I must confess that, contrary to my former anarcho-capitalist stance for unrestricted immigration (shared by many of my co-bloggers here), I now find the topic more complicated. I of course have no economic objection to immigration, if by “economic” is meant its effects on wages, incomes, and the allocation of resources. Basically, as Jean-Baptiste Say would have said, supply creates its own demand. As far as value judgments are concerned—some are ultimately needed to evaluate any government policy—I find no moral case for banning competition by the poorest. Any newborn citizen is an immigrant from within, and—except for Malthusian environmentalists—we understandably don’t worry about that.
The invasion argument is more difficult to reject. Assume that “our” state is a contractual agent for protecting our liberty. An invasion of immigrants who do not share that value would compromise it. We then have a classical-liberal argument against open immigration. How many and what sort of immigrants would actually come is an empirical issue that cannot be decided in advance, and it may be impossible to go back after the fact.
But whatever one’s stance on the general issue, I think we should agree that the way illegal-immigrant families are treated at the U.S. border is inconsistent with common humanity and decency, not to speak of individualist values. (Christian churches should be up in arms.) Saying that the law mandates such treatment of illegal immigrants is false, for the new “zero tolerance” policy is not required by law. The legal argument would be a poor justification anyway.
At about the time I published my last post on a related event, the New York Times documented the case of a Guatemalan woman who, travelling with her son, had entered the United States illegally through the Texas border. She was arrested, separated from her son, and deported back to Guatemala without him. After about two weeks of separation, the boy remains in the United States under the care of Health and Human Services, and the mother does not know when she will see her son again. From Guatemala, she was able to talk to him once on the phone late last week.
This inhumane separation was partly caused by bureaucratic snafus, as the New York Times story shows. An inhumane state is not more efficient than a benevolent one. This is one economic lesson of the episode. The federal government is too big to manage.
The story also illustrates the incentives and behavior of government agents. “I can’t go without my son,” the mother pleaded as government agents put her on the deportation flight. The government agents who committed this infamy were not necessarily thugs, but they were all following orders and complying with the team. One of them, a female agent, was apparently crying. (Perhaps all these cops should be women: we might have more humanity.) The main culprits are the people at the top of the pyramid: politicians, political appointees, and high-level bureaucrats in Washington, DC. My value judgment is that these actions are totally unacceptable.
READER COMMENTS
Dale Courtney
Jun 19 2018 at 11:36am
I understand the anarcho-capitalist arguments for open borders.
However, since we actually live in a democratic-socialist country, how does that affect the reasoning of those who still support open borders? Isn’t that position actually unsustainable given the government we actually have?
Best,
Dale
Hazel Meade
Jun 19 2018 at 12:06pm
Dale,
As numerous people have pointed out on numerous occasions, immigrants cannot qualify for welfare. There are already laws in place that prevent people from getting welfare benefits if they have not at least had permanent resident status for at least 5 years. For instance family sponsorships require that the sponsoring family show the ability to support the immigrant for 5 years, so that they will not become a public charge. Employment sponsorships naturally require the immigrant to have a job. Further, one cannot qualify to receive social security or medicare benefits until one has paid tax into the system for 10 years.
Now, many anti-immigration advocates say that immigrants consume welfare in the form of public schools and roads. But if we’re going to hold those up as examples of “welfare” that must be eliminated before we can allow liberal immigration, we’re going to be waiting a long time. Indeed public schools and roads have existed since the country was founded, and during periods of completely open immigration to the US in the 19th century, so I don’t see how roads and public school are such an attraction that unlimited amounts of immigrants will come here to take advantage of them.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 12:22pm
@Hazel Meade: Good points.
Conscience of a Citizen
Jun 20 2018 at 3:04pm
Sorry, Prof. Lemieux, but Hazel Meade is not making a “good point,” s/he is making a false one.
As has been documented here in Econlog before (link), immigrants and their children, both legal and illegal, are eligible for and do enroll in nearly all American “welfare” (means-tested social spending) programs.*
Immigration boosters realize that most Americans resent the idea of paying higher taxes to subsidize foreign paupers, so boosters routinely repeat the falsehood that immigrants are “not eligible” for welfare.
*Many immigrants also collect benefits from welfare programs for which they are not eligible– because the administrators of those programs do not check immigration status.
Hazel Meade
Jun 20 2018 at 4:47pm
Yes, there are a number of exceptions to the rule. So why not push back against the exceptions, rather than against immigration in general?
zeke5123
Jun 19 2018 at 2:35pm
Five years is a relatively short-time period. What about a ten-year waiting period? Not sure what limits there are on voting — presumably, an intermediate solution is to heavily limit access to welfare and voting.
Mark Z
Jun 20 2018 at 4:20am
Hazel,
That sounds like a nice argument for the status quo, not for unrestricted immigration.
Hazel Meade
Jun 20 2018 at 4:48pm
There’s a lot of room between “status quo” and “unrestricted immigration”.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 12:19pm
@Dale: You’re right: the welfare state is a further argument against open borders. But note that it can be turned around: open borders would destroy the welfare state, other things equal. The problem is whether other things would remain equal.
Hazel Meade
Jun 19 2018 at 11:58am
I see little reason to believe that Hispanic immigration poses a threat to the liberal order in the US. Hispanic culture is a branch of the Western liberal tradition itself – a descendend of Rome. They speak a Romantic language much like French and Italians. They are Catholic Christians, which should perturb Americans no more than Irish Catholics or Germans, and arguably less than Eastern orthodox immigrants from Poland or Russia.
If America was facing large numbers of Arab Muslim immigrants one might be able to argue that their cultural values are so different that they would pose a threat to the Western liberal tradition, but that is not the case. Hispanic immigrants are not radically different than the pre-existing ethnic makeup of the US (indeed, they have been here for a long time in smaller numbers), and their political orientation isn’t even extreme even compared to many Americans – most of whom vote for less than libertarian policies regardless of where they were born.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 12:23pm
Good point again, Hazel!
XVO
Jun 19 2018 at 2:26pm
“At least 113 politicians have been killed in the bloodiest election campaign in Mexico’s modern history”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election/another-political-murder-rocks-mexico-in-last-weeks-of-presidential-race-idUSKBN1JB03K
They are low IQ Catholic Christians. If we lower the average IQ of our country we too can have an incompetent criminalocracy like Mexico. Immigration is the biggest danger to our society in the long term, along with dysgenics.
Hazel Meade
Jun 19 2018 at 2:45pm
If you are worried about the average IQ of immigrants, why not advocate a policy of having an IQ test for admission? there’s no reason to use ethnicity as a stand-in for intelligence when we can just test for intelligence.
XVO
Jun 19 2018 at 3:06pm
I would advocate that policy generally, much better than what we have now. I do wonder about how much culture matters, like your concerns with Arab Muslims, but high IQ immigration from Latin America would probably be a net good thing.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 2:51pm
XVO: You realize, don’t you, that you are making the same argument as the early 19th-century Progressives? Please see https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2016/6/regulation-v39n2-7_9.pdf#page=4. Here is a little exercise: How many of the American soldiers in WWI were “morons” according to a U.S. government study? And how many American woman were sterilized following progressive policies? You’ll find the answers in the short article linked above. Another, different, question: How much of the violence in Mexico is due to American consumers’ demand for drugs and the American government’s war on drugs?
XVO
Jun 19 2018 at 3:23pm
Eugenics would be a good thing, and I think it should come back in some, non-violent, way. Society should promote higher intelligence and beneficial traits in it’s people. I think it could be done in a voluntary way, look you’ve had one child you can’t support, society will support you but in exchange you must stop having children.
Mexico is an intractable situation. Low IQ population creates a poverty stricken society that is easily corrupted by the drug trade. What can anyone do besides legalize drugs in the United States and/or Mexico? The best option would probably be to legalize drugs and then have the government produce propaganda against them and put heavy restrictions in place like we do for tobacco and alcohol.
Mark Z
Jun 20 2018 at 4:29am
There’s no more reason to care about an incoming group lowering the average national IQ than the average national income. No one is getting dumber, just like in the latter case one is getting poorer. Most people with high IQs still end up living and working near and marrying (the persistence assortative mating with respect to intelligence makes the ‘dysgenic’ argument irrelevant) other people with high IQs, while benefiting from a large supply of cheap labor. Smart people can live in fucntional cities with solid governance without being negatively affected by dysfunctional cities. More federalism, of course, would make this even more so.
Nor, I would note, is it clear that smart people vote for better policies than dumb ones (see San Francisco and Seattle).
XVO
Jun 20 2018 at 9:49am
While you’re right that high IQ isn’t a guarantee against bad policies, I would point to Venezuela as an example of what happens when the majority of a society’s people have low IQ. They’re more likely to fall for socialist demagoguery. Chavez was obviously full of it, destroying the future of the entire country for short term benefits. By all accounts the country is in ruins, food shortages, electricity shortages, hyper inflation, but the people still seem to support Maduro, the situation is crazy.
Mark Brady
Jun 19 2018 at 2:44pm
A Romantic language? A Romance language. Mind you, expressions of love may sound better in French and Italian, so perhaps we should call at least those two Romantic languages!
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 2:55pm
@Mark: ROTF! Phone the Oxford Dictionary.
Thaomas
Jun 19 2018 at 9:17pm
I would re-frame the issue slightly from numbers to rates change and proportions. How long it takes to assimilate a person from culture C (religion, education, income) depends on the cultural “distance” and the number of still assimilated people from that culture. [There is a local dimension to this as well as a immigrant group of only a small % of total population per year might still be slower to assimilate if all settle in a single locale.] And of course the rate of assimilation depends not on on the culture of the immigrating group but on whether efforts are made to prompt or discourage assimilation. Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric must surely have slowed assimilation of Muslims and other immigrants.
Hazel Meade
Jun 20 2018 at 10:27am
That might be the case, but I still don’t think that current levels of Hispanic immigrants are outside the bounds of present cultural variation and past immigration. There are still many places in America with authentic “unassimilated” ethnic communities, including European origin ones – think of your city’s “little Italy” or “Greektown”, and so forth. We generally find those places enriching. (Who really wants a culture that is completely homogenous anyway? Boring!) And the voting range of already-assimilated Americans already bound the preferences of Hispanics. They’re far less radical than your average Berkeley progressive. When I see a group of Hispanic guys drinking beer and riding pickup trucks and roasting meat on a barbeque, I am reminded of how similar they are to working class Americans – in everything except the language they speak.
SaveyourSelf
Jun 20 2018 at 1:45pm
You’re on fire, Hazel. Well done.
Denver
Jun 19 2018 at 12:16pm
I look at immigration the same way I look at Social Security here in the US.
Do I think we should get rid of it? Yes. Do I think we should get rid of it tomorrow? No.
There are a lot of people who have become reliant on the institution, and ending it tomorrow wouldn’t lead to anywhere pleasant. There are intelligent ways to end it such that people can slowly re-develop institutions to handle it’s absence.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 12:25pm
Denver: Interesting point. The revolution should be slow (even if this looks like an oxymoron).
Jon Murphy
Jun 19 2018 at 2:53pm
Denver,
I’m a tad confused on your point and I’d like some clarification, please. When you say “There are a lot of people who have become reliant on the institution, and ending it tomorrow wouldn’t lead to anywhere pleasant.” What is the institution here? What is “it”?
Mike W
Jun 19 2018 at 4:11pm
Saying that the law mandates such treatment of illegal immigrants is false, for the new “zero tolerance” policy is not required by law.
Source?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 5:23pm
MikeW: “Zero tolerance” is not generally required by law. If it were, there would be even more than 2 million people in American prisons!
David S
Jun 19 2018 at 7:13pm
The general problem with not having “zero tolerance” is that puts politicians in charge of determining who to charge with crimes. For some reason, their friends are never charged while non-friends are put through the wringer.
That’s why the law is supposed to be blind. If it is a bad law, it should be removed as a law. Civil disobedience doesn’t have the same issue – perhaps that could be applied in some way?
SaveyourSelf
Jun 19 2018 at 4:22pm
SaveyourSelf
Jun 19 2018 at 5:17pm
Sorry, Pierre, I just realized the first half of your post was about legal immigration.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 5:22pm
@SaveyourSelf: Sorry, I responded before seeing your last comment! I think my comment still has some relevance, though.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 5:20pm
@SaveyourSelf: One can think of many ways people with no vote can have influence. Just think about the third of registered voters who don’t vote. Think of schoolchildren who demonstrate for gun controls. Think of thugs who commit crimes and invite retaliation from the mob and the state. Think about how people in jail bring others to crime or to Islam. Think about the simple fact that people who have an audience have much more than one vote.
SaveyourSelf
Jun 20 2018 at 10:30am
Pierre,
Recall that the statement in question was,
People with no vote cannot influence the contract with the state to protect the liberty of citizens. Neither can the third of registered citizens who do not vote. Neither can gun toting children. Nor can people in jail sharing criminal behaviors. Neither can Islam. And finally, “…the simple fact that people who have an audience have much more than one vote,” is not simple, nor is it a fact. You are repeatedly falling into the same logic illusion. The one that says two things that happen at the same time are causally related. They almost never are.
In a free country, contracts are mutual agreements. They require two or more parties. If I accept that the State is my contractual agent for protecting my liberty and the State accepts my tax money as the other side of the exchange, then that is the agreement. Just because other people in this country harm each other or me does not change the terms of my agreement with the state one iota. In fact, those behaviors are the entire reason I entered into that arrangement in the first place. It is my faith that the State can and will keep its side of the agreement that allows me to accept strangers and foreigners alike in my territory. Because, as far as my animal side is concerned, there is no difference between the person born on American soil twenty miles away or the one born two thousand miles away in another country. They are both strangers to me.
Now, I’d like to take a second shot at my first attempt to discredit the concern that immigrants could somehow compromise “our” contract with the State.
In America, to my knowledge, even legal immigrants do not have the right to vote. In America, by design, only voting can change the terms of the state contract whatever ‘values’ it expresses. To earn the ability to vote, immigrants must first agree to citizenship, which is the formal acceptance of the values underlying the State. So they must first accept our values before they can ever have any chance to change them. Even then, at the Federal level anyway, a change in the underlying contract literally requires a 2/3 majority in both the house and the Senate. That is a tall order, rarely overcome in the history of this country. And even if it is changed for the worse, we know, also from history, that amendments can be revoked. In sum, I do not fear even huge numbers of legal immigrants “undermining” the values of this society. That fear, in my opinion, is misplaced and unsupported.
If you want to fear something, fear the supreme court justices who allow vague, short sentences in the US Constitution to act as doorways through which amendments to the constitution can pass by simple majority, rather than through the formal amendment process, all the while ignoring the sentences in that same Constitution that states any power not explicitly stated in the text of the Constitution are the prerogative of the State. That scares me. Because it means the contract between citizens and the state is no longer explicit, clear, understandable, reliable, or even necessarily mutual.
Charley Hooper
Jun 19 2018 at 6:03pm
I think the “open borders” position should be changed to the “only those invited” position. Only those who have been invited should be able to come here and only for as long as they’ve been invited.
Friends from Switzerland staying at your house? They’ve been invited. Japanese tourists staying in a hotel in San Francisco? They’ve been invited by the hotel. An Egyptian buying a house in Florida? She’s been invited by the house seller. A Canadian coming to work at Apple? He’s been invited by Apple. A Mexican joining a MLS team? He’s been invited by the team. Once he leaves the team, if no one else invites him to stay and he doesn’t receive citizenship, he must leave.
With this approach, we guarantee that there’s a consenting American partner on the receiving end.
BW
Jun 19 2018 at 10:43pm
Wouldn’t this policy necessarily bar all foreign, would-be entrepreneurs from the country? Why not just build a wall around the welfare state?
Steve Horwitz
Jun 19 2018 at 7:29pm
If “well they will vote for more government or to undermine liberal values” is a reason to prevent people from entering, why isn’t it also a reason to kick out current residents/citizens who have the same views? If protecting the liberal order against anti-liberals justifies the former, I don’t see how it doesn’t justify the latter.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 19 2018 at 9:59pm
@Steve: Yours is a potent objection, but I think the counter-argument is to be found in the contractarian perspective in which I was framing the issue (although I may have opened the perspective a bit too much by giving some content to the social contract). The parties would also wish to protect their membership, whatever opinions they would later express; in fact, they would include free speech in the limits imposed to the state. Looked at from a slightly different viewpoint, they would not want the state to have the power to exclude them or their children (and perhaps their foreign spouses) from the contract. I think this argument also works under de Jasay’s “capitalist state.” It would be interesting to see if it also works in the context of a Nozickian monopoly protection agency.
Mark Z
Jun 20 2018 at 4:40am
Being forcibly removed from a place you were born through no choice of your own is more coercive than preventing someone from choosing to move from one place to another. Moreover, people trying to come here already have citizenship somewhere else to which they could go back. Kicking people out would require us to find countries willing to take them.
BC
Jun 19 2018 at 11:13pm
“Open borders” really ought to be called “market immigration”: immigration limits set by markets in housing, labor, tourism, etc. What we have now is government immigration. Predictably, at least in retrospect, government immigration leads to black market immigration, commonly called “illegal immigration”, along with often draconian measures when government tries to stamp out those black markets.
In that respect, the family separations going on right now have much in common with other tragedies that have resulted from government’s efforts to eliminate black markets. For example, in the Eric Garner case, the man died over selling loose cigarettes. More recently, Trump pardoned Alice Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug conviction. Mr. Garner should not have died over cigarettes, Ms. Johnson should not have been sentenced to life over drugs, and these families should not be separated over immigration.
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