Using Immigrants to Save Detroit?

Ricochet ^ | August 5, 2013 | Mark Krikorian

[2ndDivisionVet]

For the open-borders crowd, immigration is a patent medicine, able to cure whatever ails you.

The latest pitch is that requiring immigrants to live in Detroit is the solution to that city's many ills -- see here and here, for instance. The second link, from National Journal, is aptly titled "A Modest Proposal", because it's no more real than Jonathan Swift's 18th century essay by the same name calling for the Irish to escape poverty by selling their children as food to the rich. The problem is that the Detroit suggestions do not seem to be intended as satire.

And yet, what they're suggesting is serfdom - legally tying people to a particular place on pain of expulsion (not that expulsion would ever happen anyway, since people would just leave Detroit as soon as they could and become illegals elsewhere). When Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was governor of Iowa he suggested a similar effort to make up for all the Americans leaving Iowa.

All proposals like this have one thing in common -- they objectify immigrants, imagining them to be something other than human beings, nothing but variables in an economist's fanciful equation. It's the geographic version of the "Jobs Americans Won't Do" fallacy - "Places Americans Won't Live", if you will.

In fact, immigrants have the same motivations and goals as the rest of us. And if Detroit is so badly governed, or Iowa is so remote and frigid, that Americans don't want to live there, why would immigrants? The same factors that lead Americans to move elsewhere will lead immigrants to do the same. Immigration-as-magic-bullet ideas are just cop-outs, a means to avoid facing the underlying problems of such places, either because there's no way to change those problems (bad weather) or because it's just easier to weave fairy tales than to deal with crooked politicians, grasping unions, and a degraded electorate.

What it boils down to is this -- immigrants go where the jobs are, not the other way around. Detroit can only be fixed by Detroiters (if at all), not by the intervention of magical foreigners.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The inmates are now running the asylum.

[marktwain]

The Progressive agenda is based on selling fairy tales as reality.

[Vince Ferrer]

It would be great if immigrants did go there, though, because the biggest problem in Detroit is the current power elite, who can be perfectly successful despite the failure of their city and citizens. Immigrants would upset the demographics, and would give voters a chance to break up the power structures in a way that could help the city.

[staytrue]

If you repopulate detroit with chinese immigrants, within 15 years you will see a new shining city on the hill.

[sickoflibs]

These are the type of dumb ideas that kids have when they play : ‘how would you fix things if you had magic’

Completely un-workable.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Hispanics would be better than the current situation. Watch Hardcore Pawn if you'd like a taste of the people there now. Scary.

[MeshugeMikey]

Yep the Professionals do indeed call it “magical thinking”..

while it may be entertaining coming from kids...its truly stunning when we hear it from leftist....children.

[sickoflibs]

OneTV plays the Roots series every so often and towards the end of the original set 1977 after the civil war the Southern Farmers come up a with sharecropping and some more evil ones come up with the idea keeping the ex-slaves prisoners of debt by paying them less than what they were charging them so they had to remain and live and work the same farms forever, as slaves.
For fear of jail.

This idea is similar.

[GeronL]

Assuming you can vote out the leftists

[Slyfox]

If you repopulate detroit with chinese immigrants, within 15 years you will see a new shining city on the hill.

With the Chinese looking to snap up the best of the cheapest houses, I got to thinking, what if they decide that it might be feasible to open up shop in Detroit and move workers there?

Next thing you know they are going to be demanding better schools and better laws in which to conduct business.

[Jack Black]

One of the few enterprises that can survive in Detroit are outlaw motorcycle clubs. Here's a nice Picasa web album of about 30 of them. (For comparison I believe Portland has one clubhouse, a city about the same population).

Outlaw Motorcycle Clubhouses of Detroit

How evil is it? The Hell's Angels don't have a presence there. They were kept out by the combined forces of the Outlaws and the Highwaymen. And those two clubs hate each other. But still, priorities.

Highwaymen M/C

Outlaws M/C

These are mostly White gangs, some of the few White people who survive in Detroit. You don't really want to know about the Black gangs, they are much worse.

Black Mafia Family

Errol Flynns Clever name, scary guys. East side.

Black Killers, or BK's East side.

Young Boys Inc. ... invented the modern crack trade. West side.

And, hey, the Italian's have their piece of the pie: The Detroit Partnership

Even the music fans are considered street gangs by the FBI.

Juggalos, fans of the Insane Clown Posse.

Even the Somali's would meet their match in Detroit, which is why THERE AREN'T ANY! Despite their domination of crime elsewhere in the Midwest.

The gangs of Detroit grew up playing here. This was what they had instead of playgrounds.

Detroit had 411 homicides in 2012. Detroit has a population of about 700,000.

For comparison Chicago had 532 homicides in 2012. Chicago has a population of 2.7 million. Detroit has four time as many killings per capita as Chicago, a city synonymous with violent death.

Chicago is more dangerous than Kabul, Afghanistan.

Detroit has it's own category. Detroit is a HARD, HARD place. The current residents would make short work of immigrants, I'm pretty sure.

[AlaskaErik]

Using immigrants to save Detroit is like using gasoline to put out a fire.

[cripplecreek]

Not to mention the fact that we here in Michigan have worked long and hard to put the state in GOP hands and don’t need anyone telling us to hand it back over to the democrats.

[ViLaLuz]

similar situation in Dearborn? How’s that working out.

[stephenjohnbanker]

The only thing Detroit needs is a match..