Consider the misery gap.
Imagine that you are an American who feels out of touch with harsh reality. You can go watch superhero movies because they are violent and exciting but just really fantasy violence. You're safe. You're comfortable. You watch TV shows where young stupid awkward people are cute and have nice apartments and don't get into car wrecks that jacks up their insurance premiums. You're young and healthy enough to get totally wasted whenever you feel like partying and you don't even think about health consequences. I mean you'd eat cheeseburgers every day if you could live with the gut and hip consequences. I mean meat is more dangerous than alcohol, right? OK let's not get to serious here.
The bottom line is that you're a happy American and you've got it pretty good. You are, dare we say it, privileged. I mean not compared to your friends and co-workers but compared to all kinds of other miserable people. You think to yourself, I'm happy to talk about all kinds of ways that people could be less miserable. And I'm all for being supportive of that. I'm a good person and I will speak up, because that just makes sense to me. You think, I wouldn't want to live in a harsh reality like so many other people, and I want people to live like I do. More friends for everybody, right? In your world, there is practically limitless freedom. The only limits on freedom are the zero-sum kind. When I take advantage of you, directly that's wrong. Otherwise I can swing my fist anywhere, so long as it doesn't hit anybody's nose.
OK That's the setup.
What then is the zero-sum nature of activism? When you talk about all kinds of ways that people could be less miserable, is there a cost? Is positivity not always only positive? When everybody is working to make the world a better place so long as our intentions are good, then we are all good right?
Cobb doesn't think so. This is the theoretical context that occurred to me as I was thinking about a 'misery gap' in the following scenario. If Trump makes you miserable, if the very fact of Trump is making America miserable again, then why do people risk death to come here? Most certainly they know that they will face violence and dangers of the action movie type where commandos with black camo and automatic weapons will shout at them. Certainly they must know that they won't be able to get car insurance.
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Anyway. That train of thought had a hard time climbing a hill to see the promised land. Meanwhile Fareed Z sees some facts and makes some speculations. The facts are the most interesting part.
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN: Given President Trump's mean spirited and often bigoted attitudes on immigration, it pains me to say this, but he is right, that the United States faces a crisis with its asylum system. Democrats might hope that the out-of-control situation at the southern border undermines Trump's image among his base as a tough guy who can tackle immigration. But they should be careful. It could actually work to the president's advantage.
Since 2014, the flow of asylum seekers into the United States has skyrocketed. Last year, immigration courts received 162,000 asylum claims. A 240 percent increase from 2014. The result is a staggering backlog with more than 300,000 asylum cases pending and the average immigration case has been pending for more than 700 days. It's also clear that the rules surrounding asylum are vague, lax and being gamed.
The initial step for many asylum seekers is to convince officers that they have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries. And about 75 percent meet that criteria. Some applicants for asylum have suspiciously similar stories using identical phrases. Many simply use the system to enter the U.S. and then melt into the shadows or gain a work permit while their application is pending.
Asylum is meant to be granted to a very small number of people in extreme circumstances. Not as a substitute for the process of immigration itself. Yet, the two have gotten mixed up. As the Atlantic's David Frum has pointed out, the idea of a right to asylum is a relatively recent one dating to the early years of the Cold War. Guilt ridden over the rejection of many Jewish refugees during World War II the U.N. created a right of asylum to protect those who are fleeing regimes where they would be killed our imprisoned because of their identity or beliefs. This standard has gotten broader and broader over the years.
And now includes threats of gang warfare and domestic violence. These looser criteria coupled with the reality that this is a safe way to enter the U.S. have made the asylum system easy to abuse. Applications from Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans have surged even though the murder rate in their countries has been cut in half.
More broadly, hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in poor, unstable regions where threats of violence abound could easily apply for asylum. Do they all have the legal right to enter the U.S. through a backdoor, bypassing the normal immigration process? The Trump administration's approach has been mostly to toughen up the criteria. Hire more judges, push Mexico to keep applicants from entering the U.S.
But a much larger fix is needed. The criteria for asylum need to be rewritten and substantially tightened. The number of courts and officials dealing with asylum must be massively expanded. People should not be able to use asylum claims as a way to work in America. There needs to be a much greater cooperation with the home countries of these applicants rather than insults, threats and aid freezes.
No one fix will do it, but we need the kind of sensible bipartisan legislation that has resolved past immigration crises. Democrats have spent most of their efforts on this topic, assailing the Trump administration for its heartlessness. Fine. But that does not address the roots of this genuine crisis. If things continue to spiral downward and America's southern border seems out of control, Trump's tough rhetoric and hard line stance will become increasingly attractive to the public.
Keep in mind, that the rise of populism in the Western world is almost everywhere tied to fears of growing out of control immigration.
(published now without further comment)
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