Justin

this chart will never cease to amaze me

Every major technological shock in American history has reshaped the politics of immigration. I suspect AI will be no different Natural barriers to immigration — the cost of ocean passage, geopolitical turmoil, technological limitations — have always exerted selective pressure on who could actually make the journey. When those barriers fall, the character of immigrant inflows changes. It's at this point that political entrepreneurs step in, reaching for public policy to restore the frictions that geography, cost, and conflict had previously imposed. Formal immigration restriction, in this reading, can be understood as an effort to recreate what had been “natural” barriers. Consider the Napoleonic Wars, which suppressed European emigration for years. That prolonged lull had a powerful consolidating effect on early American culture. When the wars ended and transportation costs began falling, the U.S. experienced a large influx of Irish and German Catholic immigrants which engendered a sharp backlash from native-born Anglo-Protestant “Know-Nothings.” As more migration channels became viable, selective pressure eased and source countries diversified. The same dynamic played out on the West Coast, where the growth of transpacific shipping dramatically lowered the cost of migration from China — and the political response was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, backed by a coalition that united “old stock” Anglo-Protestants with “new stock” German and Irish Catholics. More recently, the advent of offshoring reshaped the politics of immigration by changing the incentives of U.S. employers: once firms could move production overseas rather than import low-skill labor, globally competitive manufacturers — a key constituency for open immigration — defected from the coalition. The result was a narrowing of business support for expansive immigration policy, leaving low-skill immigration increasingly without powerful institutional defenders. Today, the collapsing cost of migration from the Global South is having a similar effect, and the restrictionist coalition is broadening to include first- and second-generation Americans of Latin American and Asian origin. The ideological framing changes (anti-Catholicism, anti-Chinese sentiment, categorical opposition to unauthorized inflows, concern about welfare dependence, etc.), but the consistent throughline is that restrictionists are responding to a technological shock and its cultural and economic reverberations. One reason I favor making immigration policy more selective is that well-designed selectivity can increase the benefits of immigrant inflows — to fiscal sustainability, labor markets, the age structure of the population, etc. — while reducing the disruptions that generate political backlash. This is not merely a historical curiosity. As AI and automation reshape labor markets across the skill distribution, the economic rationale for non-selective immigrant inflows is eroding, adding a new dimension to the case for selectivity that cuts across the usual ideological lines.

I am continuing this journey through the five recipes for five meals made with ingredients from Trader Joe’s for $83 (I shopped HEB but still). I’m celiac. For the crescent roll chicken pot pie I couldn’t use womp biscuits. So… I made them from “scratch” ish using this GF mix… we shall see.

Democrats shutdown of DHS was an exercise in futility, even while hurting many innocent workers at TSA and elsewhere. Just to be clear, President Trump and Republicans outfoxed Ds by pre-funding ICE and CBP $165 billion plus, in the One Big Beautiful Bill, or Working Family Tax Cuts. Now that the rest of DHS will be funded, we will plus up enforcement dollar for years to come in the coming reconciliation bill.

I'll be honest you guys, I'm not really sure how much of a future WV has.

I’m not sure the realities of a modern war’s progress and the western media/political narratives have ever been more disconnected The US is systematically dismantling, at relatively minimal cost, a longtime major enemy, and the narrative is it’s a quagmire and loss.

Stephen Spielberg probably doesn’t need my help but the West Side Story remake is badly underrated and underseen.

Their senior naval commander is only being killed because Iran is winning so comprehensively.