[ExI] The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals)

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2011-12-25 19:28, Mirco Romanato wrote:
> And on this we agree. There are government statistics (Denmark for sure,
> maybe UK) that show the costs of immigrants for the government are
> greater than the profits. They are a net taxpayer's loss.

Ah, *those* numbers. Rather biased it turns out by Danske Folkeparti's 
xenophobia (they ordered the studies). Their sister party 
Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden made the same claim, but then got hit by 
some independently done studies that showed them to be in the wrong.

Generally, economists are fairly confident in that immigration is both a 
net benefit to society and to the immigrants (with the usual complicated 
caveats, of course).

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2010/el2010-26.html
http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/econ/documents/IRS_Peri.pdf
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/pdfs/intelligencethinklike.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/business/economy/31view.html
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b491f052-138a-11e1-81dd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1hdMsgZLW
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/caplan_on_immig.html
...


> But, in many ways, they are a source of profits (and votes) for the
> bureaucrats and the politicos and their friends and allies. If they
> won't there would not be a political will to let them in and let them
> stay in.

At least in the US the opposite is true. Being hard on immigration gives 
you extra votes, since the voters are incumbents who feel threatened by 
immigration. Since illegal aliens are not voting very much you don't 
gain political capital by pandering to them.

A better case might be Sweden, where the social democratic 
infrastructure to some extent had the idea that integrating immigrants 
into the bureaucracy would help the left by getting workers. It didn't, 
because non-integrated immigrants don't vote much, and those who 
integrate are all over the map. Then the left turned as restrictive on 
immigration as the parties they had just a few years earlier denounced 
as racist.

-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University