Bogus statistical claims watch

People living in New Jersey are perfectly entitled to be against illegal immigration because New Jersey is too crowded. Likewise, people living in England are also entitled to be against illegal immigration because England is too crowded. No bogus statistical claims (or racism) need be involved.

Both of the comments above are absolutely correct. The problem comes, however, from harnessing a completely uninformative statistic to a ‘soft’ value judgement (a practice that happens so often in public debate that it seems natural).

There is almost no analytical value in simply measuring average population density across the land area of a political unit – the result tells you nothing about carrying capacity, how much of the land is usable, or other factors (including social ones) that may be relevant. Monaco has the highest density on the list, but it would drop to the end if you chose to include the Mediterranean Sea in its land area. Of course, this is absurd, but it would give you a situation analogous (in terms of the untility of the land) to Greenland or Turkmenistan or even Surinam.

The fact that Monaco seems to be doing OK as a country suggests that the simple measure of crowdedness is also not a good metric for immigrant-acceptibility. Perhaps there’s something unique about the crowdedness in England (to do with mean income, or social/class/racial tensions, or the availability of bananas or beer) that makes it different… but it seems more likely that this is a value judgement, pure and simple: valid on its own terms as a perception, but not ‘objective’ as the appeal to statistics implies. People in Montana are entitled to grumble about it becoming too crowded (and I expect some of them do).

oh yeah, as someone in bangladesh, i can you don’t don’t worry your pretty heads off. allow a bunch of under-educated third world immigrants into your countries, it’s all great, you’ve got so much slack before the ubiquitous smell of sh*t is in the air :-)

The UK is the correct unit because once an immigrant enters he is free to travel anywhere within the UK, not just England. This is why the UK should be compared to the Palestinian territories but not to Monaco or New Jersey.

Open borders vs. controlled immigration is only part of the issue. Tightening the definition of a legal migrant won’t stop illegal immigrants entering the country, and giving illegal immigrants amnesty won’t solve any problems either.

I doubt the influx of immigrants would be so high if we were properly tackling the British nationals luring them here where they work in the shadows as prostitutes and slaves. It makes the issue a whole lot less simple, sure, but it does mean tackling an actual problem rather than fabricating some kind of invasion or claiming that Britain can sustain so many people with a few convenient adjustments.

Of course, that would mean taking blame off the immigrants, partially, which nobody opposing their existence in this country seems to want to do. Forcibly ensuring that all workers are accounted for and treated equally in spite of their legal right to be in the UK effectively removes the incentive to bring them here as cheap labourers. We might also have to start arresting some pimps once in a while – who knows what we could accomplish if we stopped prosecuting victims of circumstance in favour of their exploiters?

I know that if I were living in complete poverty inundated with tales and images of a faroff land of wealth and opportunity, I’d risk my life and lie through my teeth to get there.

I’m fairly incredulous when people say “it’s not racism, it’s just common sense” because I still don’t think they’re including white immigrants. That is to say, I’ve never known a white immigrant be persecuted for having that status. However you and I have both known dark-skinned immigrants (and, for that matter, British nationals) be accused of invasion, disruption or the bewildering concept of job-theft.

I also don’t think Randall would complain about crowding if Britain were packed to the brim with born-and-bred British nationals. He’d be complaining about benefit cheats, or crap food.

(As I was completing the above comment, an email appeared in my inbox, from the Telegraph, asking “What Do You Want From The Daily Telegraph?”. I suspect my actual answer is not what they want to hear.)

an article tellingly entitled It’s not racist to worry about immigration

The implication is that you think it is racist to worry about immigration. Really? Surely almost everyone worries about immigration, in that practically no one is in favour of a total free-for-all; almost everyone wants at least some limitations. (Quite apart from the fact that it plays into the anti-immigrationists’ hands to label them all as racists.)

You may be right that the claim about England is statistical mumbo jumbo, but ultimately that’s nit-picking. The real question is whether population density should be an issue when considering how much immigration is desirable. Shouldn’t it at least be part of the general mix of concerns?

Chris, I think you underestimate the strength of the Frank Field arguments against immigration: that it threatens the welfare state by making it seem unfair to the poor whose promised benefits go to other people; also, Orwell, writing immediately after the war, had quite a lot about Scottish working-class resistance to Polish immigrants, apparently a major social problem for a while.

H.:

“ultimately that’s nit-picking”

Not if that’s the main thrust of the argument.

Wait a minute, is it reverse racism to point out errors in logic? Maybe we just “played into the hands” of those anti-immigrants? The error in logic is just there as a trap to ensnare all of us? (Instead of, like, an actual argument that actually makes sense.)

= = =

Alex:

“I’m fairly incredulous when people say ‘it’s not racism, it’s just common sense’ because I still don’t think they’re including white immigrants.”

D’oh.

Bi: Not trying to be rude here, but I’m really having trouble understanding your last post. Could you explain it?

Alex: to put it simply, I agree with you.

the UK (243 /km²) comes in behind rather a lot of places

… as does England at 388 /km². It’s hard to see how you can come up with “fourth” on that data. Even if you extend “ignoring city-states” and “ignoring other non-sovereign states” by adding “ignoring countries with less than ten million residents” – on no basis I can reasonably imagine – you’re still left with Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea and the Netherlands ahead of England.

As Alex points out, crowdedness is about having too many non-whites.

this is fun, little did I know that the population density in Kensington and Chelsea is, wait for it:

15,177/km²

last time I went there, they seemed to be doing just fine; that said, London is a tad crowded

the realization that Ruwanda (sic) is roughly as densely populated as Belgium

Rwanda, however, is a great deal more crowded from a practical sense, since (1) a very large part of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture, with consequently much greater land requirements; and (2) a good part of the country is covered in volcanoes and other mountains, a problem that Belgium (to say the least :) does not have.

From the point of view of the ability to absorb population increase, Rwanda is one of the world’s most crowded countries if not the most crowded. (If you ignore the city-states)