Category: Immigration

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Trade, Migration and Progress

For centuries Kings and Despots tried to control trade. Then the United States came along and it favored trade. Trade expanded and prosperity followed. Nations now try to restrict migration. Some try to restrict emigration (North Korea and Russia for example)and some try to restrict immigration (The USA, Australia and most of Europe). Restricting migration makes the world poorer than it could be both economically and intellectually. The analogy is not exact but in general the countries that welcome migrants will prosper.

I see a future world where people are allowed to move away from places without opportunity to places that offer them more. The result will be an amazing increase in prosperity throughout the world. It worked for trade in goods and it will work for migration of people.

Of course there will be difficulties and obstacles to overcome. But again using trade as an example slowly lowering the barriers to migration will mitigate much of the difficulty while reaping much of the bonus. Certainly the new system should not allow new immigrants to be an undue burden on the communities they join. But these real objections can be overcome to increase the well being of millions of people around the world.

I predict that countries that manage robust amounts of immigration will disproportionately prosper compared to countries that are restrictionist about immigration.

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An Immigration Bonus

Most people trying to escape from the horrors of Haiti don’t go to Cuba. They risk the much longer journey and try to get to Florida. People fleeing violence in Honduras don’t move to Mexico they want to get to Texas I could give you a few more examples but the point is clear when people get the courage to leave their homes, communities and families they chose a place that they think offers the best opportunities for safety, security and living a decent life.

So migration gives us a window into what people think about other places relative to where they are now. Only Marxists and intellectuals want to go and live in Cuba. The same Marxists and intellectuals may scorn the United States but it is the number one destination for migrants from around the world. Why because it offers some of the best opportunities for living a full life. Allowing more migration in the world would cause massive depopulation of places like Haiti, North Korea and I suspect Iran.

So the bonus of allowing more migration is that people voting with their feet will let us know what countries are treating their citizens and their new arrivals well.

This sunset is from a beach in Maui last December.

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A New Paradigm for Immigration

“The right to go where you want should be a principle in a decent world.”
Noam Chomsky

Less than two hundred years ago most of our ancestors thought that chattel slavery was perfectly acceptable. If we discovered today that our great great grandfather was a slave owner we would be at least chagrined and probably embarrassed. Ethics change.

I predict that the same is going to be true about migration. Less than two hundred years from now migration will be one of the rights we take for granted. People will be free to move away from places where they have little opportunity and into places that they want to live. And just like with slavery if your descendants learn that you were involved in restricting immigration they will be at least chagrined and probably extremely embarrassed.

How can we get to this nirvana of free migration? One way to start would be for the USA and other receiving nations to allow annual immigration of one percent of their population. With a caveat that the new immigrants not be an undue burden on the place they move to. The question of mitigating “undue burden” can be solved through bonds, sponsorships and reallocation of the money spent on fruitless border enforcement.

If you want to avoid embarrassing your descendants here are a few thing you can do to signal that you want more open immigration to the USA. Give money to pro immigrant nonprofit groups. We give to The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project and to CHIRLA. Be vocal in your support for more orderly immigration and make it one of your primary voting issues. Don’t vote for people who want to slam the door again or those who talk about immigration reform but do nothing about it. And finally when possible employ the undocumented.

It is going to be a long struggle but Noam Chomsky was correct: “The right to go where you want should be a principle in a decent world.”

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The Immigration Opportunity

Competing with China

I recently read the Now It can be Told by General Leslie Grove. It is the story of the Manhattan Project, the US/UK project to build the atomic bomb during WWII. It was written by the man who was in overall charge of the project. The book is full of interesting details about the project and the attempts to understand where Japan and Germany were on the development of their own atomic capability. In the book Groves dismisses Japan as a contender, primarily because they didn’t have the population to support such a massive effort. With a population of only one quarter of the size of the USA they wouldn’t be able produce enough physicists and engineers to be able to create an atomic bomb. Which bring us to Immigration.

Right now the USA has about one quarter of the population of China. If in the long run we want to compete with China we need to grow our population and the best way to do that is through immigration. If we were to start allowing about one percent growth per year of our population through immigration it would only be a few decades before we had a competitive sized population. I call this the one percent solution and have written extensively about it on the Beyond Borders website. Of course this was many years ago.

There are millions of people who would really like to come and enjoy the freedom and opportunity of being Americans. We would in the long run gain the value of those peoples contributions and the moral high ground of welcoming the stranger. Of course there will be losers and we need to mitigate that as much as possible. But in the long run if we open the door a little bit to new people we will benefit and the world will benefit.

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Obligations

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”

Thomas Jefferson

Our immigration laws are unjust, confusing and detrimental to the long term success of our country. So to follow Jefferson’s dictum one should: hire the undocumented, aid those fighting for justice in the immigration mess we call a system and support those who actually want to simplify and rationalize our immigration system.

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American Exceptionalism

American exceptionalism was noted as far back as Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th Century. It was often assumed that it meant that America was better than other countries but it really meant that America was different. For many years I made the argument that we were exceptional, and better, because we tended to have self selected to come here. So by definition, in the margin, we were more adventurous and less risk adverse than the people who stayed at home. I still think that that is true but being on the Grand Jury has made me add a caveat.

It might be that we also have the other extreme. Perhaps a significant portion of our population is made up of the misfits, the bull headed, the ones who want to cause trouble and the ones who had more passion and less good sense. I am speculating but it might have been more common than we want to admit that getting young Noah out of Brighton ahead of the constable was important. And the best available option might have been for Uncle Steve to pay for his passage to America.

Its Saturday so I’m thinking out loud.

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We are Guilty

Forty Dead in another Immigrant Disaster

Most people will say that the people who took a small boat across the Florida Strait to try to enter the United States illegally were responsible for what happened. I say the policy of the United States was the root cause of this disaster and that we the voters are guilty. Our unfair and unkind policy of excluding most people, especially the poor, from entering our country legally caused this tragedy.

It is time to change the laws to allow at least three times as many legal immigrants, especially from countries in our region and to actually become the beacon of freedom we aspire to be.

Note; these people weren’t trying to get to Cuba or Venezuela. The USA is for all its faults is still the best deal available for people who want their children to grow up safe and have opportunities. Why would we not welcome them and put them to work?