“There are many reasons why Chinese migrants are the fastest-growing group attempting to cross the southern border (though those numbers have fallen in early 2024). Recent research and reporting—and common sense—cast doubt on the overly simplistic idea that Chinese border crossers are primarily coming to the U.S. to threaten national security and create disorder. It’s far more likely that the average Chinese migrant is coming for the same reasons that other migrants do: to seek political and economic freedom. Rather than rebuking the people who go to such great lengths to flee China’s authoritarian regime, the U.S. should welcome them.
A new report from the Niskanen Center, a public policy think tank, found that many Chinese emigrants are coming from areas experiencing repression such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the province where the Chinese government is committing ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people. Niskanen based its estimates on Ecuadorian travel statistics: “Since most Chinese migrants enter the Americas via Ecuador, these records can reasonably be used to draw inferences about irregular Chinese migration.””
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“The Niskanen report suggests that economic decline may play a role in Chinese out-migration, noting that three provinces from China’s “Rust Belt” rank in the top third of origin regions when adjusted for population. The economic consequences of China’s pandemic policy are also at play: “In many cases those attempting to make the crossing are small-business owners who saw irreparable damage to their primary or sole source of income due to China’s ‘zero COVID’ policies,” wrote Meredith Oyen, a historian at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, last month.
“The increase in Chinese arrivals is also a response to U.S. politics,” wrote Foreign Policy Deputy Editor James Palmer last week. “During the pandemic, U.S. business and tourist visas became harder for Chinese citizens to obtain.” (Per CBS News, the U.S. issued 2.2 million temporary visas to Chinese nationals in 2016, but that number dropped to 160,000 in 2022.) “The acceptance rate for Chinese asylum claims,” Palmer added, “is a relatively high 55 percent,” at least somewhat attributable to “U.S.-China tensions and growing human rights abuses under Chinese President Xi Jinping.””
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“What pops up over and over in reports about Chinese asylum seekers is their desire for freedom. The A.P. noted that migrants said they were leaving “an increasingly repressive political climate and bleak economic prospects”—and that “there has been no evidence that they have tried to mount a military force or training network.”
Given what China is—a country under the thumb of an authoritarian government, where civil liberties and basic freedoms are under constant threat—it should come as no surprise that the U.S. is an attractive destination for the people who choose to flee. That isn’t evidence of a grand, complex espionage plan but a manifestation of all the usual reasons people choose to immigrate, and all the more reason to welcome Chinese migrants.”
https://reason.com/2024/05/15/the-u-s-should-welcome-chinese-migrants/
“The survey also found that the abortion rate in 2023 was slightly higher than in 2022, despite total abortion bans in more than a dozen states.”
https://reason.com/2024/05/15/new-survey-finds-abortions-increased-slightly-in-2023-despite-widespread-bans/
“Some undocumented immigrants have committed atrocious crimes, but there are many reasons to doubt that recent incidents prove America is suffering a surging migrant crime wave.
Crime is actually down in the cities that received the most migrants as a result of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing operations. “Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles,” NBC reported.
“We don’t have real-time data, but the partial crime data that exist for this year show consistent declines in major crimes in major cities,” concurs David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. “The most significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020—when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year.”
This aligns with historic trends. In 2015, the Migration Policy Institute found that undocumented immigrants have a lower rate of felony convictions than the overall U.S. population does. Criminologists Graham Ousey and Charis Kubrin, going off of “more than two decades of research on immigration and crime,” concluded that “communities with more immigration tend to have less crime, especially violent crimes like homicide,” wrote The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler.
Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at Cato, found that illegal immigrants have a lower homicide conviction rate in Texas than native-born Americans do. “Few people are murderers, and illegal immigrants are statistically less likely to be murderers,” wrote Nowrasteh. “We should understand that more enforcement of immigration laws will not reduce homicide rates.””
https://reason.com/2024/05/16/the-migrant-crime-wave-debunked/
“It is absolutely true that the right to self-defense is vital. And to argue that Perry—who, prior to killing Foster at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, wrote that he wanted to “shoot the [protesters] in the front and push the pedal to the metal”—acted in self-defense is to make a total mockery of that right and those who’ve had to exercise it.”
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“In July 2020, Perry ran a red light and drove into a crowd of protesters. That in and of itself, of course, is not enough to deduce that he was looking for a fight. His own statements prior to doing so, however, add a great deal of helpful context and show his frame of mind at the time. “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex,” he wrote on social media on May 31, 2020. Also in May, he threatened to a friend that he “might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” And then in mid-June, he sent that message about going to a protest, “shoot[ing] the ones in the front,” and then careening his car through the hubbub.
This was part of a pattern. Austin police detective William Bursley testified, for instance, that Perry searched on Safari for “protesters in Seattle gets shot,” “riot shootouts,” and “protests in Dallas live.” It is not hard to connect the dots between his searches and messages.
So what about that stand-your-ground defense Abbott alleges the jury nullified? Core to Perry’s case and trial was whether he reasonably feared for his life that July evening. Foster indeed had a rifle on him—because open carry is legal in Texas. The Second Amendment does not solely exist for people with conservative views. The big question then: Was Foster pointing the gun at Perry when he approached his vehicle? For the answer, we can go to Perry himself, who told law enforcement that he was not. “I believe he was going to aim at me,” he said. “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” But that is not a self-defense justification, as Perry cannot claim clairvoyance.
That the jury reached the conclusion they did is not a mystery, nor is it an outrage. What is outrageous, however, is that a governor who claims to care about law and order has made clear that his support for crime victims is at least in part conditional on having the “right” politics.”
https://reason.com/2024/05/17/daniel-perrys-pardon-makes-a-mockery-of-self-defense/
Are Poor Schools Underfunded? It’s More Complex Than You’d Think.
https://reason.com/2024/05/17/are-poor-schools-underfunded-its-more-complex-than-youd-think/
China repeatedly steals and colonizes the territory of other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io8iaj0WYNI
‘The Kremlin knows this is not sustainable’ as Putin’s losses mount in Ukraine | Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RHjH8pVPhA
“the idea of eliminating the root causes of Islamic terrorism by causing Muslim-majority countries to become prosperous liberal democracies incorporated into the U.S.-led alliance and trading system was totally sound. But how do you actually do that? In a truly wild fit of utopianism, the Bush administration spent $2 trillion on an invasion of Iraq that not only failed to achieve any of those goals but resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. On domestic policy, maybe if Bush had had a spare $2 trillion he could have made the ownership society work. Or maybe he could have successfully boosted marriage rates. Or transformed K-12 public education. But in reality none of the stuff he did actually worked, either because the ideas were bad or because the math didn’t work or because the financial resources weren’t there. Not because he governed at a time of austerity, but because his biggest spending-side commitment was to a war that didn’t work, and he saddled the country with huge regressive tax cuts.
This is an issue for all kinds of political entrepreneurs. You can’t just come up with a nice-sounding, high-level message. You need the capacity to design ideas that make sense and work in detail. I’ve fretted before that the policy analysis capacity on the left has withered somewhat, but it’s borderline non-existent on the right.”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/big-ideas-arent-enough
The Future of the Submarine – Emerging Threats, Sensors & Transparent Oceans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S96oRLoE0Zk
“The proposed rule, which will be subject to 60 days of public comment before it is finalized, would move marijuana to Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids. But that does not mean marijuana will be legally available as a medicine, which would require regulatory approval of specific cannabis-based products.
With marijuana in Schedule III, state-licensed cannabis suppliers will remain criminal enterprises under federal law, albeit subject to less severe penalties. Although an annually renewed congressional spending rider bars the DOJ from interfering with state medical marijuana programs, prosecutorial discretion is the only protection for businesses that serve recreational consumers.
The federally illegal status of state-approved marijuana businesses discourages financial institutions from serving them, since doing so could invite potentially devastating criminal, civil, and regulatory consequences. Moving marijuana to Schedule III will not solve that problem either.”
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“The president, citing old-timey “gateway drug” concerns, has steadfastly resisted attempts to resolve this conflict by repealing the federal ban on marijuana. Even while condemning the injustice inflicted by a “failed approach to marijuana,” he is sticking with it.”
https://reason.com/2024/05/22/biden-decries-a-failed-approach-to-marijuana-but-sticks-with-it/