Tag Archives: data journalism

immigration by the numbers

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This post on a blog called Demography Unplugged is a nice piece of data journalism. I have been trying to figure out if there is really a “border crisis”, or if challenges that are typical at the border are being exaggerated and cherry picked in an election year.

Measuring immigration is tricky, and this article explains how people try to do it. Basically, you want to know net migration, which is determined both by people coming in and people leaving, which both happen constantly. The Census Bureau surveys the foreign born population periodically and changes in this number are one way to do it.

Immigration really is up significantly over the past year or so. This is partly post-pandemic recovery, but it is also up significantly compared to what it has been historically even in comparably good economic times. They are coming to work. They are not coming disproportionately to commit crimes, although take a large enough group of people and there are going to be some crimes that can be cherry picked and publicized by disingenuous media outlets and political campaigns. There is no evidence I am aware of that terrorists are trying to sneak across the southern border, although of course we need to be alert for this at all ports of entry.

Some are sneaking in, but many are legally applying for asylum, after which most are allowed to enter the country while they wait for a decision on their case. This can take years, and even after a decision is made, there typically are not aggressive efforts made to find and deport them.

They are probably not taking a lot of American jobs that Americans would actually want. They are taking low wage jobs, paying taxes, and not receiving government benefits in return. Unemployment is low. Remember the labor shortage during and after the pandemic, when immigration was mostly shut off. And remember how prices shot up at least partly as a result of that labor shortage? I suspect the uptick in immigration is one factor holding wages and prices down now. The business community loves low wages, which presents somewhat of a dilemma because they also hate taxes, and the same party that advocates for low taxes also advocates for low immigration. This party generally is fine with having a dysfunctional immigration system as long as they can pin the blame on the other party.

So if you want to decrease immigration, you can let people apply for asylum at the border but not let them in until/unless their cases are decided in their favor. That exports the problem to Mexico and creates a humanitarian dilemma, which is what Trump chose to do and will do again if he gets the chance. Eventually word would get out and people would stop coming in such large numbers, but people would (and were) hurt in the meantime. You could drastically scale up whatever processes allow people to apply at U.S. embassies in their home countries. And finally, you could just try to help those countries solve some of their issues that make people want to leave, which would also be solving some of your own issues at home.

Also remember, these are relatively good economic times, and the climate change shit has not really hit the migration fan yet.

Philadelphia census

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The Inquirer has a decent analysis of U.S. census results for Philly. You have to subscribe the Inquirer to read it (which I have done maybe because I was shamed by one of those articles about the decline of local news? also since I don’t really watch TV I am aware of almost no local news unless I pay for it). Anyway, a couple highlights although the graphics are worth a look:

  • They provide the Gini index and change in the Gini index over the last 5 years or so. Income inequality has gotten worse, and Philadelphia proper is the worst in the Philadelphia metro area. They point out that this could be because the rich have gotten richer or the poor have gotten poorer, or both, but then they don’t dig into that any further.
  • The depressing statistic remains that Philadelphia is the poorest major city in the United States at over 20% of residents living in poverty. This is pathetic. They picked 10 “major cities” (not clear if these are counties or metro areas) – Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are the next poorest after Philly (go Texas!) and Chicago, New York and Los Angeles are 5-7 respectively, with San Diego and San Jose bringing up the rear (i.e., the best of the worst? or the best of the worst of the biggest?). So whatever the impression we might get in the media, the economy in California seems to be doing a bit better than Texas if poverty is the metric. The article points out that social benefits like food stamps are not considered (but maybe tax benefits like the earned income tax credit would be?) but doesn’t dig into it further.
  • About 2 of 3 Philadelphia residents were born in Pennsylvania, indicating people are not that mobile and we are not attracting new residents from elsewhere the way the sun belt cities generally area. They did not do this analysis by metro area, so including people from the New Jersey and Delaware might push this number even higher (and excluding people from, say, the northwestern tip of the state which is a 7 hour drive from here probably would not push it that much lower.)
  • Philadelphia has the second lowest percentage of foreign-born residents of the 10 cities (counties? metro areas?) studied. San Antonio had the lowest, so being near a militarized international border does not seem to correlate to attracting immigrants. Interestingly, Interestingly Philadelphia has the highest percentage of immigrants from Africa at about 11% of immigrants. Houston and Dallas are next, which again I wouldn’t have guessed. But I would keep in mind that in terms of sheer numbers, New York, LA, and Chicago may still have the most people in almost any category.
  • A majority of people over the age of 15 have never been married. This is interesting. Does this mean our city is particularly young (I don’t think so), particular groups are not getting married (I think so), or people are getting married later in life? To answer the last question, it would be interesting to know what age people tend to get married on average. I got married at 30, so if the average age were to be 25 or 30, what percent of people over that age have ever been married? What percent of people who are not married now will eventually get married? That would be an interesting number. 18% of all people over 15 are separated, divorced, or widowed (but if you want to know what % of people who get married eventually get divorced or separated, you would want to separate out the people who are widowed.) 50% of people who get married and don’t get divorced are going to get widowed – there’s a depressing thought. Or I guess it would be slightly less than 50% – I suppose a few couples go down together in car or plane crashes, sinking boats, fires/floods/building collapses, or the very occasional suicide pact. That’s sweet, now I feel better.