I want to commend to your attention an excellent exchange of ideas between Shikha Dalmia and George J. Borjas on immigration at Reason.com. Read the whole thing.
My own view is that the subject is enormously clouded, not merely by tinges of racism as pointed out in the exchange, but by the dichotomy between the immigrants whom we select and those who select themselves or are selected by other immigrants. I believe that we need to reform our immigration, both legal and illegal, so that it benefits more of the American people, not merely employers, the immigrants themselves, or previous immigrants.
Such reform will be extremely painful but is necessary and inevitable for economic, social, and security reasons.
I thought this was the key quote:
“What does economics have to say about the self-selection of immigrants? If people move from place to place in search of higher incomes, which types of people—the “best and brightest” or the “wretched refuse”—find it worthwhile to pick up and move? That question had a surprising answer: It depends on whether the U.S. offers higher rewards for skills than the sending countries. If we do, we attract the best and the brightest. If we don’t, we won’t.”
My interest is more historical. The Bernard Bailyn study, Voyagers of the West, looked at British immigration records right before the Revolution. Partly due to the troubles, the government was considering whether it should impose controls on immigration to North America so it required port authorities to conduct a census of everyone departing. Are the wretched from the poor rolls leaving? Or are we losing valuable workers? The answer for this period was the largest group leaving were skilled workers, and most people leaving gave positive reasons (to own land, to better myself or occupation) than negative reasons (unemployed, poverty, landlord charging high rents).
Not that the poor weren’t leaving too, but if you look at the economic conditions in various parts of Britain, various parts of the United States, and the cost of transportation, a person who cannot afford to live in Britain had little assurance of doing so abroad. And as a practical matter, the least skilled, who were able to find contracts of indenture to pay their way, had life spans of another 5-7 years IIRC. They probably are not our ancestors.
I think the model needs to be a little more complex than that. I think you need to crank the costs, difficulty, and danger of emigration into the mix. We tend to get more of the “best and brightest” from India than we do from Mexico. I don’t think that’s because Indians are smarter than Mexicans.
We need to apply the same logic to domestic breeding, allowing prospective parents to breed and rear only if they can satisfy our need for skilled labor.
@Dave, I meant to add in the physical perils of the trip. But it is all, push and pull factors, mediated by economic and non-economic costs of migration.
I have it on good authority that rich authors and Harvard lawyers are leaving.
– Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Another thing that doesn’t get mentioned much in discussions of immigration is the difference between temporary and permanent immigrants. Some people come here because they want to become Americans and intend to live here forever. Some people come here only for work. Our system needs to recognize the difference.