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Illegal immigrant fact of the day
Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
Here is the link.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 29, 2007 at 08:56 PM in Medicine | Permalink
Comments
Maybe they're afraid of getting turned in somehow...
Posted by: Michael K at Nov 29, 2007 9:29:42 PM
According to a telephone survey, which assumes that illegal immigrants answer truthfully to a stranger. Indeed, the authors of the study claim that the reason illegal immigrants don't use emergency rooms much is because they get nervous that they'll get caught. But, we're supposed to believe that they then are totally trusting of a stranger calling them up asking if they've used emergency rooms!
The article you link to says:
"In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms. Ten have closed in the last five years, citing losses from treating the uninsured, and those that remain open are notorious for backlogs. By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency, regardless of a person's insurance -- or immigration -- status. Illegal immigrants, who often work at jobs that don't offer health insurance, are commonly seen as driving both the closures and the crowding."
So, it's hardly material whether emergency rooms are being driven out of business by illegal immigrants or by _their children_, there is still a direct causal link between illegal immigration and the emergency room crisis.
Tyler, you're a smart guy. How come your IQ suddenly drops 40 points when it comes to credulously passing on pro-immigration propaganda?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 29, 2007 11:31:47 PM
Three quarters in the growth in those who have no health insurance over the last decade comes from immigrant families.
Some more interesting facts about our current immigration situation.
Posted by: Michael Blowhard at Nov 29, 2007 11:36:55 PM
You know Sailer's getting nervous when he resorts to personal attacks.
Posted by: shecky at Nov 30, 2007 12:19:39 AM
Sailer does that all the time (perhaps he's a perpetually nervous Woody Allen type), and criticizing a person's writings on a topic is hardly a "personal attack".
Not only does hospital use go up by generation so does crime, welfare dependency and illegitimacy. Education plateaus by third generation well below the national average. Since there are going to be a lot more children of immigrants than immigrants themselves, the first generation being preferable to the latter in various respects is the opposite of comforting.
Posted by: TGGP at Nov 30, 2007 12:26:55 AM
So I guess we can write off the "Illegal Immigrant Fact of the Day". Looks more like wishful thinking. Which is par for the course when it comes to thinking about immigration.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Nov 30, 2007 12:52:06 AM
This is a pattern that goes back years: Week after week, Tyler posts lots of high quality stuff, then every so often, he puts up something about immigration. And sure enough, it's almost always much more ignorant and illogical than his average. So, his readers educate him in great detail on his mistakes in the comments.
Typically, Tyler then equivocates, and then gives up and drops the subject of immigration for a long time. But, after awhile, he puts up something about immigration again, and it turns out to be just as far below his normal standards as its predecessors. And so the endless cycle continues ...
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 30, 2007 12:54:12 AM
Obviously people who work in low-paying jobs that don't offer health insurance are going to be underinsured. It is no surprise here. People like Steve Sailer want to enjoy the benefits of this country (low inflation, low prices, affordability of housing etc.) but don't want to pay the cost for it. Unskilled immigrants doing unskilled jobs frees up our more skilled people to do things like invent, market, create and produce. The more unskilled labor jobs we produce in our economy, the more likely we'll have poor, uneducated people working them and not getting paid much for it. In turn, this means more uninsured people. The fact that they are immigrants legal or otherwise is incidental. If native-born Americans were doing all these unskilled, low paying jobs, then our hospitals would be filled with those people. The cost for our prosperity is a cheap and willing labor force.
Mr. Sailor's skepticism for the methodology of the study is also misplaced... If you go to the study's website, you will see that first of all, the question about one's legal status is only one question out of a 30+ minute questionnaire on healthcare issues in general which was administered to over 40,000 people. The survey captured people all over California of all ethnicities, not just Hispanics, legal or otherwise and focused on many healthcare related topics. The legal residency question is most likely asked at the very end (which is when other sensitive demographic questions are usually asked), not at the beginning, so there is no incentive to underreport one's healthcare usage in the rest of the 30 minute questionnaire. As a market researcher myself, I would dream of having a sample size this big and a methodology that is so rigorous. If you go to their website there are a good number of documents on their methodology http://www.chis.ucla.edu/methods.html
It just goes to show that people will put down anything that they disagree with citing "poor methodology," especially if they have a racist or anti-immigrant agenda they want to promote.
Posted by: JP at Nov 30, 2007 1:30:02 AM
Yeah the times had a similar quote today: "Mr. Cornelius said his field research in San Diego County had shown that illegal immigrants under-used the health care system, given their health needs."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/us/29immig.html
I "under-use" my roommates beer as well.
Posted by: James at Nov 30, 2007 2:23:34 AM
Suggesting someone's IQ drops 40 points when he thinks about a certain topic is not the same as criticizing their writings on that topic.
Posted by: stuart at Nov 30, 2007 2:43:37 AM
stuart, IQ is generally measured by a standardized IQ test. Tyler is not being tested. When Sailer says someone's "IQ drops when they write about [topic]" he is not insulting their intelligence but saying that their writings in that topic compare poorly to their other ones and/or that they are not applying the same sort of rigorous thinking.
Posted by: TGGP at Nov 30, 2007 3:42:17 AM
An interesting anecdote about "afraid of getting turned in" from Italy, where no one gets turned away from the hospital: a friend of mine is married to an Italian woman who speaks fluent Chinese and Japanese, and is often called to translate for Chinese immigrants who are, naturally, in a much more foreign culture than Latinos in the US. Occasionally she deals with people who have let infections fester until they simply cannot stand it any longer, for fear of being turned in, because they don't know the system. Occasionally this leads to amputations for simple infections that, had they been caught in time, would have required nothing more than a course of antibiotics.
Posted by: David N. Welton at Nov 30, 2007 3:53:54 AM
The researchers simultaneously claim that illegal immigrants are often too nervous to go to the emergency room even when they need help, but that illegal immigrants are also so self-confident that they will honestly volunteer to strangers calling on the phone the number of times they've gone to the emergency room.
Something does not compute ...
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 30, 2007 5:14:57 AM
Shorter Sailer: "Tyler is smart when he agrees with me and stupid when he doesn't."
Posted by: bartman at Nov 30, 2007 1:01:16 PM
Um, there is no incentive to lie on a survey, especially when the more sensitive questions about demographics and residency status are left to the very end of the survey. If you understood how research works, you would know that they start with the less sensitive questions and then become more intrusive towards the end. if someone is willing to answer a survey about healthcare issues, why would they lie about their visits to the emergency room, especially since they have no way of knowing that at the very end of a 30 minute questionnaire, they will be asked their residency status. That is what doesn't compute.
Furthermore this survey is actually one of the largest surveys about healthcare being done in this country. It has nothing to do with immigration and there is no hidden immigration agenda in the survey, unlike your criticism of its methodology.
Posted by: JP at Nov 30, 2007 1:04:28 PM
"This is a pattern that goes back years: Week after week, Tyler posts lots of high quality stuff, then every so often, he puts up something about immigration. And sure enough, it's almost always much more ignorant and illogical than his average. So, his readers educate him in great detail on his mistakes in the comments."
I must say as a *huge* fan of this blog, Sailer is right on target here. Tyler's usual posts are brilliant, but on a few politically sensitive issues they are amazingly shallow. Illegal immigration is one. Two others I can think of are terrorism and national IQs.
Posted by: JD at Nov 30, 2007 2:07:47 PM
Dear JP:
Here's another methodology problem. Say, they tell the truth about all the times they've been to the emergency room. Then, at the end of the interview they are asked if they are an illegal immigrant. The natural reaction, if you were an illegal immigrant nervous about getting in trouble for using the emergency room, would be to lie and say you were legal. The overall effect would be to artificially inflate the usage rate for non-illegal immigrant Latinos.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 30, 2007 3:24:08 PM
Dear JP:
Here's another methodology problem. Say, they tell the truth about all the times they've been to the emergency room. Then, at the end of the interview they are asked if they are an illegal immigrant. The natural reaction, if you were an illegal immigrant nervous about getting in trouble for using the emergency room, would be to lie and say you were legal. The overall effect would be to artificially inflate the usage rate for non-illegal immigrant Latinos.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Nov 30, 2007 3:25:00 PM
I second Steve Sailer and JD ----- this is a great, informative and truly interesting blog written by two highly intelligent economists ---- but when the topic of illegal immigration comes up, the quality of the posts suffer abysmally.
Posted by: Varangy at Nov 30, 2007 3:57:50 PM
Steve, while that may be true, the figures on illegal immigrants is made that much more valid. Anyone who admits being illegal in this study, is obviously not lying about his status (most likely). So any data you have on them has to be pretty legitimate, especially since they have no way of knowing they will be asked their immigration status towards the end of the survey.
Yes, the figures on non-illegal immigrants might be affected somewhat by those who were too afraid to be honest, but I would argue that they are averaged out with the numerous legitimately legal immigrants, legal residents and citizens as well. Not only that but the illegal data would not INFLATE, but deflate the other responses, since the illegals are reporting less visits, not more.
I personally think it would have been better if they had compared the results of illegal immigrants with everyone else, not just legal immigrants or other Hispanics.
Posted by: JP at Nov 30, 2007 4:22:24 PM
JP, as a libertarian sympathizer I'm familiar with the argument you use regarding how illegal immigrants contribute to society. I believe your error is that you're not looking at all of the problems they and their descendants bring with them, in the form of crime, welfare dependancy, and the breakdown of democracy and civil society. Proper cost-benefit analysis demands accurate acocunting of both benefits *and* costs. Steve Sailer, whom you are criticizing, has written voluminously on these topics, and was instrumental in changing my mind - I used to be an open borders enthusiast before finding his site, and in the face of the trainload of facts he lays out I had no choice but to revise my opinions. His sites are isteve.com and isteve.blogspot.com if you're interested.
Posted by: pwyll at Nov 30, 2007 4:52:25 PM
pwyll:
Immigration has built the US into the richest and one of the most stable societies in the history of humanity. Just how is it that immigration in the past led to the creation of such benefits, but now it will inevitably lead to our ruin? Juast exactly when, and why, did immigration go from being good for this society to bad? What, exactly, makes it "different this time"?
In the past, the entrenched majority always railed about the impending doom being brought on by whatever current wave of immigrants was present at the time, be they German, Italian, Slavic, Irish, Blacks (if you wish to see their shift from slavehood as a form of immigration), Chinese, Vietnamese, and so on. The nativists and their doom-saying have always been wrong, and the current wave of anti-hispanic nativists like you and Sailer will also be proven wrong. You can rant histrionically about whatever cherry-picked anecdotes you want, but 200 years of history vividly illustrates the error of your thinking.
Posted by: bartman at Nov 30, 2007 5:07:33 PM
pwll... unfortunately, people like Steve Sailor like to discredit any evidence to the contrary of their belief system without really assessing the merits. I've wasted a bunch of time on his site. The voluminous data he espouses is actually all a recycling of the same studies and a mc escher-like house of mirrors of "academic" thought that he employs by linking to other like minded individuals and studies sponsored by nationalists and or white supremacists that have little academic merit. There is a lot of conjecturing and reductionism but very little solid data. There is nothing objective about those studies. When it comes down to it, they are all citing the same studies by a small handful of pseudo-academics. People like Steve have no training in the fields that they pretend to be experts on and have somehow managed to narrow down the entirety of human experience to things like IQ or brain size. It is easy to prey on people's uncertainties and fears and blow them out of proportion. I disagree with the over-PC-ization (is that a word?) of our world, but these folks go the other way to an extreme. I think you'll see that under the guise of academics and objectivity lies people with an ugly agenda. Sailor is a prolific writer, poster and contributor to numerous blogs under his own name and under pseudonyms all trying to make the case for White superiority. He makes a living off of stirring up the pot for the sake of conflict. Again, I agree that we have become overly PC in this country, but people like Steve Sailor just go overboard and are a blight on our culture.
Posted by: JP at Nov 30, 2007 6:48:31 PM
"Unskilled immigrants doing unskilled jobs frees up our more skilled people to do things like invent, market, create and produce." Excuse me for a short comment from a U.S. citizen (and voter) ex-pat living in Central America. There is much blather in this comment thread about what "immigrants" cost or contribute to the U.S. That's not the issue. The issue for most U.S. citizens is the flouting of THE core principle holding the diverse U.S. together - Respect for the Rule of Law. It's clear that most Libertarians would like to wish away the whole concept of sovereign borders. Unfortunately, the U.S. does have laws regarding the kind and number of immigrants that are allowed into the U.S. and the conditions for their residence (until citizenship) here. If anyone here trembles at the thought of a rise in the price of their salads and landscaping, then convince the majority of U.S. voters to change the law to allow open borders and amnesty for everyone. Until then, I vote we ask government officials to respect and enforce fully the laws regarding immigration. Believe me, the current crop of illegals are not trained in their home country to show much respect for the law.
Posted by: boqueronman at Nov 30, 2007 7:52:20 PM
Good point Bogueronman... What needs to happen is that our laws need to actually make sense. RIght now, our laws are the equivalent of telling senior citizens to pay outrageous prices for pharmaceuticals and then criminalizing them for going to Canada for better deals since they can't afford the lifesaving drugs. The immigration laws right now favor skilled people (of whom we already have many here in the US) and make it virtually impossible for unskilled people to come in legally. However, the demand for unskilled labor is extremely high and not waning anytime soon. If you legally let in less than 1000 unskilled people per year when we're easily hiring millions of them, then there is something wrong with the system.
Let in the correct amount of people to do the jobs that are needed, no more and no less. Charge them $2000 to get in (which is less than they're paying coyotes), keep close tabs on them and you'll quickly see there is nothing to be upset about. Use the billion or so dollars to tighten up the borders and to enforce them properly. Problem solved. When demand for labor goes down a) people won't want to come in anyways and b) we reduce the quotas.
Posted by: JP at Nov 30, 2007 8:38:10 PM
