January 24, 2014

U.S. border unenforceable, but Detroit's 8 Mile Road is airtight

To encourage other Americans to move to Detroit would be racist, so the white Republican governor of Michigan is attempting to elect a new people in Detroit by demanding from the Obama Administration special visas for immigrants to Detroit, whom it would be racist to question. 

From the New York Times:
Immigrants Seen as Way to Refill Detroit Ranks 
By MONICA DAVEY 
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan on Thursday announced plans to seek federal help in bringing 50,000 immigrants to the bankrupt city over five years as part of a visa program aimed at those with advanced degrees or exceptional abilities in science, business or the arts. 
Under the plan, which is expected to be formally submitted to federal authorities soon, immigrants would be required to live and work in Detroit ...

We are constantly told that the U.S. border, unlike say the Finnish or Israeli border, is impossible to enforce. Yet 8 Mile Road, the northern municipal boundary of Detroit, is apparently seeded with landmines or something because nobody seems to wonder how the new visa-holders will somehow be corralled permanently in Detroit instead of quickly moving to Birmingham, MI or Ann Arbor or San Diego or some other place in the U.S. nicer than Detroit.
 

50 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-workers/employment-based-immigration-second-preference-eb-2

It's high skill immigration. It doesn't matter where they go, and such people follow the visa rules more than unskilled laborers.

Reg Cæsar said...

…aimed at those with advanced degrees or
exceptional abilities in science, business or the arts.


Disparate impact, anyone?

Anonymous said...

No people smuggler boats in 5 weeks. We were told this could not be done.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/no-boat-in-five-weeks-vindicates-prime-ministers-tactics/story-fni0cx4q-1226809046328

An election or two and we'll have porous borders again.

Anonymous said...

Where does an engineer get an engineering job in Detroit?

or does the governor think that engineers build rockets in their garages with skittles

Uncle Peregrine said...

The Birmingham MI link to the links is nice, but Detroit probably looked pretty good in 1961, too.

Anonymous said...

Frank Venegas is chief executive and chairman of the Ideal Group, a family-owned manufacturing and construction company where the governor made Thursday's announcement.

Venegas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, said Snyder's proposals would benefit the struggling city and the company he started in 1979, which has grown to incorporate several subsidiaries and annual revenue of more than $200 million.

"We're the greatest country in the world. Why can't we attract some of the greatest people in the world from different countries?"

Anonymous said...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2013/12/08/chinas-newest-city-we-call-it-detroit/

http://nypost.com/2013/12/04/mysterious-plans-to-build-upstate-ny-china-city-of-america/

If China ever has the kind of emigration rate that Mexico has, it'll be game over for Australia and North America. They're already a very visible minority, now imagine 25% emigrating, as happened with Mexicans.

Anonymous said...

The whole mad, crazy, scheme calls to mind the phrase "throwing christians to the lions", except there'll be hardly a christian amongst them, but you know the whole human sacrifice idea, the idea of throwing 'live bait' to wild animals.
Stomach churningly horrible.

PropagandistHacker said...

Head 'em up, move 'em out, keep those immigrants moving...to america....


Hell bent for leather, any kind of weather...immigrating till the end of the line....



This story is a great example of the "america as a livestock operation" meme that I find useful.

America is being operated by the elite as a livestock operation. We are human cattle, not citizens.

The more human cattle the elite can cram into america, the more their profits, the higher home prices go, the lower wages go, the higher retailer revenues go, the higher GDP goes.

More workers, more consumers, more workers, more consumers.

Mo' money, mo money, mo money....

Growth Uber Alles!
GDP Uber Alles!

More more MOAR immigrants!

It's a ponzi scheme....

What is the "end of the line"? Is it 'turtles all the way down'?

peak Emma Lazarus said...

I enjoyed the way WSJ's Taranto blog handled this one-- linking to the source hed/title "Snyder Wants to Attract 50,000 Immigrants to Bankrupt Detroit" under the caption: "But It's Already Bankrupt"

Anonymous said...

Immigrating into 8 Mile? Seems like a job for Snake Plissken.

Black Death said...

Snyder is the former chairman of the board of Gateway, so it's not surprising he favors lots of highly skilled immigrants. He's also running for reelection this year, so he wants lots of low-skilled fruit pickers to shore up his standing with the farmers. There's nothing new here.

Cail Corishev said...

So now our indentured servants will not only be tied to their masters -- er, employers -- but they'll have to live on designated reservations as well?

It's too bad we don't have a major political party or media outlet that opposes mass immigration. It would be SO easy to explain this stuff to the populace and shoot it down, if virtually everyone with a megaphone weren't pushing it.

Hunsdon said...

leftist conservative said: America is being operated by the elite as a livestock operation. We are human cattle, not citizens.

Hunsdon said: Human cattle? Cattle? Why you gotta go all anti-Semitic like that, bro? Don't you know it's an ancient hoary anti-Semitic trope that goyim means cattle?

Harry Baldwin said...

Doesn't this sort of proposal acknowledge that there's something wrong with the people who currently live in Detroit--those people who we are often told "built this country"? I guess as long as you don't notice the acknowledgment you're okay.

Billionaires must love this plan. Michael Bloomberg put it out three years ago:

POLITICO Live:
May 01, 2011

Bloomberg: Let immigrants in... to Detroit

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a solution to the nation's immigration problem: Let immigrants come to the United States... "as long as they agree to live in Detroit."

Bloomberg, the mayor of America's largest city, believes the federal government has an immigration problem and that Detroit has a people problem — "half the population has left; you've got to do something about that" — so why not flash some of that American ingenuity and kill two birds with one stone?

"If I were the federal government, assuming we could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five to 10 years, start businesses, take jobs or whatever," Bloomberg said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"You would populate Detroit overnight because half the world wants to come here," Bloomberg said of the continued appeal of living within the United States, yet implying perhaps Detroit is not the most desirable new home town.


slumber_j said...

"Yet 8 Mile Road, the northern municipal boundary of Detroit, is apparently seeded with landmines or something because nobody seems to wonder how the new visa-holders will somehow be corralled permanently in Detroit..."

C'mon, Steve, you're a smart guy: think!! Obviously, you just bring in some other, perhaps less-skilled immigrants to man the border in armed patrols.

It's immigrants all the way down.

Anonymous said...

I sense the hand of Bloomberg. He was going on about immigrants can revive Detroit. Isn't there already a Mexicantown in Detroit?

Also why don't they implement a modern homestead act for Detroit? If folks can get a cheap house to raise their families you might get enough takers to rehab a few sections of the city.

Chicago said...

Those high skilled immigrants with advanced degrees will be shackled and micro-chipped to make sure they don't try to escape Detroit? Guns will be pointed at their heads while their keepers snarl 'produce, or else'? What is the IQ of this Snyder person or what kind of drug is he taking? We don't need them furriners anyway, not when universal pre-K kicks in and starts cranking out home grown geniuses like so many conveyor-belt pizzas. Then we'll be trying to export our surplus of eggheads.

David said...

>the lower wages go, the higher retailer revenues go<

'Splain.

Anonymous said...

This has the seed of a good idea in it. We should modify it to be the path to citizenship they keep trying to push. That would be an amnesty with some benefit to the US. Move to the city of Detroit and enroll at least one child in Detroit public school system and your lease and enrollment form get any direct family members a work visa and citizenship after five years of continuous residence. Detroit has Mexican town and another 300K would bring the population back up around 1 million. I would add another 100K each for Chinese and Indian nationals with the same rules just to add some diversity that the path to citizenship crowd loves so much. Pass this through the house and enjoy the show as Harry and Barry respond to it.

Anonymous said...

Silly me, I was unaware that we have a shortage of people in the United States. 320 million is just not enough. How did we get by without them previously?

I guess we do have a shortage of electrical engineers willing to work for $30,000 a year, so the high tech firms are demanding immigrants. Construction firms have a tough time finding skilled tradesmen willing to work dirt cheap too, so they are demanding immigrants. And of course Democrats need more voters, as liberals tend to not have many children. Everyone wins except the tax paying citizens.

Anonymous said...

The next few years will be all about whether GOP elites and the far left can join together to push America past the third-world tipping point BEFORE the vast sleeping giant of Americans fully wakes up to the enemy within.

TGGP said...

My understanding is that they are not increasing the total quantity of visas, but allocating more of them toward Detroit.

Something like half of illegal immigrants are those who've overstayed their visas. There should be more attention paid to enforcing visa requirements.

Anonymous said...

"If China ever has the kind of emigration rate that Mexico has, it'll be game over for Australia and North America. They're already a very visible minority, now imagine 25% emigrating, as happened with Mexicans."

You forgot about Sub-Saharan Africa. Their population currently is about one billion. I am afraid to even think about the projections in the upcoming years.

europeasant

Anonymous said...

People who want to go and live in Detroit must be NOTICING something that blocks them.

Godzilla?

Anonymous said...

I take it that this is the PC way to say that Detroit has too many Black people?

syon

Miguel S. said...

Lesson from Detroit: the solution to the problem of Mexican immigration is make America 82.7% African.

Whiskey said...

Doubling down on idiocy.

countenance said...

Oh boy, this combines Rand Paul's two favorite things in the whole wide world: Detroit and green cards.

I suppose the answer to your question is that the Detroit visa will stipulate that the visa holder must reside in the city limits of Detroit. But the Federal courts would probably strike that down, based on some combination of uniform immigration laws and/or interstate commerce.

Anonymous said...

Why would they want to leave Detroit? The city is wide open for entrepreneurship and innovation. Any immigrant willing to work could move in there and make a fortune overnight. They will restore Detroit to its glory days.

albino bobb said...

What if transsexual Syrian STEM majors figured out how to fix black people? Would that justify long form treatment in The New Yorker?

Anonymous said...

Not mentioned in the NYT article, but this is what Dan Gilbert (Quicken Loans) wants. He owns most of the office building space and prospective apartment space in Detoilet and wants to get them filled. Birmingham and Bloomfield are safe from the blacks, though, as there isn't anything affordable to them in those burbs. Southfield, Wayne, Westland, not so lucky. Don't knock Snyder for trying. Detoilet is a can that has been kicked down the road since the late 60s. Snyder is the first to make any tough decisions about the Beirut/Baghdad of the West.

upton sinclair said...

"This story is a great example of the "america as a livestock operation" meme that I find useful.

America is being operated by the elite as a livestock operation. We are human cattle, not citizens.

The more human cattle the elite can cram into america, the more their profits, the higher home prices go, the lower wages go, the higher retailer revenues go, the higher GDP goes."

I fear you are right. I would not have believed it even 10 years ago.

Anonymous said...

while wearing hoodies

Anonymous said...

I take it that this is the PC way to say that Detroit has too many Black people?

Yes, basically. What they want are non-blacks to move in, but they can't recruit Americans because that would be "racist", but they can recruit immigrants because immigrants are a protected class.

jailhouse rock said...

Lotsa funny and interesting comments about the various hidden agenda here, not excluding outright plain idiocy of course, but Chicago 6:58 makes a good point about World War Pre-K: how does one square that new panacea against economists' sage advice that importing immigrants is the only way to unbankrupt a given disaster zone? Are the post-pre-K geniuses supposed to leave the U.S., like for a sabbatical, and then re-naturalize at a later date? There's no way to reconcile the two, unless you just accept it's all horse manure and that no policy is ever pushed for whatever public interest was avowed to the media.

Anonymous said...

Oddly the large third world Arab immigration to Dearborn, which borders Detroit, has not spilled over into Detroit. Now if Arab Muslims don't have the asabiyyah to live somewhere, who does?

Anonymous said...

--
Related to Detroit...

Ive started to wonder if what's bad for the good old USA may be good for the bad old CSA.

Isn't it in their/our interest to reduce the black percentage of these states once and for all? Or at least drive the total population up to a point where they can't define the entire region? NC, GA, TX, and FL have sort of done that.

While the “browning” of America moves most states one way on the spectrum, it moves us in the other.



Anonymous said...

Ive started to wonder if what's bad for the good old USA may be good for the bad old CSA.


Isn't it in their/our interest to reduce the black percentage of these states once and for all?


No, not if they do it by increasing the percentage of brown voters.

While the “browning” of America moves most states one way on the spectrum, it moves us in the other.


Texas, and many other states in the south, will soon be reliable Democrat strongholds thanks to all their wonderful Hispanics. You're moving the wrong way on the spectrum.

Anonymous said...

It's a ponzi scheme...

Ah, but leftist conservative, it's not a ponzi scheme if it never ends...

Bert said...

Immigrants don't generally move to areas with no jobs.

Super duper doo said...

The Chinese are buying up Detroit en masse.

From what I understand they don't know what they're getting into, just 'American home for less than the price of a pair of shoes' seemed too good to pass up.

Ironically, they may just yet wind up dumb-lucking themselves into a windfall. If there were only a few doing this, they would be screwed out of their cash but get enough doing this, and they may have enough coverage of a region of a town to exclude the bad neighbors.

It may also be a different ballgame for them. If someone committed a crime on the property, you or I would be liable for civil damages if we were owners, but they may just be able to abandon it and stay in China, ignoring the consequences.

notsaying said...

On what basis would we restrict any immigrants to any city? We are not set up that way. Such a law would never make it past the political firestorm of ethnic groups afraid such restrictions would be applied to their people one day.

Would some children of the world's rich rent a $500 or $1000 a month apartment in Detroit -- plus a $3000+ a month apartment in NYC, Boston LA, etc. that they' really live in and would be their true residence?

I'd say they would. What do they have to fear, what do they have to lose? They sure cna't be afraid we'd enforce our own immigration laws, that's for sure.

zog said...

Detroit area whites, a mix of German, Polish, and Appalachians, generally dislike blacks and white southerners equally. Mexicans, Arabs, and Chinese taking over the ghetto suits them quite well, especially as the area's black population migrates to Georgia, NC, and Texas.

zog said...

Notsaying, there are not any 1000 a month apartments in Detroit. you could buy a house for 1000. or you could rent a decrepit Victorian mansion for 400 a month.

a population decline from 2 million to 0.7 million has some very extreme effects on the local rental market.

Anonymous said...

It's true that the UK the government tried to elect a new people but not the true of the USG.

Most Americans don't have a problem with lots of Mexicans in the country. A lot of non-liberal, NYT reading, middle of the country middle class folks see it as alright. You way overestimate the discomfort people have with Mexican immigration.

thirdtwin said...

"...bringing 50,000 immigrants to the bankrupt city over five years as part of a visa program aimed at those with advanced degrees or exceptional abilities in science, business or the arts."

Instead, it will be 50,000 muslims, as the annexation of Destroit by Dearbornistan continues apace.

Anonymous said...

Believe it or not, Detroit or St Louis is better for Mexican immigrants than LA or Houston Texas. I read that the highest wages for Mexican immigrants are in Detroit, St Louis and Poughkeepie NY while La and Houston are lower. So, Steve is wrong Mexicans do better in cities where they are less job competition among them, even if the city is like Detroit its poor.

Anonymous said...

Most Americans don't have a problem with lots of Mexicans in the country. A lot of non-liberal, NYT reading, middle of the country middle class folks see it as alright. You way overestimate the discomfort people have with Mexican immigration.

Well, if California shows the way, that won't last very long. Ignorance abounds, and all that. First hand experience is not the same as "NYT reading".

meanwhile back in reality said...

Republican voters -- NOT Washington-based Republican officeholders and consultants -- from Southern California and Arizona are anti-amnesty, with scattered support from white-collar urban Democrats too. Texas isn't the same, a bit different set of priorities but usually falls in the anti camp, followed by the smaller GOP bases in the smaller states like Utah/Nev/Colo.

No place that was partially Mexicanized in the last century supports huddled-mass importation from the same direction -- even white liberals in San Diego don't want a return to the status quo of the early 80s. But the modern GOP is more influenced by Acela types; it has always been a Midwestern party but they now view the Sun Belt as an albatross. Look at the two Senators from Ariz., you have a think-tank libertoid and an insane coot marching around in a Napoleon costume.