Why We Get Immigrants Wrong
Immigration isn’t about greed but survival.
Vivek Ramaswamy recently wrote a post about limiting immigration from African countries like Sierra Leone. I don’t have an opinion either way, in terms of limiting or furthering immigration. I don’t think illegal immigrants should necessarily be just given a green card but I also don’t strongly believe in restricting immigration either. I don’t know if we can handle millions of more immigrants all at once, however, for those that are already here there should be accommodations. Immigration is a complex subject that needs further debate and consideration in Congress.
However, there’s one thing we’re missing in the immigration debate. A lot of the world is terrible and shit. For one thing, it’s poor and I don’t just mean a little poor but very very very poor. The GDP per capita of Sierra Leone is 160 times smaller than the GDP of the United States in 2022. In Sierra Leone, it’s just a meager $476 compared to $76,330 in the United States. Even basic medicine we can afford like generics becomes unobtainable to many Africans. Child mortality is a lot higher as well with 101 children under five dying out of every 1,000 children. That’s one in every ten children. The equivalent back here is around 6 children out of every 1,000. On a lot of other metrics Sierra Leone is a worse-off country, its life satisfaction score on average is 3.47 out of 10 whereas the United States in 2023 is at 6.52, according to The World Happiness Report. This is self-rated out of hundreds of sampled individuals so it’s probably at least a partially accurate reflection of the state of the country as a whole.
It’s not just Sierra Leone, Africa as a whole is in an abysmal state and so are parts of Asia. Africa itself doesn’t have many natural resources, it’s mostly either jungle or desert with little in the way of oil reserves or vast tracts of unoccupied land for planting. It’s war-torn in many places and even in places where it’s not, it still has severe issues with Malaria and other diseases from the climate and lack of medical care. I think part of the problem is geographic. Countries at a higher latitude tend to be wealthier and better off than those with an equatorial climate. Equatorial climates introduce diseases and parasites that don’t exist at higher latitudes. Equatorial climates are also filled with difficult jungles to survive in and are not amenable to building a civilization.
Freed slaves would have been better off staying in the United States despite the racism than moving back to Liberia where free colonization movements sprung up to bring slaves back to Africa. A movement that was supported by Abraham Lincoln and some abolitionists and slave owners. The mortality rates would be lower and wealth of former slaves would become much greater in the Americas than in Africa and their lives would be better off at least in terms of medical care, job security, and wealth.
When thinking of immigration we have to think of it in terms of why someone would travel thousands of miles and risk death just to escape their home country. It’s not simple but we shouldn’t perceive immigrants as just here to take or be a problem in the country. A lot of the right has a serious issue with immigrants and it’s more complex than they’re here to take “er jerbs.” Some illegal immigrants might need to be deported, however, I don’t think getting rid of everyone here he came as a child or later should be the answer either. Immigration is a complex subject, but one-dimensionalizing it doesn’t help when we don’t understand the circumstances that drive immigration. Fixing the issues in these countries should be a priority rather than blaming immigrants for job loss and other ills attributed to immigrants which are often the result of corporations off-shoring rather than immigrants coming here.
