34 responses to “Cato: Amnesty A Net Plus For the Economy”

1. 

   Steve Verdon

   August 17, 2009 at 1:19 pm

   First before the sh*t storm….

   Added via edit:

   Not surprising to me. In economics increased competition usually goes along with things like rising incomes, more output, and so forth. And that is what immigration is when you get right down to it increasing competition, mostly in the unskilled labor markets.
2. 

   Wayne

   August 17, 2009 at 1:20 pm

   According to many Computer Models ran 20 years ago we should have much higher temperatures today. So a great deal of salt should be taken when talking models. I did not see details and haven’t the time to research the model they talk about. I “assume” that they make a great deal of assumptions in doing so. For example perhaps that money made by illegal’s is spent in the U.S. or that there is not enough low skill labor for demand which in today’s economy may not be true. Also there is more cost than just welfare that illegal immigrants cost us.

   I crack me up how many treat illegal immigrants as one and the same as legal immigrants. Many on my side believe if we need more we can increase the number of legals while still enforcing our laws. There are also other benefits with controlling the border besides just keeping out illegal immigrants.
3. 

   Steve Verdon

   August 17, 2009 at 1:27 pm

   According to many Computer Models ran 20 years ago we should have much higher temperatures today. So a great deal of salt should be taken when talking models. I did not see details and haven’t the time to research the model they talk about.

   Yes computer models for X are crappy, therefore computer models for Y are crap too…in fact all computer models are crap.

   Get off the internet Wayne.
4. 

   sam

   August 17, 2009 at 1:35 pm

   Yeah:

   The Cato Institute has recently published a study indicating that amnesty for illegal immigrants legalizing drugs would produce a net benefit to the economy—and increased enforcement would be a net drag…

   Of course, reason won’t prevail vis-a-vis illegals any more than it will vis-a-vis the War on Drugs. But I do appreciate Cato’s efforts.
5. 

   Wayne

   August 17, 2009 at 2:05 pm

   Steve
   I pointed out computer models can be faulty not that they all are crap. That is why I stated “So a great deal of salt should be taken when talking models”. Some people are foolish enough to believe that models get it 100% right.

   You need to learn how to read but what can you expect from a cop hating, self center, it is my perspective or else nut job.
6. 

   Trumwill

   August 17, 2009 at 2:20 pm

   Wayne,

   In theory what you say is correct. Yet the correlation between people that are hyperconcerned about illegal immigration and people that favor further restriction of H1-B visas is 100% among the people that I know. I am sure that there are plenty of counterexamples and probably a few more than would accept say a 5% increase in legal immigration in return for a 90% reduction in illegal immigration, but they would still generally prefer fewer legal immigrants as well.

   And, of course, if you pass amnesty then none of them are illegal anymore, are they?
7. 

   Steve Verdon

   August 17, 2009 at 2:40 pm

   Wayne,

   I pointed out computer models can be faulty not that they all are crap. That is why I stated “So a great deal of salt should be taken when talking models”. Some people are foolish enough to believe that models get it 100% right.

   All of science is based on models. All of it. Hence this view of your is bordering on the unscientific. Being aware of a model’s limitations is one thing, being willing to throw out a models results based on the flaws in models used in an entirely different subject of assessing the impact of an entirely different process is…well just astoundingly bad reasoning.

   Further, this result is in line with what most models in the economics show: more competiton is better than less. As such, it is at the least weak evidence that the model is reasonably well specified.

   And what Trumwill said. The degree of correlation between the people who oppose illegal immigration and increasing legal immigration is surprisingly high. It suggests that the economic arguments are at best, a side show to appeal to a larger population–i.e. are scare tactics. The argument essentially holds that we should become a protectionist nation and engage in absolutely no trade with other countries when taken to its logical extreme. Its an old argument and has been found lacking on both empirical and theoretical grounds.

   For example, during the Depressions in the latter half of the 1800’s these arguments often held considerable sway: we’ll prohibit foreign competition. Thus, American firms can raise prices, higher more workers, and we’ll pull ourselves out of the depression by our boot straps. Only one problem: prices rose, firms took the profits, didn’t hire that many workers, and consumers were made worse off.
8. 

   Dave Schuler

   August 17, 2009 at 3:05 pm

   I read the paper, Alex. They’re making a significant number of very bad assumptions. Among them are that the change in policy wouldn’t result in a change in the number, skill sets, or needs for services of the guest workers. They also assume that we won’t have universal coverage.

   Open borders would throw the cost assumptions on universal coverage into a cocked hat.

   I’m in favor of greatly increasing the number of workk visas issued to citizens of Mexico—by an order of magnitude or more. However, I think that abandoning all restrictions on immigration as seems to be the proposal would be bad policy.
9. 

   Wayne

   August 17, 2009 at 3:30 pm

   Steve
   Where did I say we should throw out the results of the above study? Do you know what the phrase “to be taking with a bit\large\bucket of salt” means? My intent was that people should be somewhat skeptical of models\studies because they can and often are wrong, not that all models\studies should be thrown out entirely. Then I pointed out a few assumptions that if they weren’t taken into account in the model could throw it off. Thinking I said that one study is completely wrong because a different one was wrong is bad reasoning on your part.

   Hopefully later today I can find the raw data or at least the models assumptions of the actual study like Dave did to give a better inform opinion of the study. I hate the above link that pretty much give you someone conclusion of a study with little information about the study to back it up.Often people will take someone conclusion of a study as fact which is faulty thinking especially when at times the actual study doesn’t support.
10. 

    TangoMan

    August 17, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Who knew? Count me as surprised that the policy of adding high school drop-outs to an economy is a net positive for the economy. Should I be upset that our betters have been telling us that students should finish high school because unless they do they will have bleak futures and cost taxpayers a lot of money for social support?

    This study finds that increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households.

    I it hard to believe that the bolded is an accurate reflection of the degree of impact. Back in the 90s the National Research Council determined that every immigrant with less than a high school education presented a lifetime cost to taxpayers of, in today’s dollars, $144,000. Further, based on extrapolation of historical trends, it would take over 300 years for the descendants of the poorly educated immigrant to eradicate the cost to taxpayers that arose from the immigrant’s presence.

    Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers.

    The annual cost to educate a student in the Los Angeles Unified School District is $28,786. That’s just one example of a public expenditure. Imagine the infrastructure that Los Angeles has had to develop to deal with a population of illegals that is in the hundreds of thousands. Extra capacity has to be added, and paid for, to the road network, the electricity grid, the water system, the sewer system, the hospital system, etc. Most people with the education of high school drop-outs are not contributing enough in taxes to balance the social costs that they impose on their community.

    In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households.

    Funny that, increasing supply of a commodity tends to increase the cost of the commodity? Hmm.

    What’s also funny is that a think tank solidly in favor of open immigration can concoct a study, based on a computer model that limits the scope of its variables, and conclude that Yes, adding high school drop-outs to the economy is a boost for society.
11. 

    Observer

    August 17, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    TangoMan,

    It’s pretty rich to see you accuse Cato of data manipulation when you spend half your time on this site trying to convince people that blacks and latinos aren’t as smart as white people…
12. 

    TangoMan

    August 17, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    It’s pretty rich to see you accuse Cato of data manipulation when you spend half your time on this site trying to convince people that blacks and latinos aren’t as smart as white people…

    1.) Your response is an attack against the man, ad hominem, and not an attack against the ideas or evidence. You convince no one with such an attack, and I’d even suggest that you can’t convince yourself either.

    2.)Even if your charges is correct, which it isn’t, the basis of the charge relies on evidentiary argument. Show me evidence that I’m wrong. Keep in mind I’m asking for evidence, not reliance on creationist belief sets.
13. 

    TangoMan

    August 17, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Cato’s analysis is accurate and focus on the downstream effects of their proposal. Would you prefer to be marginally better off economically at the cost of being more isolated socially? Here is commentary from the American Enterprise Institute’s Jason Richwine:

    He began by telling us about one result he encountered that was thoroughly upsetting to him—the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less social capital it possesses. When a person lives in a diverse community, he trusts everyone less, including those of his own ethnic group. In describing the behavior of people in diverse areas, Putnam told us to imagine turtles hiding in their shells.

    Two years after Putnam wrote publicly about diversity’s problems, and at least five years since he has been presenting his findings informally, nothing has changed. We still treat diversity as an unqualified good.

    It would be interesting to quantify how people are willing to trade-off between social isolation and economic competition.
14. 

    Tru Mp-net Works

    August 17, 2009 at 10:38 pm

    It seems to be a negligible point that the people for which this would apply may not in fact come forward to accept such a gratuitous induction into our legal culture, especially if they can already access the benefits of it without being encumbered by the obligations.
15. 

    anjin-san

    August 18, 2009 at 1:17 am

    Your response is an attack against the man

    You are a man? Hmmm. Kind of hard to believe…
16. 

    Joe R.

    August 18, 2009 at 6:41 am

    What about the private property rights argument in favor of increased immigration? Don’t conservatives believe in property rights anymore? And if so, then why can’t I invite someone into my home, or hire someone, without their permission?
17. 

    sam

    August 18, 2009 at 7:58 am

    TangoMan, Richwine’s article also contains this:

    What we want are immigrants who are most likely to be cooperative, trustworthy, and concerned about the welfare of the community. No one has any simple, reliable way of ascertaining whether an individual possesses these qualities. But we do have a simple, reliable way of measuring another quality that is correlated with them—cognitive ability, as measured by an IQ test or an educational credential. The smarter our immigrants are, the more likely they are to trust and cooperate, and the less likely they are to subtract from our existing stock of social capital. Selecting immigrants for intelligence (or a proxy indicator like education) could lessen the negative impact of ethnic diversity on American society.

    One might sum that up as the “Too dumb to be an American” criterion of selection. Contentious, to say the least. But you could apply that to existing political communities in the United States. I wonder how Tea Baggers would fare? Or Birthers? Do they, as a group, add to or subtract from our existing stock of social capital?
18. 

    Alex Knapp

    August 18, 2009 at 8:43 am

    TangoMan,

    I don’t have any problem trusting someone who’s skin color is different than mine.
19. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    Don’t conservatives believe in property rights anymore? And if so, then why can’t I invite someone into my home, or hire someone, without their permission?

    Because you’re involved in a game of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses. Think of this in terms of high school drop-outs (who generally have more education than the typical 6-8 years of schooling we see from illegal immigrants) who you might hire for $5.00 per hour. You and this worker are both gaining from your transaction. However, society has to subsidize all of the social costs associated with that high school drop-out and he isn’t likely to be paying income taxes, in fact, he’s likely a recipient of the EITC and in a sense is a money pit for taxpayers.

    The difference between that high school drop-out and the illegal immigrant is that the high school drop-out is an American citizen and we have to deal with him whereas an illegal immigrant is not our obligation. There is no reason that American taxpayers should subsidize the losses associated with illegals so that you can privatize the gains in your own personal dealings.
20. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    I don’t have any problem trusting someone who’s skin color is different than mine.

    So what? We could also find people who don’t mind their neighbors having loud parties every night, or who find it exhilarating to drive on the same streets as street racing teens.

    Yes, I know you felt compelled to make your statement to show us how enlightened you are as a person. Liberals are very good with this form of reputational conspicuous consumption, yet they rarely decide to pick up stakes and move to the inner city or barrio where they could really soak in luxurious bath of “diversity.”

    Look, we can play around with Census data and map out very liberal white districts where we’d find little racial or ethnic diversity. Liberals are very good at prescribing how others should live but they seem to refrain from moving into minority majority districts so that their kids could enjoy full immersion into diversity. Instead they feel it sufficient to announce to everyone how enlightened they are.

    Why don’t you pick up some of Putnam’s work and delve a little deeper into this social phenomena. It certainly opens up thought provoking issues and questions.
21. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 3:41 pm

    But you could apply that to existing political communities in the United States. I wonder how Tea Baggers would fare? Or Birthers? Do they, as a group, add to or subtract from our existing stock of social capital?

    Tea Baggers? Never heard of them. As for birthers, they’re little different in characater than those who associate with Move-on.org.

    Whether any of these groups add to the stock of the nation’s capital is immaterial, for they’re comprised of Americans. With immigrants we have a choice, so if we know that adding them to the national stock will weaken social bonds, then we can choose to reject them and stop straining the social cohesion of our nation.

    Those of us who have seen a good portion of the world soon realize that lack of social cohesion characterizes many societies around the world. A subset of the folks who realize this may also hold that the US is not immune to the pitfalls associated with weakened social ties. A subset of these folks may realize that the process of societal change may look different from the inside than from the outside or that the path of least resistance does not always lead to the preferable outcome or that change may be like the slow boiling of a frog. Take your pick.

    Key axioms of leftist philosophy are not empirically tested. They’re unexamined. They’re articles of faith. For instance, a key axiom is that one is an enlightened person if one believes in multicultural diversity. What is the empirical evidence that taking multiple cultures and throwing them into one pot, one location, one environment, produces better results, more enriching results, than the alternative of deep cultural bonds where social fundamentals are widely shared and advanced? In fact, the empirical evidence runs counter to liberal myth, yet liberals still cling to their axiom that their embrace of multiculturalism defines them as being enlightened with the added bonus that they can now brag about some new ethnic restaurant that they discovered.

    Nowhere in my definition of enlightenment is there a provision for believing something that is contradicted by evidence. Believing something that is contradicted by evidence is more appropriately classified as exhibiting fealty to faith.
22. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    A final thought for Joe R. Let’s make a deal. I’ll relax my concerns about immigration and not complain about open borders once we eliminate all social transfers within government and institute uniform taxes on all residents so that common infrastructure can be built and maintained. In other words, let’s go back to the days of old where if a newcomer to America couldn’t provide for themselves there were no government programs to aid them. They either worked, went back to their native land, or starved.

    In such an environment, I won’t raise a peep about your freedom to bring in foreign workers to work in your home or business because there will be no socialization of the losses attached to such workers. If those workers need medical care, then you can pay for it or let them die in the streets. After all, you’re the one who is capturing the gains produced by the workers, so it should fall on you to subsidize their needs.
23. 

    An Interested Party

    August 18, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    So…it’s perfectly reasonable to distrust someone simply because he has a different ethnic origin than you? And stupid people are just fine as long as they are already citizens? Oh, and the only diverse neighborhoods exist in inner cities? And maybe someone could explain the similarity between trusting someone who has a different skin color and tolerating noisy neighbors & street racing teens…
24. 

    Social Scientist

    August 18, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    TangoMan,

    Not only is that article a gross misinterpretation of Putnam’s work, it also completely ignores later work in the same field that indicates, for example, that bilingual and multilingual children are better achievers, and that ethnically segreated neighborhoods have higher levels of depression and anxiety than those in multi-ethnic neighborhoods. You can find these articles with a Google search, but, apparently you didn’t bother to read too deeply–relying instead on the racists at AEI to misinterpret research for you. Otherwise you might have uncovered research that indicates that excess social capital among ethnically homogenous groups leads to racial conflict, oppression, apartheid, and genocide.

    As for an example of diversity leading to greater social cohesion, I submit a very simple empirical example: the integration of the United States military.
25. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    So…it’s perfectly reasonable to distrust someone simply because he has a different ethnic origin than you?

    Sure it’s perfectly reasonable. It’s not liberally fashionable, but it’s certainly reasonable. You don’t share common assumptions and outlooks. This is exactly why we see less community involvement as racial and ethnic diversity increases. Less volunteerism, less looking out for one’s neighbor, less park clean-up days or bottle drives, less blood donations, etc.

    And stupid people are just fine as long as they are already citizens?

    It’s not that everything is fine, it’s that society doesn’t have a choice, it MUST address the situation as it exists. It’s kind of like family, if you have a troubled child you need to deal with the troubled child, you can’t just wish the child out of existence.
26. 

    An Interested Party

    August 18, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    Sure it’s perfectly reasonable bigoted.

    Many people of the same ethnic background don’t necessarily share the same assumptions and outlooks, either…

    …if you have a troubled child…

    Yes, many of the Tea Baggers and Birthers are indeed acting like troubled children…
27. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    or example, that bilingual and multilingual children are better achievers,

    Give me a citation. I suspect that the paper suffers from selection bias or confounding variables. There are plenty of Mexican and Central American children of illegal immigrants in our nation’s schools and they are bilingual yet they seem to be having all sorts of troubles in comparison to their unilingual peers. Are they included in the study design? If the researchers don’t control for parental IQ then they can’t discern whether the child’s achievement is caused by their social environment, their language mastery, or their immersion in multiple cultures. For instance, it is often assumed that the family practices in Asian American families is the primary driver of high Asian American academic achievement, but as Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki noted in their paper Asian-American educational achievements: A phenomenon in search of an explanation, the parenting styles and values found in East Asian-American homes tend to correlate with lower test scores when they are found in white homes. If parenting styles and values are not the drivers of school achievement in the Asian American community, then what’s going on?

    Otherwise you might have uncovered research that indicates that excess social capital among ethnically homogenous groups leads to racial conflict, oppression, apartheid, and genocide.

    Oh boy, I see that you’re playing at being a social scientist.

    As for an example of diversity leading to greater social cohesion, I submit a very simple empirical example: the integration of the United States military.

    This example actually supports Richwine’s thesis, in that the US Military is notorious for parsing its applicant pool on IQ and other selective criteria. In this sense, they’re sharing the approach of professional sports – there is little racial disharmony in sports because every athlete on the team earned their spot by proving their merit.
28. 

    Observer

    August 18, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Shorter TangoMan: I’m no racist, but would you want your daughter to date one?
29. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    Shorter TangoMan: I’m no racist, but would you want your daughter to date one?

    This cracks me up. New definition of racist = anyone who beats a liberal in an argument.

    As I noted above, liberalism seems to predominantly fixated on liberals seeing themselves as enlightened and very little effort is expended on empirically testing their axioms.

    David Goodhart in The Guardian:

    And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life). The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left’s recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.

    It was the Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the “progressive dilemma”. Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform, he said: “The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties that they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: ‘Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn’t do?’ This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the United States you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity, but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests.”
30. 

    Social Scientist

    August 18, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    TangoMan,

    This example actually supports Richwine’s thesis, in that the US Military is notorious for parsing its applicant pool on IQ and other selective criteria.

    Nonsense. The AVSAB wasn’t adopted by all branches of the military until 1976–28 years AFTER integration. It’s irrelevant.

    Give me a citation.

    Do your own research. There’s about 20 key papers published since 2000 alone that document this phenomon. The very fact that you’re unfamiliar with this indicates to me that you’re cherry picking data to support your ethnic separatist conclusions.

    Otherwise you might have uncovered research that indicates that excess social capital among ethnically homogenous groups leads to racial conflict, oppression, apartheid, and genocide.

    Oh boy, I see that you’re playing at being a social scientist.

    Apparently you’re unaware of the social capital research centered around Weimar Republic civic institutions and ethnic conflicts in Africa. Once again, you’re showing that you’re ignorant of the field.

    There are plenty of Mexican and Central American children of illegal immigrants in our nation’s schools and they are bilingual yet they seem to be having all sorts of troubles in comparison to their unilingual peers. Are they included in the study design?

    See the studies of Latino populations in Chicago by the University of Korea. Additionally, bear in mind that illegal immigrants, as most research shows, often have trouble in school because they frequently move around during childhood and often go for long stretches without school attendence due to their parents’ fear of being deported. That’s a difficult variable to control for.

    If parenting styles and values are not the drivers of school achievement in the Asian American community, then what’s going on?

    Wait… let me guess. Because some ethnic groups innately have higher IQs than others, right? Even though IQ is variable? Even though IQ results can shift as much as 10 points in both directions depending on pre-test coaching? Even though the bogus crap perpetuated by the Bell Curve and its proponents don’t properly control for physiological factors such as malnutrition and environmenal factors such as income?

    Keep cherry picking and sticking stubbornly to the belief that skin color matters, even though DNA studies consistently refute most conventional notions of ethnicity…
31. 

    Observer

    August 18, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    TangoMan,

    On Putnam:

    I aim to show that Putnam’s findings, while provocative, are difficult to interpret given the methodological and conceptual limitations of the study. The most important limitations include the failure to distinguish between diversity and residential segregation, potential biases resulting from aggregation across racial and ethnic groups, methodological problems with the specification of the regression model, and selection bias, which I argue is more problematic than the author acknowledges.

    I’d read the whole thing if I were you.
32. 

    TangoMan

    August 18, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Nonsense. The AVSAB wasn’t adopted by all branches of the military until 1976–28 years AFTER integration. It’s irrelevant.

    Maybe you are an academic for you are showing skilled slight of hand. Military testing of intelligence predated the AVSAB. To rely only on the current iteration and ignore the history of screening procedures is very tricky of you.

    Do your own research. There’s about 20 key papers published since 2000 alone that document this phenomon. The very fact that you’re unfamiliar with this indicates to me that you’re cherry picking data to support your ethnic separatist conclusions.

    I have done my research. I ask for a cite so that we can discuss the particulars of a piece of research. For instance, this paper doesn’t support your generalized conclusion:

    . For Puerto Rican Americans, the effects of neighborhood segregation on mental health become nonsignificant after controlling for neighborhood-level income and individual-level covariates, whereas neighborhood segregation is strongly associated with the mental health of Mexican Americans even after controlling for other covariates.

    You’ve twisted the finding that some communities suffer from neighborhood segregation and tried to imply that there is a benefit to all communities from neighborhood desegregation. We see that the mental health of Puerto Ricans living in a segregated neighborhood became non-significant when confounding factors were controlled but that there is something going on in Mexican neighborhoods which does affect the mental health of residents. This would suggest that the causal factor for increased mental health problems isn’t something to do with limiting racial or ethnic exposure but something to do with the negative factors inherent in some, but not all, cultures. Puerto Ricans don’t seem to have those negative factors, but Mexicans do. Again, if you want to argue global causal factors then cite some research so that I know exactly what you’re referring to.

    Keep cherry picking and sticking stubbornly to the belief that skin color matters, even though DNA studies consistently refute most conventional notions of ethnicity…

    DNA studies consistent refute, huh? What to make of this, then:

    Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group.

    “This shows that people’s self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background,” Risch said.

    Nothing makes my day more than social scientists ignorant about genetics who start pontificating about genetics.

    Additionally, bear in mind that illegal immigrants, as most research shows, often have trouble in school because they frequently move around during childhood and often go for long stretches without school attendence due to their parents’ fear of being deported.

    This factor is controlled for by examining Hispanics who are 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation American. The same results arise.
33. 

    TangoMan

    August 20, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Since a good portion of this debate has shifted to the marvels of diversity, it’s interesting to note that the voters of Westchester County, NY, who’ve voted solidly Democratic:

    In fact, Westchester, after New York City and Albany County, has produced the biggest margins for statewide Democrats in recent years.

    are, to paraphrase Mencken, going to get the fruits of liberalist dogma, good and hard – they get the privilege of financing, against their will and through being extorted, forced diversity. Their right to freely associate has been abridged and they now get to experience up close what they’ve probably been preaching to everyone. Liberals getting to taste their own medicine, what joy:

    Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.

    Given that 120,000 acres in the county meet the criteria, the monitor “should have no difficulty making sure that Westchester ends its policy of allowing affordable housing to be off-limits in the most highly white neighborhoods in the county,” Mr. Gurian said.

    Don’t get me wrong, this is an atrocious policy that is stripping the residents of freedom, but it couldn’t have happened to a better group of people.