May 4, 2024

"Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Japan disappointed by Biden's 'xenophobic' comments" (Kyodo News).

Did he just blurt that out or is there political wisdom in saying that? It appeals to certain Americans and it might be a deliberate nudge to China and Japan.

77 comments:

Old and slow said...

I agree that immigrants are a fine thing. Even better if they are skilled, non-criminals, and we know who they are. Oh yes, also not Muslims please. I’ve had Muslim acquaintances who I think highly of, but as group, they are not an acceptable addition to a modern liberal society.

gspencer said...

Yeah, because MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS have been such a boon for Western Europe.

gilbar said...

are ANY of those countries doing worse "economically" than US?
are ANY of those countries doing worse "economically" than Western Europe?
are ANY of those countries doing worse "economically" than Britain?

Also, by WHAT Stretch of the senile imagination, is INDIA "xenophobic"
Please list the countries with more Muslims than India?
how many languages does India have? 20?

RideSpaceMountain said...

“Diversity is our strength” Biden says
“Migrants deserve our help!” Biden says
"Think of all the tasty foreign cuisine!" Liberals say
“It will be fun!" They say...

Leland said...

Now explain why our economy is stalling so badly under Biden.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Have you ever noticed that migrants never have credit or debit cards with them? That they have no financial identity whatsoever? The large transnational banks don't see these people as migrants, they see them as customers. I’m surprised they don’t hand credit card applications out at the border like candy at this point, I mean they already hand them EBT cards so why the hell not.

Balance sheet growth or bust! The ponzi must continue! May the farce be with us!

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

That's just Biden's butt FuKKKing handlers speaking.

Mr Wibble said...

They told me that if I voted for Trump, we'd have a president who insulted critical allies and embarrassed us internationally, and they were right!

Iman said...

Legal immigration is a good thing. Allowing people into this country should be based on benefit to American citizens and the U.S. as a whole.

What Biden and the Democrats have allowed to happen on our southern border is bordering on treason. They are actively trying to ruin this country.

wild chicken said...

Immigrants are great if your idea of a great economy is selling houses to each other.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

If there's nothing between Emma Lazarus and Japan, Emma Lazarus is better? Is that how they console themselves in the White House?

Just an old country lawyer said...

Diplomacy!

Sebastian said...

WTF? Take India. Super diverse. Growing fast. While keeping a lid on Muslim trouble.

RideSpaceMountain said...

I swear to God, watching Biden try to navigate the intricacies of international diplomacy and the cost-benefit analysis of competing national priorities is like watching a toddler playing with a hand grenade.

Remember all the people screaming about Trump having the nuclear codes? Well congratulations, international geo-politics now includes a man with access to the nuclear football whose brain is also applesauce.

[claps slowly]

Charlie Eklund said...

You’re kidding, right? Obviously, he just blurted it out. Obviously.

Money Manger said...

This is exactly why Biden will never debate Trump. He cannot go for three minutes of unscripted dialogue without saying something either crazy or offensive.

Old and slow said...

Immigrants ARE a very good thing. More people = more wealth. It matters very much who those immigrants are though. They aren't sending their best, you might say...

Fred Drinkwater said...

The political news in this Little fiasco is that the White house staff has NOT rowed back Joe's remark.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Biden's Handlers.

narciso said...

they have between them 2.5 billion people why would they need more, they don't engage in magica thinking, about energy, that would be literally fatal, they buy Russian oil and they sell some of it to us on discount, just like they buy Iranian oil,

Tina Trent said...

Calling 3/4 of the world prejudiced probably isn't good diplomacy, but it seems to be our last great export -- and import.

doctrev said...

Biden's senile ramblings are why he will never, ever be allowed on an uncontrolled debate stage. Trump/ RFK may not have to do anything before this sack of diarrhea says something incredibly insulting to Indians or Mexicans, all to make excuses for his economic mismanagement.

Ask someone paying $6 for normal sized hamburgers if the Biden economy is going well. The underclass is increasingly ready to hang their overlords.

n.n said...

Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry), Equivocation, and Indoctrination (DEI) is a progressive problem in liberal societies. #HateLovesAbortion

Original Mike said...

China is stalling because their economy was built on credit to produce exports and high-rises nobody will ever live in.
Russia is having trouble because they started a war.
Japan and India in trouble is news to me, though I haven't paid strict attention.
Why'd you leave Germany off your list Joe? They're in deep trouble because they're farther down the unsustainable energy economy than you (we) are.

n.n said...

China has practical and actual [Muslim] slaves. Americans lose their civil rights to illegal aliens and political congruence. Japan has a social progress problem that places its viability at risk... America, too.

Sally327 said...

Is it even true that there are no immigrants in those countries? I don't know the answer for sure but I do know that are Filipinos working in Japan and I read somewhere that there is a large Nigerian community in China. And also it doesn't seem plausible that those countries are having economic problems --if they are-- because of a lack of more people to take care of.

I don't know to whom that statement is supposed to appeal. Maybe it's some super clever way of encouraging all those people trying to get into our country to head overseas and try to get into China or India instead. Maybe we should start arranging flights to facilitate that.

n.n said...

Single, central, monopolistic economics, and absorbing American et al fiscal liberal profligacy.

tim maguire said...

It’s difficult to see the political wisdom in insulting allies, of lumping India and Japan in with China and Russia. They’re all major Asian nations, but beyond that, they don’t have much in common.

I Shouldn’t Have Left the White House said...

Japanese and Western fusion of culture, defense and business is yet another strategic master piece by Xi and Putin.

Hard-working, ethical and no longer interested in rabid imperialism like Chinese and Russian agitators, I suspect they will prove to be a huge partner and ally to the West.

I am looking forward to visiting again soon!

Quaestor said...

Labor shortages have nothing to do with any supposed economic "stall" in China or Russia. In China, much of the oppression of the Uyghur exists to create employment opportunities for Han people. If the Chicoms are experiencing a bad economy, it's because of ridiculously bad centralized management at the highest levels of government, something the majority of American citizens understand precisely. Russian citizens have the same problem. The only important difference between their situation and ours, apart from the millions of indolent, unskilled, and criminal aliens that are encouraged to cross our borders daily, is the identifiable persons responsible for the mismanagement and destruction. Putin and Xi are unquestionably in charge of their respective regimes and therefore principally responsible for whatever happens, good or bad, whereas Biden is a meat-puppet -- a ventriloquist dummy operaterated by unseen hands.

Original Mike said...

My, God. This is Joe Biden's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. This is truly scary.

Rusty said...

Hey! I didn't vote for the moron. You guys that did strighten this mess up.

MadTownGuy said...

"Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants."

It's not about those other countries. Joe (or, more likely, his handlers) is running a psyop against anyone here in the US who objects to the torrential influx of unfettered, unvetted, Cloward-Piven promoting invaders.

Jupiter said...

At least he is admitting that his failure to enforce our immigration laws is intentional.

Breezy said...

If he thinks that, why hasn’t he talked to us about that? We’d like at the very least try to understand why he’s put us all in a dangerous situation. 10 million unvetted people from places that don’t work like ours is not at all ok. Plus it’s illegal!

Skeptical Voter said...

Joe has said a lot of spectacularly stupid things--but this one must be near the top of the list of all time stupid Biden comments.

I could say that it's hard to tell what Joe was thinking when he said this--but that gives him credit for thinking at all. And the jury is out on whether he's capable of independent thought. There's a reason he earned the reputation of the dumbest man in the Senate.

Jupiter said...

You kind of have to wonder, if large numbers of uneducated rapists are economically valuable, why isn't Senegal doing better?

n.n said...

China has an integrated multi-ethnic society, but a distinct lack of diversity (i.e. color blocs) but not class distributions. America has a social progress problem that curbs its native viability, which is sustained through immigration. Immigration also serves to artificially, temporarily increase apparent economic health statistics (e.g. GDP).

rhhardin said...

Slanty eyes, a war and a caste system with affirmative action.

Scott Gustafson said...

Why have low skilled wages stagnated since Biden took office?

Narayanan said...

I agree that immigrants are a fine thing
================
when you need them [for what where and when is a different question]

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

10:46 Q- for the win.

Scott Gustafson said...

According to the BLS household survey, all of the employment growth over the last year has been from the foreign born. Native born employment declined slightly.

Jerry said...

The stupid thing about this is - who's he trying to affect/convince? None of the countries he mentioned are going to care one bit about what he thinks, and at the best they'll just laugh at him. At worst, it (once again) damages our standing in the world.

Japan's having a demographic collapse - as is SK. China's also having problems because of their 'one child' policy and their adherence to a top-down political/economic style's not helping. India will do what India does - they're more worried about China and Pakistan than the opinion of the Ficus-in-Chief.

Someone in our administration decided quite a while back that unrestricted immigration's an unquestionable positive good. And it doesn't matter what the actual effects are - the narrative can't be questioned at all.

So NATURALLY Joe's going to blast our allies because they don't 'do the right things'...

God, I could go for some mean tweets, instead of this deep-state, smash the peasants bullshit.

Blackbeard said...

I'm no fan of Joe Biden but on this he is right. Many Asia countries, notably China and Japan, are xenophobic. The resident foreign population is Japan, for example, is around 2% compared to around 14% in the US. As fertility rates collapse around the world, including in the US, our openness to immigrants is going to turn out to be a massive advantage.

n.n said...

American economic health is sustained through labor and environmental arbitrage, immigration, redistributive change (e.g. federal dollars), and capital extraction.

Joe Smith said...

Having personal knowledge of Japan...they SHOULD be xenophobic.

Once they start importing foreign workers (which is inevitable) they will lose their culture and what makes them special.

Tokyo is the greatest city on earth.

Visit now before it's not...

mikee said...

Joe goes for diversity rather than central planning as the named cause of economic distress for four large countries. I guess he does that because he's a fan of central planning, not for its potential success (negative) in running economies, but for the power, graft, and control it offers. Diversity? Cover for unlimited immigration in the US, that is all. This is what magicians and pickpockets call "diverting attention" and placing a hand firmly on your wallet is the proper response when this starts.

Spiros Pappas said...

How is Japan failing? They live 5 to 10 years longer than we do, they have 90% less crime, they have universal literacy and so on. I know they're experiencing a baby bust just right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if ten, fifteen years from now they were rolling in babies.


And what about our great, prosperous country? I think our country is failing. All of our economic growth has gone to the top 5,000 or 10,000 ultra wealthy men. The rest of the country looks and acts like a sh*tty third world country. Our IQ levels are plummeting (I don't think 30% of Americans can read any language) and our men refuse to acquire the valuable skills we need. Our doctors are no longer competent and our life expectancies are falling. It is genuinely terrifying to get on a plane now. The list goes on and on.

I'm in Clearwater Beach right now. It is a very nice, booming little town. But two or three miles away from the island and the Scientologists and there is homelessness and despair. Friggin tent cities with 10 or 15 homeless people living just off a highway in a nature grove. And Florida is way better off than most of the country. It is so sad.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

China is failing because they're a command economy. Obey the Chairman's edict and build new cities and EEVs! Who cares that no one will move into those new cities or drive those EEVs? We must keep those construction companies and factories busy doing make work.

Japan was an icon of government/private industrial policies. That's the key to national prosperity! Until make work investment runs out of steam and it takes decades to overcome the bad investments. Obey the government!

Both ignore the feedback of the free market. Government mandates of no ICE cars after 2035 will work out just as well as China's and Japan's failing economies.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Debate stage for the Presidential debates:

On the right, Donald Trump.
On the left, RFKjr.
In the middle, a 77-in t.v. screen.

Both RFKjr and Trump answer their questions competently. "Joe Biden" answers with previously recorded clips of what he's said previously. Nonsensical answers and slurred speech.

It'll be a riot (metaphorically, not an invasion of the university campuses.)

effinayright said...

Having lived for almost five years in Japan, I can say with certainty that admitting largely-illiterate immigrants from any poor European or Western Hemisphere country would only result in the Japanese having to provide every one with huge amounts of "welfare". Forever.

The newcomers couldn't speak or read the language, and very few Japanese will speak theirs.

So aside for the young kids--who pick up new languages easily---the new arrivals will be illiterate in a country where virtually all jobs require fluency. How could employers train them?

The foreigners will very likely have poor hygiene, which the fastidiously neat and clean locals will hate. If experience teaches us anything, the newcomers will trash every place they squat in.

I say this having seen all of the above to some extent when I lived in Kyoto years ago. Smelly American hippies walking on tatami matting in Birkenstocks, for starters, and when they couldn't be understood just talking louder and louder---as if that would make a difference!

And THEY were Americans!

RCOCEAN II said...

Joe biden is such a piece of leftwing, Globalist shit. How anyone could vote for this clown is beyond me. He needs to shut up about Japan Korea or China.

Unlike the USA, these places are actual countries. These people can trace their ancestors back for 2000 or more years and they don't need "Immigrants". They're massively overcrowded. japan is the size of California with 120 million people! Hey, but think of all the MONEY, says the 'murcian. What about cheap labor? What else maters?

These countries also have leaders who identify with their own people. Unlike 'muricans, they don't have some hostile elite trying to destroy the native born population.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

"Did he just blurt that out or is there political wisdom in saying that?"
LMFAO! Joe Biden, Political Wisdom Blurter...
Oh, the neutrality! The cruel, cruel neutrality!

Narr said...

Yeah, it's a deliberate nudge to China and Japan. A nudge for them to ignore whatever senile babble emerges from the POTUS pie-hole and get on with their own plans.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

There is no strategic thinking coming out of “the Biden” warehouse.

Biden is mostly reacting to events

Jay said...

Large bureaucracy left wing authoritarian governments in financial trouble.

Suprrrise, suprrrise, suprrrise.

cfkane1701 said...

Joe Biden does nothing deliberately, and I include bodily functions in my statement.

Oligonicella said...

Althouse:
It appeals to certain Americans...

Which? All that means is xenophobia appeals to xenophobics.

Not wanting illegal line jumpers let in is not xenophobia as those being jumped are xeno themselves.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

"Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically?
Because they're a communist dictatorship, asshole

Why is Japan having trouble?
Because they created a society where the labor demanded of people was in far excess of the rewards they received
This works when you country has just been devastated by war, and no one has anything, so any move upward is "good".

It doesn't work two generations later, when they can all see that the rest of the Western world doesn't have to suffer that way.

The people in charger were the old generation, and so weren't willing to hear complaints.

So the younger generation just checked out

Why is Russia?
Because it's a corrupt kleptocratic dictatorship run by a former Communist.

IOW, it's exactly what Biden wants to turn the US into

Why is India?

It isn't doing badly

Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants."

Joe's an idiot at the best of times, so it may be he's just too stupid to understand the difference between "highly educated or at least smart and hard working" beneficia immigrants who go through the legal process for immigrating, , and assimilate to their new home, vs "people with no skills" who come in illegally or as "refugees", and act as a net drain on the country they're invading, while they major effect is to destroy jobs and wages for the actual citizens of the country they're invading.

If you're low income in America, the "open borders" people are your greatest enemy. Voting for a Democrat is like a chicken voting for Col Sanders

traditionalguy said...

The Dem’s desire to live off the enslaved classes never goes away. NB: Biden’s family being slave state guys have never had to work. They just scam the world by using the threat of America’s world military dominance.

I Shouldn’t Have Left the White House said...

China's economic growth is a political matter. The CCP are frightened of losing control, as they believed they had in the period leading up to Xi's clampdown which started in 2013. Economic growth, productivity growth and new employment opportunities are increasingly important for China. The government is painfully aware of this, but dare not liberalise further for fear of losing control. That is why public investment is the only response.

Understanding China's growth 1980-2020 means understanding a massive Chinese release of animal spirits and entrepreneurial activity. Today's Chinese stagnation derives from the loss of those animal spirits. Walk along any street in a major town and you will see rows of boarded-up shops which were closed during the COVID lockdown, and have not reopened.

China's CCP has reached the crunch point, where China's economy, and especially its young age-group under 30, desperately need liberalisation, but letting go means loss of government control. It will happen; the question is how. By a steady process, or via a big explosion ?

Amadeus 48 said...

Biden, the human gaff machine, appreciates Althouse’s attempt to rationalize his natterings.

Rabel said...

Here's the transcript.

Since he was speaking to a group of Asian Americans I'd say it was a blurt.

And a new, to me, lie:

"And whether you’re immigrants or not, whether you’re the children of immigrants, like I am, the fact of the matter is you’re what makes America what it is. Not a joke. It’s not a joke."

Both of his parents were born in Pennsylvania.

JaimeRoberto said...

He blurted out what his handlers say behind closed doors like when he said it wouldn't be a big deal if Russia had just a minor incursion into Ukraine. I can just picture his handlers smacking their foreheads in frustration when he blurts.

Harun said...

You know, what if its not "immigration" that matters, but Japan's massive debt?

Its very large as percent of GDP.

Joe Biden doesn't want to talk about that maybe because he plans to increase our debt.

The Real Andrew said...

One of my favorite statistics is that during the Syrian civil war, Japan took in 7 Syrian refugees.

That’s the way to do it.

And I’m not sure we should be encouraging immigration to a Communist country like China.

As for India, it has almost 1.5 billion people. How many more does it need?

Narr said...

It's stuff like this that proves there aren't too many people, or too few. It's just that they're always in the wrong place.

Josephbleau said...

Beiden is a dumb shit. It matters not if he was a natal dumb shit, stutterer, or a victim of brain rot. The effect size is as observed, causality is not important.

Josephbleau said...

"It's stuff like this that proves there aren't too many people, or too few. It's just that they're always in the wrong place.

What if global warming is just a way for the Earth Mother to move people to the places they should have always been?

Bunkypotatohead said...

"In the interview with Bloomberg, Summers quoted someone from a developing country as saying, "What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the US is a lecture."

Narayanan said...

As for India, it has almost 1.5 billion people. How many more does it need?
=================
India also gets illegal immigrants

Narr said...

"What if global warming is just a way for the Earth Mother to move people to the places they should have always been?"

You could argue it, but I'm partial to the theory that it's history that does most of that.

Rocco said...

Let's test Joe's thesis shall we? Let's have Joe immigrate somewhere and let's see what happens to that country.

holdfast said...

Nice job insulting Japan, Joe, you stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

Any other allies you'd like to push away?

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Rich said...
China's CCP has reached the crunch point, where China's economy, and especially its young age-group under 30, desperately need liberalisation, but letting go means loss of government control. It will happen; the question is how. By a steady process, or via a big explosion ?

By a big explosion, that being the only way left for it to go

Tina Trent said...

China's doing fine on the illegal immigrant front to America. So the are a nation of immigrants.