Notes
1 Ezra Klein, “Bernie Sanders: The Vox Conversation,” Vox, July 28, 2015.
2 Jeffrey Miron, “Forget the Wall Already, It’s Time for the U.S. to Have Open Borders,” USA Today, July 31, 2018.
3 Sam Bowman, “Immigration Restrictions Make Us Poorer,” Adam Smith Institute, April 13, 2011.
4 Grover G. Norquist, “Samuel Gompers versus Reagan,” American Spectator, Sept. 25, 2013.
5 Bhaskar Sunkara, “What’s Your Solution to Fighting Sexism and Racism? Mine Is: Unions,” Guardian, Sept. 1, 2018.
6 David L. Wilson, “Marx on Immigration,” Monthly Review, Feb. 1, 2017.
7 David Bacon, “Globalization and nafta Caused Migration from Mexico,” People’s World, Oct. 15, 2014.
8 Gustavo López, Kristen Bialik, and Jynnah Radford, “Key Findings about U.S. Immigrants,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 14, 2018.
9 Kate Tulenko, “Countries without Doctors?,” Foreign Policy, June 11, 2010.
10 Jason Hickel, “Aid in Reverse: How Poor Countries Develop Rich Countries,” Guardian, Jan. 14, 2017.
11 “Immigration, DACA, Congress, and Compromise,” Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2017.
12 Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny, “Do State Work Eligibility Verification Laws Reduce Unauthorized Immigration?,” IZA Journal of Migration 5, no. 5 (December 2016).
13 Dan Wheat, “Ag Groups Split over Latest House Labor Bill,” Capital Press, July 17, 2018.
14 George Borjas, “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers,” Politico, September/October 2016.
15 Borjas.
16 Chris Matthews, “What’s Important about the Clinton Campaign’s Leaked Emails on Free Trade,” Fortune, Oct. 11, 2016.
17 Krishnadev Calamur, “Why Norwegians Aren’t Moving to the U.S.,” Atlantic, Jan. 12, 2018.
18 Tracy Jan, “Trump Isn’t Pushing Hard for This One Popular Way to Curb Illegal Immigration,” Washington Post, May 22, 2018.
18 Tracy Jan, “Trump Isn’t Pushing Hard for This One Popular Way to Curb Illegal Immigration,” Washington Post, May 22, 2018.
Angela Nagle writes for the Atlantic, Jacobin, the Irish Times, and the Baffler. She is the author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Zero Books, 2017).
This is an excellent article at a crucial time, and makes the broad points I’ve been struggling to articulate for years in a very readable way.
ReplyDeleteWhenever you hear words to the effect of “doing jobs the British/ Irish won’t do” you need to mentally add on “for that rate of pay”, there few jobs people won’t do for the appropriate level of compensation.
We have the right to long for a society that is more than just an ever increasing talent pool for business to draw from, that sees nature as more than just a resource to harvest. The economy should serve our needs, not the other way around.
The irish times will hate this.They moan about housing costs that have increased by seven hundred percent cent in Dublin post 1990,yet they worship immigration. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteRonan, enough time has elapsed now for the public to assess the competency and basic trustworthiness of those whose opinions the Times pushes. We don’t need to read fake opinion polls to tell us what the rest of our peers are (allegedly) thinking on a given issue either, we can see for ourselves across social media, the truth cartels power is broken.
ReplyDeleteBut those who join the dots for the public are unpersoned, banned from not just media platforms but even banking services. This is why a raft of repressive speech legislation is on its way to the West too, at some point we have to gauge that all this is more harmful than being an (alleged) racist/xenophobe.
Great article: Since when did supporting the wholesale denuding of non-western economies of the fit abled bodied populations become "anti-racist progressivisism"?
ReplyDeleteWicklow resident who lived in the Middle East to FG over Direct Plantation
ReplyDelete“You have no idea what’s coming”
Others equally angry:
https://mobile.twitter.com/gearoidmurphy_/status/1071107174716325888/video/1
Here's a view from the United States where we struggle daily with the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America. First off, despite the dire warnings that our Spanish speaking neighbors are "degenerates" and "rapists" intent on "poisoning our children with their drugs" (which the children and their parents want), the vast majority of them, especially those braving the crossing with "coyotes" in the deserts above Chihuahua, are amiable, hardworking people. Simple conversations with them will make this abundantly clear.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that many American employers do exploit the cheap labor of illegals and in the process drive down wages, there really are jobs most Americans "will not do" (e.g. roofing, gardening, picking fruit, and mucking out stalls to name a few). Even if these jobs provided a decent wage and health care, only a tiny fraction of multi-generational Americans would take them. This refusal cuts across racial lines.
The article justifiably criticizes those facile solutions to our porous borders offered by both the left and right. Open borders would only lead to chaos and further resentment on the part of those susceptible to demagoguery. Separating children from their families, on the other hand, is only one step from Sophie's Choice. As for the wall, the blunt and humorous reactions
of Vincente Fox, a former president of Mexico, say it all. Nagle's article does not have the space to deal with the endemic corruption and economic dysfunction of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. An examination of Spanish colonial history and its hacienda system is the place to begin when trying to understand the inability of Hispanic nations to create robust economies that retain rather than export labor.
Thanks to Angela for allowing TPQ to feature this piece. Thanks also to Alfie Gallagher - my great Left libertarian buddy -for drawing my attention to it.
ReplyDeleteThe totalitarians have been hurling a lot of abuse Angela's way for it so when that happens we instinctively sense that there is something worthwhile reading in a piece, and what is being threatened by it is the arrogance and sense of entitlement of the totalitarians who feel they should decide what we read. And there is a lot worthwhile in this piece. A piece is no less good because there might be ideas in it that we do not agree with: they can be the best pieces, forcing us to think and recalibrate positions.
There is a great piece scheduled for 1700 this evening by James Quigley on the situation in Moville. He too has been gratuitously labelled a racist for having the temerity to raise concerns from the perspective of local democracy.
AM, one of the saddening aspects of this area of debate is the utter refusal of open borders advocates to accept there is a counter to their position that isn’t automatically racist. If they do not accept debate on this (shouting racist at people isn’t debate) , then any sane person who values his local environment should automatically oppose Direct Plantation, since the introduction of small numbers (relative to Island, huge relative to their villages) will leverage the fault lines in society disproportionately, effectively turning half the country against the other half, why should the Irish not advocate for things that benefit them at this vulnerable point in time?
ReplyDeleteCasino bankers of culture rings more true every passing day.
Again, brilliant article, an energy that Republicans should be exploring.
AM
ReplyDeleteWhat is Left Libertarianism? Isn't that oxymoronic given the onus on the left to create a socialistic safety net while libertarians, at least in the United States, contend they want less government and less regulation? The two seem to bang heads. In an ironic twist, the supposedly libertarian senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul (he who got beat up by his neighbor in Bowling Green over some yard clippings), wanted everyone on the White House staff to take a lie detector test after the sleeper cell declaration in The New York Times. That doesn't sound very hands off. Dang Rand. The senator also thinks it's a good idea to give Kentucky teachers guns to ward off arsenal fans (not the London kind) and bad hombres. Guns in desks, hmm, what could go wrong? Anyway, what's this Left Libertarianism?
Michael - I am not going to do the work for you on this one!!
ReplyDeleteGoogle Marxist Libertarianism/left libertarianism - read David Held's Models of Democracy - you will find enough there to address your curiosity.
AM
ReplyDeleteThanks a bunch, it's off to work I'll go. And yes you were right, SAY NOTHING is hard to put down. My tired eyes are burning.
Michael - I just blogged a review of Say Nothing
ReplyDeleteI thought Angela's article was a worthy, well-reasoned exploration of an important issue. Personally, I am sympathetic to arguments in favour of the open borders. Indeed, as an eventual end-goal in a world that is fair and equal, I think open borders would be desirable. However, the problem is that right now, all things in the global economy are manifestly unequal. Therefore, I think the people who shout "Open the borders now!" focus on a symptom of this problem rather than on its cause.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the key question is not whether there is a case for open borders, but rather in what context would it be implemented. Given the current weakness of the left and the trade union movement in the Western world, I think open borders would merely entrench the bargaining power of big business, alienate low-wage workers, and even worse, give further stimulus to the nationalist far-right.
From my reading, Angela Nagle's article is neither anti-immigrant nor anti-immigration. She merely puts forward a position that is no different to the policies advocated by Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. However, Angela has received an incredibly hostile reaction from the ever-irrelevant Twitter Left, which seems appalled that a socialist writer would deign to expose their empty posturing. To paraphrase Norman Finkelstein, left-wing politics ought to be about reaching masses of people in order to achieve the most enlightened, progressive goal possible. But if it becomes more about irrelevant sanctimony and fervent hostility to internal dissent, then it's just another cult.
AM & Alfie
ReplyDeleteIreland and the United States face different immigration hurdles, but as you've both noted, Angela Nagle confronts the idea of open borders in a clear-minded and sensible way. She takes on the complexity of the Gordian Knot with the intelligence and submission to imperfection demonstrated by past American administrations. Whacking the knot, Trump of course is a would-be Alexander without the physical courage and strategic brilliance. Trump's delight in caging children and demanding Mexico pay for a fantasy are not quite akin to Tyre, Gaugamela, and the march to India. Frankly, the lover of all hues Norwegian doesn't have a clue about how to deal with immigration.
So I've done a little reading on Left-Libertarianism (not afraid to admit my ignorance) and find the concept extremely attractive. Boiled down, it seems to stress that small is beautiful, that the state is dangerous, especially the big nation state. Decentralization and common ownership or management of resources definitely have their appeal. I can see how the desire for states rights (the post-Civil War version divorced from slavery) in the United States and even Éire Nua are in league with Left-Libertarianism. The former is paradoxical given its association with the the Republican Party (GOP) and its grandiose nationalism (mega MAGA). Ireland seems a perfect place for Left-Libertarianism to flourish. The United States, on the other hand, will continue to have an unresolvable conflict between federal and local authority, its unmanageable size and global manipulation forever frustrating the simple fruits of something like Left-Libertarianism.
I suppose the following shows the effect of drawing talent out of societies for use elsewhere.
ReplyDeletehttps://electronicintifada.net/content/chasing-dreams-outside-gazas-walls/26286