Friday, August 24, 2012

Welcoming Our New Immigrant Overlords

The Gazette reports on "Welcoming Michigan", yet another outlet propagandizing us to welcome our new immigrant overlords.

Welcoming Michigan looks to refocus the conversation on immigration; create an immigrant-friendly environment

The group pushes a bunch of misleading statistics on immigration's effect on the economy. It is certainly true that more immigration will grow the economy, simply because there are more people. But that does not mean that individuals are better off. In particular, there is essentially no benefit to American citizens.

While some immigrants do create businesses, those who do are quite atypical, as I have pointed out before.
It is true that some immigrants come to America, start businesses, and create jobs. You know what those immigrants have in common? They aren't from the Third World. The three examples Snyder cites were Dutch, Armenian, and Canadian. Michiganders who oppose more immigration aren't upset about Canadian immigration (well, other than Granholm).

Meanwhile, most of America's immigrants continue to come from the Third World, particularly Latin American, particularly Mexico. Why didn't Snyder cite all the big Mexican-founded corporations in Michigan? Wait, there aren't any?
The early commenters were not very sympathetic. Recently, eight commenters have repeated the same sentence. It's as if the pro-immigration commenters are part of a cult.

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