The Prevailing Immigration Policy of Californians

Originally Published on April 17, 2019

I’ve spent part of the last week arguing on Twitter with a couple of Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) proponents on Twitter. They neglect many of the possibly good argument for their stance, resorting instead to a combination of covetousness, thinly-veiled classism and zero or negative sum economic thinking.

After a little more thinking, I realized what the dominant mode of thought is amongst coastal California progressives. Stated specifically, they believe in unrestricted inter-country migration, and they do not believe in intra-state migration. To wit:

Gentrification is viewed as unequivocally bad. Gentrification, or the movement of those classes of people with money and/or power into an area that is pre-dominantly occupied by the perceived oppressed class, is believed to displace people groups and hurt community ties. Certain criticisms of gentrification are valid-for instance, if a community has everyone sitting on their stoops playing music every night, and newcomers attempt to ban the playing of public music, it is infringing on the rights of the existing community. But generally, the acquisition and movement of capital will end up benefiting the poorest among us the most due to the marginal utility created by innovation, which largely happens with free flowing capital. Housing will get cheaper, displacment will lessen, and those communities will be able to gain more capital. Rent control, using local planning to block development, etc, largely hurts the “oppressed” classes the most. This leads to point 1: coastal progressives believe and actively promote policies that areas currently occupied by the perceived oppressed classes should not allow people to migrate into them.

Secondly, there are limited coastal lands. Building where fires can and do happen not only inevitably leads to the loss of houses on a long enough timeline, but creates worse fires when they do happen. Californians, rightfully so, are not fans of building in fire prone areas and are moving to slow it down

Progressive elites-especially Californians, prevent the development of infrastructure in many un-occupied areas due to environmental concerns.

Okay, so building is prohibited in areas occupied by oppressed communities. It is also prohibited inland, and water can’t get to almost any other new housing development that is not coastal. Even more, progressive coastal elites have instituted zoning policies which prevent building new homes for less than $1 million, or apartments at all. In almost every wealthy area in California. This, again, hurts ethnic minorities as well as people from other classes from moving into the community.

So we have established that California residents and newcomers can’t move into areas where the oppressed live if they are not from that oppressed class. They can’t create new infrastructures or towns. And the oppressed classes or newcomers definitely can’t move into areas where the rich live already. In essence, California’s infrastructure, zoning, tenant protections, and housing policy has created a situation in which intra-class geographic migration is highly discouraged, if not de facto prohibited.

Simultaneously, the majority of Californians believe in offering sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants. Amongst this favored class, the open borders/no walls movement is growing in favor; this same group is also extremely pro free international trade and global people movement. This creates an interesting pragmatic policy juxtaposition. The implicit Californian’s progressive agenda is to prohibit intra-state migration while encouraging inter-country migration. When people move into California, where are they supposed to live? And where are they even allowed to live?