I’ve posted twice now (here and here) on Sam Enright’s critique of my co-blogger Bryan Caplan’s case for open borders.
I have two more points, one where I agree with an Enright critique and one where I disagree with an Enright compliment of Bryan.
The critique I agree with is that Bryan’s analysis is too America-centric. This is what Bryan knows and this, plus Canadian immigration policy, is what I know. Together those two countries could easily take a few hundred million more people, as could western Europe. But it would be nice to see, in a book titled Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, a multi-country approach. Possibly there are economists and other scholars in Europe and Japan who could extend Bryan’s work.
The implicit compliment of Bryan’s work is in this paragraph from Enright’s critique:
In the US, a disproportionate amount of innovation comes from immigrants. More inventors immigrated to the US from 2000 to 2010 than to all other countries combined. Immigrants account for a quarter of total US invention and entrepreneurship. Maybe this is just because America selectively lets smart and innovative people move there. But maybe there are some agglomeration effects going on here specifically related to immigration? Immigration and clustering people together seems to have been key to the success of various intellectual hubs throughout history, like the Bay Area recently, Vienna in the 20th century, and Edinburgh in the 18th century. This is a ripe topic for progress studies to tackle. Aesthetically, I agree with Caplan’s choice not to talk about this much. People talking about all the “amazing contributions” made by a certain immigrant group often comes off as condescending, in much the same way as token engagement with other cultures might. Make the case for immigration from prosperity and freedom, or don’t make it at all!
The one criticism I had of Bryan’s book in my November 2019 review of his book was that he failed to make a closely related point. I wrote:
While few people would accuse Caplan of understating the benefits from immigration, I am one of those few. Immigrants start businesses at a rate that is twice that of native-born Americans. Among the main beneficiaries of such immigrant employees, therefore, are American workers. Yet nowhere in his book did I find mention of that fact. It’s possible, of course, that this overstates the benefits to native Americans; think of the Korean dry cleaner that largely employs other family members. Still, the odds are high that most of these employers employ some non-family and non-immigrant workers.
If a point in favor of immigration is both true and important, it should be made. Enright argues that making the point often comes off as condescending. I don’t see it. Complimenting people on their contributions seems like the opposite to me. If the formulation that bothers him is “amazing contributions,” that formulation can easily be changed to “large contributions.”
Also, Enright ends his compliment by writing:
Make the case for immigration from prosperity and freedom, or don’t make it at all!
Ok, but the more innovators we have, the more prosperous we get. So making the case based on prosperity would seem to require noting the role of immigrant innovators.
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Nov 3 2021 at 8:14am
I think the strongest argument against the immigrants and innovation is one of selection bias. Immigrating to the U.S., whether legally or undocumented, is hard! You’d naturally expect the people who do that are the ones that have the most to gain and the ones that are the most tenacious. Good quality to have if you’re starting a business. If immigration was much easier, we’d probably see less of that effect (while still seeing more innovation overall).
*I should say, I work with a lot of early stage startups, and I see the negative impact of our immigration rules on innovation all the time and it is heartbreaking. One of the strongest startups I’ve had the pleasure of working with is co-founded by a woman from the UK, and the company is in limbo right now because she’s legally not allowed to work on it while her visa application keeps getting pushed back months and months. I’ve had other promising startups have to stop before they even got started because of visa issues and people having to leave the U.S.
Christophe Biocca
Nov 3 2021 at 8:42am
Those stories are common enough that Canada’s immigration department has billboards up in Silicon Valley saying: “H-1B Problems? Pivot to Canada”.
Dylan
Nov 3 2021 at 10:12am
Yep, and I’ve lost at least two entrepreneurs to Canada over the last year (they had previous ties to Canada, but had lived in the U.S. for over a decade)
robc
Nov 3 2021 at 9:43am
I think that would be testable by looking at 19th century immigrants, when it was much easier. Did they innovate at a significantly higher rate also?
Dylan
Nov 3 2021 at 10:11am
Not sure I’d characterize the 19th century as being much easier. Sure, there were fewer regulatory barriers, but it was an expensive and somewhat dangerous voyage and harder to travel home as well. My guess is that it would have still selected for the more adventurous, which would probably positively correlate with entrepreneurship as well.
robc
Nov 3 2021 at 10:49am
I think immigration in general selects for more adventurous, regardless of era or difficulty.
I worked in Switzerland for one year and that alone probably puts me above average in the adventurous category.
Dylan
Nov 3 2021 at 11:37am
Sure, but there are differences in degree. Who is more adventurous you, who lived in Switzerland for a year, or my friend, who decided to move to Syria to start a new business in 2020?
The person who gives their life savings to a coyote to bring them on a long and difficult journey to cross the border illegally or the French guy that lived across from me for a year that overstayed his tourist visa?
I think I’m making the non-controversial point (at least should be non-controversial here) that when barriers to entry are high, only those with the absolute most to gain will come. As those barriers come down, you get immigrants where the gains are more marginal.
This isn’t an argument against open borders, just the naive position that you can extrapolate directly from rates of entrepreneurship among existing immigrants to a hypothetical future where it is much easier to immigrate.
robc
Nov 3 2021 at 2:06pm
But that was my point of the 19th century immigrant. Sure the adventure-level is high, even higher than my 1 year abroad, but still not all that high. You had to buy a ticket on a steamer and move permanently to a new country.
But that latter is pretty typical of most immigrants. Sure, its easier to visit back home now, but most move permanently.
If 19th century immigrants were more innovative than the 19th century non-immigrant, that says something about immigrants under even low cost movement.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Nov 4 2021 at 9:52am
The trick (assuming that we do not take Caplan literally) is to craft an immigration policy that selects for immigrants with the greatest “spill-over” benefits. Entrepreneurial activity would be the best but not the only example of that.
Higher levels of immigration would also raise the net benefits of other policy changes such as removal of occupational licensing, reduced restrictiveness of zoning, and use of congestion taxation in urban areas.
Sam Enright
Nov 4 2021 at 5:42am
Hi,
Thanks for all the responses! I wrote a response to your latest two posts about this, as well as your dissatisfaction with my original response: https://samenright.com/2021/11/04/henderson-on-me-on-caplan/
-Sam
David Henderson
Nov 4 2021 at 12:34pm
Thanks, Sam. Nice response.
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