Redstate

As a self-identified member of the "pro-immigration forces," I am certainly not happy with the status quo. It a) is a national security problem, b) is a disfunctional economic setup, and c) makes no sense.

We need secure borders as an issue of national security. The main difference between us "pro-immigration" types and the Tancredo followers is that we believe you can secure the border and encourage immigration at least at the level we have now. The way to do that is to find a reasonable economic setup that makes sense, not the status quo.

I would prefer a system that admits about 1.5 to 3 million legal immigrants a year (compared to the 1 million legal and .3 million illegal immigrants a year right now). However, for social and cultural reason that is not going to happen. A second-best solution would be a Guest Worker program or a Pence-style system that regularizes the flow of workers. They would allow us to actually follow who is coming in and going out of the country, which is a major step towards national security. And by definition secures the border.

I do think Leon's analogy is an interesting one. Supressing supply and demand isn't usually the most efficient solution to a problem. Often a market-based solution will achieve a goal with less costs. That's what the RIAA figured out. And I think it's what is animating much of the compromise immigration legislation.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

Are those numbers reversed? Since there are multiple millions of illegal border crossings per year and 40% of those who come here illegally come on visas (meaning they aren't included in those illegal crossing figures), 300,000 per year illegal immigration sounds really low. Even 1 million seems low.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

We already know what animates it. Money on the Republican side, desire for votes/power on the Democratic side. Somebody posted an IBD article that went into this in detail.

Immigration isn't an economic issue.

Sure it is. It's more than that too, but I don't know how you can say it an economic issue when the people who are coming here are coming here for economic reasons, and those who are attracting them here are also doing so for economic reasons. Clearly economics is a major part of the problem.

Citizenship and visas aren't a right, although I don't doubt a federal court will soon find such an animal in our constitution.

I don't think anyone here has claimed it was. That doesn't remove economics from the problem, however.

Napster didn't follow the law and pay the labels and artists, so it was shut down. If illegal immigration continues unabated, look for the legal variety to end or be curtailed, too.

That isn't really a good analogy. This would be as if the record labels decided to pull their records from stores because too many people were downloading songs illegally. Not a smart move, IMO. Ending legal immigration will increase the pressures on the illegal side. It won't do a thing to solve the problem. The same goes for pulling records from stores to protest illegal downloads.

No one runs on what you advocate, because to do so would be to lose.

Except for the President and half of the Senate, a big chunk of the House, and a bunch of Governors. I don't think amnesty is a particularly popular position to take, but there are certainly supporters of it, and there are politicians that make it pretty clear they support it (even if they don't use the word).

So enforcement first (i.e., Napster pays) means legal immigration will continue unabated.

I have no problem with enforcement first, even though the threat to legal immigration is empty and foolish. I'll take whatever enforcement I can get. I think it is reasonable to expect the failure to do anything to resolve the demand side will make it harder to do enforcement, however.

The bottom line for me is I would much rather see legal, vetted immigrants who are interested in working in a legal job here than whoever can sneak across the border to commit as much crime as they can, then go back while the heat dies down.

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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

issue. It does have economic components but they are secondary.

I don't think anyone here has claimed it was. That doesn't remove economics from the problem, however.
(regarding whether illegal immigration is a "right").

No, but some courts have come close. I have seen that argument kind of made in other right-of-center circles (the Wall Street Journal's advocacy of no borders comes fialry close).

Not a smart move, IMO. Ending legal immigration will increase the pressures on the illegal side. It won't do a thing to solve the problem. The same goes for pulling records from stores to protest illegal downloads.

It very well may not be smart. Like much in politics, a reaction to a problem isn't always based on the best public policy. Right now we have mob rule from the open borders advocates; I don't see that as any less extreme than the suspension of immigration.

Except for the President and half of the Senate, a big chunk of the House, and a bunch of Governors. I don't think amnesty is a particularly popular position to take, but there are certainly supporters of it, and there are politicians that make it pretty clear they support it (even if they don't use the word).

Nearly a third of all House Democrats joined all Republicans to go with the enforcement-first position recently. Most of the Dems were in contested races, even though their opponents might be nominal. Rep. Sherrod Brown flip-flopped to vote for enforcement-first because Sen. Mike DeWine had voted for the comprehensive bill.

I have no problem with enforcement first, even though the threat to legal immigration is empty and foolish. I'll take whatever enforcement I can get. I think it is reasonable to expect the failure to do anything to resolve the demand side will make it harder to do enforcement, however.

Unless the borders are secured and employer sanctions made, we will do nothing to curtail illegal immigration regardless of the numbers of legal immigrants we have.

Sure, it's a skill and technology issue. But if you don't have a plan to get around gravity, you won't get off the ground. Leon's point, with which I agree, is that economic pressures are what creates immigration - and you can no more ignore those in this debate than you can ignore gravity in flying an airplane.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

economic pressures pull illegal immigrants into the United States, and the decreased costs of criminal labor tempt employers to break our laws. Where I differ with Leon is how to deal with the lawbreaking. He suggests that new programs be instituted to deal with the economic realities. Well, that may or may not be good, but is a call for Congress to make after we get things under control. Right now this isn't an economics issue at all, but a matter of whether the rule of law matters in this country. If it doesn't, then all well and good; there are few things now crimes I might want to do. If the rule of law still mattters, enforce the legislation Congress enacted and make it extremely painful for those who come here illegally for economic reasons and those who employ them illegally for economic reasons. How much immigration, and the ways it is to occur, is a legislative decision, not one to be made by those who decide the law doesn't apply to them.

Where's the outrage? And thousands of lemonade stands don't pay taxes each year. Where are the marches?

There are many victimless crimes that are committed more often than illegal immigration. There's a lot more outrage in this case because it is also a cultural and social issue, not just a case of "enforce the law."

Nonetheless, I still think there is a simple solution if the only concern is to make sure people are law abiding. Don't legalize those already here, but allow 1% of our current population to the be immigration ceiling in the future. Most years we won't get 3 million legal immigrants. So if those already here want to become legal they can go back to their native country and start the process with a high chance of making it through the process. This is a non-disruptive way to encourage lawfulness. And if "breaking the law" is the only problem it would suffice.

I am guessing many on this thread would still oppose it because they oppose "mass immigration" for reasons other than "breaking the law."

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

victimless crimes don't carry enormous social and economic burdens. You usually do better.

Incidentally, since when does law enforcement have to be "non-disruptive?" Is this another new constitutional right that has been discovered?

Nothing "has to be" non-disruptive, I merely assert that it would be better policy. We have every right to limit immigration to 0. We also could raise taxes to 100% or tariffs to 1000%. Those would all be permissible and dumb ideas.

If the goals is to end illegal immigration, there are good efficient ways to do that and inefficient ones. I support the efficient ones. Those who support the inefficient ones do so mainly for non-economic reasons: fear of cultural change seems to the major one. I don't fear cultural change and in fact I think our country has thrived on adding new cultures to the melting pot. That is why it does not worry me to consider allowing more legal immigration as a possible solution.

This is not unlike the Drug War. If the goal is to reduce drugs, we could tax them or ban them. Taxing would have a much lower social cost and could lead to the same level of drug use. But for cultural reasons, we choose to ban them. I think the non-economic reason here is to make drugs into contraband that is seen unambiguously as a "bad" thing. It is a more expensive and inefficient system, but it serves a non-economic end.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

I don't fear cultural change and in fact I think our country has thrived on adding new cultures to the melting pot. That is why it does not worry me to consider allowing more legal immigration as a possible solution.

And I think you are coming close here to admitting that there is no actual economic benifit from immigration but that you favor it for cultural reasons.

And I think you are coming close here to admitting that there is no actual economic benifit from immigration but that you favor it for cultural reasons.

He pretends (at least I hope it isn't ignorance) to be unaware of what the success of the Johnson-Reed Act meant in our being united at the outset of WWII. He also comes across so awfully like Teddy Kennedy upon the passage of Hart-Celler regarding how it "would not alter the ethnic makeup" of the nation.

Closeted oikophobes are worse than pederastic Congressmen.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. -Theodore Roosevelt

This is a decision for the Congress to make. The drug laws may be stupid, outrageous, and counter-productive. Nonetheless, they are enforced. The immigration laws are not. Until I see them enforced, I am disinclined to believe any claims they will be when, well, X or Y or Z happens.

If the people don't want cultural change for whatever reason, the Congress within the bounds of the constitution can uphold the public sentiment--no matter how stupid it may seem to you. As it is now, we have mob rule--and those who spearhead this lawlessness see those who oppose it as crass bigots, xenophobes, restrictacons, and other folks with cooties. Rather ironic, in the final analysis.

KARL DEWEY
States, counties cracking down on illegals
Even jay-walking, parking violations, and prostitution gets the population in an uproar when it starts to affect traffic. So the illegals are having an adverse impact on many communities and they have decided to do something even if the federal government only wants to do their job of enforcement if it is a big headline.

Traffic stops can lead to deportation; some Latinos cry foul
CHARLOTTE - Police here operated for years under what amounts to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward illegal immigrants.

As elsewhere in the United States, law enforcement officers did not check the immigration status of people they came into contact with, and in the vast majority of cases, a run-in with the law carried little threat of deportation.

But that accommodation for the burgeoning illegal population ended abruptly in April, when the Mecklenburg County sheriff's office began to enforce immigration law, placing more than 100 people a month into deportation proceedings. Some of them had been charged with violent crimes, others with traffic infractions.
..................
Philip Turtletaub, a Charlotte immigration lawyer, says he sometimes receives six or seven calls a day from relatives of illegal immigrants caught by the program. He tells them not to waste their money.
"Most people I can't do anything for," he said.
‘Putting the pressure on these people’
While he ventured no opinion on the program's fairness, he said he thinks it could make life as an illegal immigrant in the region so uncomfortable that fewer illegal immigrants would choose to live there.
"They're putting the pressure on these people. They're scaring them. People say we can't deport 10 million. But you don't have to. If you deport enough of them, others will go back voluntarily because they don't want to live in these conditions.".

If I know I can buy illegal labor at a discounted price and with impunity, only the most law-abiding will refuse to do so. Just as when the kids all knew they could download all those expensive CDs from Napster for nothing with impunity, only the most law-abiding bought CDs.

Were there not the law enforcement and political problem of illegal immigration immune from law enforcement, there would be an entirely different economic dynamic.

In Vino Veritas

Buying or downloading pirated goods is illegal... it is just much harder to enforce. Even thinking about it is probably illegal under the DCMA.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

The economy has changed as much as audio technology. The economy of the 50s had much different labor demands and a much different labor supply available to it than the one of today. It is much easier to do business from a foreign location now than it was in the past. It is easier to obtain raw materials and ship goods from anywhere in the world. These are big changes that do have an impact on immigration policy.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

It is easier to obtain raw materials and ship goods from anywhere in the world. These are big changes that do have an impact on immigration policy.

To the extent that raw materials and goods are easier to move, there is actually less incentive to move people than there used to be. As a noted economist has said, free trade in goods is a substitute for the movement of people.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Makes it a whole lot easier to move jobs overseas. You can operate from anywhere in the world almost as well as you can from the US. For some of these jobs that immigrants do, that is the alternative. It may be an alternative worth taking in some cases (we could afford to lose some agribusiness off life support, for starters). In other cases, it might be worth allowing enough immigration to keep the jobs here.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

it might be worth allowing enough immigration to keep the jobs here.

I'm not seeing your argument. Why would allowing immigration keep the jobs here, especially if "you can operate from anywhere in the world almost as well as you can from the US"?

We let a lot of jobs go overseas in the eighties and ninties, based on good free market principles. If the Japanese can make a widget better and cheaper than Americans can, they should do that and we should do something else.

I don't see that we should change that policy simply because the Americans who are now at risk of losing their jobs to outsourcing are from the managerial class. I can see why they might want to keep their life in the US and bring workers to them. I just don't see why everyone else should indulge them.

Why would allowing immigration keep the jobs here, especially if "you can operate from anywhere in the world almost as well as you can from the US"?

Almost being the operative word. It is still much more convenient and safer to operate from here, as opposed to Brazil, Mexico, Russia, or India, but that difference has gotten considerably smaller than it was 50+ years ago. There is always the inertia and the initial cost of moving outside the US to factor in as well, which can be fairly high... however, if the labor situation is bad enough, there is often no choice but to move.

We let a lot of jobs go overseas in the eighties and ninties, based on good free market principles. If the Japanese can make a widget better and cheaper than Americans can, they should do that and we should do something else.

If it makes sense to keep the jobs here at the cost of increased legal immigration, and I think it does in some cases, then we should do it. If the businesses are not worth keeping, we shouldn't bother. As I said, I don't have any sympathy for the agribusiness concerns that depend on illegal labor because I am convinced most of them are a net drain on our resources anyway, through the punitive tariffs on imports and their corporate welfare payments that we all finance, in addition to the costs of their illegal labor force.

All things being equal, however, I would rather see jobs here than in Mexico or China.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

I don't see why we should care about whether these jobs are kept here, if "we" are not going to be doing them. As I say, I can see why an employer might feel differently, since he gets to keep his job.

Jobs leave here for other countries mostly because the laws here make it an expensive country to run a business in. Immigration does not change that, except in the illegal category.

If you are against the agricultural jobs, which ones would you favor immigration to fill?

I don't see why we should care about whether these jobs are kept here, if "we" are not going to be doing them.

There are probably employers that hire all illegal immigrants and no or very few legal employees, but many businesses would have a mix of both legal and illegal employees. If those businesses move overseas or go out of business because they can't get legal labor to replace their illegal employees, it seems to me that would be a net loss for the country, so long as the business could make it on its own without government subsidies with an adequate supply of labor (i.e. not agribusiness).

I don't think an expanding work force, through immigration or any other means, is a bad thing. I don't believe in a fixed pie that gets divvied up between various people, with the slices getting smaller as you add more people. If net contributing businesses move operations outside the US, that pie gets smaller. If a new business is started that hires nothing but legal immigrants (no native workers), the pie still gets bigger, so long as they are net contributors.

The current state of non-enforcement of the law, on the other hand, is a very bad thing. I am all for increased legal immigration, provided we turn off the spigot on illegal immigration at the same time.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

If those businesses move overseas or go out of business because they can't get legal labor to replace their illegal employees, it seems to me that would be a net loss for the country

Thats a common notion, but it contradicts the basic tenets of free market capitalism, which hold that businesses which go under to more cost-effective competition are a benifit to everyone.

That point aside, its impossible to imagine why any compnay should find it impossible to get legal labor. Again, the market dictates that labor must be available. A lot of pro-immigration sentiment seems to be resting on the implicit assumption that only people of certain races can do certain jobs, so that we simply must have Indian engineers, for example, or we'll have no engineers at all.

This is plainly wrong, since we had no problem getting sufficient enegineers 'in house" in the past. One thing which is relentlessly ignored in immigration debates is the extent to which it is driven by the poor quality of Americas schools. If our children can be considered the "output" of AmericaCorp, then we a making a poor quality product.

A car company which gives up on building its own cars and buys those of its competitors and resells them under its own brand name is just a shell of a company. America is not quite there yet but its headed that way in a hurry. Papering over the problem with immigration does not help matters.

I'm confused by your pie analogy. You say that you believe that there is no fixed pie which all compete for, but you then seem to suggest that there is a worldwide fixed pie which America should attempt to grab as much as possible of, by having foreign workers come and work here where possible. That does not sound like free market capitalism to me.

Thats a common notion, but it contradicts the basic tenets of free market capitalism, which hold that businesses which go under to more cost-effective competition are a benifit to everyone.

In this case, we are in control of the cost. The government's actions on immigration will determine the size of the labor pool and therefore the cost of that labor.

That point aside, its impossible to imagine why any compnay should find it impossible to get legal labor. Again, the market dictates that labor must be available.

There is a finite pool of labor in the marketplace. The government and parents control the size of that pool. When that pool isn't big enough to satisfy demand, the market will only be able to correct itself by shedding demand through steep increases on the price of labor, either through businesses going under, reducing hiring, or hiring overseas. It will be constrained on the supply side, unless government acts to increase immigration.

The government, through immigration, is the only party that can respond to that demand on the supply side. People aren't going to start having lots of kids because there is are a lot of job openings in town.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

We were in control of the cost back in the eighties when we allowed manufacturing jobs to go overseas. We decided that it was more important to have all the OSHA and enviromental regs than to have those jobs. That is the sort of trade off which is made all the time. The moral of the story is that economics does not trump every other consideration.

Yes, we can scrap our immigration laws and allow employers to bring in anyone they want from anywhere in the world. We can do just about anything. the question is what we should do. And I think you will have a hard time arguing that the high immigration idea will be of any benifit to us, as opposed to a handful of people.

There is a finite pool of labor in the marketplace.

There is a finite pool of everything in the marketplace. The very definition of a marketplace presupposes finite resources. If everything existed in limitless amounts we would have no need for markets. The purpose of the market is attach the correct cost to different resources.

When that pool isn't big enough to satisfy demand, the market will only be able to correct itself by shedding demand through steep increases on the price of labor, either through businesses going under, reducing hiring, or hiring overseas. It will be constrained on the supply side, unless government acts to increase immigration.

There is no demand on the supply side, as evidenced by the fact that the cost of labor is not increasing, but decreasing. So immigration is a solution in search of a problem.

People aren't going to start having lots of kids because there is are a lot of job openings in town.

Frankly, I'm dissapointed that you refuse to address the points I have made and bring up these strawman instead. As I've already noted, there is no shortage of people in the country. There may be a shortage of skilled or trained people. In which case, yes indeed, the government has a role to play in making sure ITS people have the neccessary skills.

But it is simply not the role of the US government to play global matchmaker between US employers and foreigners. If you wish to open a business in Angola, God speed to you. But you cannot say that free market capitalism requires you to be able to bring Angolans to America. It doesn't.

so long as the business could make it on its own without government subsidies with an adequate supply of labor (i.e. not agribusiness).

But the low-wage immigrant labor is in fact a government subsidy, if not quite as direct as a government check to the employer. The employer gets the subsidy of paying less than what would be the market wage for low-skill labor without the inflated supply of low-skill immigrants, and we the tax-payers are stuck paying for government services for those immigrants, because their wages are too low to pay enough taxes for their own services.

If you want to go that far every business is subsidized... it is possible to take the argument too far, where it is meaningless. You see the same thing where lefties claim oil to be heavily subsidized, since they add little things like the GWOT and Desert Storm into the cost of oil... as if we wouldn't be taking any action in those cases if it weren't for oil.

Low wage workers (native born or not) are subsidized because of the way we designed our tax policy and the massive welfare state we have created. That isn't something that can really be blamed on businesses. On the other hand, highly skilled immigrants are major contributors. If what is really important is net tax contribution, there is no reason to be restricting highly skilled workers from immigrating.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Low wage workers (native born or not) are subsidized because of the way we designed our tax policy and the massive welfare state we have created.

The difference is that the American low wage workers would be subsidized by our welfare state whether or not the employer hired them. Thus the employer doesn't increase the cost to tax payers by hiring a low wage American, who might otherwise be earning even less and thus paying an even lower fraction of his costs to society.

In contrast, bringing in lower-wage immigrants to reduce an employer's wage bill adds to our welfare burden; we wouldn't be subsidizing them if they had stayed in their home country.

An additional effect of increasing the supply of low skill labor with immigration, is that low skill Americans earn even lower wages (supply & demand) than they otherwise would; and the less those low skill Americans earn, the larger their net burden on the rest of us tax payers.

Double-whammy of low skill immigration: more low income people for the rest of us to subsidize, and a bigger subsidy for the low income people already here.

On the other hand, highly skilled immigrants are major contributors. If what is really important is net tax contribution, there is no reason to be restricting highly skilled workers from immigrating.

I agree that we should admit many more high skill immigrants. Beyond the fact that they pay their own way with more taxes than they consume in government services, the fact that their work commands a high wage demonstrates there is a market scarcity of those immigrants' skills.

That's my economic basis for immigration policy: the market responds to scarcity with a high price (high wage), so immigration to fill worker "shortages" should only be for those jobs where that shortage is demonstrated by a high market wage for that work. (No, just because a certain job traditionally had a low wage, doesn't mean there's a shortage if they can't fill the job at low wages.)

The welfare state is designed to *look like* it is subsidising low wage workers. The facts are rather different.

The most striking example is social security. Because of the operation of compound interest someone who starts paying in five years earlier pays in twice as much. Someone who lives five years longer draws out twice as much. Because of the cap on payments it is unusual for even the highest wage person to pay in four times as much as anyone but the very poorest.

Thus a modestly paid person who joins the workforce at 18 and dies at 75 fares worse than than a Wall Street broker who joins the workforce at 23 and dies 80.

The very poorest, of course, often pay in at very low rates. But many die before retirement age and thus draw out nothing.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

I share your skepticism of many welfare state benefits for low wage workers. Others like schooling for their children, medical care, roads, police, etc. clearly are some benefit to them, even if inefficiently provided.

In terms of the low-skill immigration issue, none of this changes the fact that low-wage immigrants consume more tax-money than they pay in taxes (even including Social Security tax), so bringing them into the country increases the tax costs on the rest of us. Taxpayers have to bear the financial burden for buggy-whip employers' financial benefit of reducing the wages that low-skill workers get.

>>In terms of the low-skill immigration issue, none of this changes the fact that low-wage immigrants consume more tax-money than they pay in taxes (even including Social Security tax),

This one I am not sure about. Illegal immigrants who don't pay tax, but are, for some bizarre reason, allowed access to the welfare state, yes, obviously.

For legal immigrants, not necessarily. They lose (on average) so much out of social security, by far the biggest element of the welfare state, that there will be many who lose more than they gain. To assess overall would take a huge study.

Yes, low wage people do get some benefit from education and police protection and other government services, though obviously not to the same degree as high wage people.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

have good lobbyists. If an industry can't survive on legal labor (including lawful immigrants) it needs to go offshore. As a matter of fact, the loudest voices for guest worker programs (and illegal alien amnesty) come from those sectors that can't go offshore easily--agribusiness being one of the worst offenders, as was pointed out. I hate to argue anything to do with economics on this issue, though, because that has to take a back seat to law enforcement, national security, cultural concerns and a host of other issues. But your point is dead on, Jon.

For whatever reason people think that the immigration case can be made more easily on economic grounds. I'm pretty sure thats wrong and I'm willing to fight the battle on that ground. The pro-immigration case is economically indefensible, except for the small handfull of individuals who benifit from it.

Actually it's quite easily defensible. If worker A wants to work and employer B wants to hire worker A, then it is efficient to let it happen. Both would agree only if they gained something out of the transaction. That's basic microeconomics.

And the interaction of millions of people every day making these basic economic decisions leads to an amazing amount of wealth as it creates a division of labor. Thus, far from "a small handfull of individuals (sic)" benefiting from basic economic transactions, the whole country does. In fact our entire capitalistic, market-based economy is based on the simple fact that you let people make their own economic decisions and the whole country is benefited.

The only way I can imagine an argument (based on economics) for preventing people from making a market transaction is if you exclude one or both of them from your analysis. For example, if you don't include the benefit to the worker, there is a small possibility that the net effect on everyone else is negative. But even excluding the benefit to the worker, most studies show at most a miniscule effect on wages of other low income workers and sometimes no effect at all. Combined with lower prices, the net effect on national economic output is most likely positive.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

If worker A wants to work and employer B wants to hire worker A, then it is efficient to let it happen. Both would agree only if they gained something out of the transaction.

We would not be having this conservation if that was all that is required, now would we? The problem arises when employer B is in country X and worker A is in country Y, and employer B bribes the government in country X to allow worker A to come work for him for less than the normal salary in country X. But you already know this.

Stripping out the phony economic verbage, all you are saying is that everyone has the right to do whatever they wish as long as it does not cause immediate physical harm to somebody else. I don't agree.

Thus, far from "a small handfull of individuals (sic)" benefiting from basic economic transactions, the whole country does. In fact our entire capitalistic, market-based economy is based on the simple fact that you let people make their own economic decisions and the whole country is benefited.

Rubbish. The economy does not work in anything like this fashion. Every purchase an individual makes is subject to multiple constraints. A consumer purchasing a car is far from being an example of two individual economic actors doing what they wish wthout constraints. The production, importation, and sale of an automobile is subject to volumes or regulation and red tape, ranging from OSHA rules in the factory to the extensive requirements we impose on the would-be driver, such as a license and insurance.

The only way I can imagine an argument (based on economics) for preventing people from making a market transaction is if you exclude one or both of them from your analysis.

We make arguments every day based on economics which prevent people from making market transactions. Drug laws are one example. The assorted pollution laws which drove most heavy industry off shore are another. You get what you are willing to pay for, and we have decided that we are willing to pay for these things.

But even excluding the benefit to the worker, most studies show at most a miniscule effect on wages of other low income workers and sometimes no effect at all. Combined with lower prices, the net effect on national economic output is most likely positive.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Most likely positive? Is this the easy defence you mentioned above? I agree about the easy part, but its not much of a defence.

I have a diary on the topic here.

We enforce inefficiencies for non-economic reasons. You cite the drug laws and pollution laws as examples. Those are great examples. The first is one where we have an inefficient system because we value labelling drugs contraband. We could tax drugs to get usage levels to their current low but we prefer to put a social stigma on the goods as well. As for pollution there is an externality problem here but we could solve it in different ways. A cap-and-trade system would use the market to fix the externality efficiently. A hard cap system that limited every user to X amount of pollution would inefficiently do the same thing.

If we as a country decide that for non-economic reasons we want fewer immigrants than the market would demand, we can do that. But it will be inefficient and costly to society and the economy. I think many here would say it is worth the cost. I don't think it is.

But as to the "easy defense." It really is basic microeconomics 101. If two people both desire to exchange things, then preventing the exchange is creating a social cost. The burden is to say society values something else more than their freedom to exchange. We do that a lot; in fact, we do it a lot more than I wish we did which originally is why I considered myself a Republican.

As for the final paragraph, I along with almost all economic analysis, include the benefit to the worker. When millions of people are pulled out of poverty and can help pull their families out of poverty, I do think it should be in the equation. And including the workers makes the balance easy to read. It's a huge net positive. In fact, the system of immigration, work, and remittances is the single best form of development aid in the world. It goes directly to families (not governments or charities, both usually inefficient) and is spent on housing, education, and health rather than white elephants or bureaucratic pay. It encourages people to work for the money rather than beg for it from their government or an aid agency. To leave out the major, positive benefits to the workers is not really a fair exercise from an economic standpoint. Thus my point that only by making that unfair move could you possibly argue that there is a negative impact.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

We enforce inefficiencies for non-economic reasons.

There is nothing non-economic about it, Adam. We have decided that clean air is a good thing, and that the cost of clean air is worth the cost. That is an economic decision. You decide something is worth a certain price, and you pay that price. It is pure economics.

If we as a country decide that for non-economic reasons we want fewer immigrants than the market would demand, we can do that.

Glad to hear you say it.

But it will be inefficient and costly to society and the economy.

As RR put it, there you go again!

Nobody has ever demonstrated that there is the slightest correlation between immigration and a countries economic performance. As I pointed out in my diary on this topic, America economic growth seems to be unaffected by whether or not immigration is restricted. Looking abroad, other countries seem to manage quite well without the help of large scale immigration. I repeat, there is simply no evidence that immigration serves to stimulate an economy, or that non-immigration injures an economy. None.

I along with almost all economic analysis, include the benefit to the [immigrant] worker.

Are you an economist, Adam?

I, along with most people, believe that our first obligation is to our fellow Americans. I'm relatively disinterested in helping out the poor people in other countries, at least if that "help" means inviting them all to come crash on my couch.

It's a huge net positive. In fact, the system of immigration, work, and remittances is the single best form of development aid in the world. It goes directly to families, etc

All well and good, Adam, and I'm not knocking you for wishing to help poor people abroad. But that is not supposed to be the purpose of America or American immigration law.

Having said which, I prefer this line of argument, which strikes me as being more grounded in reality than the claim that immigration is great for the country.

Here is something to consider. Right here, in this country, live just about all the people in the world who believe in free markets, in any fashion. And they are a narrow majority here. Immigrants bring their own cultural baggage with them, and that baggage is mostly socialist. I work in Manhattan, surrounded by immigrants, and I have to tell you, they run the gamut from socialist to communist. You can't point to a single state in the union where immigrants are not driving the place to the left. The place in the news recently is Virginia, a former red state turning purple in a hurry. The people you are idealizing are killing your ideals.

"the country" doesn't exist, so please spare telling us how it benefits the country.

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Anyone who claims that globalization is a conservative process is either a liar or a fool. - James Kurth

When the Bracero program ended, farms invested in R&D, came up with new harvest technologies and it was the unions that stepped in and conned government into ending business incentives to innovate along those lines. Every time somebody tries to sell me on the economic "benefit" of mass immigration, I'm immediately reminded of what used to be known as the American "can do" spirit. Soviets put rocket in space? We go to the moon in ten years. Nobody to pick tomatoes? We hybrid the Roma variety that can be harvested by machine.

We've got little robots running around on Mars for chrissakes! New technologies, ammortized over time, do not raise prices significantly. Then the price falls to below what it was before the problem addressed by the technology was invented.

My Americanist, Citizens First Immigration Reform 101:

1) Close the border (as best we can)
2) Enforce the workplace (harshly, with perp-walks for employers)
3) Incentivize innovation that does away with the need for cheap labor and replaces 50 stoop laborers with one highly-trained harvest technician.
4) 40-year break in mass immigration similar to the 1924 reforms; there is no good reason why the former pattern that saw 1/3 of all immigrants repatriate within five years should not be idealized.
5) Nix the Anchor Baby loophole using article 5 of the 14th Amendment.

We have an aging population. Is it really wise to share the franchise with another culture that will surely elect representatives who will cut our future benefits in favor of government largesse for the new plurality? Or might it be better to get to work now on giving businesses incentives to create low-labor means of doing everything illegal aliens do today, thus eliminating the demand for illegal aliens altogether?

If the average expected life span hits 90 in the US, as it likely will within the next 20 years, isn't it more fair to give those elderly who do not wish to spend 25 years in retirement something else to do if they choose? Why can't it be made so that in my latter years I can sit right here in my little home office and manage the harvest for some big conglomerate if I want to remain productive?

We have a hospital here in my town that has a fully automated pharmacy robot that delivers the right medicines and the right dosages to the patient's bedside for administration. My understanding is that only if there is an injection necessary does a nurse step in and administer it. And with IV's, the need for that will be less in the future also.

I see all this fuss about business' "need" for cheap labor and I wonder when we stopped moving forward and stepped into some sort of neo-feudalist nightmare. I keep wanting to wake up from it so I can make sure my daughter still has some semblance of the nation her ancestors left in my care. For me to be of the generation that abandoned its obligations of stewardship for future generations would be too much to bear.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. -Theodore Roosevelt

If an industry can't survive on legal labor (including lawful immigrants) it needs to go offshore.

Why does it "need" to head overseas? Says who? Does the movement of a particular firm or industry to a foreign land make America better or stronger? Why do you favor this?

Much of the infrastructure of this country was built with immigrant labor -- railroads being a notable example. Would you have wanted that industry to "go offhore"? What is so different about the America of 2006 that makes immigration so much less beneficial or desirable than it was for the America of, say, 1868?

why the heavily government subsidized transcontinental railroad project(s) were allowed to import all their labor rather than employ the contrabands and, later, the recently freed slaves. Here, I'm afraid, you'll find the basis of much of our addiction to imported labor. The US was willing to expend a million lives ostensibly to free the slaves, but rather than employ them, returned them to a penury worse than slavery and imported labor to build the railroads.

In Vino Veritas

In Vino Veritas

Nor do I support Third World crony capitalism wherein only certain laws apply to certain people. If an industry cannot compete within the bounds of the law, it should go offshore or out of business. The worlds of 1868 and 2006 are different precisely because capital and labor have great flight now. We were lectured all through the last three decades about the need for globalism. Well, I actually listened to the lectures; the attempts to turn the United States into a Third World banana republic because certain buggy whip industries demand illegal labor runs counter to those arguments.

Finally, this isn't even an economics argument. Immigration is a privilege and not a right. The Congress of the United States can stop all immigration tomorrow or open the floodgates, but that is a legislative decision to be made based on the will of the American people. Currently we have rank lawlessness and that is an international disgrace. I might also mention we are in a global war on terror but, hey, what's a few dead Americans when lettuce can be picked for 15 cents cheaper an hour albeit illegally?

I also noticed you blurred legal with illegal immigration above. Common sleight of hand, even if transparent.

What is so different about the America of 2006 that makes immigration so much less beneficial or desirable than it was for the America of, say, 1868?

- The country is far more crowded. In 1868, the frontier was open.
- The immigrants of today are far less educated relative to natives than the immigrants of 100 or 150 years ago
- At the same time, the portion of the labor force employed in of low-skilled jobs in manufacturing or agriculture is far, far smaller.
- The America of 1868 didn't have an institutionalized system of ethnic grievance.
- The America of 1868 didn't have a welfare state.

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Anyone who claims that globalization is a conservative process is either a liar or a fool. - James Kurth

- In the late 19th century we weren't receiving, against already extremely generous immigration laws, millions of immigrants from ONE corner of the world who spoke ONE language, who had a similar history and culture, and whose home countries were just a stone's throw away from the U.S.
- In the late 19th century, the immigrants who were coming and were soon to come had no colorable historical claim to the Southwest or to any other American territory.

Most economist a pro-free trade in goods and in labor. Which one are you paraphrasing?

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

That sounds very unlike him.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

The only thing I remember Friedman writing about immigration is that free immigration and a welfare state may be a problem. That was more a denigration of the welfare state from his perspective than of free immigration.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

I found your quote and it's context, here:

Q: Dr. Friedman should the U.S.A. open its borders to all immigrants? What is your opinion on that?

A: Unfortunately no. You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

Q: Do you oppose a unilateral reduction of tariffs and if not how can you oppose open immigration until the welfare state is eliminated?

A: I am in favor of the unilateral reduction of tariffs, but the movement of goods is a substitute for the movement of people. As long as you have a welfare state, I do not believe you can have a unilateral open immigration. I would like to see a world in which you could have open immigration, but stop kidding yourselves. On the other hand, the welfare state does not prevent unilateral free trade. I believe that they are in different categories.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

It's simple common sense.

Borders are not usually highly regarded by economist. Tariffs, qoutas, taxes, and political boundaries all prevent economic exchange artificially. As said elsewhere, there may be good arguments for these things, but they are not economic arguments. Erecting a big wall and telling individuals that they cannot trade with their neighbors for goods or services is an economic burden.

I understand the cultural concerns, but waving away the major economic considerations makes it hard to take ideas from the Tancreoites seriously.

Social Security Choice - Club For Growth

"Borders are not usually highly regarded by economist[s]."

Which is about as concise a statement as I've heard for why economists are untrustworthy.

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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

http://devine-gamecock.townhall.com
www.race42008.com
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face." - Ronald Reagan

I don't think you are because the copyright infringement is being made by YouTube, not you.

Others disagree though, and claim that you're trampling on the copyright as well. What copy you're making, though, I can't say.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I think the objection is to talking of it as only an economic issue, implying that it's quaint or impractical to insist on our sovereign right to decide who and how many are allowed to immigrate.

It's strking to see how the two sides of this issue tend to talk past each other.

I would make almost the same comment in reverse about the restrictacons. In my view they won't brook any analysis of immigration as an economic issue. My main beef with them is their refusal (as I see it, anyway) to look at the economics of immigration.

I wouldn't for a second deny the cultural implications of immigration, by the way. Were we attracting a half million illegal immigrants from Yemen and Pakistan, I would be vociferously supporting Congressman Tancredo's and Pat Buchanan's policy proposals. I just happen to think they don't make sense, however, when the bulk of the people attempting to come to the States are eminently assimilatable Christians coming here to sell their labor to willing American buyers. I agree with Leon that for such people, an ITunes solution makes a whole lotta sense.

The fact that there are multiple valid objections to immigration policy that increases the proportion of low-skill non-English-speakers in America's population - e.g. multi-culturalism, more single mothers, reduced wages for low-skill Americans, more crime, higher taxes - that multiplicity of reasons does not lessen the validity of any one of those arguments made on its own.

My main beef with them is their refusal (as I see it, anyway) to look at the economics of immigration.

Since those who support legalizing the currently illegal flood of low-skill immigration have pretty much given up on arguing that America needs more people who don't speak English and more single mothers, they try to convince us there's a valid economic argument for more low-skill immigration to weigh against those social costs. However their supposedly "economic" arguments for low-skill immigration are shockingly devoid of real economic logic.

Supposedly we have this immense shortage of low-skill labor, requiring millions of unskilled Mexicans to fill? The economic indicator of scarcity is a high price, so any work where the wages are low obviously doesn't have a real shortage.

If you want an economics based immigration policy, how about saying we admit immigrants to fill occupations where there is a shortage of workers. And to determine what kind of workers are in short supply, we rely on the market. If the wage for an occupation is say 4 or 5 times higher than America's median wage, that indicates we can use more immigrants to do that work. But if the wage for some jobs is $25 an hour, obviously there isn't any serious shortage, otherwise the labor market would have bid up the wage to $50 or $100 an hour, so no immigrants needed to fill those jobs.

And what is the economic argument for low-skill immigrants who don't pay their own way in our society, because their income is too low to pay enough taxes to cover the government services they and their families consume? If saving a quarter (if that much) on the price of a head of lettuce costs me an extra 50 cents of taxes to support that immigrant's family, that's bad economics on my side.

Because there's "demand" for below-market-wage labor from parasitic companies, that supposedly constitutes an "economic" argument in favor of more low-skill immigrants who don't pay their own way in our society. That kind of "demand", from players who aren't willing to pay the market price for legally available labor, is no different than the "demand" for subsidies from any other free loader who wants the rest of society to pick up part of his tab.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. -Theodore Roosevelt

Paging Optimus Prime!

I'm sorry to have to tell you, but we have at least a half-million people here from countries such as Yemen and Pakistan, and more come every day.

In my view they won't brook any analysis of immigration as an economic issue. My main beef with them is their refusal (as I see it, anyway) to look at the economics of immigration.

I'll be very impressed if you, or any other "decepticon" (gee, this is fun) ever manage to present an economic argument for immigration. I have never seen one offered in any of the innumerable immigration threads on this site. But maybe tonights the night.

but I believe that in this particular comment, PB Almeida was referring to illegal immigration, due to the emphasis on a market solution being more acceptable in the case of Hispanic illegal immigration as opposed to if it were Yemeni immigration.

So, the people coming from Yemen every day are not illegals - they are legal and vetted by the US government. You can of course take issue with that as well, but don't confuse the gist of that particular argument.

I do understand that the debate over economics vs. cultural wrt immigration in this thread is about both illegal and legal.

.. that PB's objections were to being from Yemen, rather than being illegal. But he may correct me if I'm wrong.

I regard immigration from Muslim countries to be potentially a grave danger. I say this with significant regret, because I know the vast majority of Muslims in the US are peaceful, patriotic, and productive (more so than natives, so I'm told) folks. Moreover, a case can be made for more, not less, immigration from the Muslim world precisely to build up cultural ties that may ameliorate some of the hositility this region feels for the USA. Nonetheless, given the lethality of the Jihadist virus infecting the lands from Morocco to Java, I think simple prudence dictates a wariness on the part of America with respect to immigration from Muslim countries. I wish it weren't so, but I prefer to live in the world as it exists -- not the one I wish I lived in. To lay my cards on the table, I'd sooner a 100,000 illegals from Guatemala than a 100,000 legals from Saudi Arabia. Such talk is no doubt considered shockingly unPC in certain quarters. I think it's plain common sense. (and of course, I'd much prefer 100,000 legals from Guatemala than their legal counterparts from S.A.). I make no bones about wanting to subvert the economics behind illegal immigration via legalizing it.

...between 100,000 Muslims and 100,000 Catholics.

Muslim citizens subordinate their allegiance to the U.S. in favor of Mecca first, Catholic citizens subordinate theirs to the Vatican. Muslims would like to make us dhimmi. Vatican city would like nothing more than to make us it's lapdog by replacing America's foundational Protestant majority with a more compliant Catholic one.

Either way, we'd no longer be the America for which my ancestors fought, bled, died, prayed and hoped.

The Vatican's interests do not have any regard for what their desires may bring to us in terms of Culture, Economics, Heritage or any other basis for argument those of us who wish to restrict immigration might make. This is as much or more about tithes as it is about faith. Long-standing desire for retribution is also a part of the equation. Just because the "Know-Nothings" are vilified by contemporary historians, it doesn't mean their political positions were completely without foundation.

Those who deny that fact are either liars or fools.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. -Theodore Roosevelt

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

to bed when John Kennedy was elected President. Apparently it is alive and well in some quarters. I guess somethings will never change.

John
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True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky, I don't know.
P.J O'Rourke

...is some data loss, so it was harder to keep track of old warnings from the Scoop days.

Good news, though; your old warning stuck in my mind.

The Contact Form is your friend. Good luck.

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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.

Lower class Latin Americans, who make up the bulk of immigrants, are anything but "eminently assimilable." They are not political blank slates: they have a history and an identity in their own countries. This identity is, despite the fact that most, though by no means all (there are plenty of speakers of Indian languages and followers of Indian religions in Latin America) are Spanish-speaking and nominally Christian, a specifically anti-western one by definition. The westerners are the ones who arrived in ships in 1519 or 1535 and razed their cities and put them in slavery, then spent the next five centuries lording over them. This is not ancient history: It is a large part of the basis of the appeal of leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Lopez-Obrador. It is why Mexican nationalists harken back to the Mexica (Aztecs) rather than the conquistadores, why Malinche is a curse, why Pizarro's statue is offensive to Peruvian sensibilities, and is part of the reason the (white) USA is so hated.
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Anyone who claims that globalization is a conservative process is either a liar or a fool. - James Kurth

Lower class Latin Americans, who make up the bulk of immigrants, are anything but "eminently assimilable."

Nonsense. The arguments used to attack the brown menace from the south echo with near perfect precision those used to spread fear about Jews, Catholics and Slavs a century or more ago. I'll grant you someone off the boat from Honduras may not seem to have all that much in common with a third or fourth generation American (just like in 1880) but so what? I see no evidence America's ability to assimilate immigrants has weakened. Third generation Latino-Americans almost without exception cannot speak Spanish.

Please, if the opponents of immigration in 1924 pointed to a wave of indigenist, anti-western, anti-white populism sweeping southern Europe, I'd like to see it. So why don't you address my arguments, rather than jousting with the ghost (may he rest in peace) of Calvin Coolidge?

If a Guatemalan Mayan, or less extremely, a Mexican mestizo with a taste for indigenist populism, is eminently assimilable, then is anybody not actively carrying a bomb not readily assimilable? Does the term assimilable even mean anything anymore? If it doesn't mean anything, why use it? Is it just a nice bit of verbal decoration for your string of aggrieved assertions?

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Anyone who claims that globalization is a conservative process is either a liar or a fool. - James Kurth

American labor is inured to American cultural values, educated at considerable expense to an American skill level, and protected by a long evolved system of American labor law. Likewise, American intellectual property such as audio and video recordings are a product of an affluent and secure American culture, produced by people educated at great expense to an American skill level, and protected by American copyright and other intellectual property laws. Illegal alien labor is produced in third world Hellholes, largely lacking in educated skills, and de facto exempt from American labor law. Likewise, Napster et al. markets stolen intellectual property from which all value has been removed because some little punk stole it and wants to put it on the internet.

Given a choice between paying for something at it intrinsic worth, and paying for something at a reduced, stolen value, there are apparently those who would prefer the latter.

In Vino Veritas

behavior will go: free passes to tax cheats? Overlook non-compliance with child labor laws? Forgive the failure to obtain bonds and permits? This is such an absurd rabbithole people run down that sometimes they forget exactly what they advocate is nothing short of mob rule by lawbreakers.

If we'd enforce the laws on the books today, some of the uncertainty would be removed. That'd also make the people who were burned by IRCA feel more like compromising.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

The basic premise is "give us what we want and we will enforce the old and new laws then." It is a transparent and ridiculous way to win friends and influence enemies, and people aren't buying it as they did in 1986.