Bryan, you have chosen to build your life in an effectively closed-borders, selective environment, namely George Mason University. A university selects some smart fraction and excludes everyone else. This is certainly true for students and exceptionally true for faculty.
Your university and many others have extremely strong selection for …
Bryan, you have chosen to build your life in an effectively closed-borders, selective environment, namely George Mason University. A university selects some smart fraction and excludes everyone else. This is certainly true for students and exceptionally true for faculty.
Your university and many others have extremely strong selection for youth, intelligence, rule-following, and socio-economic status. I would argue that this selection is central to the recipe for success of a university. Yet, university folk would scream to the high heavens about bigotry if a country ever tried to select people 1/10 as much as any good university does.
I admire you greatly -- you are one of the brightest lights of our age -- but on this topic I find you to be extremely hypocritical.
A university isn't a country. I don't see how this is in any way analogous. If people came here through open borders companies would still selectively hire them and universities would still selectively pick them in the way that you described. A university is also specialized and necessitates that you have a certain skillset to succeed. A country has innumerable jobs that require a large variety of different capabilities. Let's say you let in only people who can be doctors, why is that better than letting in more people who could work construction or do farm work?
Just to pile on, it isn't as though Bryan lives exclusively on the university grounds. He has his own house and all that, and Fairfax county has pretty open immigration relative to the US as a whole. Last I checked they don't even keep out Californians.
Hell, GMU isn't even a private campus. People can just walk on from outside, any time they want, and even enter the buildings during work hours. You don't even need a key card to get into class rooms, and in larger classes the prof probably wouldn't even notice.
Bryan lives in a town in Fairfax that has a lot of zoning to keep the poors out. Relative to Fairfax county its whiter, higher income, and has grown slower than the surrounding area.
A non-student does not have a right to walk around inside the GMU buildings, but that is hardly something that needs to be tightly enforced.
Why?
Fairfax County has the 3rd highest income of the 3000 or so counties in the US, so that's pretty exclusive already. The median home price in Fairfax County is $700,000.
GMU certainly could have strict enforcement of the campus of it ever wanted or needed to. Consider Johns Hopkins University, which has a police force of 200, 117 blue light call stations and 186 CCTV cameras on campus.
It is a whole ecosystem that is separate and distinct from the broader world. An inhabitant of a university ecosystem can live their whole life safe and sequestered from the grittier side of life.
Imagine a city where 100% of the inhabitants are college-educated. That is what a college campus is. Such a city would be extremely unrepresentative of broader society to say the least.
Dear Bryan "I really kinda like my own personal borders really tight, thank you" Caplan --
As I thought about it, something else came to mind: Universities are not like countries where you only have to prove yourself only once. Once you're in, the University can still kick you out. If you can't prove your smarts every semester, or if you can't keep paying a high amount every semester, sayonara! And unless you are among the elite faculty or in a PhD program, it is a pretty good bet than you are gone by age 25, like a girlfriend of Leo DiCaprio.
The extremely strict people-selection policies of universities have some remarkable effects. For example, in my state there is a city with a homicide rate higher that of El Salvador, the most dangerous country in the world. But right in the middle of that city is a special exclusionary zone that admits just 6.5% of applicants and is an oasis of beautiful serenity.
You are conflating public property with private property. Bryan doesn't advocate for the abolition of private property allowing everyone to use everyone's stuff. As for the crime issue, maybe we should deport all the natural citizens and keep the legal and illegal immigrants to reduce it!
All who cross a US border illegally have committed a crime, so open-borders CATO's data is obviously false from the get-go. Not reporting your income to the IRS is another major crime. What is the rate there among those in the country illegally? Half? More? Generally speaking, actual crime rates are unknowable because reporting rates are low for illegal immigrants, obviously. CATO's data is about as legit as a $3 bill.
"deport all the natural citizens" -- Lovely. On what basis? To where? Most of them don't have any other country.
Public property belongs to the citizens of a country. It is not the property of everyone in the world. By your rules, can I be part owner of Norway's sweet, sweet sovereign wealth fund?
Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
Obviously you can't include the fact that they are here illegally in the crime rate statistics or that renders it completely pointless. Someone actually seeking the truth about whether or not they commit more crimes once they are here, as is commonly claimed, wouldn't do that though. They would be interested in seeing whether open borders would lead to more crime, because in that scenario coming here isn't a crime. Only someone trying to rationalize their dogmatic view would argue as you did.
Deport all natural citizens is obviously tongue in cheek. Natural citizens commit more crimes, so if your measure of worthiness for being here is a lack of criminality I guess natural citizens are the first to go!
Public property belongs to the government. We don't own the public property. That's just a nice story they tell you. Try going to any public land and building a house then say that you own it. This is just another ridiculous bad faith argument so I know you don't actually care about the truth.
(1) "Only someone trying to rationalize their dogmatic view would argue as you did."
With all due respect, the extremist position in this conversation is the open-borders view, a view that an extremely small share of people in America espouse. Even very few immigrants espouse that few (just look at the remarkable showing of Trump in the almost entirely Hispanic and heavily Democrat precincts along the Texas-Mexico border), and virtually nobody in Europe holds that view.
That open-borders is the extreme view is not my rhetoric. It's just the statistical reality. Open-borders is openly held only by a few on a far end of the curve. It just so happens that our blog host, the brilliant Bryan Caplan, is the one of the principal advocates of this far-outlier position. I think you have lost sight of how outside of the mainstream this position is.
(2) It is quite relevant if someone began their stay in the United States by breaking the law. That is significant lawbreaking. It happened, even if you choose to ignore it. It shows, at the least, a basic disrespect for US laws.
The rate of taxes paid may be $1500 or so per person which us very low (not including things like sales tax which are unavoidable.)
(3) "if your measure of worthiness for being here is a lack of criminality"
I never said that -- actually, you began by pointing out crime statistics for illegal immigrants. I didn't start that. I merely responded that Cato's data on this is not remotely accurate.
Here is CDC homicide victimization data. Almost all homicide is intra-racial, so this is a proxy for rates of committing homicide by different groups.
Homicide is one crime that almost always gets reported, so it is the one reliable metric for comparison.
But I am only pointing out that Cato's data here is bunk, since you are eager deport Americans who have no country other than this one over bad crime data.
My mention of crime was in a different context: I brought up Baltimore which has a very high crime rate (by citizens, mostly) to point out that a university ecosystem is incredibly detached from the broader world.
My point has been and remains that it really, really hypocritical to argue open borders from within the walled garden of a university campus (or an extremely expensive neighborhood for that matter). (Walled garden doesn't mean there has to be a literal wall around the place.)
(4) Citizens are, in a sense, shareholders of public property, similar to how I am a shareholder of some companies. I obviously can't march into company headquarters of my stocks and do what I want but I am still a minority owner.
The government in the US system is in theory supposed to represent the citizens, as management is in theory supposed to represent shareholders. It doesn't always work out that way -- you get bad governments and bad managements -- but that is the idea anyway. If a company started giving a dividend to non-shareholders, that would be an instant lawsuit that the company would be guaranteed to lose.
Bryan, you have chosen to build your life in an effectively closed-borders, selective environment, namely George Mason University. A university selects some smart fraction and excludes everyone else. This is certainly true for students and exceptionally true for faculty.
Your university and many others have extremely strong selection for youth, intelligence, rule-following, and socio-economic status. I would argue that this selection is central to the recipe for success of a university. Yet, university folk would scream to the high heavens about bigotry if a country ever tried to select people 1/10 as much as any good university does.
I admire you greatly -- you are one of the brightest lights of our age -- but on this topic I find you to be extremely hypocritical.
A university isn't a country. I don't see how this is in any way analogous. If people came here through open borders companies would still selectively hire them and universities would still selectively pick them in the way that you described. A university is also specialized and necessitates that you have a certain skillset to succeed. A country has innumerable jobs that require a large variety of different capabilities. Let's say you let in only people who can be doctors, why is that better than letting in more people who could work construction or do farm work?
Just to pile on, it isn't as though Bryan lives exclusively on the university grounds. He has his own house and all that, and Fairfax county has pretty open immigration relative to the US as a whole. Last I checked they don't even keep out Californians.
Hell, GMU isn't even a private campus. People can just walk on from outside, any time they want, and even enter the buildings during work hours. You don't even need a key card to get into class rooms, and in larger classes the prof probably wouldn't even notice.
Bryan lives in a town in Fairfax that has a lot of zoning to keep the poors out. Relative to Fairfax county its whiter, higher income, and has grown slower than the surrounding area.
A non-student does not have a right to walk around inside the GMU buildings, but that is hardly something that needs to be tightly enforced.
Why?
Fairfax County has the 3rd highest income of the 3000 or so counties in the US, so that's pretty exclusive already. The median home price in Fairfax County is $700,000.
GMU certainly could have strict enforcement of the campus of it ever wanted or needed to. Consider Johns Hopkins University, which has a police force of 200, 117 blue light call stations and 186 CCTV cameras on campus.
So your claim is that Bryan lives in a highly exclusive place that doesn't bother to exclude people? What about it is exclusive then?
And yea, Fairfax Co. is a pretty expensive place, but much like DC, NYC, San Fran, etc. the median is high, but the bottom end is really, really low.
"What about it is exclusive then?"
Did you even read my comment?
"the bottom end is really, really low"
My sides! I honestly can't stop laughing!
Juarez, East St. Louis, Fairfax County, Virginia. Man, I've seen some rough places in my day.
Seriously, I am from around here and have done multiple service projects in West Baltimore. You have no idea what you are talking about.
But the immediate environs of Mason is Fairfax City specifically. Lets have a look:
https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/va/fairfax-city/murder-homicide-rate-statistics
Brutal, just brutal.
A university is not like most companies either.
It is a whole ecosystem that is separate and distinct from the broader world. An inhabitant of a university ecosystem can live their whole life safe and sequestered from the grittier side of life.
Imagine a city where 100% of the inhabitants are college-educated. That is what a college campus is. Such a city would be extremely unrepresentative of broader society to say the least.
Dear Bryan "I really kinda like my own personal borders really tight, thank you" Caplan --
As I thought about it, something else came to mind: Universities are not like countries where you only have to prove yourself only once. Once you're in, the University can still kick you out. If you can't prove your smarts every semester, or if you can't keep paying a high amount every semester, sayonara! And unless you are among the elite faculty or in a PhD program, it is a pretty good bet than you are gone by age 25, like a girlfriend of Leo DiCaprio.
The extremely strict people-selection policies of universities have some remarkable effects. For example, in my state there is a city with a homicide rate higher that of El Salvador, the most dangerous country in the world. But right in the middle of that city is a special exclusionary zone that admits just 6.5% of applicants and is an oasis of beautiful serenity.
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/md/baltimore/crime
Interestingly, it is from within such special exclusionary zones that we get the strongest open-borders voices.
You are conflating public property with private property. Bryan doesn't advocate for the abolition of private property allowing everyone to use everyone's stuff. As for the crime issue, maybe we should deport all the natural citizens and keep the legal and illegal immigrants to reduce it!
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0
All who cross a US border illegally have committed a crime, so open-borders CATO's data is obviously false from the get-go. Not reporting your income to the IRS is another major crime. What is the rate there among those in the country illegally? Half? More? Generally speaking, actual crime rates are unknowable because reporting rates are low for illegal immigrants, obviously. CATO's data is about as legit as a $3 bill.
"deport all the natural citizens" -- Lovely. On what basis? To where? Most of them don't have any other country.
Public property belongs to the citizens of a country. It is not the property of everyone in the world. By your rules, can I be part owner of Norway's sweet, sweet sovereign wealth fund?
Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
Obviously you can't include the fact that they are here illegally in the crime rate statistics or that renders it completely pointless. Someone actually seeking the truth about whether or not they commit more crimes once they are here, as is commonly claimed, wouldn't do that though. They would be interested in seeing whether open borders would lead to more crime, because in that scenario coming here isn't a crime. Only someone trying to rationalize their dogmatic view would argue as you did.
Deport all natural citizens is obviously tongue in cheek. Natural citizens commit more crimes, so if your measure of worthiness for being here is a lack of criminality I guess natural citizens are the first to go!
Public property belongs to the government. We don't own the public property. That's just a nice story they tell you. Try going to any public land and building a house then say that you own it. This is just another ridiculous bad faith argument so I know you don't actually care about the truth.
(1) "Only someone trying to rationalize their dogmatic view would argue as you did."
With all due respect, the extremist position in this conversation is the open-borders view, a view that an extremely small share of people in America espouse. Even very few immigrants espouse that few (just look at the remarkable showing of Trump in the almost entirely Hispanic and heavily Democrat precincts along the Texas-Mexico border), and virtually nobody in Europe holds that view.
That open-borders is the extreme view is not my rhetoric. It's just the statistical reality. Open-borders is openly held only by a few on a far end of the curve. It just so happens that our blog host, the brilliant Bryan Caplan, is the one of the principal advocates of this far-outlier position. I think you have lost sight of how outside of the mainstream this position is.
(2) It is quite relevant if someone began their stay in the United States by breaking the law. That is significant lawbreaking. It happened, even if you choose to ignore it. It shows, at the least, a basic disrespect for US laws.
This disrespect for the law continues with taxes.
https://www.fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers
The rate of taxes paid may be $1500 or so per person which us very low (not including things like sales tax which are unavoidable.)
(3) "if your measure of worthiness for being here is a lack of criminality"
I never said that -- actually, you began by pointing out crime statistics for illegal immigrants. I didn't start that. I merely responded that Cato's data on this is not remotely accurate.
Here is CDC homicide victimization data. Almost all homicide is intra-racial, so this is a proxy for rates of committing homicide by different groups.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Screen-Shot-2022-10-25-at-7.45.54-AM.png
Homicide is one crime that almost always gets reported, so it is the one reliable metric for comparison.
But I am only pointing out that Cato's data here is bunk, since you are eager deport Americans who have no country other than this one over bad crime data.
My mention of crime was in a different context: I brought up Baltimore which has a very high crime rate (by citizens, mostly) to point out that a university ecosystem is incredibly detached from the broader world.
My point has been and remains that it really, really hypocritical to argue open borders from within the walled garden of a university campus (or an extremely expensive neighborhood for that matter). (Walled garden doesn't mean there has to be a literal wall around the place.)
(4) Citizens are, in a sense, shareholders of public property, similar to how I am a shareholder of some companies. I obviously can't march into company headquarters of my stocks and do what I want but I am still a minority owner.
The government in the US system is in theory supposed to represent the citizens, as management is in theory supposed to represent shareholders. It doesn't always work out that way -- you get bad governments and bad managements -- but that is the idea anyway. If a company started giving a dividend to non-shareholders, that would be an instant lawsuit that the company would be guaranteed to lose.