Here are some highlights of my weekly reading and viewing.
Fiona Harrigan, “The Good Samaritans Who Saved Syrian Refugees,” Reason, December 2023.
Excerpt:
There is a story about crisis relief that a lot of people believe instinctively, one that’s built into our institutions: Governments and major international organizations, armed with resources and authority, are best equipped to quickly help people harmed by war, hunger, and violence.
Dana Sachs offers a different narrative in All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis. A million migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe in the year 2015 alone. As the refugees reached shore in Greece, “traditional relief networks proved themselves incapable of delivering a productive response,” she writes. Major humanitarian groups such as the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “offered only limited support on the ground.” The European Union shelled out “millions of euros in aid but failed to disburse the funds effectively.”
Harrigan does express her disappointment that Sachs won’t reach the conclusion that Harrigan and I share:
There will be humanitarian crises to come, making it all the more important to lay blame and praise at the appropriate feet. Sachs writes moving passages about the boundlessness of human generosity, and she constantly highlights how volunteers with local knowledge kept the humanitarian aid machine moving in Greece. Her account suggests a clear conclusion: that the volunteer effort was better, not out of necessity, but because it is better suited for the task. But she never quite says that aloud.
Fiona Harrigan, “Trump and DeSantis Won’t Stop at Keeping Out Illegal Immigrants,” Reason, November 17, 2023.
Excerpt:
This isn’t something that you’ll hear former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis say on the campaign trail. “We talk a lot about illegal immigration,” saidDeSantis at an event last week. “But no one really talks about the legal immigration system and there’s some Republicans that say, ‘As long as it’s legal, it doesn’t matter.’ I don’t subscribe to that.”
Nor are Trump’s second-term crackdown ambitions limited solely to undocumented immigrants, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Instead of targeting legal status, many of Trump’s policies would target ideologies he dislikes. “The visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled,” per the Times. “U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes.”
Fiona Harrigan, with a careful attention to facts, has become one of my favorite writers on immigration.
“Marian Tupy: I Saw Communism with My Own Eyes,” PragerU, November 14, 2023.
I’ve been a fan of Tupy’s work for some time. He wrote the piece “European Union” for the second edition of my Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. I knew Marian was an immigrant but I didn’t know from where. He lays out the daily horror of living under Communism. He also says something at the 4:14 point that I wish he had expanded on. It was that under Communism, “You had to become a moral monster.” I believe him, but I will would have liked to see more.
Fiona Harrigan, “Kansas Thinks You Need 1,000 Hours of Training To Remove Hair,” Reason, November 17, 2023.
Excerpt:
For the past few years, Green has received sugaring services—a noninvasive, nonhazardous hair removal procedure that involves applying a sugar, water, and lemon juice paste to a client’s skin. A sugaring business, she thought, could be “something that I could do part time” or on “a super flexible schedule that would allow me to stay home with my son and also provide some additional income for our family,” Green tells Reason.
But Green quickly learned that it’s illegal to remove a single hair from a client as a sugarer without a state-issued occupational license.
I didn’t notice until I went to post this that, yes, the author is Fiona Harrigan. She won the trifecta.
READER COMMENTS
Mactoul
Nov 20 2023 at 2:19am
That a country, even US, should screen out immigrants with undesirable and inimical values, is a unexceptional proposition. And not a novel one. I believe US used to ask visa applicants ideological questions long back. GK Chesterton remarked on it a hundred years ago.
Individuals on a study visa have no right to engage in politics and should be deported when they attempt to influence American politics. No other country tolerates such behavior. Let them try it out in China or Saudi Arabia.
Mark
Nov 24 2023 at 3:24am
Quite a lot of countries. Do not limit freedom of speech or right to public protest to their citizens but let all people do it. Germany, e.g. – while the federal constitution guarantees the right to Germans only, this is not seen as a general ban to others. And the constitutions of some of the 16 Länder (our states) give the right to all people. – Not very practical to screen thousands of peaceful protest marchers for passports (and college students tend to love those marches). And actually hard to do it with riots. That said: some stuff is banned, and if foreign protesters get sentenced breaking those rules, they may face trouble prolonging their visa.
MarkW
Nov 20 2023 at 7:08am
Let them try it out in China or Saudi Arabia.
Let’s hope that ‘No more authoritarian than China or Saudi Arabia’ isn’t our standard. Look, in the US, visa holders are not citizens and cannot vote, but why would we care if they engage in political speech? They’re only going to be the tiniest of minorities in the country. By all means, deport them if they commit crimes, but not simply for engaging in free speech and expressing opinions about our politics. Yikes! (Biden is disaster, but some of the Trumpers are pretty scary in their own way).
Mactoul
Nov 21 2023 at 12:07am
It is the tiny minorities that count in politics, not the passive majority.
I suspect that the visa is already given out with conditions attached but these conditions are not enforced.
Jon Murphy
Nov 21 2023 at 8:07am
There are no conditions about what a student visa holder may or may not say. The only conditions are on employment and enrollment. Such conditions would violate the 1st Amendment, something which is unique in our American heritage.
MarkW
Nov 21 2023 at 8:39am
It is the tiny minorities that count in politics, not the passive majority.
Is it? Which stone tablets is that truism carved into?
Look if non-passive tiny minorities could always prevail, why isn’t the minority (tiny or not) who share your politics not running the show? Are people like you too passive? There is not only the possibility but the reality of many, many tiny active minorities in any country — why don’t they all ‘count’? Or do those foreign visa holders (spread thinly across the country, who may not speak great English, and who are not intimately familiar with the culture) somehow have an influence far greater than their numbers? Why would that be? And do you realize, you’re sounding a lot like the folks who promoted the ‘Russian Collusion’ hoax?
David Henderson
Nov 21 2023 at 10:20am
I don’t know if your suspicion is correct. I’m betting that it’s not. When I received my first F-1 student visa, in September 1972, there were no such conditions attached. Of course, I had to obey U.S. laws and, on top of that, could not work for pay other than the pay I got from my scholarship.
It’s possible, of course, that things have changed. But I doubt that they have changed that radically.
Jon Murphy
Nov 21 2023 at 10:49am
According to the USCIS website, your experience in the 70s is still the case.
David Henderson
Nov 21 2023 at 11:37am
Yup. Those conditions sound awfully familiar.
They bring back a bad memory. I was writing pieces on the effects of gasoline price controls in early 1974 and sending them to the WSJ. None of them was published. But somehow, maybe because of one of my professors who knew what I was doing, I got an offer from an oil company executive to write a speech for him–for $1,000! In 1974 dollars. That would have made a huge difference in my life style. That was one of the hardest “no’s” I ever said.
Jon Murphy
Nov 21 2023 at 11:01am
Tiny majorities can count, but it’d depend on the incentives and conditions. When costs are dispersed and invisible and benefits concentrated but visible, then a minority can get its way in an election even if the minority ends up harming the majority (this is the case with tariffs). If, however, the majority has a clear view on an issue, then a minority is less likely to sway an outcome (this is the case with abortion policy). Given student visa holders cannot, by law, vote or work outside a university, there seems to me to be little incentive for politicans to cater to that minority.
Indeed, it seems to me the way the current law is written, the incentive is to abuse that minority group. I’ve heard horror stories from my students about one coach who uses student vias tied to the athletes as a threat. Granted, this is just one coach in one school, but the incentives do not seem to be what you think they are.
MarkW
Nov 21 2023 at 11:52am
If, however, the majority has a clear view on an issue, then a minority is less likely to sway an outcome
And if a minority has no means or ability to hire lobbyists, make campaign contributions, hire out-of-office politicians or their family & friends, etc, they are highly unlikely to have their interests catered to by elected officials.
Ordinary voters have no reason to find minorities (particularly of foreigners) persuasive, and politicians have no incentive to cater to such small, uninfluential groups.
BS
Nov 22 2023 at 11:04am
It isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also pragmatic: it’s good to have dissenters right out in the open. You can’t fix what you don’t hear about.
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