Mexicans and a myriad of other alien voices.