The Costs of Diversity: Contra Hanania on Immigration

Non-white immigration causes negative externalities

In his latest article, Richard Hanania asserts that “diversity really is our strength.” There isn’t much of an argument to respond to per se — the key point, less justified than merely asserted, is that free markets are good, and increasing diversity increases market freedom. This is supposedly why homogenous European countries have lower GDPs than many American states, including insignificant flyover states. The flyover states are more diverse than the European countries, and so they have freer markets, leading to higher GDP.

Hanania, of course, has only circumstantial evidence for this claim, which is mostly narrative based on a thin, superficial veneer of GDP data. Noah Carl tore this narrative apart. To summarize his article, the US has more economic freedom because of high Northern European IQ, and selection effects on the European immigrants that composed the original population. As “diversity” has increased, a more restrictionist population has earned more voting power, and economic freedom in the US has declined. While ethnic heterogeneity might predict less redistribution, it still predicts lower economic freedom overall, for example increased regulation, increased taxation, and less entrepreneurial opportunity.

Emil Kirkegaard also tested this narrative and concluded “As such, we can pretty confidently say that ethnic fractionalization — that is, diversity — isn’t a strength insofar as wealth is concerned. Rather, it doesn’t matter except as a proxy for the intelligence of the population.” And, while I’m citing everyone, Seb Jensen wrote on how the IQ decline from Hispanic immigration is real, significant, and a negative externality, something which Hanania glosses over as not mattering for some reason.

The debate over this article so far has focused on IQ and debunking Hanania’s claims. In this article, I would like to broaden the perspective of the discourse on immigration by considering data on immigrant tastes and behaviors. I argue that mass non-white immigration has and will continue to produce the following negative externalities: increased crime rate, negative fiscal impact, more wealth redistribution to non-whites, and less freedoms.

Increased crime rate

Hispanic immigrants increase the crime rate. According to FBI crime statistics, the odds ratio P(Crime|Hispanic)/P(Crime|Not Hispanic) is about 1.5 for assault and sex crimes, including rape. It is about 1 for murder. This is not due to the age composition of the Hispanic population.

Hanania tried to cope with this by referencing fake data, but was quickly deboonked on Twitter.

Negative fiscal impact

Hispanic immigrants consume more wealth redistribution than they pay out in taxes.

This means adding a Hispanic immigrant will, on average, increase the deficit under current law. Will this law change? Adding a Hispanic also decreases that probability.

Government services

Hispanics prefer a big government with a lot of services. They come in and consume more welfare than they pay in taxes, on net, and they get a vote. They are not going to vote this away. Hanania blames Republicans for alienating Hispanics due to irrational racism. However, he’s putting the cart before the horse. Republicans dislike Hispanics not because of their skin tone but because their preferences are not conservative.

We can see here that Hispanics actually like a big government more than blacks and Asians, and all non-whites are majority big government, while whites are majority small government. This is probably why whites vote Republican on net and the other races vote Democrat on net. It is not due to random irrational factors or accidentally believing in the Steve Sailer narrative. Hanania should know better than this as a Political Scientist^TM who has allegedly read his public choice theory.

Emil Kirkegaard asks, “Do immigrants really undermine support for the welfare state?”, and the answer is obviously not, as the study he cites showing a positive correlation between collectivism and “diversity” (more non-whites) shows.

Freedom of speech

Hispanics, and non-whites in general, are drivers of freedom of speech restrictions, something which is contrary to the preferences of most white people. In general, as we saw above, brown people fuel the domination Democrat party politics, which is contrary to the preferences of the majority of white people, as white people on net vote for Republicans.

We can predict from this that adding more Hispanic immigrants will eventually lead to hate speech laws being passed, because it will change the median voter preference to be in favor of such laws.

2nd amendment

Hispanics are against the 2nd amendment, unlike white people. This is not explained by voting Democrat merely because of immigration position.

Conclusion

Hispanic immigration will lead to less support for the 2nd amendment, more support for hate speech laws, a larger government spending deficit, more support for wealth redistribution away from white people, and a higher crime rate, especially sex crimes, theft, and assault. For Republicans to capture Hispanic voters like Hanania suggests, they have to tolerate these negative externalities, permitting the worsening of these problems with continuing immigration while catering to Hispanic tastes for big banana republic governments.

Contrary to Hanania, it is rational for a white republican voter to be against Hispanic immigration, since they are harmed by more crime, more anti-gun sentiments, more anti-free speech sentiments, and more anti-white wealth redistribution. Hanania is currently arguing on Twitter about what data to include in regressions which involve relatively abstract sociological variables like “ethnic fractionalization index”, but I argue that this argument is moot given the vast polling data presented in this article.