Posted On: Tuesday - May 31st 2022 5:41PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity
We're always glad to have good discussion in the comments here at Peak Stupidity. There were a number of them discussing ways of estimating the number of illegal aliens in this country, appropriately under our recent post that showed our disgust with the ancient 11 million that is still pulled out of pundits' rear ends on occasion.
That's a BS Fox Headline too. It's not a "crisis". It's part of the Population Replacement Policy, not anything new, but just ramped up higher lately.
(VDare is always a good source on this topic, but my point here is not to show that recent 836,000 influx specifically. This has been going on for many decades, and these inflows are not usually so specifically defined.)
Commenter Hail inserted a link to a paper by Mohammad M Fazel-Zarandi, Jonathan S Feinstein, and Edward H Kaplan of the National Center for Biotechnology Information that deigns to obtain an estimate of this inherently not accurately obtainable number: The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States: Estimates based on demographic modeling with data from 1990 to 2016. No, the number of illegal aliens is inherently not easily obtainable with any accuracy. When you get down to it, because citizenship status has been purposefully removed from the paperwork of most government agencies and government-beholden industry, ostensibly due to fighting Racism!/Xenophobia!, but really due to general policy of keeping the population replacement low key, we can't use simple arithmetic methods, such as subtracting citizens from enrollment numbers of various sorts.**
What do you go by? You can't use SS #s, or the lack thereof, because illegal aliens will use stolen identities when necessary. They live "in the shadows" when it works to live in the shadows, but you don't know how many are. That doesn't mean one shouldn't try. There may be more creative methods, figuring out the "un-banked" in the big picture of financial transactions, taxes of some sorts (sales tax paid vs. estimates of actual legit residents' spending from income tax forms), stuff like that, but I don't see ANY method that gets to some specific difference between illegal aliens and the rest of us that could be tallied. (Other people who aren't illegal aliens live off the books too.)
The guys who wrote the paper linked-to above talk about using inflows and outflows to get a tally. As a general idea, well, of course, that makes sense. It's no brilliant development though. Inflow - outflow + internal generation = accumulation. (That internal generation portion is generally zero in this country due to our idiotic birthright citizenship, aka "anchor baby" policy.)
To get illegal border crossing rates, the writers of the paper make assumptions from apprehension numbers. This has always been pretty bogus. I remember thinking this for other criminal acts being kept track of: "Recoveries of square tunae off the coast of Florida has increased greatly over the last 2 years!" OK, but does that mean there are more bags of pot being shipped up from South America or is it just that the Coast Guard and customs officials are spending more time on the water? It's the same with border crossers - more apprehensions might mean a beefed up Border Patrol and fewer people coming in. Who knows? (Well, more on who knows in a bit here.)
Then, I credit the writers for discussing (non-immigrant) visa overstayers, an often overlooked avenue. Here too, there is just one assumption after another. A paper like this is pretty worthless, no matter that they did "a million simulations". So freaking what?! What does that do for you, as garbage in means garbage out? If one piece of garbage coming out may have been the truth, we sure don't know which piece that is.
I didn't write this post to badmouth this one paper though. That paper is just a glaring example of the fact that estimating the number of illegal aliens in America involves rectal extraction, and we may as well admit that from the get-go.
What the paper missed, and what a lot of people miss, is that there is plenty of ILLEGAL immigration that does not come across the US southern border. I mentioned this is the previous post. I have information from 2 different sources, on the Chinese-speaking customer side and on the restaurant owner side that there are big operations that bus illegal Chinese aliens all over the country. The information I got specified the origin as Newark, New Jersey. What's the deal with Newark? Oh, yes, there is a big international airport there. Is it the case that the American immigration officials are all the most upstanding stalwarts of the rule of law? Have you been through their operation in the last couple of decades? Often, the immigration officials look like illegal aliens themselves, just well-fed illegal aliens is all.
On the •Indian side, I have run into people that are in such unlikely places that I am almost certain that they have been arranged for by their business owner relatives or higher-caste members for the jobs. That guy at the crossroads who didn't drive, knew almost nothing of the area, yet worked in a convenience store doing a job Americans must not be able to do? I'm pretty sure he wasn't here illegally. These are the "unknown unknowns". We don't even know what other kinds of operations, for what other nationalities, are going on, with "flows" that add to the accumulation. I would not hazard any guess to within even 50%, but I'll say that there are a couple of million to 5 million non-Hispanic illegal aliens in this country. Don't they count for anything?
Rather than use crude assumptions with precise numbers that mean nothing over the course of calculating a total, I think the only good way to get accurate numbers would be to go to the experienced sources on this matter. Peak Stupidity plugs VDare at every opportunity for a reason. They cover EVERY aspect of the immigration invasion, and they also have a number of writers who are inside the system (or have formerly been). As a pretty random example (as I read the site today, before writing this post), I read A. W. Mogan's articles Columbia University Sued Over Student Visa Fraud (yet another avenue) and UCLA Report: 99 Percent Of Illegals In Special Biden Program Filed Worthless Claims (this latter one is on the southern border, of course, and, well, if the claims are granted, I guess they won't be illegals... so there's that ...)
That's just the one writer. I really think if a good tally were to be calculated, VDare would be just the outfit to do it. With input from their Border Patrol guys for accurate un-apprehended throughputs, other "Federales" who know about airport immigration practices and corruption, experts on the student scams, the non-immigrant visa overstayers, and more, we could get a fairly accurate numbers. They could do the job that the 3 authors of that paper attempted, but with decent starting numbers and a more comprehensive picture of all the avenues. That's what I call Comprehensive Immigration
PS: I realized after writing this that I included a few points already made by Mr. Hail in his comments under the "11 Million" post. Those points would be on the anchor babies, on the 1 million simulations in that paper, and on the lack of a citizen question on the census (or about anywhere else). Thanks, Mr. Hail. You sound like you are a VDare reader.
* Just having a Department of Homeland Security at all is a traitorous act to begin with.
** I suppose one could get demographic government school enrollment data and subtract data on naturalized citizen Hispanics from the total of Hispanics, the same with Orientals, etc. However the anchor baby scam would complicate this right away.
Comments:
The Alarmist
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 2:25PM MST
PS
“Square Tunae” reminds me of old “Save the Bales” T-shirts.
In addition to toilet paper, one might look at sales of bidets to pick up other populations infiltrating the US of A.
“Square Tunae” reminds me of old “Save the Bales” T-shirts.
In addition to toilet paper, one might look at sales of bidets to pick up other populations infiltrating the US of A.
Anti-Gnostic
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 11:03AM MST
PS There may be 400 million people in this shithole of a "country."
Moderator
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 9:43AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, regarding your 2nd comment, no and yes. I'm talking about a phenomenon that was going on at least only 2 years back. It was before the Covid time by just a bit when I was talking to someone in that business who told me about the white busses and the whole transportation arrangements to (yes, as you wrote) Chinese buffet restaurants around the country. I linked to my post ("The China to King Buffet Pipeline") in that previous post - easier to click there than copy/paste from here.
There you go: "No, I don't know where I live." That sounds exactly like the guy at the crossroads convenience store by the turn-off toward, well, that's it, he had no idea where the road went. Then there are plenty more of the dot-Indian sort at hotels owned by their countrymen. I don't know how many are relatives and how many are basically lower-caste indentured servants, but I doubt most of them came in legally. Brides, yes - there are visas for that. (That system gets abused too, as we may see in romantic comedies - maybe not all that romantic in the real world.)
The Chinese can operate in this country in their completely own economic system, as the language is inscrutable. To stay at one of their no-tell, no-tax-to-ANYBODY "hotel" rooms in NY City, one has to search for Chinese language web sites, and whoever answers the phone not only won't speak English, but she probably CAN'T speak English.
Thanks for the comments!
There you go: "No, I don't know where I live." That sounds exactly like the guy at the crossroads convenience store by the turn-off toward, well, that's it, he had no idea where the road went. Then there are plenty more of the dot-Indian sort at hotels owned by their countrymen. I don't know how many are relatives and how many are basically lower-caste indentured servants, but I doubt most of them came in legally. Brides, yes - there are visas for that. (That system gets abused too, as we may see in romantic comedies - maybe not all that romantic in the real world.)
The Chinese can operate in this country in their completely own economic system, as the language is inscrutable. To stay at one of their no-tell, no-tax-to-ANYBODY "hotel" rooms in NY City, one has to search for Chinese language web sites, and whoever answers the phone not only won't speak English, but she probably CAN'T speak English.
Thanks for the comments!
Moderator
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 9:35AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, regarding your 1st comment:
Yeah, see, you'd still need to know that count of US citizens, and I really don't know how anyone can have an accurate number. One could go by the number from censuses back in the day when we know this country had only a few hundred thousand or a million illegals, then start adding new citizens that naturalized from there. You then add on ALL births within the US, seeing as how (still trying to wrap my mind around it) every one of them is to a citizen, no matter what kind of crap the baby's parents pulled.
Then you pull out the toilet paper sales numbers and do some accurate survey on how much toilet paper the average person uses (hopefully, as you speculated, it's the same for illegal aliens living in the shadows, where you've got Spanish Moss too... no, don't use that. I can tell you from experience!).
Then I suppose you could estimate total population from toilet paper sales and subtract off all those citizens you have calculated.
Am I missing something?
Yeah, see, you'd still need to know that count of US citizens, and I really don't know how anyone can have an accurate number. One could go by the number from censuses back in the day when we know this country had only a few hundred thousand or a million illegals, then start adding new citizens that naturalized from there. You then add on ALL births within the US, seeing as how (still trying to wrap my mind around it) every one of them is to a citizen, no matter what kind of crap the baby's parents pulled.
Then you pull out the toilet paper sales numbers and do some accurate survey on how much toilet paper the average person uses (hopefully, as you speculated, it's the same for illegal aliens living in the shadows, where you've got Spanish Moss too... no, don't use that. I can tell you from experience!).
Then I suppose you could estimate total population from toilet paper sales and subtract off all those citizens you have calculated.
Am I missing something?
Hail
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 8:37AM MST
PS
"there are big operations that bus illegal Chinese aliens all over the country."
I wonder if this is what you're talking about:
Starting maybe in the 1990s there were mysterious "Chinatown buses" that ran from Chinatown to Chinatown in different cities and which, word had it, were only available to Chinese' "You have to be Chinese to ride them" somehow skated by in the 1990s, a form of Foreigner Privilege, and any similar direct thing would be crushed by the Justice Department behemoth.
By the 2010s, many of these Chinatown buses had evolved into being typically-Chinese 'shady' business operations of ultra-low-cost but ultra-low-service and that curiously rude way many Chinese in business have of dealing with customers.
I have had some experience with these about 2016, in which a then-unemployed friend visited using one of these buses, induced to the visit by the good price. He was 'stranded' going back because the Chinatown bus line suddenly closed with a poor-grammar handscrawled note saying: "NO buses today or tomorrow, Sorry!" Luckily I was able to get him out by other means without an overnight delay, but that is a White American's taste of can imagine what it's like to a Chinese gray-area person.
Another case of gray-area people are, afaict, any "Chinese buffet." You can't speak in absolutes, but I would guess that coast to coast, the aggregate staff of those places must have a high portion of illegals, and according to a cousin who once worked at a place next to one, he would ask the staff what they were up to on the weekend, how long they'd been here, where they live, these kinds of friendly-banter questions, and the Chinese-or-etc staff would clam up and say they "don't know." "How can you not know where you live??" "We come on a special bus every day. I'm not sure where we live."
"there are big operations that bus illegal Chinese aliens all over the country."
I wonder if this is what you're talking about:
Starting maybe in the 1990s there were mysterious "Chinatown buses" that ran from Chinatown to Chinatown in different cities and which, word had it, were only available to Chinese' "You have to be Chinese to ride them" somehow skated by in the 1990s, a form of Foreigner Privilege, and any similar direct thing would be crushed by the Justice Department behemoth.
By the 2010s, many of these Chinatown buses had evolved into being typically-Chinese 'shady' business operations of ultra-low-cost but ultra-low-service and that curiously rude way many Chinese in business have of dealing with customers.
I have had some experience with these about 2016, in which a then-unemployed friend visited using one of these buses, induced to the visit by the good price. He was 'stranded' going back because the Chinatown bus line suddenly closed with a poor-grammar handscrawled note saying: "NO buses today or tomorrow, Sorry!" Luckily I was able to get him out by other means without an overnight delay, but that is a White American's taste of can imagine what it's like to a Chinese gray-area person.
Another case of gray-area people are, afaict, any "Chinese buffet." You can't speak in absolutes, but I would guess that coast to coast, the aggregate staff of those places must have a high portion of illegals, and according to a cousin who once worked at a place next to one, he would ask the staff what they were up to on the weekend, how long they'd been here, where they live, these kinds of friendly-banter questions, and the Chinese-or-etc staff would clam up and say they "don't know." "How can you not know where you live??" "We come on a special bus every day. I'm not sure where we live."
Hail
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 7:29AM MST
PS
There was another study that proposed estimating illegal-resident population by purchases of toilet paper per area per year and back-calculating from that. This was pro-Covid, the "toilet paper panics" of Feb and March 2020 upsetting this metric.
If you could find total population by purchases of toilet paper or other consumer good, on the assumption that there is a similar usage rate by all, including both illegals and non-illegals (dreamers and non-dreamers, if you will), you'd still need to know number of citizens to subtract from the total estimate. Nationwide I think there is reliable data on number of citizens but it's not official. That introduces another element of uncertainty.
I may be deceiving myself but I think I remember a paper actually using this "toilet paper" method. I think it was in the 20-30 million range at the time, 2x to 3x the public number.
There was another study that proposed estimating illegal-resident population by purchases of toilet paper per area per year and back-calculating from that. This was pro-Covid, the "toilet paper panics" of Feb and March 2020 upsetting this metric.
If you could find total population by purchases of toilet paper or other consumer good, on the assumption that there is a similar usage rate by all, including both illegals and non-illegals (dreamers and non-dreamers, if you will), you'd still need to know number of citizens to subtract from the total estimate. Nationwide I think there is reliable data on number of citizens but it's not official. That introduces another element of uncertainty.
I may be deceiving myself but I think I remember a paper actually using this "toilet paper" method. I think it was in the 20-30 million range at the time, 2x to 3x the public number.
Moderator
Wednesday - June 1st 2022 4:37AM MST
PS: Agreed, Mr. Blanc. However, it sure ain't no 11 million. As I wrote on here, these guys (as recently as '16/'17) had nothing to say about other avenues of arrival. (Yeah, they included visa overstayers, but that's not the half of it.)
MBlanc46
Tuesday - May 31st 2022 8:04PM MST
PS They are illegal. The number one goal of any lawbreaker is to avoid detection. Many of them are successful. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how many of them are. Any estimates are based upon assumptions, most of which are correlated with the assumer’s political biases, and, therefore, suspect.
Alarmist, I had never seen the "Save the Bales" T-shirts, but that definitely sounds like a 1970s/'80s Florida thing. "Square Grouper" some called them.