A Colombian Tradition Comes to NJ

An article earlier this week in the Record of Northern NJ ("Stupidity on Wheels") mentioned that Bergen County police pulled over a multicolored bus after they saw debris being thrown out the windows of the bus, causing drivers of other cars to swerve. The bus, it turned out, was outfitted with a dance floor, deejay booth, and bar, and was full of high school students for Morristown partying after their prom. A Record column today by Mike Kelly explains the origin of this tradition:

The bus, owned by La Chiva Way, is a “chiva” – a term that describes rolling party buses that are common in rural Columbia. The firm’s website advertises itself as the “best party on wheels.”

Kelly also notes an immigration angle to this story:

A few hours later, the phone range at the home of Diana Mejia, a Morristown-based immigration advocate. The caller was one of the students on the bus – and here the story takes an intriguing turn.

Mejia says the student – and others who called later — were not so much concerned about the penalty for underage drinking, though Mejia adds that the students said they did not drink. Rather, Mejia said the students worried that the attention from the prom bus might lead police to discover that some of their relatives in Morristown were illegal immigrants.

Many of the students, were from Morristown’s burgeoning Latino community, said Mejia, who works the American Friends Service Committee and the Wind of the Spirit immigration group.

“Some of the kids may be documented,” said Mejia, using a term that refers to a person’s immigration status. “But their parents may not be. Remember, these are mixed families.”

The photo above, of disc jockey Ricardo Silva, left, of Jackson Heights, N.Y., and party bus promoter Jean Balcazar of College Point, N.Y., waiting to be called in municipal court in Hackensack, accompanied Mike Kelly's column online and is credited to Elizabeth Lara of the Record. The two men were smiling in the photo of them that accompanied Kelly's column in the dead tree edition of the paper today.

Lesson's from The European Parliament Elections

I meant to post a link to this earlier this week, but didn't get around to it. From Salon, here is Michael Lind's take on the victory of rightist parties across Europe in the European Parliament elections last week: "A warning for Democrats? The right just won all across Europe, thanks to nationalism, populism and recession. It could happen here too.".

Below is an excerpt from Lind's essay, followed by a few thoughts by me.

[I]t has become something of an orthodoxy among bien pensant progressives on both sides of the Atlantic that territorial nation-states are immoral because they privilege the identity of one cultural nation over others (the nation part) and because they favor the well-being of their citizens over foreigners who may be poorer (the territorial state part). Most progressives favor ending agricultural subsidies in Europe and the U.S., claiming that this would help poor peasant farmers in the global South export their way to prosperity (of course this would really benefit multinational agribusiness, not romanticized peasant farmers, but never mind). In debates about immigration, as in debates about trade, elite progressives whose own positions and incomes are secure frequently demonstrate their altruism by suggesting that it is acceptable if immigration somewhat lowers the wages of their less-fortunate fellow nationals, as long as poor foreign immigrants and receivers of remittances are thereby made better off. How generous of them!

The new pro-capitalist, anti-nationalist center-left finds allies in investment banks and college campuses but has little to offer ordinary people who view the nation-state as their agent and protector in a dangerous world. Nobody should be surprised when, in a period of economic crisis, significant parts of the population should turn to unabashed nationalists of the right, as opposed to progressives who fret that helping out their fellow citizens might be a form of discrimination against more deserving foreigners. It's true that toxic forms of racism and illiberal nationalism drive the anti-immigrant politics of the far-right parties that have benefited from protest voting in Europe. But the economic case for limiting the inflow of new workers into an economy at a time of mass unemployment is likely to seem commonsensical to many non-racist voters who do not share the new center-left's unease with national patriotism.

Lind makes some astute observations here, and Republicans can draw some lessons from this if they are willing to part company with Democrats on some of their shared orthodoxies (e.g., embrace of large scale unskilled immigration). The way to do this would be to acknowledge the challenges posed by globalization to the American middle class and offer some constructive solutions. In a recent post ("How Not to Create Broad-Based Prosperity"), we mentioned one Democrat (Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress) who acknowledged these challenges but didn't offer constructive solutions to them (e.g., Miller's proposed replacement for manufacturing jobs lost to outsourcing was to replace them with service jobs such as hospice aids; Miller proposed this without acknowledging the extent to which these jobs are currently filled by immigrant workers). I've made these points before, but two specific areas where Republicans can draw a contrast with Democrats are on immigration policy and energy policy.

On immigration policy, Republicans would be smart to buck the Chamber of Commerce's demands for cheap unskilled immigrant labor and advocate a transition to an immigration system similar to those of Australia or Canada, one that selects for immigrants with high levels of human capital. While unemployment is high, immigration should perhaps be further limited to foreign entrepreneurs who have the capital and intent to start businesses here and create jobs for American workers. To counter the inevitable accusations that anyone advocating an economically rational immigration policy is advocating it because of racism, Republicans ought to do two things. First, they ought to scrupulously distance themselves from anyone who advocates restricting immigration based on race. Racist immigration restrictionists may win elections in Europe, but they will be the kiss of death to any plans to institute a Canadian- or Australian-style immigration policy in America. Second, Republicans ought to point out that it is often minorities who are most harmed by the effects of our current immigration system. Let Democrats explain why we should import more unskilled immigrant laborers when, for example, 39.4% of African American teens are unemployed (Hat tip to Dr. Mark Perry for the chart below).



On energy policy, Republicans would be smart to continue advocating efforts to develop more domestic sources of oil, gas, and coal, while advocating an increase in nuclear power as well. Increasing domestic supplies of energy would create more high-paying jobs in the energy sector, and ensuring a large supply of relatively inexpensive energy would facilitate the creation of jobs in energy-intensive industries such as manufacturing (we noted the effect of lower energy prices on employment in a post last fall, "A Tale of Two States: Utah versus Rhode Island").

A third area where (some) Republicans may be able to draw a favorable contrast with Democrats, if they are willing to do so, is by running against Wall Street, or more accurately, running against the incestuous relationship between some major Wall Street firms and Washington. I suspect New Jersey's GOP gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie will try a version of this while running against our incumbent governor, former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. Republicans would be smart to look for economic advisers from among the smart bankers and investors who haven't required government rescues. I don't know what John Hussman's politics are, but to the extent his policy prescriptions (e.g., making big banks eat some losses) have been ignored by the current administration, I bet Dr. Hussman would welcome a chance to advise a Republican candidate willing to listen to him. Another potential economic adviser might be Andy Beal, the self-made billionaire Texas banker who successfully navigated the credit bust.

Former Mexican Foreign Minister's Call for Amnesty Gets Cool Response from NY Times Readers

In an op/ed piece in the New York Times earlier this week, former Foreign Minister of Mexico (and current NYU professor) Jorge Castañeda called on Barack Obama to suspend efforts to enforce laws against illegal immigration ("Call Off The Immigrant Hunt"). Yesterday the Times published four letters in response to Castañeda's op/ed (and to a related editorial), and three of those four letters opposed Castañeda's view (the fourth letter, from a Hudson Institute fellow, objected to the Times editors' characterization of the Bush administration as hostile to open borders, noting that President Bush had tried to get an amnesty policy passed). Below are excerpts from the first three letters ("Ways to Discourage Illegal Immigration").

From Alma Suzin Flesch, of New York, NY:

Without disagreeing with Professor Castañeda’s plea for more humane treatment of illegal immigrants, I would like to ask what he did while he was a member of the Mexican cabinet to improve the economic lot of his people and so stem the tide of illegal immigration into the United States.

From Christopher Brigham, of Somerville, MA:

We must support our government’s efforts to finally enforce our immigration laws. At a time of rising unemployment and financial uncertainty, we must protect United States workers from the wage competition brought on by mass immigration.

With state and local budgets stretched beyond repair, we cannot continue to provide benefits for anyone who wants to sneak into the country. If we want to create a sustainable society, we must recognize that there are limits to the number of people we can employ, house, feed and provide health care for.

From David C. Holzman, of Lexington, MA:

Jorge G. Castañeda, the former foreign minister of Mexico, should worry more about the mess in his own country than about United States policy toward illegal immigrants.

Mexico is actually relatively wealthy by world standards and used to have a substantial middle class, but corruption has changed that. In fact, our crackdown on illegal immigrants, which Mr. Castañeda opposes, might help Mexico deal with these problems.

Why? Because those who are willing to risk so much to sneak across the border are the same people who would be most likely to push for change in their own country should we continue to eliminate the incentives for them to come here.

By functioning as a safety valve, we are enabling our southern neighbor’s bad policies.

These three New York Times readers -- blue state residents all -- probably represent numerous other letter writers with similar opinions whose letters weren't published by the Times. This is worth remembering next time one reads an op/ed column advising the GOP that the way back from the political wilderness is to embrace an open borders policy welcoming unlimited unskilled immigration from south of the border (as if the GOP candidate in November's election weren't the most zealous advocate of such a policy). In fact, there are three reasons why this is a perfect time to advocate a more rational immigration policy, one similar to the policies of Canada or Australia, that seeks to attract immigrants with high levels of human capital.

First, with the bursting of the housing bubble, there is little demand for unskilled labor in the construction industry. Second, with the incoming Obama administration planning a massive stimulus which will include infrastructure spending, it would be better for that infrastructure work to go to Americans, who will spend most of their salaries at home (hopefully, creating a multiplier effect) than to illegal immigrants who will send much of their salaries to their countries of origin. Third, since the Obama administration plans to expand entitlement programs, including those that provide access to free or subsidized health care, it makes sense to limit immigration primarily to those immigrants with high levels of human capital who will tend to pay more in taxes than they will consume in government benefits.

Samuel Huntington Passes Away

Harvard Political Scientist Samuel Huntington passed away last week at the age of 81. Prompted by his passing, RealClearPolitics links to a reprint of Huntington's famously prescient Foreign Affairs essay from 1993, The Clash of Civilizations. In 1996, Huntington published a book expanded from that article, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order". In an Atantic article on Huntington from 2001 ("Looking the World in the Eye" -- the Atlantic re-posted this on its website in response to the news of Huntington's passing), Robert Kaplan summarizes some of the themes of this book:

In the book that emerged from his article, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Huntington offered a wealth of other insights. He showed that whereas the West has generated ideologies, the East has generated religions—and explained that religion is now the more menacing force on the international scene. He pointed out, counterintuitively, that because communism was a Central European ideology, the Soviet Union was philosophically closer to the West than is the Eastern Orthodox Russia that has succeeded it. He reminded us that the Cold War was a fleeting event compared with the age-old struggle between the West and Islam. In the Middle Ages, Muslim armies advanced through Iberia as far as France, and through the Balkans as far as the gates of Vienna. A similar process of advance, demographically rather than militarily, is now under way in Europe. "The dangerous clashes of the future," Huntington wrote, "are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic [Chinese] assertiveness."

The rest of Kaplan's article is worth reading.

Neither RealClearPolitics nor The Atlantic mentions an article Huntington wrote for Foreign Policy in 2004, "The Hispanic Challenge". In his preface to that article, Huntington wrote:

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant¹ values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.

¹On the first page of this essay, Huntington elaborates:

Would the United States be the country that it has been and that it largely remains today if it had been settled in the 17th and 18th centuries not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is clearly no. It would not be the United States; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.

A Brazilian once actually made a similar point to me a few years ago. During a vacation to Brazil I had scheduled a couple of business meetings, the second of which was at the Rio de Janeiro branch of a U.S.-based brokerage. In conversation with the office manager, it came up that a friend and I had visited the old colonial port city of Paraty on our way up from São Paulo. The manager explained the history of the town to me, that it had been the port from which the minerals mined from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais ("General Mining") were shipped back to Portugal. Then he went on to contrast the difference between the original settlers of what became the U.S. with the original settlers of Brazil: "You had a higher quality of settlers," he said. "Yours -- Puritans -- came to build. Ours came to take". Of course in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Brazil attracted some of the same sort of immigrants that the U.S. did, including Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews, and Japanese (Brazil today has the largest ethnic Japanese population outside of Japan).