Legal versus Illegal Immigration
Going back to 2006 and one of the founders of Angry Bear below. Immigration being a positive thing and the reasons why. Also, the us population is not replacing itself. We have not yet experienced a decreasing population. It is not that far on the horizon. Replacement rate in the US is ~1.6 as discussed here.
Legal versus Illegal Immigration 2006
Angry Bear By Kash
Some of you have wondered why I haven’t yet made much of an effort to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. It’s a fair question. Let me share my thoughts with you about the two and explain why my sentiments about immigration in general mean that I don’t worry much about the distinction between the two.
Personally, I tend to see immigration as a positive thing. It helps the people immigrating, and it makes the US population as a whole stronger, richer, more creative, and more connected to the rest of the world. This analysis applies to both kinds of immigrants, legal and illegal.
But could there be reasons why one might want to reduce illegal immigration while leaving legal immigration rules alone? Let me try to compile a preliminary (and surely incomplete) list of reasons why one might want to reduce the number of illegal immigrants without allowing them legal entry as an alternative.
- Lots of illegal immigrants come to the US every year. Therefore, if you simply want to cut down on the number of total immigrants to the US, one way would be to make stronger efforts to reduce illegal immigration while denying the deterred illegal immigrants the option to legally enter the US. (Alternatively, you could reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed.)
- By far the largest source country of illegal immigrants is Mexico. So, if you want to change the mix of the country-of-origin of immigrants coming into the US (i.e. have a smaller proportion of immigrants come from Mexico), then again a good tactic would be to specifically try to reduce illegal immigration.
- Illegal immigrants, being in a precarious legal situation, are more easily taken advantage of by employers. If your concern is the well-being of the illegal immigrants, a sensible tactic would be to try to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. However, a corollary to that is that you should also want them to be legally allowed to remain in the US (since they obviously want to be here, given that they are willing to do it illegally), in which case efforts to reduce illegal immigration should be coupled with an increase in legally allowed immigrants. On the other hand, if your concern is the effect of this phenomenon on the US labor market, then we can combine this item with #4 below…
- Illegal immigrants may be poorer and less well-educated (on average) than legal immigrants. This (possibly combined with #3 above) could have effects on the domestic market for unskilled labor in the US. If you want to try to address such concerns by changing the mix of the income/educational level of immigrants coming to the US, then one way might be to reduce illegal immigration while maintaining legal immigration at current levels.
There are probably other reasons to consider, but let me work with this as a start, and try to explain why my predisposition in favor of immigration covers both the legal and illegal kind.
Personally, I don’t think that there are too many immigrants in the US. If anything, I think the US should accept more immigrants than it currently does. This is the whole point behind my occasional arguments in favor of immigration in general. I am therefore not in favor of clamping down on illegal immigration for reason #1.
I also have no problem with the country mix of immigrants; I don’t think that immigrants from Mexico are inherently better or worse to have in the US than immigrants from any other country. So, reason #2 doesn’t persuade me to want to reduce illegal immigration flows.
I am concerned about issue #3. I think that the plight of illegal immigrants in the US is often horrible, and a disgrace to a country like the US. This pushes me in favor of reducing illegal immigration, but only if it’s replaced with more legal immigration. If we imposed harsher penalties on illegal immigrants while simultaneously allowing an extra few hundred thousand legal immigrants (not the horrible “guest worker” idea, but fully legal immigrants) to enter the US every year, I might be okay with that.
Issue #4 may be the most difficult one to resolve. It really is a part of the deeper question of how much should the US try to shape the type of immigrants that we allow. Perhaps the US should more actively try to change the mix of immigrants toward more high-skill individuals. That would raise the average skill-level of the US population and reduce the downward wage pressures on unskilled workers in the US. From a cost-benefit point of view, changing the mix of immigrants in such a manner would certainly be better for the US than the current system.
However, from a moral point of view that seems potentially problematic. Is it better to allow a doctor from Nigeria to come to the US and increase his standard of living from being relatively well-off in Nigeria to being relatively well-off in the US, instead of allowing a farm worker from Mexico come to the US and transform the situation of his children from being hungry, sick, and illiterate to getting basic nutrition, health care, and education? And is it okay to deliberately try to deprive the poorest parts of the world of their best-educated people?
This in turn relates to the still deeper question of why we allow immigration in the first place: is the goal to improve the US, or is it to improve the lives of the individuals who want to immigrate?
For me, both goals matter, at least to some degree. I’m more sympathetic toward that poor Mexican farm worker than I am toward the Nigerian doctor, but the Nigerian doctor will probably make me (and the rest of the US) a tiny bit richer than the Mexican would. To me, those two effects roughly balance out. As a result, I’m not particularly in favor of changing the rules to only allow high-skilled immigrants into the US. I can see the logic of it (it’s really an economist’s logic, after all), but it doesn’t satisfy my sense of morality.
That said, I do worry about the income inequality in the US that unskilled illegal immigrants might cause (due to both items #3 and #4). But I worry about income inequality in the US much more generally than that. Income inequality is a huge problem in the US, and the problem is much bigger than immigration can account for. My preferred policy response to income inequality would therefore be to try to address income inequality much more directly, for example by improving basic education for lower-income people or by changing the tax code, not through the back-handed method (one with many negative side-effects) of reducing unskilled immigration.
Putting this all together, I find that I don’t worry about illegal immigration any more than I worry about legal immigration. I’d like there to be fewer illegal immigrants, but only because I’d like more of them to be able to enter the country legally. Put another way, I could possibly favor harsher treatment for illegal immigrants, and I’d even be willing to pay for stricter border enforcement . . . but only if those policy changes were accompanied by a much more liberal legal immigration policy, and a policy to bring current illegal immigrants into fully legal status.
Note that I am not advocating completely open borders – I think that some sort of limit on legal immigration is reasonable, simply because overly rapid population growth in the US would cause its own set of problems. However, current population growth in the US is only about 1% per year, including immigration. That is near the lowest levels of population growth ever experienced in the US – only in the 1930s was it lower. I think the US can handle a bit more than that.
I realize that I am probably in the minority on this one (no pun intended) . . . but you asked for my opinion, and now you have it. Have fun in the comments.
Kash
I vaguely remember this, may have even influenced me a bit. I had just hung out my shingle, opened up shop, and was drafting what became “the atmosphere, this thin layer of no longer potentially toxic gasses we live in enveloping the only ball of mud we know of we can live on … does not recognize the boundaries of “nation/states”
Or the religions of man but that came later …
actually, human nature does recognize the religions of man. or maybe it’s the other way around.
you may be right about “potentially toxic” but as language it feeds into the Republican tripe that “carbon dioxide is not poisonous.”
i realize that greenhouse gasses is harder to say, and no better understood by those who do not want to understand.
but you are certainly right about recognizing borders. i have wondered why europe does not boycot our products until we effecively limit (limit effectively) our greenhouse gas emissions.
When I was in college in the 60’s, the janitorial/maintenance staff were almost all Mexican immigrants, I assume legally allowed to work in this country on some kind of visa. The supervisor had held his job for well over a decade, and low as his wages were he managed to be the primary support of his immediate family still in Mexico and some of his extended family. One day he showed us pictures of his home there and some of his family. Mansion is how I would describe it, or more of a family compound with main house and detached smaller homes for extended family and in-laws in a huge walled-in courtyard. He only got to see his family during school breaks, and sometimes not even then if there was a big maintenance job to be done.
That was the first real experience I had personally with immigrants, and there were no harder working and finer people anywhere. When some moved into the dorm, not everyone was really comfortable with dark skinned guys showing up to fix a clog or fix a window that would not open, but by the end of the term they were just helpful friends for most everyone, because that is what they were.
In the last 60 years I have seen nothing to indicate otherwise about any immigrant from any country that I have met personally. I can’t say I always like all of them, but that is true of native born Americans as well.
I fully expect many of the pop-up taco stands or flower/fruit vendors on the corner may not be documented. When I know more Spanish than they know English, they have not been here very long at all. The food is good, plentiful, and not that expensive, and they always have a good business. If people want to work and others want to buy what they provide, more power to them.
Jane
speaking of janitors
when i was teaching in a college an oldish lady sat in on my classes. i got to talking to her. turned out she was the janitor. took the job to support herself after her husband died.
a few months later the college (state university) decided it could save money by conracting out the janitorial services to a privae company that hired minimum wage no benefits workers.
i don’t know what happened to her, but i am sure glad the university saved us all those tax dollars.
A major political objection to increased immigration of minimally educated people is the pressure on the labor market. As I’ve pointed out before, in the Chicago area, people who start out in non union-undesirable jobs understandably want to improve their situation and often end up in the trades, competing with union workers. This weakens unions and tends to hold down wages. They are not limited to gardening and yard work. Roofing, painting, carpentry, and other skilled trades, to name a few are common areas of advancement.
The problem is not whether or not illegal immigrants…
but how we treat them. Kash apparently thinks “harsher treatment” might be justified.
“reolacwe have lost our souls. [and that is not a “religious” statement. surely all you educated people can find something secular that answers the description of “soul.”]
I agree with Jane. the problem is not immigration, it’s not even really racism. it’s unfamiliarity and the fact of human nature that we hate people because we treat them badly.
that said, “replacement rate” is bad economics. unless you think the goal of economics is to have a bigger army than the other guy.
make them legal and get them to join the union. “working together” is the best cure for racism.
@coberly; are you advocating an open border? “Getting them to join the union” is not so simple; they compete by offering lower costs which required lower wages.
Jackd
no i am not advocating open border. i am advocating treating those who come decently. nor do i think the “compete by offering lower cost which required lower wages” either works as an english sentence, or is valid economics. i know it looks good on an Econ 1010 supply demand curve. but it only works when the power balance is against the worker. that’s what unions are for.
My apologies for offending your grammatical sensibilities. You may not think that what I described works as economics but it seems to happen anyway. The people employing the migrant workers are often migrants themselves. As I asserted earlier, unions resist allowing migrants to work because, however it may get organized, the migrant labor costs undercut the union wages. You may have noticed that manufacturing in this country tends to gravitate to locations where unions are not strong. It’s the same economic behavior.
On the open border issue, when those seeking to enter or stay in the country without legal authorization are assured they can work and will not be deported for many years, if at all, it becomes close to being an open border as one can get without simply opening the gates.
I don’t advocate treating migrants badly but I don’t advocate encouraging them either except on terms that benefit the society. I don’t think that flooding the country with cheap labor benefits society and I don’t think that you do either.
Jackd
I am not normally a grammar pedant. it just took me a while to scan your sentence before i could understand it. my own writing often suffers the same problem.
as for the economics..yes to your view in the short run, but the only reason it “works” that way in the long run is that “illegals” have no bargaining power because they are afraid of deportation.
anecdote: there is a mexican company in my town (that is the guy who owns it is an immigrant and so are all of his workers). they worked hard cutting grass …using a knife. and have evolved into a quite prosperous landscaping company…with all the modern tools.
saw a graph today, dont remember where, showing that upward mobility among immigrants today is similar to upward mobility among immigrants since forever, and is significantly higher than among, you know, us americans.
This post provoked me to reflect on the composition of my department of biochemistry at a midwest medical school on the day I started versus today, three months before I retire.
When I hired on 37 years ago, there were ten tenure-track active faculty who were native-born Americans and three immigrants. Today, there are four tenure track active faculty who are native-born Americans and 13 immigrants. I’d say that by the usual metrics by which academic departments are assessed, we’re stronger now than we were 37 years ago.
Those folks, I’m guessing, didn’t have to wade or swim the Rio Grande.
@Jack,
LOL! No. Turns out that most immigrants in the US have not come across the Mexican border, despite the stereotypes. My paternal grandfather, for example, arrived in New York after sailing from what is now Ukraine. And yet, he was an immigrant.
And that was probably in the day when people were allowed in once they reached Ellis Island. Particularly Europeans.
@Jack,
In my grandfather’s case, yes. And plenty of Irish, Italians, Germans and Scandinavians came in through Ellis Island. OTOH, Chinese and Japanese immigrants came in on the Pacific coast.
Chinese until the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The Chinese and Japanese did not come as conquerors
Typewriter daze (remember those) I wrote a fairly substantial paper ~ I’ve got it here somewhere ~ arguing the history of our War on “Drugs” starts with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Yeah, the Whiskey Rebellion could be but that’s not what we think of as “drugs”
(to be fair neither did your ancestors. was mine)
Remember Cactus?
worth saying again:
the issue is not whether illegal immigration…
but how we treat them.
we have lost our souls.
Still sounds like an open border position. Is it?
Jackd
no.
answered you above after you wrote this. if it sounds like an open border situation …well , maybe it’s one of those “if you have to ask, you will never get to know” situations.
You’re too intelligent to not understand that present policies encourage migrants to believe that if they can get here, they can stay. I agree that’s not an open border in the sense that the door’s wide open. It’s only partially open but it’s open.
Jackd
don’t count too much on my intelligence. yes i suppose knowing they can stay would encourage more to come. but “better than home” will encourage more than enough to take the risk.
back in the day…sixty years ago…it was fashionable among intellectuals to argue the lifeboat dillema: the lifeboat is full, any more will sink it. what do you do about the guy still in the water?
about this…there is a movie “The Finest Hours” about a coast guard rescue back in the fifties. I loved it. My son in law hated it. Matter of taste..he did not like “fifties chicks” and the special effects were not always convincing. i am old enough to discount stuff like that (and of course i like fifties chicks…discountimg the makeup, clothes, and hairstyles. but that’s not the point. as i recall they loaded the lifeboat 3X the “capacity,” and brought them all home.
like i said, your first thought is always the obvious answer.