Socialite Cordelia Scaife May Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html

by georgecmu • 7 years ago

47 77 7 years ago

nytimes.com

georgecmu• 7 years ago

paywall breach: http://archive.is/RRKEH

tlb• 7 years ago

It seems like many now-popular movements had deep-pocketed sponsors.

Can a billion dollars always push an idea into the mainstream? Or are there counterexamples of groups who poured huge amounts of money into promoting something that never caught on?

hnaccy• 7 years ago

Nativism is not new.

harryh• 7 years ago

Plenty of rich people have blown a lot of cash trying and failing to get elected to office.

Of course, they succeed sometimes too, but it turns out that money is no guarantee.

neetdeth4• 7 years ago

Money does seem to be the only way to get even a hint of policy change from Washington, but the trend line of public opinion is opposite of what you suggest. Until around 1995, immigration restriction was overwhelmingly mainstream in the United States and still commands a strong plurality.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx

I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor and an expanded consumer base. It's just about the only thing the Koch brothers and Soros can agree on.

Spooky234• 7 years ago

The difference is that traditional chamber of commerce GOP types would hold back the anti-immigration stuff because it killed unions and made their mainstream donors happy. Your chicken slaughterhouse in the middle of Nebraska prospers with underpaid illegals who don’t get workers compensation.

The big money, big ideology people poured money into hard right conservatism. Investing in and advertising on talk radio being one key strategy. Your average blue collar worker/trucker/etc has been indoctrinated with conservative blather for 30 years.

javert• 7 years ago

It's just about the only thing the Koch brothers and Soros can agree on.

Is that really true?

To me, both Soros and the Kochs seem to be somewhat close to classical liberalism. Mostly free people, mostly free markets, etc.

As such, to me, they to have more in common with one another than either has to the Trump crowd or the Sanders/Warren/AOC crowd.

My understanding of Soros and the Kochs is somewhat low resolution, so I would be happy to be corrected on whatever I am not seeing here.

deogeo5• 7 years ago

Until around 1995, immigration restriction was overwhelmingly mainstream in the United States and still commands a strong plurality.

Popular opposition does not look like it had much of an effect on immigration rate [1]. One might even call the policy un-democratic.

[1] https://cis.org/Report/Immigrants-United-States, Figure 1

ajxs3• 7 years ago

This is the fantastic irony of the completely false dichotomy that the public imagines mainstream politics to be. The modern left seems to paradoxically be supporting open-borders _and_ worker's rights. Normally I would further qualify that statement by attributing such sentiments to the _far_ left, but this seems to be a fairly mainstream position based upon what we saw in the Democratic Primary debates recently. I find it difficult to believe that a pro-trade union candidate like Bernie Sanders does not understand the basic laws of supply/demand: How a supply of cheap labour affects the wages of the individual employee. I'm in my early 30s and I came of age immersed in the counter-culture of the 90s. Nihilistic Industrial rock decrying the emergence of free-trade and a globalised economy was the left wing soundtrack of the age. Now the far-left seems to be wholesale pro free movement of people and capital. I would accuse the masses expecting that this will not have a negative impact on the financial well-being of the individual of absolute foolishness, but it seems that many proponents of such policies are no longer expecting them to be feasible within the framework of social-democracy. Instead opting for much more collectivist forms of government.

cma• 7 years ago

I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor and an expanded consumer base.

For low wage jobs maybe, but doctors have fought very hard to minimize foreign trained competition being allowed to work in the US.

hash872• 7 years ago

I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor

George Soros does not, to my knowledge, employ a large number of low-wage workers- how would he personally benefit from a larger labor pool? The Koch brothers do have a very large workforce, but they're all industrial assets- hard to imagine farm laborer-types from Central America could be employed in huge numbers. The only people who could conceivably benefit from immigrant labor would be industries with huge huge numbers of minimum or close to minimum-wage employees- Home Depot, Chipotle, Subway etc. I guess Amazon.

Seeing as we have a federal minimum wage- how much money could an evil billionaire who employs thousands of unskilled workers possibly save with a larger labor pool? $1 per hour, per worker? $2 per hour? I find the amount of cost savings they'd get to be not that much- you'd think Evil Billionaire would put way more effort into healthcare reform, given that non-wage benefits are (much much much) more expensive than a few dollars per hour.

Saying 'the labor pool' is handwavey. Outside of a few industries, developed countries have mostly outsourced unskilled work to the 3rd world- so, if a bunch of farm laborer-types with a 6th grade education come here, they're not competing with the huge huge majority of skilled US workers. There is no affect on wages for most workers, and no motivation for really any white collar employer. I find your hypothesis unconvincing

rdtsc• 7 years ago

One of the illustrative point is also that some present day Democrat presidential candidates and legislators just 4-5 years ago were against increased immigration and open borders. Listen to what Sanders has to say about "open borders": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 he is not just slightly against it, he is quite upset by the idea altogether.

chrischen• 7 years ago

There are probably a few startups with multi-million dollars that weren't able to get themselves "caught on," and that's with initial traction, so the threshold is at least higher than that.

blfr• 7 years ago

Successful popular movements are almost always led by elite class traitors. It's been like that at least since the Populares.

Mountain_Skies2• 7 years ago

Depends on what constitutes a group and how broadly you define "something". Does Google+ count? Any of the dozen or so spring football leagues? Plenty of movies. Jai-Alai? If we restrict "something" to politics and social movements, opposition to H1B visas has been going on since the program started but with a few minor hickups, it has become increasingly entrenched. Perhaps the grassroots money isn't in the same order of magnitude but it's also not big to sneeze at either.

brightball• 7 years ago

Once you polarize people enough, all it takes is enough money to get an idea supported by a politician on one side.

The “other” side will attack all of the points weaknesses and then, because people don’t have the ability to just say “yes, this idea associated with my party is both expensive and stupid” it will be defended instead. Often by just a few people who like to argue.

But the defense makes it appear that people in the party support the idea, which then further solidifies the concept in the base as the back and forth continues. At best you will hope to work out the bad ideas via primaries and debates, but sometimes a bad idea that’s popular is going to hold on because voters often care more about how they feel than math.

rdiddly3• 7 years ago

Don't like to see overpopulation being conflated with immigration again, because...

Overpopulation is obviously a problem; immigration maybe or maybe not (case-by-case each country decides).

Overpopulation is from people being born; not from people crossing borders. No humans are created or destroyed in the act of emigration or immigration.

Overpopulation, nobody wants to talk about; immigration, everybody wants to talk about.

Mountain_Skies2• 7 years ago

How does that square with many western nations whose population would be declining due to low birthrates if not for immigration?

Spooky234• 7 years ago

Prosperity reduces birth rates for a variety of reasons.

One of the big drivers of population growth is being a poor farmer and preserving a legacy. Once you have some wealth, the incentives change.

My grandparents grew up poor in rural Ireland, my grandmother was one of 12 children and at least 16 pregnancies, born in the WWI era. 9 of the siblings made it to adulthood. They needed people to milk cows and catch fish, and needed living sons to inherit the land and take care of the elders.

Immigration in modern western countries fills the gap between productivity gains and the dearth of workers. It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo. Remember that behind of all of these crazy debates is a need for certain stakeholders to maintain power.

rdiddly3• 7 years ago

It doesn't need to square with it. In some places population can increase, in others it can decrease; add them all up and there is some number, ΔP, that is either positive or negative. For a long time now, it's been an exponentially-increasing positive, which I contend is bad news, and I hope it reverses. If people move around, all that does is move the growth around.

rdiddly3• 7 years ago

If anyone can tell me why they downvoted this straightforward, factually correct and (I would've thought) uncontroversial comment, I would love to hear it.

I'm not talking about your little patch of ground, I'm talking about the globe here.

chkaloon• 7 years ago

On a recent Vox Weeds episode there was mention made of the environmental movement's early connections to eugenics, sterilization and population control, and how national parks weren't so altruistic when it came to native populations and local population subsistence. I have also heard opinions in the past that environmentalism in its 20th century forms was really just a white culture concept of aesthetics. I can imagine that if you scratch deep enough there's lots of dark stuff there.

mc32• 7 years ago

Up until the green revolution population control was of great concern. The PRC took that to heart and introduced the 1CPF policy.

It’s arguable that this policy while very cruel and unjustly applied and which resulted in skewed gender demographics, had allowed China to prosper quicker than otherwise. On the other hand, in 20-30 years they will face a severe shortage of working age people. But they are autocrats so they may be able to manage that via central policies.

pm902• 7 years ago

If you sincerely believe that the earth cannot support a large population of humans that live unsustainable lifestyles, your most logical conclusion will probably be to find ways to reduce it. However, we know now that as a country gets wealthier, it’s fertility rate also decreases rapidly. So perhaps instead of trying to fix the problem by eliminating humans we can try to make other societies prosper and let socioeconomic factors take care of the problem.

nyolfen• 7 years ago

I have also heard opinions in the past that environmentalism in its 20th century forms was really just a white culture concept of aesthetics

this is phrased so strangely that i can't tell what it's supposed to mean. environmentalism was long intertwined with romantic thought and philosophy, and obviously until the second half of the 20th century did not carry the eschatological urgency of climate change. environmentalism as we've inherited it is largely a european and american development so it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that it is associated with white people, but i can't tell if the implication is supposed to be some kind of indictment of it.

romaaeterna3• 7 years ago

When someone moves from the 3rd world to the US, their CO2 footprint grows enormously. Mass immigration is hugely disruptive to stable job and family formulation. It seems to be supported by mainly by two groups in the US, one that wants cheap exploitable labor, and one that wants to shift American politics by changing the demographics.

jonstewart2• 7 years ago

There’s also a third group, who believes that if someone’s country has become unlivable (e.g., Honduras today), the United States of America would be honored to have them.

/s/, descendant of Potato Famine Irish Immigrants

romaaeterna3• 7 years ago

What quantity of people are you talking about exactly, and what price are you willing for poor black/Hispanic/white people with only high school degrees to pay in low-skilled labor competition, in order to assuage your racial guilt?

Do you have any idea what has happened to the wages for non-skilled labor since the 1970s? While you and I may have nice cushy jobs and live in nice houses, the largest employer in this country is Walmart. Most people in this country don't have college degrees. They are poor, and mass immigration has made them poorer, and continues to make them poorer.

A lot of the "Abolish ICE" support comes from people in highly gentrifying areas of the country, living in cities that are in the process of driving out their historic minority residents from their homes to go live in the Midwest, all to make way for wealthier white people. Not that this would be your situation, of course! But it can make that sort of person's cheap grace very cheap indeed.

masonic2• 7 years ago

What makes Honduras/Guatemala/Salvador increasingly "unliveable" is (1) the flight of its most industrious people to the US, and (2) the resulting indebtedness of those smuggled to the gangs that smuggle them and arrange illegal, subminimum-wage, off-the-books employment for them.

Persistence of the status quo flow of illegal entrants would doom the Triangle countries forever.

simplecomplex3• 7 years ago

I’m a third group: Americans that believe in freedom and liberty, that America is a free country, and that everyone regardless of their race, origin, or class can come here and pursue their happiness like the rest of us.

la122• 7 years ago

What is the numerical upper limit to your goodwill?

And what about the current citizens who are relatively poorer off because off high number of low skilled new immigrant arrivals? Does a nation not owe more to its current citizens?

simplecomplex3• 7 years ago

Wow, I’m surprised by the downvotes. I thought the American dream would be more accepted here. These principles used to be considered basic foundational ideology of the USA.

pkkim• 7 years ago

If you want to prevent the formation of a pool of cheap exploitable immigrant labor, there are two ways. The best would be to prevent immigrants from entering, but that's impossible. The second best is to make sure that those who enter have the same freedoms and protections as native born workers, so that unscrupulous employers can't take advantage of them (house cleaners paid below minimum wage, H-1B tech employees paid under the table, chicken processing plants [0]).

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-in...

deogeo5• 7 years ago

The best would be to prevent immigrants from entering, but that's impossible.

'Impossible' is a very strong word for something many countries manage just fine. Unless you define 'prevent' as "no immigrant ever enters, even if only to be deported the next day".

But there's a third way - prosecute those unscrupulous employers. If only their lobbying money wasn't in the way...

Hnrobert424• 7 years ago

I need a source on the disruption of stable jobs claim.

I support immigration because my ancestors were immigrants, and I believe others deserve the same opportunity.

inflatableDodo• 7 years ago

A billionaire worrying about the possibility of global ecological collapse due to overpopulation and then deciding that their preferred reaction to this is to spend their vast wealth keeping people out of the particular corner of the planet that they personally spend most time in, is some of the laziest thinking I have encountered in quite a while.

edit - Also, I am not entirely sure that her partners in this battle she was fighting against immigration, have really got the memo on the whole ecology/overpopulation thing. They strike me as more the sort to either be siring their quiverfull ready for the coming eschaton, or to leave a trail of illegitimate children from a series of messy affairs with employees.

oh_sigh4• 7 years ago

I assume this article was written because of proposed changes to the green card system hinted at earlier this week.

It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away?

jakelazaroff• 7 years ago

Because permanent residency shouldn't be a privilege granted only to the relatively wealthy.

ap33• 7 years ago

Do you have to be wealthy to not need public assistance?

oh_sigh4• 7 years ago

Most Americans aren't relatively wealthy, but also aren't on food stamps or other public programs.

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away?

Every single immigrant visa category in the US immigration system is based on something that has been specifically deemed by the Congress as a reason to offer people admission, permanent residency, and ultimately citizenship in the United States.

So, yes.

oh_sigh4• 7 years ago

You're just using the law as a proxy for correctness. 180 years ago a similar argument would have said that black people should be chattel because the law says that they should be and Congress passed those laws.

egypturnash• 7 years ago

This is your occasional reminder that a lot of the “Mexican” “Immigrants” our president hates so much are the descendants of the people who were already here when Europeans came here.

Socialite Cordelia Scaife May Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out

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