Why We Need At Least Two Immigration Policies

In an insightful post at the Washington Post Dan Drezner summarizes the U. S. immigration situation like this:

At this time, we know that:

1. The United States is experiencing a net outflow of Mexican migrants.
2. The number of individuals living illegally in the United States has declined (contra Krikorian, Pew estimates the number as falling from 12.1 million in 2007 to 11.3 million in 2o14).
3. The notion that unvetted refugees are flooding into the United States is a complete lie.

This doesn’t mean that illegal immigration flows might not tick up again, particularly if the U.S. economy outpaces the rest of the world in job creation. But it suggests that, right now, the undocumented residents are in fact the biggest part of the problem.

He characterizes that as the “core dilemma” of U. S. immigration policy. While I think that illegal immigrants (most aren’t merely undocumented—that’s a euphemism) form one aspect of our core dilemma, I don’t think that’s really it. Here in summary are my views on immigration:

1. An ongoing, reliable supply of low wage immigrants hurts poor native-born Americans, particularly African Americans, with much of the benefit going to the highest income earners.
2. An ongoing, reliable supply of skilled immigrants hurts middle income native-born Americans by depressing wages, with much of the benefit going to the highest income earners.
3. Many of the skilled immigrants are brought in fraudulently.
4. A large number of immigrants creates problems for the states. Anyone who has seen a classroom in which no two children speak the same language at home understands this.
5. A large immigrant population exacerbates income inequality, practically by definition.

Now consider the graphic at the top of this post, gleaned from the Census Bureau’s presentation on immigration using Community Survey data. The United States is the only country in the world that shares a 1,500 mile land border with a country that has a median income 20% of its own. That creates incentives for illegal border crossing different from anywhere else. That this illegal migrant workers will work for lower wages and under conditions native-born workers would protest are incentives for less than scrupulous employers to hire them, indeed, hire them preferentially, something that will continue regardless of any border control we might put in place.

That Mexico along with other Central American countries, many of whose people pass through Mexico on their way to the U. S., figures so prominently, should not come as a shock. A large Mexican population in the United States poses other challenges. I suspect that if Ireland were joined to the U. S. by a land border and the Irish claimed the United States by virtue of St. Columba’s having discovered America in a coracle there would have been even more pushback against the Irish coming here than there was.

Note, too, that people from the third largest source country by number of immigrants, India (1.8 million), also pose special problems. Nearly three-quarters of Indian immigrants to the United States speak a language other than English at home. There are more than 1,500 languages spoken in India. I don’t really know what that means. Cultural preference? Resistance to assimilation? They view themselves as guest workers rather than permanent immigrants?

Consequently, I would say that the core dilemma of U. S. immigration policy is that we need more than one immigration policy, at least two—one that pertains almost entirely to Mexico and another for all other migrants. We may actually need more policies.