Really is different this time (reprise)
NYT capitulates on the immigration story, but there are still dots that need connecting
‘largest surge in US history’
gaming the system and then getting right to work
still an important piece of the deflationary puzzle
👉👉👉Reminder to sign up for the Weekly Recap only, if daily emails is too much. Find me on twitter, for more fun. Really is different this time (reprise)
It used to be a somewhat controversial claim, but now even the NYT has capitulated to what’s been obvious for a while: immigration really is different this time.1
“The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history . . .
Annual net migration . . . averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023 . . . [and] [t]otal net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.
That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic.”
A “faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record”—their words, not mine.
The net-result of this historic surge of migrants is an historically high share of “foreign born” people (and “foreign born” workers):
Foreign born share of the population is at an all-time high of 15.2% (although it’s probably even higher than that).
Now, whether this is good or bad, is a separate discussion, but merely admitting that it’s happening, is a good start for grappling with that question. And, of course, an historically fast pace off an historically high base, is relevant context.
Opening the border to goose the labor force
In terms of what caused the surge, well, that’s a pretty straightforward story.
The outgoing administration just kind of stopped enforcing the law (and/or actively subverted it), while teaching migrants to game the system.
Why the administration did that, well, it probably had more than one reason, but at least one reason was to alleviate the labor shortage. As Random Walk has quipped repeatedly, Great Replacement is real, it’s pro-growth, and deflationary.
The Boston Fed actually published some research that shows both (a) a wild expansion of heretofore little-used categories of migration-status; and (b) the surge in work-permits that followed.
2021 was a major inflection-point for status determinations like “public interest parolees,” “prima facie eligibility,” and “deferred action,” which mostly came out of nowhere:
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