Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice links to this post on the blog Moderate Musing. I have to admit that I’m puzzled about why this might be considered a moderate position on immigration since it seems fairly radical to me. I also have to admit that I’m pretty conflicted on the subject myself and, indeed, I’m uncertain on what a good, sensible, centrist position on the issue would be.
I think it’s important to agree on first principles. I believe that the citizens of the United States through their elected representatives have a right to limit immigration into this country including who may immigrate, the conditions under which they may immigrate, and how long they may stay and to enforce these restrictions with laws sufficient to do that effectively. That’s a moderate and centrist position because the radicals on both the left and the right don’t believe that. Libertarian radicals tend to believe that people have no right to restrict the movement of other people. Right radicals tend to believe that restricting immigration places an undue burden on employers. Left radicals tend to believe that oppressed people have a right to flee repressive economic, political, or social systems.
No nation in the world accepts the notion of open borders (and, unless you accept limitations on immigration and the propriety of the means necessary to enforce them, that is, in fact, what you believe in). Neither does the U. N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Immigration romantics remind us that we’re a nation of immigrants (all nations are, if you go back far enough, except maybe Tanzania). They hearken back to a nostalgic past when the marginal utility of labor in the United States was rising. It’s been static or falling in the United States for more than forty years. For the first hundred years or so of the nation’s history most immigrants came here to farm the new, available land (leave aside the reality that these new farmers squeezed out the hunter-gatherers whose immigrant ancestors had arrived here as much as 20,000 years before). The land has been divvied up now and the destination for most of today’s immigrants is our cities. Times have changed and our policies need to change with them.
Mercantilist realists warn that if immigration of workers into this country is curbed that goods and services will become more expensive here and jobs will leave for overseas. I think that this is, largely, a straw man argument. Productivity can be increased by paying less or capital investment to produce more with fewer man-hours. I’m going to admit flat out that the future I’d like to see in this country is not one with an ever-growing pool of low wage workers being paid less and less but one in which the workers already here are made more productive through the clever application of technology. And one in which we employ more workers to produce this technology.
That’s not the direction we’re headed in now: the IEEE reports that, although the unemployment rate of electrical engineers peaked in 2003 (the highest in history), the number of electrical engineers employed here continues to dwindle. The situation in IT is not completely dissimilar: although the number of those employed continues to grow, wages are basically stagnant.
The other area in which we’re importing skilled workers is health care and I’ve written repeatedly here about the moral quandary in this: I think it’s wrong to import doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals from poor countries where they’re desperately needed and where they’ve frequently been trained using money from the public purse. Those who object to this line of reasoning generally point to the plight of the poor medical professionals overseas and that surely I can’t blame them for looking towards the greener pastures in the United States (and Canada, Britain, France, and Germany). I don’t. I blame us. I think we should be paying international health care professionals to stay home and educating many, many more doctors, nurses, and medical technicians in the United States. The rate of increase hasn’t increased with the increase in our population (and that’s been true for more than 40 years).
I don’t have too many answers on the question of our immigration policy. I think that we have a right to limit immigration and a right to enforce the limit. I don’t believe in a policy of importing large numbers of low-skilled workers to keep wages from rising here or that chasing productivity improvements through forcing wages down is a good strategy for our society. I also have real reservations about the skilled workers being imported here. I wonder whether that’s good for our society or for the donor societies.
But I think most of all that we need to enter into a serious dialogue on the subject of immigration that relies on the realities on the ground today and not on either nostalgia for the past or conditions today that aren’t quite the way they’re being represented by the proponents of open borders.
Very nice post. Keep thinking about it, and share your thoughts as they develop and crystalize further.
I’ve posted a link to this article here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/01/re-whats-moderate-position-on.html
I concur that we have the right to limit immigration; the total number or immigrants, the folks we want etc. However, I disagree with your logic as to if (or how much) we should limit immigration.
You issue, if I understand it, is that immigration enlarges the labor pool driving down wages. I don’t dispute the that fact. However, what benefits counter balance this?
– Cheap labor is good for those that are hiring, and those that are buying the cheaper products made by cheaper labor.
– More people mean more people to sell to. This is good for most companies, and for most folks that have a stake in the stock market.
– More young immigrate people are good for Social Security. Assuming they contribute in the system.
Most people subscribe to some variant of your point of view. I believe this is symptomatic of a built in assumption held by many: That the pie is divided by the number of people in the game. If the number of people increases, than someone else’s share must decrease because the size pie is constant. This assumption is quite inaccurate in this case.
In the long run, immigrants contribute much to the size pie. It is true that when looking at particular budgets (say the education budget in Los Angeles) then you find a more or less “fixed” pie that is divided by more users. You hear a lot about that, but you almost never hear about the run up in housing prices as being fueled by those same immigrants.
Now I do share your concern about immigration. I feel the current system is destroying our respect for the law as we have created an extralegal society. This is good for no one. I do think we should solve this problem by simultaneiously relaxing immigration restrictions and increasing punishment and enforcement of the relaxed standards. I also think we should limit benefits to immigrants until they have contributed to our society. I also think we should monitor and tax (but not prohibit) outgoing money flows — this might be the single biggest lever to control immigration.
That’s not quite the point that I’m making, Fred K. My point is that there is more than one strategy that we can use as a society to make the goods that we produce better and cheaper. One way is to use an ever-increasing pool of cheap labor. The other is capital investment in technology, production methods, distribution methods, and production methods.
I think that the latter strategy is a better one for the United States.
On Social Security, perhaps you should consider the math a little more closely. One additional person making $10,000 per year is not worth as much to the Social Security system as is a person already paying into the system who makes $10,000 more (up to FICA max). Unless, of course we’re planning on taxing people without making them eligible for benefits. The reason for this is that once covered the more money an individual kicks into the system, the better, since revenues go up more quickly than benefits. We can’t import our way to Social Security solvency (any more than France can).
I also disagree with your evaluation of the benefits that result due to immigrants per se: I believe it is an error of aggregation. I completely agree with you point about immigrants who are skilled workers (but I have other reservations about that as I wrote in the post). There are two other classes of immigrant workers: those who pay taxes and those who don’t. I’d certainly be interested in seeing your argument relying solely on the latter class (which I believe is substantial in size).
And, of course, I completely agree with your point about respect for the law. I don’t believe that we should have laws that we don’t intend to make a good faith attempt to enforce. I would find the kind of simultaneous reform in immigration and enforcement that you propose acceptable but that’s not what’s on the table.
And I’ve made the point about taxing remittances myself.
Frankly, without some supporting statistics, I’m very dubious about the claim that there exists a “substantial” number of non-tax-paying immigrants.
Case in point – My son is an accountant for a small roofing company in Florida, whose roofers are 100% hispanic, and (presumably) mostly illegal immigrants. These guys all get taxes witheld from their paychecks just like everyone else, they all pay sales tax when they go to Wal-mart, and they presumably pay property taxes on their automobiles when they file their tax returns at the end of the year in order to get their tax refund. So, which taxes are they evading? What am I missing?
Now I’m certain there are some immigrants who are paid in cash – and therefore avoid income taxes – but isn’t it true that those immigrants are nearly all low-wage earners who wouldn’t be paying income taxes anyway? What am I missing here?