tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post4212795891896829479..comments2024-03-23T12:05:13.464-07:00Comments on Ideas: Immigrants and WelfareDavid Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-21513157975092753882012-11-18T13:21:54.676-08:002012-11-18T13:21:54.676-08:00But what is wrong with the status quo? A sort of ...But what is wrong with the status quo? A sort of "don't ask don't tell" policy, where illegal immigration is liberally tolerated? Yes, there are sometimes arbitrary deportations (sometimes for electoral gain, but mostly to instill obedience and respect for authority among the illegal communities) but from what I've seen, illegal immigration is out in the open. It seems to work ok, the police in the DC suburbs of Virginia for example has informed the illegals (everyone knows who they are) that they can freely come to the precinct to report any crime, without having to show documentation. They have cars, driver's licenses, jobs, many are entrepreneurs (from selling tacos to full-fledged contracting companies) and generally contribute to the well-being of the community. The only downside I see to the status quo is that an illegal act is openly condoned by society - chipping away at the rule of law.TheVidrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09344788573052372170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-91400853281346697702012-11-18T07:20:47.089-08:002012-11-18T07:20:47.089-08:00Well, therein lies the problem. How do you tell wh...Well, therein lies the problem. How do you tell which members of the immigrant population are here to escape the evils of their native cultures (like the Volokhs) and which are merely here to escape the _consequences_ of those evils, while recreating the evils themselves (like the apparent majority of the Muslim population of Dearborn, or of Mexican-dominated communities near the border)?<br /><br />You appear to think that I concur with the views of hardcore close-the-border types. I do not. America is most definitely improved by the addition of people who have seen _and recognized_ the consequences of errors contemplated by our present population and long-since implemented by the populations they came from. And as making the distinction between the two types is almost certainly impossible for a government bureaucracy, I say our bureaucracies should not attempt to do so, for they'll only make the situation worse.<br /><br />We need to attack the _incentives_. A good first step, in the case of immigration from Mexico, would be to greatly _ease_ the process of immigrating to the United States _legally_, as we've seen that when the hard-working and otherwise law-abiding folks (the ones we _want_) are made into de jure criminals by the immigration statutes, they (naturally) become less willing to cooperate with American law enforcement in its efforts to root out and punish those among the immigrant population who are not merely here without government permission, but are engaged in ongoing patterns of crimes against persons and property.<br /><br />Fix the incentives, and that problem will greatly lessen. (It's a lot harder to get from Havana to Miami than it is to get from Juarez to El Paso. Why do the Miami Cubans have so much less of a crime problem than the El Paso Mexicans? Mightn't it have something to do with the fact that the ones among them who aren't committing crimes can, if they see one of their neighbors going bad, report him to the authorities without having to fear for their own status?)<br /><br />But how to get from here to there without creating tremendous moral hazard problems? I don't know. I'm not sure anybody does. It's easy to pontificate about how to craft a better policy than we had in the 19th century, or the 1920s or 1930s, based on the conditions that prevailed then. Crafting a policy that improves on the conditions today, without creating too many negative side effects? Much harder.<br /><br />We live under an immigration regime that seems almost purpose-built to produce negative outcomes for society. There is evidence that some of the more cynical elements of our society have manipulated that policy for their own private gain (whether electoral advantage for Democrat politicians who benefit from vote fraud, or commercial advantage from Republican businessmen who benefit from cheap and exploitable laborers who can't complain without fear of deportation) at the expense of society at large.<br /><br />I do not think that the restrictionists are right about the correct course for the future. But I can see their point, and while I think they are wrong, I recognize that they are neither crazy nor ill-motivated.lelnethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08600824544185328505noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-52743878407900411242012-11-18T03:46:43.941-08:002012-11-18T03:46:43.941-08:00I think the progressivity of the U.S. federal inco...I think the progressivity of the U.S. federal income tax might be a problem. <br /><br />Take annual federal spending and divide it by the number of U.S. tax payers. The tax payer that pays exactly this amount will in some sense put in as much as he gets out of the system. The tax payer that pays less could be said to be a negative contributor. Under the current system, a vast majority are negative contributors, and almost every immigrant will be, too. This means that in some sense it will be rational for people already in the U.S. to resist immigration. The solution to this would be a flat income tax.Simonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-17800551188255200962012-11-16T16:52:01.996-08:002012-11-16T16:52:01.996-08:00lelnet:
I don't see why the desire of Muslim ...lelnet:<br /><br />I don't see why the desire of Muslim immigrants to have contracts with each other judged under Sharia is any more of a problem than Jewish immigrants having disputes settled under Talmudic law or Amish settling their disputes under their institutions--both of which have long happened. On the whole, I would expect immigrants from socialist countries to be rather less friendly to socialism than immigrants from, say, France. <br /><br />I haven't noticed the Volokh brothers, for instance, arguing for more socialism.<br /><br />So I don't see why you think immigrants are going to impose the institutions of where they come from on the rest of us.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-54542699844419286622012-11-16T12:23:15.772-08:002012-11-16T12:23:15.772-08:00Trouble is, we're not talking about spaghetti,...Trouble is, we're not talking about spaghetti, stir-fry, and tacos. We're talking about things more like socialism, rigid caste structures, and Sharia.<br /><br />Your taste for Tom Kha Goong needn't _ever_ impair my access to roast beef sandwiches. They can coexist in peace indefinitely, and the more adventurous scions of the traditions they came from can (if they choose) acquire experience with and desire for one another's respective contributions, and everyone end up wealthier for it. America is _spectacularly_ good at making that happen.<br /><br />But there remain elements of other cultures that must necessarily, by simple logic, struggle existentially against the culture we already have. They _cannot_ merely be added to it, as previously-exotic foodstuffs can, but rather, once imported, must eventually either destroy what preceded them or else themselves be destroyed.<br /><br />This is not, of course, to say that _people_ coming from cultures possessing such elements cannot be integrated into American society. Every previous generation has managed it, after all, despite _all_ having had at least one such impediment. But to do so, they must _actually integrate_, rather than merely relocating and setting up a branch office of the Old Country.<br /><br />Chinatown may be populated with people of Chinese descent selling food with Chinese ingredients and goods of Chinese origin, but it is not actually very much like China, and never has been.<br /><br />Again, this is a problem for which any direct solution is almost certainly too complex to be attempted by law. But it may aid your understanding of the fight over legal decisions, to recognize that the political combatants' expressed statutory preferences (blunt as statutes by nature must be) are often merely proxies for more subtle and hence complex issues pertaining to the differential compatibility of cultures.lelnethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08600824544185328505noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-27968775294641079282012-11-16T11:29:12.404-08:002012-11-16T11:29:12.404-08:00lelnet wants to distinguish between immigrants who...lelnet wants to distinguish between immigrants who want to become Americans and those who want to bring the environment they are leaving with them. I'm not sure how he would apply those categories to past immigrants. Is spaghetti part of our culture or theirs? Stir fry? Tacos?<br /><br />I grew up in Chicago, a city much of which is a patchwork of ethnic districts, convenient for those who prefer their ethnic restaurants to be real and inexpensive. Despite which, the immigration that produced that patchwork seems to have worked pretty well.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-25537440091159246832012-11-16T10:16:50.953-08:002012-11-16T10:16:50.953-08:00"There are people, probably many millions, wh..."There are people, probably many millions, who would like to come here, live here, work here, raise their children here, die here. There are people who would like to become Americans, as our parents and grandparents did."<br /><br />A big part of the problem is that this is not, as you appear to be asserting, merely two different ways of describing a single group. It is a pair of descriptions for two _different_ groups, although obviously the latter is a subset of the former.<br /><br />For a great many opponents of mass immigration, the issue is (while arguably economic in fundamental nature, as it concerns human behavior in response to incentives and constraints) not readily reducible to financial measurement.<br /><br />The concern, rather, is not over immigrants who wish to be Americans, but over those who merely wish to reside here (and eventually vote here), but do so while retaining the cultural attributes that led to their countries of origin being the kind of place they thought worth running away from.<br /><br />In simpler terms, "if the place you were born was so bad it made you spend all that effort and risk to leave, why are you trying so hard to make America more like it?".<br /><br />It is worth noting, of course, that this phenomenon is not limited to merely international immigration. Poll Arizona about building an impenetrable wall to keep out the Mexicans, and it's a toss-up which way any given respondent will argue. Poll Arizona about building an impenetrable wall to keep out the _Californians_, and the answer will be so near to unanimous as to make no difference. :)<br /><br />It's just that building a wall in Arizona to keep out Mexicans is (whether you like the policy or not) permissible by the Constitution, while building one to keep out Californians is indisputably not so.<br /><br />It can be argued, and I think persuasively, that the law is far too blunt an instrument to rely on for choosing between immigrants who wish to become Americans and immigrants who wish merely to reside within the borders of the United States. I happen to think that the problem is insoluble by means of the statute books, and thus must be either solved by tweaking incentives or else given up as a lost cause. But the incentive problem is an extremely complex one, and not given to simple solutions.lelnethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08600824544185328505noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-51386296294782137602012-11-16T04:33:15.343-08:002012-11-16T04:33:15.343-08:00Resistance to immigration is puzzling to the econo...Resistance to immigration is puzzling to the economic rationalist, since migration is (or would be, in the absence of the welfare state) economically rational with people moving to where they are more productive.<br /><br />But consider that people value not just wealth but also relative status of which there is arguably a fixed amount in a society. If we look at the combination of wealth + relative status for the existing, adult, voting population of a country (we don't consider their children nor the immigrants), could resistance to immigration actually be rational? An immigrant who fails may cost you money, one who succeeds will make you jealous.<br /><br />Then again, I remember from The Machinery of Freedom that David Friedman makes the contrary argument: immigrants starting at the bottom could create a situation where natives get more status as basic acculturation becomes a more valuable skill. Simonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-15570688795133274372012-11-15T22:00:26.639-08:002012-11-15T22:00:26.639-08:00All the things you suggest are excellent ways to d...All the things you suggest are excellent ways to deal with any problem that might arise from open immigration with a welfare state (I particularly like the "no benefits, but not taxes that support benefits" idea). Though I will note that deciding that one will only look at this problem from the level of the national border seems arbitrary.<br /><br />After all, if we worry about people from poor countries immigrating to take advantage of generous welfare, why not worry about, say, people from Mississippi moving to Connecticut to bilk them? Mississippi is <a href="http://geocommons.com/datasets/15615/data" rel="nofollow">significantly poorer</a> even accounting for cost of living difference. The populace is <a rel="nofollow">less educated</a> and thus likely lower skill in Mississippi than Connecticut. This should be especially worrisome for those who are concerned about the solvency of welfare given Connecticut's <a href="http://247wallst.com/2011/11/11/the-states-doing-the-most-and-least-to-spread-the-wealth/2/" rel="nofollow">relatively generous benefits</a>.<br /><br />Now to be fair, the difference in wealth and skills between Mississippi and Connecticut is less than the difference between, say, Haiti and the United States. But even ignoring all the potential keyhole solutions like limiting benefits to immigrants, if welfare solvency is the decisive concern for a person, then they should be in favor of completely opening the border with every country that is close to as rich to the United States. Say every country with a per capita GDP 70% of that of the US (the gap between the poorest US state and the richest) which would mean at least open borders with between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita" rel="nofollow">25-28 other countries around the world</a>. Consistency would demand either that or making a border wall around Connecticut to make sure Mississippi people don't get in.Chris Hhttp://openborders.infonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-82598281886324468332012-11-15T20:38:07.952-08:002012-11-15T20:38:07.952-08:00If you don't talk about the economic or psycho...If you don't talk about the economic or psychological 'interest', then the only other place for the discussion to go is to try to figure out why Republicans don't like Mexicans and why Democrats don't like non-union labor, neither of which is a pleasant topic for those respective parties.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-89024728257613934872012-11-15T16:55:35.027-08:002012-11-15T16:55:35.027-08:00The words on the SOL are a nice greeting for a hos...The words on the SOL are a nice greeting for a hospital or Holiday Inn. It's worth noting that immigrants a century ago were from various countries and ethnic groups, rather than from primarily the 13th richest and second fattest country on Earth. If the presence of a Mexican is good for a country, why should the U.S. continue to take them from those less well off? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-37787016842429412622012-11-15T15:06:52.673-08:002012-11-15T15:06:52.673-08:00Max:
Point taken.
But the words on the pedestal ...Max:<br /><br />Point taken.<br /><br />But the words on the pedestal were supposed to describe what the statue symbolized. "I lift my lamp beside the golden door."<br /><br />Now mostly shut.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-13491286981460592792012-11-15T13:30:16.964-08:002012-11-15T13:30:16.964-08:00I can't resist pointing out again that the sta...I can't resist pointing out again that the statue of liberty's *pedestal* (the part with the words) was made in America. France had nothing to do with it!<br />Maxnoreply@blogger.com