June 19, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Cheap shot
Was yesterday's post mean and unkind, a vicious ad hominem? I don't think so. But I do think a number of people who weren't meant to be included by it have taken it as an attack on them.
I am pro-immigration, but not pro-open bordes. I think there's a limit to how quickly America can assimilate immigrants. Luckily, I don't think we're anywhere near that limit. But I understand perfectly that there are realistic objections to immigration: the expense of social services, the difficulties of assimilation.
I was referring to a particular kind of objection to immigration: the "Oh my God, they speak Spanish!" objection, which goes hand in hand with the "they breed like cockroaches" and "they have a funny religion" objections (heard mostly in weirdo evangelical circles). Unless you are, like my mother's family, descended from the White Anglo Saxon Protestants who sailed for this country in 1621, or shortly thereafter, you are the descendant of people who had exactly the same charges leveled against them. The Germans. The Swedes. The Irish. The Italians. The Jews. The Serbs. The Poles. The Russians. The Portuguese. The Arabs. The Greeks. Frankly, I'm getting tired of typing.
The ancestry of every single one of my readers, those WASPs excepted, was the target of some native American group complaining that they were coming here with their funny language and their weird customs, keeping to themselves, taking jobs or land from good Americans. (The WASPs were also targets of complaints, but the indians tended to register their immigration fears a little more violently; possibly because those WASPs practiced exactly the kind of cultural separatism that they've been complaining about in other enthic groups for the last 200 years.)
Unless you're some kind of weird self-hating crank, you don't give any credence to this, even though it was just as true of your ancestors as it is of Mexicans today. They did lower wages for low-skilled workers, try to keep their children from assimilating, practice a strange religion, alter local mores (you can thank Jewish immigrants for the fact that children no longer recite prayers in school), and frankly, some of them, like the Irish and Italians, had a penchant for antisocial behaviour. They were also famous for living like, eighty to a room in extremely unsanitary conditions. And contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of them. One country, Ireland, sent about 1 million people to the United States during the ten-year famine period, at a time when the United States had a population of less than fifty million.
Your ancestors weren't welcomed; they were reviled. They didn't assimilate along the happy schedule outlined on saccharine television dramas; indeed, Mexican immigrants are much more open to assimilation than many groups, which is why early 20th century literature is so full of anguished dramas about immigrant parents trying to keep their children from losing their culture.*
Yet you may have noticed, you feel pretty American--so American that it may worry you to run into people who are visibly still participating in another culture, right here in your own back yard. Culture is phenomenally powerful, and the nearly iron rule is that, as long as the majority does not wall the minority off into a ghetto, the majority wins. That's true whether it's a company, a church, or a nation: the majority wins, no matter how hard the minority tries to hold out. Europe's problems with assimilations are not, in my humble opinion, very much to do at all with the ethnic characteristic of the immigrants; the problem is one ethnic characteristic of Europeans, which is that they are constitutionally unable to view immigrants, particularly immigrants who look different, as true citizens of their countries.
We are better placed now to assimilate immigrants than at any time in history. We have a longer history of assimilation, and fewer immigrants to work on. (And people who think that "hispanics" are a single, homogenous cultural block which represents some unique threat to assimilation are guilty of racism; my parents' Ecuadorian housekeeper had no more in common with the Mexicans at my local taqueria, or the Cubans in West New York, than you have with Scots or Jamaicans.) A special note to people who keep posting links to Aztlan nuttery: this is like Al Qaeda picking out NAMBLA as representative of American culture. Hispanic parents have been leading the charge against bilingual separatism in schools, and Mexicans feel about New Mexico about the way most Irish Americans feel about Armagh; sure, they oughta give it back, but it doesn't actually impact my life. Indeed, to their credit, the Mexicans aren't the ones giving money to terrorist groups who promise to reverse a centuries old land grab.
If you think that you deserve to be here, despite the many costs, psychic and otherwise, that your ancestors imposed on the pre-existing citizens, then you have a pretty high bar to explain why other groups are different and special and don't deserve the same chance. The charges leveled against Mexican immigrants are overwhelmingly anecdote and calumny. The actual data shows they seem to be assimilating just fine--at least if we define what your grandmother did as "just fine".
It looks pretty fine to me.
* The pretty-pretty "America is a great big melting pot" version of previous immigration waves is a creation of the World War II propaganda machine, which wanted to portray America as a harmonious fighting machine, not a collection of squabbling immigrant groups. It was then echoed in American textbooks in the 1950's, which is why so many people seem to believe it is actually true. It isn't. The history of America is the history of fierce resistance to immigrant groups as soon as they got too numerous . . . and equally fierce forgetting as soon as the immigrants' kids got jobs and learned English.
Posted by Jane Galt at June 19, 2007 3:18 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>That last sentence seems to suggest a melting pot pretty well, not the absence of one. The "melting pot" IS real...but as the post says, it doesn't work as quickly as people would like or as flawed historical memory suggests. It takes a few years, even generations, but we all melt in...eventually.
Posted by: alan on June 19, 2007 4:09 PMI almost entirely agree.
But I'd note that you and I are both in the northeast. In the southwest, Mexican immigration does have a unique quality in that it's coming from a bordering country with a historic claim to the land being emigrated to. Our ancestors (and the Latin Americans moving in next door to us) had a huge physical distance between themselves and the old country and certainly didn't consider themselves to have a greater right to it than the current residents.
Posted by: JSinger on June 19, 2007 4:16 PMThe issue is the large number of Mexicans relative to the immigrant population and to the total population.
One fear (boogeyman? I don't know.) is that the Cubans, Ecuadorians, Colombians, Dominicans etc. will assimilate into a "Latino" identity, bound by language and a shared narrative of immigration, and probably anti-Anglo sentiment. See Univision anchor Jorge Ramos' book, "The Latino Wave."
The fear is that Latino/Hispanic will become/is the New Black, our official intractable "racial" problem of the 21st century, as a significant chunk of our population defined by ethnicity is economically, educationally and socially inferior to and most likely hostile to mainstream Anglo society.
New York may be a very deceptive model in understanding Mexican immigration. The history of Mexican-Anglo relations in Texas is very different, and colors W's views very much. (How many "guest workers" came through Ellis Island?)
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 4:31 PMJust to throw it out there--what justification is there for de facto unlimited immigration from Mexico combined with limits on immigration from the rest of the world?
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 4:40 PMYou mention differences among Hispanic groups. I suspect that, if a Scot, a Jamaican, a Canadian and I moved to Brazil, we'd suddenly find we had a lot in common.
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 4:42 PMI don't agree with the argument that descendants of immigrants, who were once observed to be imposing costs on the country to which they migrated, are somehow estopped from observing that immigrants continue to impose similar or greater costs, and concluding that immigration ought to be controlled or even reduced.
By Jane's logic, because my ancestors included Normans, including a certain bastard named William, who went and conquered their neighbor, I am estopped from resisting someone who tries to conquer my country. Going back further, I can't fault the Saxons from conquering and damn near exterminating the native British. Nearer to the present, because my ancestors successfully invaded the land of the New England Indian tribes, I'd have to allow an invader to drive me from my own home.
A variant of this is the argument that Clarence Thomas, minorities in general, and women can't legitimately oppose race and gender preferences, because "they benefitted from affirmative action." Of course, someone making that moronic argument wouldn't say that a person who had benefited from slavery was barred from criticizing slavery. This is all very silly.
Obviously, it doesn't work that way. For the record, about one-half of my family tree's branches show up in American in the 1600s, with the others dribbling over here throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and one sweet Polish-German girl arriving around 1900. But I have no more or less right to object to mass immigration than Cesar Chavez did. I am a citizen of a democratic republic, and the policies I can advocate, and the concerns I can express, are not limited in the slightest by who my ancestors were.
I see plenty of data that indicates that the "pretty-pretty" presumption that Mexicans are overwhelmingly assimilating "just fine," as well as past groups, is faulty. Given how different our society is now from what it was in 1910, I wouldn't expect history to repeat itself. In 1910, the idea that America was a fundamentally oppressive, racist, sexist, europhallopatriarchocentric society was limited to the fringe (ironically, a fringe comprised largely of recent immigrants, who brought European-style radicalism with them). Now you can't fling a brick in your average university without hitting several people who'd agree with that dogma, which strikes me (as George Will once put it) as an excellent reason for brick-flinging. Is it realistic to expect assimilation to have a similar attraction for immigrants in 2007 as in 1907, when a substantial body of elite opinion essentially declares that America is not something a decent person should aspire to assimilate to?
My hat is off to hard-working Hispanic immigrants. It's their kids who I worry about most. An awful lot of them seem to be assimilating, all right -- but to ghetto culture, not to anything constructive.
Posted by: TheProudDuck on June 19, 2007 4:47 PMI'm curious about how a New York City financial writer gets to spend enough time in "weirdo evangelical" circles to know what is said there.
Posted by: y81 on June 19, 2007 4:47 PMAgain, you fail to address the simple fact that the US is failing to control its borders. This is an issue which has absolutely nothing to do with the ethnicity of the people crossing into the US illegally. I can only assume you don't think border security is important. I would like to know why.
Posted by: purple on June 19, 2007 4:58 PMI'm still trying to figure out who this Randy was on Blossom. I checked IMDB - no dice.
Posted by: A.S. on June 19, 2007 4:58 PMI suppose the fundamental disagreement is on the existence of your Iron Law of Assimilation.
What I learned from those early 20th century assimilation narratives (and their contemporary Indian equivalents Bend it Like Beckham, the Guru, I'd bet on more to come) is that assimilation is heartbreakingly painful. You are tearing out a part of yourself, and in a way betraying those you left behind. You are turning your back on Us to become like Them. Assimilation carries economic benefits, but exacts a harsh psychological toll. It's terrifying--you might not succeed, you might be rejected and not know it, with the In-crowd snickering at the (ethnic slur) behind your back.
What happens when, due to modern communications and a Spanish-speaking critical mass, you don't have to go out into that unfamiliar Anglo world? You speak to your friends at work and in the community in Spanish, on TV at home you have Univision, and if you have a satellite then a dozen or more Latin American channels, you talk to your relatives "back home" all the time with cheap international calls. You and your children visit the Old Country from time to time. You can live in a Latino bubble.
If your children grow up in that bubble, how ready are they going to be to leave it? Or will they be a "broken bridge" generation, not confident in either world and so drawn to ethnic identity gangs and/or violent politics to certify them as Real?
Think about the toll taken on the American black community by the fear of "acting white" or "selling out" by refraining from self-destructive behavior. Then remember that Oscar De La Hoya took a lot of flack in 1992 at the Olympics for holding up US and Mexican flags. (It wasn't the Mexican flag that he was taking flack for back then. A lot of Mexican-Americans were rooting for the "real Mexican" Julio Cesar Chavez to kick the Golden Boy's pretty coconut ass.)
* Assimilation was actually a little bit easier for the Irish and for refugees from Communist countries--supporting the IRA or militant anti-Communism becomes a way of Keeping It Real. In this case, the equivalent would be a militant, ghettoizing "La Raza" movement.
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 5:07 PM
Hmm. If successive waves of immigration indicate that there is nothing to worry about in the current wave, then do successive waves of nativist anxiety and panic suggest that we shouldn't be all that nervous about nativism?
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 5:14 PMUntil they take over The Mob, can they really be said to have assimilated?
Posted by: dearieme on June 19, 2007 5:17 PMIn 1910, the idea that America was a fundamentally oppressive, racist, sexist, europhallopatriarchocentric society was limited to the fringe...
Don't mean to burst your bubble, but in 1910 America WAS fundamentally racist and sexist. That is absolutely uncontroversial, unless you think Jim Crow laws and women not having the right to vote weren't so bad...
Please note that I am not implying that America is fundamentally racist and sexist NOW...vestiges of racism and sexism remain, but we've come a long way since 1910, baby.
Posted by: Immoralist on June 19, 2007 5:17 PMJane... you are acting as if things NEVER change. This is a pretty dynamic country, and what worked for other immigrants, may not work for someone coming here tomorrow, because THINGS CHANGE.
The question is, is this a country of laws? If it is, don't we have a right to apply them? You say you aren't a believer in open borders, which I agree with.
So what ARE you arguing about?
We are discussing people who break the law to come here, right? The non "waspy" waves [way to choke on your own hubris there kid] came here BASED on the laws in existence AT THAT POINT. It doesn't matter if they were reviled once they got here, because it was LEGAL for them to be here.
We are talking about something different.
Illegal people may or may not assimilate, but if they TRULY wanted to come HERE. To be HERE. Then they would prove their intent to assimilate, by following the LAW to come here.
They don't. That IS the problem. Immigration is anothere question really. We can talk all day about the reality of quotas and such, but that isn't the problem here. We have people infiltrating our country illegally, and we are being squemish about dealing with them.
Apply the law that exists.
Punish those that break it, INCL. the people who hire Illegal people [the law IS on the books]
and THEN reform the immigration system, so that it works for everyone who has a desire to come here. Regardless of if they are from Mexico or Tunisia.
The Immigration waves of our past occured in a country that was varying sizes and borders, and I doubt the people of New Mexico think of themselves as belonging to Mexico, since that was 150 years ago, and the indidginous populations were hard done by the Mexican government in those times. Having spent much of my childhood in the Taos area with family still there, I think I can speak to that.
D
Lastly, what's with the name calling?
Interesting comparison (or contrast) of the Irish "wave" and "Hispanic" levels. Per your numbers, the Irish became about 2% of the USA population in ten years. In the last 10 years, legal and (estimated) illegal Hispanic immigrants would total about 21 million or more than 7% of the population. Not exactly comparable. And JSinger makes an excellent point.
Posted by: MikeinAppalachia on June 19, 2007 5:22 PMIt would be interesting to see where the immigrants are settling. In most of Jane's historical examples they settled in large cities. The current wave seems to be settling in suburbs and exurbs, at least around here (Atlanta).
Posted by: Steve French on June 19, 2007 5:35 PM@MikeinAppalachia
At least as I read the numbers, Jane says that Irish made about 2% per year = (given growing population) 16% of the total population in 10 years. That makes the comparison a bit different.
Posted by: Kyle on June 19, 2007 5:36 PMOne thing that puzzles me is why the subject of Puerto Ricans is rarely ever brought into discussion of open immigration.
If open immigration is a bad thing, particularly in the context of certain language, culture, and religious groups, then there would be a good example to hold up as to what can happen when you allow unlimited numbers of a group to come into the country.
Of course, there's the pesky issue that Puerto Ricans are born US citizens, so it's not really immigration, it's basically like moving from Mississippi to Minnesota. I personally find something a bit uncomfortable about saying that it all boils down to where your parents were living when you were born... but that's just me.
(I realize there are plenty of people around the world who arrange things so they just happen to be on US soil when they're giving birth, but when you set up rules, people will figure out how to take advantage of the rules. People are good at that.)
Posted by: Emily on June 19, 2007 5:38 PMOne of your best yet. This kind of thing is what keeps me coming back.
Posted by: me on June 19, 2007 5:39 PMIn the southwest, Mexican immigration does have a unique quality in that it's coming from a bordering country with a historic claim to the land being emigrated to.
Maybe unique these days, but much the same was true of French-Canadian immigrants in New England at the turn of the 20th century. Large numbers of immigrants coming from just a train-ride away, attracted by economic opportunities in the mills. And the immigrants had their own churches and schools and a plan to become a political force--turning the cities of New England into French enclaves. It all looked viable for a short while until the kids assimilated as English speaking Americans.
Having said all that, I think the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is important. I'd be much more inclined to support a "compromise" if I believed either the administration or the Democrats were serious about enforcement.
Jim
Posted by: scarhill on June 19, 2007 5:47 PMEmily: Because there aren't enough Puerto Ricans in the world to make much difference. (4 million on the island, 3 million in the US including those of Puerto Rican descent.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_migration_to_New_York
In some ways, it's not the 12 million illegals or the 30 million Hispanics we have now that are a problem, it's the next 50 million.
Posted by: John Bragg on June 19, 2007 5:49 PMA silly post. What makes this a moral issue ("deserve the same chance") and not a simple question of whether mass illegal immigration is currently in the interest of the citizens of the United States?
Posted by: James B. Shearer on June 19, 2007 5:51 PMmy parents' Ecuadorian housekeeper
Someone said a couple of years ago that George Bush's unpopular (with ~70% to 80% of the electorate) position on immigration ultimately comes from the fact that he likes his housekeeper. We didn't have a maid when I was growing up, so who knows.
Anyway, this is how I thought Jane would respond. Ignore all the arguments and evidence presented by the 80% of commenters who disagree with her and say that we're being dishonest and we really just mean that Mexicans are brown.
Posted by: huh on June 19, 2007 6:05 PMKyle-
Jane wrote-
"One country, Ireland, sent about 1 million people to the United States during the ten-year famine period, at a time when the United States had a population of less than fifty million."
I didn't read that as 1 million PER year, but as 1 million in 10 years, then 1/50 = 2%. I guess it would be more accurate to consider the mean over 10 years, given (as you say) population growth during the 10 years. But that would make it less than 2%(?).
Laws are modified-even the frigging constitution is amended - so nothings frozen in time! If the mexican busboys/gardeners choose to trek across the border risking starvation and death rather than apply for a visa to come in maybe the immigration laws are fucked up and would benefit from a relook? And if you are legal immigrant frothing about how this is unfair to your relative waiting in line at the philippines consulate to come in and pluck the same fruit or garden the same lawn as the 'illegal' mexican maybe, jus maybe its geography rather than a love for the law thats keeping him/her there? And as Kevin corrected me on the other thread, immigration laws have been in the books for just a little more than a century and was ugly for most of the time and not much better now either - so fiercely resisting any talk of 'legalizing' the illegals or slamming it as amnesty (wait in line for atleast a decade+ 5grand + a dozen other cruel rules) just smacks of racism - illegal immigration will ALWAYS be there and can only be managed - never eliminated.
Posted by: Sri on June 19, 2007 6:41 PM>> but if they TRULY wanted to come HERE. To be HERE. Then they would prove their intent to assimilate, by following the LAW to come here
They might prove the _intent_ but they wouldn't actually GET here and assimilate, by and large. Re: quotas. A very simple thing really. What did they stand to gain by respecting the immigration law and not immigrating?
Yes, stricter laws and stricter enforcement would have changed this equation. But they weren't there. Thus it is silly to pretend that current illegal immigrants are somehow morally inferior just because they got here by breaking the law. If they haven't broken it, most of them wouldn't be here.
>> Punish those that break it, INCL. the people who hire Illegal people [the law IS on the books]and THEN reform the immigration system
Or, reform the immigration system and then maybe the task of controlling the border and punishing the law-breakers will become significantly easier?
Personally, I think that whatever limits on immigration should be based solely on the ability of prospective immigrants to "pull their weight" in the current economy (excluding would-be terrorists and criminals is a given, but there's only a small minority of those in the overall pool). Tax returns are not a bad proxy. That would certainly mean a bias towards educated professionals (hey, I'm one myself -- why shouldn't I like more of my ilk around? ;) ) but it's quite likely those are a small tip of the pyramid and most of lawnmowers, construction workers et. al. will still make it in. Legally. And we will be sure they are not spending more from the public coffer than they're paying into it because we'll be able to measure it for a change.
Posted by: ...Max... on June 19, 2007 6:45 PMFor all those who say that the real problem is ILLEGAL immigration, here's my question:
What would you say to alleviating the pathologies associated with illegal immigration by making it easier to come here and work LEGALLY? Then we could have a better match between the supply for labor and demand for labor, but the laborers would exist in a legal framework.
Would you support steps to make LEGAL immigration easier?
Also, do you think it makes any sense to have laws that artificially keep supply from matching demand?
Posted by: thoreau on June 19, 2007 6:55 PMJust to throw it out there--what justification is there for de facto unlimited immigration from Mexico combined with limits on immigration from the rest of the world?
Is this even on the table as a proposal? Why ask the question? Seriously, who is arguing for unlimited immigration from Mexico?
Even immigration enthusiasts like me -- people who favor tackling our illegal immigration problem via a market-based approach (ie., let them in legally and they won't have to sneak in illegally) generally don't want no limits on immigration from Mexico -- or anyplace else. Indeed even if we had in place a system that allowed American employers to hire and import foreign workers at will, there would still exist the natural limit implied by the growth in the economy.
I can only assume you don't think border security is important. I would like to know why.
Actually, anybody who is truly serious about border security should agitate for a generously proportioned hemispheric immigration program. The status quo, or the status quo plus a few extra billion for additional guards and fences, is putting the nation's security at great risk. To quote my own blog:
If one is concerned as I am about national security, one is convinced the most sensible approach is to screen, fingerprint, bond, background check and credential these workers — and spend our finite border security dollars trying to stop terrorists. Stopping roofers and landscapers just isn’t a high priority for me.Posted by: Jasper on June 19, 2007 7:07 PM
Jane sez (or implies, in the case of #2):
1) That there is a limit as to how many immigrants the US can assimilate at once.
2) That "press one for english, para espanol prensa dos" does not indicate that we have reached or are exceeding that limit.
3) Any objection to POFEPEPD is an objection to brown people, not a protest that we have reached the assimilation limit.
4) This is because my grandparents didn't speak English (Actually, they did.)
I just don't follow the argument. Can anybody help me out?
Posted by: Oschisms on June 19, 2007 7:08 PM'Yes, stricter laws and stricter enforcement would have changed this equation. But they weren't there. Thus it is silly to pretend that current illegal immigrants are somehow morally inferior just because they got here by breaking the law.'
Stricter? The laws ARE strict. You have to apply and wait until you are let in.
If you are not approved, THEN YOU DON'T COME. You have to re-apply. You have to wait. I know several people who have completed this cycle, and it is absolutely no fun. But it's the law, and it can be, maybe should be changed. But that is a different issue.
That doesn't excuse people who have broken it because they cannot be bothered. Because they risked their lives to get here, doesn't make them right. If they were asking for political asylum, it would be a different ballgame. They are not. Yes, they are willfully breaking in to the country to get here.
If a guest in your house breaks down the front door instead of turning the nob, do you reward them, or get angry?
If anyone wants to change the immigration laws, that's fine, let's change 'em. That STILL doesn't change the problem with people who have already broken it. If you snuck across the border to Canada to work and sneak back periodically, what will happen if you get caught? Whose jail will you be in. It doesn't matter, you will be in jail. That border is regulated by two countries that care about it. Mexico WANTS their people to come here, as a matter of defacto policy.
Posted by: D on June 19, 2007 7:14 PMI didn't read that as 1 million PER year, but as 1 million in 10 years, then 1/50 = 2%.
Actually, the US had a population way under fifty million at the time of the potato famine. America's population didn't reach 50 million until the early 1880s. The population at the time of the famine was perhaps 20 million or so (rising to about 30 million by the eve of the Civil War). So, if the US indeed absorbed two million Irish immigrants in a single decade, it would be analogous to her receiving 30 million immigrants from a single country between now and 2017. In fact, today's net rate of immigration (about 1.5 million/300 million or .5%) is not particularly high by the standards of American history. The rate was nearly three times today's at the beginning of the 20th century (1 million/75 million or 1.3%), and was doubtless a good deal higher in the 1840s and 1850s, as well.
Posted by: Jasper on June 19, 2007 7:16 PM"I think there's a limit to how quickly America can assimilate immigrants. Luckily, I don't think we're anywhere near that limit."
Since nearly all the commenters on this post and the last take the view that we _are_ near that limit, and that our ability to assimilate immigrants is not what it was in 1900 -- why don't you simply set forth arguments for those propositions, instead of accusing people who want to close the southern border of racism?
The only real argument you've given to support your view is, in effect, that the last big wave of immigrants assimilated in the end, and there's no obvious difference between those people and the Mexicans today. I remind you, again, that the last big wave of immigration was _stopped_ by force of law, the Immigration Law of 1924. If we close the border, returning to the policy of 1924, we can expect the same results that followed from that policy. But you're not suggesting that we close the border, now, are you?
Posted by: Michael Brazier on June 19, 2007 7:37 PMI'm waiting for the explanation of how having every single thing you buy in every major store in America printed in Spanish, plus a Spanish button on every phone call to every major corporation proves that assimilation is going great. The Korean signs in a small LA ethnic enclave can't be compared to the Spanish in Wal-Marts in North Dakota and rurual Vermont
Or maybe they can, but that's something you have to argue, and so far you haven't even acknowledged it.
Posted by: Rob Lyman on June 19, 2007 7:43 PMPerfectly warm sentiments, but you'd think in these last 2 posts 'Jane' was a Zero thinking to land by the USS Missouri for the little party MacArthur was putting on.
Posted by: michael on June 19, 2007 7:48 PMJasper: If we don't put up fences and hire guards to watch them, it won't matter what the legal means of immigration are, because it will always be easier to cross the border illegally and live off the black labor market than to apply for permission to work openly. If you don't want the fences built, you're arguing for unlimited immigration. We can discuss your ideas for inviting guest workers after we've ensured that nobody can come without an invitation.
Currently immigration policy works like this: we'll take a strictly limited number of skilled and law-abiding foreigners, and make them go through a long, absurd obstacle course for the privilege of coming here and living like Americans. And, in addition, we'll take an infinite number of wretches and let them work themselves half to death, with no prospect of anything better. It's that second part that's the problem here.
I'm sick and tired of people who use the straw man "illegal aliens are illegal" argument. Laws can be changed. If we give 'amnesty' to the illegal immigrants already here, then they'd be legal. Hence, they won't be illegal anymore. Get it?
Why don't people have the guts to come out and say, "we don't want more Mexicans?" At least then we can have an honest discussion about immigration.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on June 19, 2007 8:15 PMImmoralist:
Don't mean to burst your bubble, but in 1910 America WAS fundamentally racist and sexist. That is absolutely uncontroversial, unless you think Jim Crow laws and women not having the right to vote weren't so bad...
You kind of make my point. We'll stipulate that America in 1910 was more racist and sexist than it is today (reserving my quibble about the adjective "fundamentally" for another time.) There was nothing like the level of general disdain by influential elites towards the entire American project as there is now. In other words, there is now less actual racism, and more contempt for America's civilizational character. That means that the ratio of elite bad-mouthing to actual bad-mouth-worthy stuff has gone up substantially since 1910.
Which means, IMHO, that counting on similar levels of voluntary assimilation by immigrants -- who, by the way, are encouraged to view themselves as victims of an unjust American society -- as we had in 1910, in an age of much greater confidence in the society into which people were expected to assimilate -- is unrealistic.
Posted by: TheProudDuck on June 19, 2007 8:16 PMJasper asked: Seriously, who is arguing for unlimited immigration from Mexico?
I meant the system(non-system) which we have now. But now that you ask, most of the Hispanic lobbying groups plus a number of doctrinaire libertarians led by the Wall Street Journal.
Posted by: john bragg on June 19, 2007 8:19 PM"I'm waiting for the explanation of how having every single thing you buy in every major store in America printed in Spanish, plus a Spanish button on every phone call to every major corporation proves that assimilation is going great."
- Rob Lyman
This paragraph is called a hyperbole. I didn't see any Spanish stickers on the pack of Oreo cookies I had bought at my local Giant. By that fact alone I have refuted your argument!
Posted by: Zhong Lu on June 19, 2007 8:21 PMI don't know if my position on the issue differs much from yours, Megan, but I'm a little surprised in that you seem to simply assume that the incentive to assimilate today is the same as it was in 1900. Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn't, but I certainly don't think one can just assume the answer, and I know that you agree regarding the importance of incentives.
In a rare note of political optimism, I'll put forth the notion that perhaps a working, productive coalition can be built around the notion of greatly increasing legal immigration, greatly penalizing the willfull employment of illegal immigrants, while putting much stronger incentives in place for vigorous efforts to assimilate.
Posted by: Will Allen on June 19, 2007 8:26 PMMexican immigration can be viewed as an externality imposed on Mexican workers by their corrupt society. If Mexico had decent chances for employment, there would be much lower immigration. Instead, the very rich lords take everything for themselves and impoverish the rest of their society.
Posted by: shamus on June 19, 2007 8:49 PMJane wrote: " ... I am pro-immigration, ..."
WHY ??????
I'm going to play the Ayn Rand Devil's Advocate here, and assume that selfishness is a virtue & altruism is a vice. How does it benefit those of us who are already here, to fill up this country with people from some other place (regardless of their race, color, etc.) when we could just as well fill up this country with our own flesh & blood by the simple expedient of having more children.
Assuming, for the sake of the discussion, that we want to increase our population, and that 300 million isn't already past the optimum, why not propagate our own genes, which is what every living creature on this planet is programmed to want to do.
And for that matter, is it really in the best LONG TERM interest of these other countries to allow them to take the easy way out and export their problems to America instead of forcing them to confront the internal factors that make them undesirable places to live in the first place?
Will Allen: that's what was supposed to happen under the immigration bill of 1986. The penalties and incentives were never enforced, and now there's four times as many illegal immigrants as there were then. Why should we repeat something that didn't work the first time? No bill that lets in a bunch of immigrants now can get popular support, no matter what other provisos are included -- the failure of the 1986 bill ensures that.
Zhong Lu: I'll say it readily. We don't want more Mexicans. At least, we don't want all the Mexicans who are willing to come. We want to say, "We'll take this many, and no more", and make it stick, so we only get that many. We certainly don't want the Mexicans who came here by invitation to feel like chumps because they followed our rules and didn't sneak in. We don't in short, want what we're getting, or what our precious government wants to give us ...
Posted by: Michael Brazier on June 19, 2007 9:11 PM>> We want to say, "We'll take this many, and no more"
Well, it appears that discrepancies in the desired value of "this many" are breaking down the "we". The consensus on this topic is about as realistic as the one on legality of abortions...
Posted by: ...Max... on June 19, 2007 9:16 PMShamus wrote: " ... Mexican immigration can be viewed as an externality imposed on Mexican workers by their corrupt society ..."
Exactly!!!
Mexico is NOT a poor country. On average, Mexico is at least an 'upper middle-class' country, but the disparity in wealth between rich and poor is mind-boggling by USA standards. I don't know if it's still true today, but when I lived there (10 or 15 years ago) Mexico had more multi-millionaires per capita than the USA or West Germany or Japan.
And the ruling elites in Mexico are playing us for fools by using us as their safety valve.
We'll stipulate that America in 1910 was more racist and sexist than it is today (reserving my quibble about the adjective "fundamentally" for another time.)
Agreed--we'll drop "fundamentally" and just say that there were strains of racism and sexism in 1910 that permeated America's cultural mores and its legal system.
There was nothing like the level of general disdain by influential elites towards the entire American project as there is now. In other words, there is now less actual racism, and more contempt for America's civilizational character.
Ah, okay, I think I get you, though I'm not quite sure what "America's civilizational character" means. Are we talking about the values present at the time of the founding in the late 18th century, or do we go all the way up to present day? I only ask because any nation's "civilizational character" is bound to change over time. Right? (Personally, I think dropping slavery in 1865 and adding managerial liberalism in the 1930s were pretty good choices, myself.)
But this "contempt" you're talking about? I know very well that an influential slice of academia has made a cottage industry out of unearthing historical grievances against various oppressed minority racial/ethnic/sexual groups in American society, but is it really fair to say that this amounts to "contempt" for America all the way down? Furthermore, if you broaden your conception of "elites" to include various kingmakers in the business community who support increased immigration levels, I think you'd be hard-pressed to conclude that most, or many, or even a significant minority, are "anti-American," if I can use that term. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, to name one example, thinks the American borders should be as open as Paris Hilton, but I don't think it's fair to call them anti-American, barring some extraordinarily sinister motive on their part. They probably consider themselves pretty *pro*-American.
Which means, IMHO, that counting on similar levels of voluntary assimilation by immigrants -- who, by the way, are encouraged to view themselves as victims of an unjust American society -- as we had in 1910, in an age of much greater confidence in the society into which people were expected to assimilate -- is unrealistic.
I can't really dispute this, since I don't have much of a dog in the immigration dispute. I just don't think American elites have as much contempt for the *entire* American project as you think.
Posted by: Immoralist on June 19, 2007 9:47 PMWas yesterday's post mean and unkind, a vicious ad hominem?
I don’t see how you can honestly look at what you wrote yesterday and the comments that responded to your question and your complete lack of response to the points they made answering your question and not conclude that it was anything other than a vicious ad hominem attack.
Sorry but “oh but I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about someone else” doesn’t really cut it.
Zhong Lu wrote:
I'm sick and tired of people who use the straw man "illegal aliens are illegal" argument. Laws can be changed. If we give 'amnesty' to the illegal immigrants already here, then they'd be legal. Hence, they won't be illegal anymore. Get it?
That argument carried the day in 1986. Now we have many more illegals. Unless we effectively enforce existing immigration laws, or open the border and define all comers as legal, the story will repeat.
It is not immoral to advance the interest of one's countrymen above that of foreigners, however admirable the latter, or how recently we or our own ancestors qualified for that designation. Every time we celebrate a national holiday, we honor the sacrifices of those who came before to make life for us better within our borders than is enjoyed by others elsewhere. In Abraham Lincoln's immortal words, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Posted by: Kenneth A. Regas on June 19, 2007 10:35 PM"but the disparity in wealth between rich and poor is mind-boggling by USA standards.
Don't worry, the current US administration's working on that . . .
- and we shouldn't forget, in terms of the current bulge in immigration, the (at least short-term) havoc wrought by NAFTA. I was reading something recently - can't remember/find the details of course - detailing some of the assumptions planners had made regarding how people were going to react, and what measures would be put in place . . , and if it had actually worked out that way, things would have probably gone fairly well. Of course, they didn't, for various reasons, so . . .
"How does it benefit those of us who are already here, to fill up this country with people from some other place
More varied and interesting country. The regions of the country that have followed the low-immigration self-seeding model may (in fact, do) have many virtues, but I'm thinking high levels of dynamism, ferment of ideas, etc., often don't top the lists. Now, in some cases at least, that's because they're already kinda backwater-ish (and that's why few folks are immigrating), but it's also arguable that after a few generations local cultures tend to start reaching a relative level of equilibrium. They go on developing, of course, but the rate of novelties being generated on a local level is probably going to be fairly low - absent, that is, shocks to the system, which is one big-ass caveat, there.
Also: this way we get a not-insignificant fraction of the world's go-getters, chance-takers, etc. Kinda nifty for us.
"I don't agree with the argument that descendants of immigrants, who were once observed to be imposing costs on the country to which they migrated, are somehow estopped from observing that immigrants continue to impose similar or greater costs, and concluding that immigration ought to be controlled or even reduced.
That's because this isn't quite Megan's argument. The important paragraph is here:
"If you think that you deserve to be here, despite the many costs, psychic and otherwise, that your ancestors imposed on the pre-existing citizens, then you have a pretty high bar to explain why other groups are different and special and don't deserve the same chance. The charges leveled against Mexican immigrants are overwhelmingly anecdote and calumny. The actual data shows they seem to be assimilating just fine--at least if we define what your grandmother did as "just fine"."
Now, if you retroactively oppose your ancestors' immigration, that's another matter, but generally folks don't - in fact, they frequently contrast the current 'bad' immigrants with their own 'good' ancestors, often with some degree of feel-good mythologizing, as Megan points out.
She also specifies that the baseline here is Mayflower WASPS, not Native American groups - and that's entirely right, since - past and present paranoid fantasies aside, whether obsessed with Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, or "Aztlan" - nobody's coming here to steal our land, massacre us, and ultimately herd us onto reservations. Seriously. With some already-noted variations (and each wave of immigration does have its own unique features), it's just the same old thing, all over again.
". If we close the border, returning to the policy of 1924, we can expect the same results that followed from that policy.
Of course, one of the places where those differences really do matter is here. Whether the "results" really did follow causally from that law (and I'm far from certain about that, as I mention on the other thread), "close the border" is up there with "stop everyone from drinking alcohol." To a significant and meaningful degree? Well, it might be ultimately possible - but at a economic and social cost that makes it rather unclear if that really a efficient - or sane - use of resources. (I'm taking "close the border" to be a somewhat different animal from "improve border security, to guard against genuine threats - and while I consider the spread of disease to be one of them, Lou Dobbs has so contaminated the issue that I feel a little dirty even mentioning it. Heckuva job,Dobby!)
"every single thing you buy in every major store in America printed in Spanish"
And not just that - I bet those funny-lookin' Spanish words tramslate as Happy Holidays, instead of Merry Christmas!!
Oy vey. What a waste.
Posted by: Dan S. on June 19, 2007 10:55 PMAnd apparently I've forgotten the a/an thing - clearly immigration is to blame!
Posted by: Dan S. on June 19, 2007 11:01 PMThis is one of the best discussions you've ever generated.
I am in agreement with Megan on this one. I live in South Texas, and if you don't know what that means in this context you need to come visit. I am one of those Johnny come lately German descendants. My family didn't come to Texas until 1847. The last generation of German speakers is dying out now. So, they didn't assimilate if the test is giving up your native tongue. On the other hand, they were every bit as American as the English of the early 17th century. They were a group that refused to fight for the Confederacy, to the point of being killed for their resistance.
The quantity of brown Spanish speaking people is not an issue here. They largely outnumber the Anglo population, but the culture is wonderful and does not endanger America in any definable way.
My humble opinion is that we should find a way to allow those who are coming across our southern border to have a visa so we know who they are and why they are here. This would eliminate the predatory coyotes and give us control over our border. I have not heard any proposal yet that will actually stop people from coming from Mexico and Central America to enjoy what the U.S. offers, so let us manage the problem. The fence is an expensive idiotic joke. There is nothing to stop anyone from going over, under or through it.
Posted by: J.R. on June 19, 2007 11:27 PMPeople are not for or against immigration, they are for or against a certain *amount* of immigration and a certain *distribution* of different types (poor, smart, family reunification, etc.. ) of immigrants.
Saying your pro-immigration but not for open boarders with out naming a rate and distribution of immigrants is a cop-out because the supply of potential immigrants is almost unlimited, most of world lives in countries with a per capita GDP less than Mexico.
Posted by: ben on June 20, 2007 12:14 AMJane, you are making the perfect case for federalism. Here we have a person on the east coase telling people in the Southwest that the mass of illegal immigrants that have flooded (mostly) the Southwestern US is not a problem.
Thanks for telling us that. Meanwhile, we desert dwellers will tell you easterners that you need to stop using oil to heat your homes and just put on an extra blanket at night because it can't get that cold.
But unfortunately it's not just up to the southwestern states to defend their boarders. That is something the United States of America as a whole should do. Or perhaps we should just tell NY when they get repeatidly bombed by terrorists its not our problem because we live in the middle of nowhere and stand no chance of a Sept 11. in our neighborhood.
Posted by: cdub on June 20, 2007 12:17 AMZhong Lu wrote: I'm sick and tired of people who use the straw man "illegal aliens are illegal" argument
Why is this a strawman? Doesn't the current law get the presumption of popular support? Sure you can advocate any potential policy you want (while implying your opponents are racist), but from where I sit most people don't want more unskilled immigrants. Shouldn't that matter? If I am wrong won't the political process figure it out? I don't want more mexicans, but I would say that about any country that had already sent us the bulk of 12-20 million unskilled immigrants (plus children and not counting those from the first amnesty).
Would Jane our her supporters be in favor of making Mexico the 51st state? If so, why, if not why not?
Posted by: cdub on June 20, 2007 12:31 AMWould Jane or her supporters be in favor of making Mexico the 51st state? If so, why, if not why not?
Posted by: cdub on June 20, 2007 12:31 AMps - I see a lot of good arguments on both sides. Ultimately, however, I see one side of the debate consistently trying to justify or rationalize why it is ok to break the law and why we should not enforce the law.
""they have a funny religion" objections (heard mostly in weirdo evangelical circles)"
A very disappointing thread Jane; please stop digging. The individual in this post (http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/06/the_normblog_pr_2.html)has had about as much exposure to "weirdo evangelicals" as they've had to Martians. If you're looking for ignorance and prejudice, try the mirror.
Posted by: J on June 20, 2007 1:01 AM"the nearly iron rule is that, as long as the majority does not wall the minority off into a ghetto, the majority wins. That's true whether it's a company, a church, or a nation: the majority wins, no matter how hard the minority tries to hold out."
Does that apply to blog posts and comments, too? Because if it does, Jane should be signing up for the Minutemen pretty soon.
Looking over the 130+ comments on the past two posts that disagree with Jane's position, I see every argument I would make has already been presented. And ignored.
I'm relieved there is 'actual data' that shows assimilation is just fine. Too bad the data isn't online, or there could be a link to it.
Posted by: bgates on June 20, 2007 1:38 AMUltimately, however, I see one side of the debate consistently trying to justify or rationalize why it is ok to break the law and why we should not enforce the law.
I'll drink to that. Actually I can't drink to it because we changed that law because people wouldn't follow it. Here's my $50; let me buy the lemonade. I can't use those smaller denominations becuse all those people pictured on them were law breakers. Sorry, we can't watch sports on TV. Many of the participants got there start after a woman broke the law and wouldn't sit in the legal bus seat. Anyway, thanks for waiting. I'm sorry I was late. I nearly got run over coming over here driving the speed limit.
Posted by: michael on June 20, 2007 2:14 AMThe problem is, IMO, that free trade in labor is a stampede to the bottom. I know you don't think much of unions, but labor is all most people have to sell. Why should we open that restricted market to non-citizens? It's purely corporate welfare, a way to keep a two-tiered society in America. Mexico already has that kind of society and it doesn't seem to be working too well for all the Mexicans who want to come here. If free trade is not helping Mexico, then something needs to change down there. We used to have a middle class in this country. The WSJ elitists don't have a clue.
Posted by: jj mollo on June 20, 2007 2:43 AMJane, you said:
" I think there's a limit to how quickly America can assimilate immigrants."
I would concur. My gut sense agrees with your statement that we are capable of quite a lot of assimilation, perhaps more even than we are doing now. My question would be, how do we prioritize those who we choose to fill those, admittedly limited, slots to assimilate? Do we prioritize low skilled labor, low education, labor that frequently doesn't speak english and therefore is very likely to consume much more than they contribute? Or do we prioritize high skilled, highly educated labor that already speaks english and will contribute much more than they consume.
Because I guarantee you we could replace every single one of the current low skilled illegals with high skilled, highly educated english speaking immigrants from places like India tomorrow and still have unmet demand from such high skilled groups to immigrate.
At it's heart, the immigration debate in my mind is about husbanding resources. We have a (by your admission) limited number of slots into which to place immigrants (before we overrun our capacity to assimimlate them). Why not fill them with the highest value immigrants, rather than the lowest?
Posted by: quadrupole on June 20, 2007 3:19 AMJ.R., until the middle of last year _I_ lived in South Texas -- Hidalgo County, to be specific -- and I say Megan doesn't know what she's talking about. The danger in mass immigration is that the Southwestern US will imitate the politics and economics of Mexico, and Mexico's politics is Tammany Hall magnified. The way Mexico is run is, objectively, worse than the way the USA is governed; they ought to imitate us, not we them.
Posted by: Michael Brazier on June 20, 2007 4:28 AMFirst Jane says:
"they have a funny religion" objections (heard mostly in weirdo evangelical circles)
then she says:
A special note to people who keep posting links to Aztlan nuttery: this is like Al Qaeda picking out NAMBLA as representative of American culture.
Pot, kettle, black.
Remember, folks: if you disagree with Jane, you're racist! And a "weirdo evangelical"! And racist!
Geez. First you turn your back on the soldiers in Iraq, then you root for the Yankees, now this. Bad form, Jane. Very bad.
Posted by: RMc on June 20, 2007 6:59 AMThere was nothing like the level of general disdain by influential elites towards the entire American project as there is now.
I think you've spent too much time in school, TheProudDuck. I learned all sorts of post-colonial anti-imperialist that-and-that studies too, and it looked like all the world was just waiting for the next Western injustice to be uncovered. Then I left school and discovered that assistant professors of sociology are neither elite nor influential. Among the people I meet, the "elites" I read/watch, and in the culture as a whole I see plenty of differences of opinion but never anything less than a wholehearted support for "the American project". There may be broad factors making assimilation different now than in 1840 or 1910, but surely this isn't one of them.
Jane evidently forgot the first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
You can make an assertion and back it with facts. However, imputing motives to those who disagree with you, without hearing their side, is stupid. I don't think Jane's stupid, I just think she's wrong on this issue.
My arguments against a re-do of Simpson-Mazzoli have already been made, eloquently, by other commenters. Continue to believe "this time, it'll be different" if that comforts you.
Posted by: MarkD on June 20, 2007 8:44 AMThe danger in mass immigration is that the Southwestern US will imitate the politics and economics of Mexico, and Mexico's politics is Tammany Hall magnified. The way Mexico is run is, objectively, worse than the way the USA is governed; they ought to imitate us, not we them.
Could it be that the ones coming here are the ones who prefer our system to the corrupt one that they're leaving behind?
Posted by: thoreau on June 20, 2007 8:53 AM>Unless you are...descended from the WASPS...you are the descendant of people who had exactly the same charges leveled against them. The Germans. The Swedes. The Irish. The Italians. The Jews...
Not true. See below.
>The ancestry of every single one of my readers...was the target of some native American group complaining that they were coming here...keeping to themselves, taking jobs or land from good Americans.
I guess I suspected this, but it's official: Jane has no black readers.
Posted by: Matt B on June 20, 2007 9:04 AMI've noticed a lot of people fall back on "but it is ILLEGAL".
In the past, it was always very easy to exploit immigrants for cheap labor. Weak labor organization laws, poor communication and isolation of immigrant communities made immigrants easy pray. That isn't true any more. People emigrating from anywhere could easily have a solid level of community support behind them and equal protection under the law regardless of their ability to speak the language now.
To get around this, we make sure that we have a sizable population who do not have equal protection under the law. We have illegal immigrants because it is our policy to have illegal immigrants. We want them here so that we can exploit them. Immigrant labor laws are not enforced to prevent them from working, they are enforced to punish them for trying to get equal treatment. While it is true that they have broken our country's laws, it is equally true that they have done exactly what our country wants them to do.
We should just end the kabuki. Significantly increase legal immigration and start enforcing the laws. Amnesty is fine. Those affected are here because we asked them to be here with our money and did little to keep them out with our laws. If you think they should pay a price, hit them with something sensible, like a reduced personal exemption on their taxes for the first five years. That way they pay a price proportional to the job they took from "a real American".
Posted by: Njorl on June 20, 2007 9:14 AMI just love it when people refuse to engage what I have to say but prefer to mock it without thought.
Apparenlty Oreos have no Spanish on the package. That's nice, although I'm surprised there was no Spanish "800" number for customer complaints. On the other hand, all the tools, paint, electronics, appliances and similar goods I've bought recently--and I've bought a lot--are covered in it. And the big-box stores all seem to have bilingual signs.
Now, I have nothing against Spanish itself or people who speak it. But the omnipresence of it suggests that assimilation is not going as well as Jane and others suggest, and that society is now apparently making it as easy as possible to never bother learning English.
Maybe my interpretation is incorrect. Maybe in another generation the Spanish will be gone because all the kids learned English. I don't know. But it would be nice to see someone address the point, which has nothing to do with Oreos, geographically limited ethnic enclaves, or the relative "funnyness" of foreign signs (as an aside, I speak 4 languages, or at least I could at one time, so perhaps I could be considered immune to charges of ignorance and fear of foreign words).
Posted by: Rob Lyman on June 20, 2007 9:15 AMMichael Brazier, Kenneth A. Regas - Amen
thoreau-Also, do you think it makes any sense to have laws that artificially keep supply from matching demand?
Citizens are more than the labor that they produce, especially in a democracy.
Also, illegal immigration and a minimum wage are somewhat philosophically at odds. It's like giving a gift with one hand and rescinding it with the other. You can believe living in a democratic society requires a certain minimum wage paid to its citizens to maintain the quality of life and related social services required to keep a democracy along with high employment. So be it. Or you are against a wage floor and welcome illegals who will work for less than minimum wage to offset the government imposed restrictions, or you're okay with just bringing in more folks to compete for minimum wage jobs (with increased supply meaning more people won't be "worth" minimum wage) thus boosting unemployment. Elected leaders need to choose which type of "caring" they believe in and stick with it rather than trying to play all parties against the middle.
Also, we're not living in econ 101. Those who can't find employment in the US at minimum wage should go to a country where they can find employment. But that just ain't going to happen, for a variety of reasons. And chronic unemployment leads to a variety of social ills.
Could it be that the ones coming here are the ones who prefer our system to the corrupt one that they're leaving behind?
If this speculation was true, immigrants would tend to reject the symbols of their country of origin. Instead, we see pro-immigrant marchers waving mexican flags. So I'd say "no." Preferring the benefits of a process is not to be confused with preferring the process itself.
Posted by: Ryan W. on June 20, 2007 9:29 AMbgates: Looking over the 130+ comments on the past two posts that disagree with Jane's position, I see every argument I would make has already been presented. And ignored.
I'm relieved there is 'actual data' that shows assimilation is just fine. Too bad the data isn't online, or there could be a link to it.
If you're waiting for links to "actual data" on assimilation, or for Jane to tell us, e.g., exactly how she knows that Mexicans feel the same way about the Southwest as her spear-side relatives feel about Armagh, you're missing the point of her immigration posts. The high cant/fact ratio (which distinguishes them from her usual output) ought to tell you that she's not posting this stuff in order to engage on the facts with, say, the sorts of people who have the bad taste to be middling-middle-class parents in areas where public schools and public services have been degraded by uncontrolled immigration. As other commenters point out, it's impossible to tell exactly what she's arguing about. Such exuberant moral posturing isn't for our benefit, toots.
Jane: It looks pretty fine to me.
I'm gonna party like it's 1899...
Posted by: Rohan Swee on June 20, 2007 9:41 AMSorry, messed up the italics above. "I'm relieved there is 'actual data' that shows assimilation is just fine. Too bad the data isn't online, or there could be a link to it" are part of the quote from bgates.
Posted by: Rohan Swee on June 20, 2007 9:47 AMWhen has a country, other than East Germany or North Korea, ever actually "controlled its borders"? Especially an economically and politically free and prosperous one?
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian on June 20, 2007 9:53 AMNjorl is right, of course. Re: the radical pro-enforcement crowd, I've always wondered about people who are willing to destroy the life of X's family in order to gain a purported infinitesimal economic advantage.
Posted by: pedro on June 20, 2007 10:00 AMhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901322.html
Lazy, Job-Stealing Immigrants?
Nativist Nonsense Distorts a Critical Issue
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, April 30, 2007; A15
President Bush is doing his pragmatic best to secure immigration reform. He is honorably laboring to revive some version of the bipartisan bill that got 62 votes in the Senate last year. But watching this torturous process is enough to make a sane person scream. The livelihoods of millions are at stake, yet most immigration pronouncements are nonsense.
People accuse immigrants of gang violence, drunken driving and a general contempt for the law. But in 2000 the incarceration rate for immigrants was just one-fifth the rate for the population as a whole, according to Kristin Butcher of the Federal Reserve and Anne Morrison Piehl of Rutgers University.
People say immigrants are feckless and lazy. But in California in 2004, 94 percent of undocumented men ages 18 to 64 were in the workforce, compared with 82 percent of native-born men. Far from being part of a shiftless underclass, the act of coming to the United States makes immigrants among the most upwardly mobile groups in the nation, only a bit behind hedge-fund managers.
People say, contrariwise, that immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans. But economists have patiently explained for years that there is no finite "lump of labor" in an economy. The presence of migrants causes new jobs to be created: Factories that might have gone abroad spring up in Arizona or Texas. Hasn't anyone noticed that California, where fully one-third of the adult population is foreign born, has an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent?
People say that immigrants burden social services while not paying taxes. Actually, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps and Medicaid; and although they do use hospital emergency rooms and schools, they also pay sales taxes and payroll taxes, and one in three pays income tax. The net result is that immigrants cost the average native U.S. household an extra $200 in taxes each year, according to a study of 1996 data. Once you take into account the boost to pretax incomes caused by immigrants' contribution to growth, the total effect of undocumented workers on native-born Americans is roughly zero, according to Gordon Hanson of the University of California at San Diego.
People say that immigrants cause wage losses even if they don't cause job losses. Here the story is subtle: Some studies find no evidence that immigrants pull down wages, while others find that native-born high school dropouts lost as much as 9 percent of their earnings between 1980 and 2000 as a result of immigration. But -- and here comes the sane scream -- there's no way that even a 9 percent wage loss can justify the policies that immigration hawks advocate.
Really, how much could draconian enforcement restore those wages? Between a quarter and two-fifths of undocumented workers originally enter legally, so stringent border enforcement could only affect about two-thirds of new arrivals. Moreover, arrivals are only part of the issue; the alleged downward pressure on wages comes less from the 400,000 illegal immigrants who show up each year than from the 35 million immigrants already here, two-thirds of them legally. And migrants will continue coming even if the entire southern border is walled off. Europe has a wall called the Mediterranean. It still has illegal immigrants.
Thanks to intensive enforcement over the past year, illegal immigration from Mexico is thought to have fallen by a quarter. Suppose even more spending could cut the number of illegal entrants from 400,000 to 200,000 a year, so that 2 million arrivals could be prevented over a 10-year period. Add in an aggressive deportation program that ejected 1 million illegals, and you are still only scratching the surface. Even if immigration has driven down wages for high school dropouts by 9 percent, it's hard to see how truly vicious counter-immigration policies could drive them up by more than about 2 percent.
That simply can't be worth it. Border security does not come cheap: We could save money on unmanned aerial drones and use it to help high-school dropouts with a more generous earned-income tax credit. And although the concern for high-school dropouts is welcome, it must be weighed against the aspirations of migrants. Is it right to push native workers' pay up by 2 percent if that means depriving poor Mexicans of a chance to triple their incomes?
Of course it isn't, and given that the total economic effect of immigration on U.S. households is a wash, the big ramp-up in enforcement spending beloved by immigration hawks is an egregious waste of money. But no politician is going to say that. Candidates with a good record on immigration -- Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, John McCain -- are trying to avoid the issue. And the demagogues and nativists are allowed to spout unchallenged nonsense.
smallaby@cfr.org
It is interesting that Mallaby's op-ed does not mention illegal aliens until the fifth paragraph. This is commonplace with illegal alien advocates who try to conflate legal and illegal immigration.
And even then, Mallaby calls them "undocumented".
Posted by: Kevin P. on June 20, 2007 10:25 AMHeck, maybe amnesty, in the form of green cards, would be fine if they were limited in mumber, and sold at auction, combined with an English fluency requirement. The most motivated and productive people get in, while employers who continue to employ people illegally get it in the teeth.
Posted by: Will Allen on June 20, 2007 10:26 AMThere is no such thing as advocacy of illegal immigration, Kevin P. There is advocacy for humane treatment of those who are here illegally, particularly when the alternative policies proposed by *some* (not all) are callous, vindictive, and morally wrong by the lights of anybody with the most basic moral intuitions.
Posted by: pedro on June 20, 2007 10:30 AMDan S. wrote: " ... Also: this way we get a not-insignificant fraction of the world's go-getters, chance-takers, etc. Kinda nifty for us. ..."
That used to be a traditional & valid argument in favor of immigration, but regrettably, I don't think it's true any more -- especially in the case of Mexico.
Mexico has always been a very desirable place to live for the rich and the upper-middle class, but Hell on Earth for the poor. And lately, it has improved to the point where it is a desirable place to live even for the middle-class, but it's still Hell for the poor.
So now, the go-getters, risk-takers, hard-workers, etc. CAN succeed within Mexico, and they are NOT the ones who are sneaking across the border illegally; they are very happy where they are.
I see this first-hand amongst my own in-laws, i.e. in my wife's extended family (which, if you include second cousins is certainly large enough to be a pretty good statistical sample.) The hard-working cousins are going to college in Mexico (or Spain) and becoming biochemical engineers, etc., etc. while the ne'er-do-wells and black sheep of the family are sneaking into the United States.
pedro:
There is no such thing as advocacy of illegal immigration, Kevin P. There is advocacy for humane treatment of those who are here illegally, particularly when the alternative policies proposed by *some* (not all) are callous, vindictive, and morally wrong by the lights of anybody with the most basic moral intuitions.
Shorter Pedro: Those who oppose illegal immigration are inhumane and immoral.
Unfortunately Jane seems to be drawn to that position as well.
Posted by: Kevin P. on June 20, 2007 11:57 AMThat doesn't excuse people who have broken it because they cannot be bothered. Because they risked their lives to get here, doesn't make them right.
The problem here is with the frame of the discussion. "Cannot be bothered" implies that there is a perfectly good and reasonable way to do what someone wants to do, and that they are too lazy to do it.
For example, I see people every day that double park because they cannot be bothered to pull up to the corner, or jaywalk because they cannot be bothered to walk to the corner.
This is a particularly pernicious argument when applied to Mexican immigrants, as it reinforces some rather unflattering stereotypes.
The reason that the "risk their lives" argument is brought up as a counter, then, is to point out that there is not a more reasonable manner of immigration that a would-be immigrant can rely on. The current practice is so constrictive as to be a non-option, or at least an option less appealing than risking one's life. Few people are willing to risk their lives to do something because they cannot be bothered about something.
Posted by: Brad L on June 20, 2007 12:18 PMGreat site, keep up the work!
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Posted by: Steve on June 20, 2007 12:27 PMLet me chime in as one who is completely put off by Megan's recent nosedive in post quality.
Just because I love immigration in the abstract, and many immigrants in the particular, doesn't mean that I think we should institute amnesty for those who are living here illegally. Indeed it is because I love my immigrant friends so much that I find such an idea abhorrent. Why should the trials and tribulations of their own legal immigrations be trivialized so that farmers and landscape companies can pay illegals under the table?
Here's my admittedly unpolitick solution that I would implement in the order given:
1) Abolish all income and payroll taxes, thus removing the incentives for illegals to come over and employers to hire people off the books.
2) Abolish most of the welfare state, thus ensuring that people aren't drawn to this country just for the "gold-plated benefits."
3) Auction visas and allow people to pay for them with loans the way they do for real estate.
4) Establish the policy that illegal residency, either by sneaking over the border or overstaying visas, results in automatic expulsion and permanent ban on re-entry. The absolute opposite of amnesty.
To me this is the most egalitarian and yet libertarian of any other proposal I've seen. So of course it would never be popular. ;-)
Posted by: Christina on June 20, 2007 12:53 PMIt really doesn't bother me that my great grandchildren may be multi-racial, speak Spanish as their first language, eat tacos instead of hot dogs, have Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday, or wear sombreros. What I would be bothered by is if the American experiment with individual liberty was over and they lived in a "1984" or "Brave New World." As some poster above remarked, radical collectivist views have been flooding into this country with immigrants for years and years. We (those here now) and doing a pretty good job of wrecking the American experiment all by ourselves. Let's work to rebuild American liberty by roundly defeating collectivist ideas whether they are espoused by
a newcomer sneaking across our border or a "Cabot" ensconced in a tenured Harvard professorship.
Are there any Cabots ensconced in tenured Harvard professorships these days?
Posted by: Nanonymous on June 20, 2007 1:42 PM"implies that there is a perfectly good and reasonable way to do what someone wants to do, and that they are too lazy to do it." -bradL
Yes. That is correct. It is perfectly reasonable to follow the rule of law, in order ot immigrate to a country. REGARDLESS of your feelings on the law itself. It is the price of admission. If the price is too high, YOU GO ELSEWHERE. If you can't go elsewhere, you stay home.
The argument about how complex the law is, has NOTHING to do with illegal immigration. The law CAN be changed, simplified, made worse or better. We are talking about people who don't particularly CARE what the law is. The benefit to them outweighs the risk. In order to get control of this, we need to make the risk higher than the benefit.
Following the law is not a strawman, believing that we have no right to enforce our own border, IS.
"morally wrong by the lights of anybody with the most basic moral intuitions." -pedro
This statement is confounding to me. If you break in to somebody's house, and get caught, you are going to jail. Is breaking in morally wrong, or putting that person in jail, morally wrong? If I do not lock my door, and a stranger comes in and steals my food... Who is in the wrong? 'well you didn't lock your door, so it's your fault.' Yeah. NO. Pragmatically you lock your door because you don't trust strangers to do the right thing. Their entering without your leave, makes them wrong.
No matter how Byzantine our laws for immigration are, we do not have to change them JUST BECAUSE someone wants to come here. There is no basis for this idea. People on the outside ask for permission to come in, and must follow the rules to do so. The only philosophy that does not hold that is anarchy.
Either you believe that immigration should be controlled or you don't. If you believe in control, you are going to want a law for that that. There are always going to be people who do not agree with that law. You must then enforce it.
If you believe that the borders should be open, do you also believe that there should be no boundries. Should there be no ownership of property? One flows in to the other.
It is telling that the immigration and border laws in mexico are far stricter than ours. If THEY actually believed in this free immigration thing, then why would they care? They only like free immigration if it beneifits THEM. We have no obligation for that.
Posted by: D on June 20, 2007 1:43 PMSpanish...English it's all irrelevant. Inside 10 years your cellphone, (or whatever replaces the cellphone) will provide real time translation.
Posted by: James B. on June 20, 2007 2:16 PMMy immigrant ancestors, mostly Mormons who came in the 19th century, were widely reviled just as Jane stated.
My wife of twenty-five years, meanwhile, is an immigrant from Guatemala. She and I speak exclusively spanish to each other in our home. We have four boys, all of which speak spanish to some degree. They all speak perfect English.
Conclusion: Assimilation is happening, just as it did in the past. Anti-immigrant activists are also hard at work, using the same arguments that they have always used in the past. The cycle continues.
DA:
I think you've spent too much time in school, TheProudDuck.
Almost certainly. The basic point is that, for good or ill, a large part of the American information-forming elite has less civilizational confidence than its counterpart in 1910. And my thesis is that this results in a weaker impetus for the integration of immigrants.
Posted by: TheProudDuck on June 20, 2007 2:38 PMKevin P. To infer from the paragraph you quote that I say that *everybody* who opposes illegal immigration is inhumane and vicious is to have serious difficulties with elementary quantification. From an existential statement, in which the word "some" is emphasized by a parenthetical remark negating the quantifier "all", you derive, in your wonderful logical dexterity, a universally quantified statement. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Heh.
Posted by: pedro on June 20, 2007 2:39 PM>> The benefit to them outweighs the risk. In order to get control of this, we need to make the risk higher than the benefit.
True. And there are different ways to do it. Shooting everybody who can't prove his legal status will likely do it. So will replacing Mexican political and legal system with something akin to ours, or better. Neither of those options are very realistic though. On the other hand, consistent border enforcement policy coupled with significantly less restrictive immigration policy might do it just as well.
I sincerely doubt that pure enforcement will do much unless it is escalated to very intrusive levels: e.g. making both illegal entry and employing an undocumented person IN ANY WAY, including paying him $20 to mow your lawn, a federal felony. When there's huge economic pressure, there will be flow.
And, before you cry for strict measures, think what particular documentation of your legal status can YOU provide, especially on the spot. To consistently enforce the laws against illegal immigration ANYWHERE but in the narrow border area we would pretty much need to establish a federal ID for everybody. Either that, or prepare for legal consequences of unlawfully detaining swarthy US citizens with heavy Spanish accent.
Question for those of you who are anti 'illegal' immigrants...
If, as many of you suggest, a key attraction of illegals immigrants is to benefit the American welfare system, why is the government spending so much effort trying to prevent these immigrants from working? As long as the government persists in making the employment of immigrants artificially difficult, I have little sympathy for the argument that "we" must reject immigrants because they will become unproductive drains on our economy.
As mentioned in the comment of another blog, at the end of the day immigrants don't come to the US to be poor. It's much easier to poor in their home countries where things are cheap and they have families and friends to support them. Immigrants come here to WORK and build a better life (to them the American Dream still exists). We should applaud them not ostracize them with ill informed rants and prejudicial stereotypes.
phaedrus:
You can work and still take advantage of the generous benefits we enjoy as citizens, most specifically health care and public education.
Nobody is saying that all illegal immigrants come over here to hang out on the corner and drink 40s while collecting TANF benefits. We're saying that many are a net drain, when you take into account their use of social services juxtaposed against their low productivity.
However, I agree that it's too hard to work in this country. Which is why I think we should make it easier for everybody (see my post above).
Posted by: Christina on June 20, 2007 3:04 PM"implies that there is a perfectly good and reasonable way to do what someone wants to do, and that they are too lazy to do it." -bradL
Yes. That is correct. It is perfectly reasonable to follow the rule of law, in order ot immigrate to a country.
Actually, if the law is structured so that you cannot immigrate when you intend to, then you are wrong. You can either a) follow the law and not immigrate or b) break the law. One's personal industriousnous is not a key element; there is no step one can "bother" to do to get what they want.
There is a real false comparison here: it is as though you are arguing that people are driving around without drivers licenses because it is just too much fuss to go the DMV and stand in line and pay $50. If, on the other hand, that process took years, and only 1 in 50 people finally got a license, you'd see a lot of people driving around without licenses, and not because they "can't be bothered."
If the price is too high, YOU GO ELSEWHERE. ... Following the law is not a strawman, believing that we have no right to enforce our own border, IS.
The problem is that the price isn't "too high", it's that the product is not for sale. I've never said that no one has the right to enforce a border, but let's also not act like there is some "good" process generally available to people that they are simply to lazy to avail themselves of, which is a position that completely whitewashes the issue.
If you believe that we should have no immigration or severely restricted immigration, or that we should have more drastic measures for people that come here illegally, fine - argue that on the merits. But don't couch it in terms that pretend there is a better legal alternative for most of them when there just isn't, and don't suggest there is some laziness that is driving illegality. To do that is to completely mischaracterize the issue at hand, and to reinforce some obvious and odious stereotypes.
Posted by: Brad L on June 20, 2007 3:22 PMYou can work and still take advantage of the generous benefits we enjoy as citizens, most specifically health care and public education.Keep in mind that when Jane says she doesn’t believes “we're anywhere near th[e] limit [where the United States can assimilate immigrants]” we’re not talking about a situation where they are evenly dispersed amongst the 50 States but one in which they tend to be disproportionately congregated in a few States and often times in a few communities within those States. That places a tremendous burden on local resources particularly schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Posted by: Thorley Winston on June 20, 2007 3:26 PM
If you believe that the borders should be open, do you also believe that there should be no boundries. Should there be no ownership of property? One flows in to the other
Huh? I think you are mistaking the term "open borders" for something else. Someone like me that wants much more lax immigration laws may use the term (or someone may use it of me, more likely), but it is a colloquialism. It does not mean we do not have any right to:
a) enforce security - Nobody is arguing that if instead of country of origin that you enter "Al Qaeda" you should be welcomed with open arms.
b) enfore property rights - being allowed to legally enter the country does not mean you own someone else's property, and I am somewhat confused as to why it should.
c) regulate who gets what services when they are in the country.
Think about it this way: Canada has an "open-border" policy with respect to American short-term visitors, but property rights seem to have held up just fine. I can't vote in Canadian elections, even though I am allowed to enter with little more than a passport and 2-minute review.
The idea that you could do the same with guest workers or alien residents may pose technical/structural challenges, but doesn't necessarily pose philosophical ones.
Posted by: Brad L on June 20, 2007 3:37 PM"But don't couch it in terms that pretend there is a better legal alternative for most of them when there just isn't" -BradL
For you this seems to be a base assumption: That the legal alternative for most of them... ISN'T good enough.
all right, I'll bite... who GETS to decide what is the best legal way of getting here? US? The people that already are citizens of the country? Or them, who wish to come in?
If, as you say, the product is not for sale. Then it isn't. By what right do you force me to sell it?
If I read your comments correctly, you are saying that they have an INTRINSIC right to come here. Our throwing up an immigration law, WHATEVER it happens to be, puts us in the wrong if the people who want to immigrate don't agree with it.
It's as if the owner of the house can ONLY set rules for strangers, if the strangers agree to them.
"Actually, if the law is structured so that you cannot immigrate when you intend to, then you are wrong." -BradL
This apears to say that it is the immigrant's INTENT that rules, Not the country's...
is that actually what you mean?
Posted by: D on June 20, 2007 3:56 PMconsistent border enforcement policy coupled with significantly less restrictive immigration policy might do it just as well
There's a lot of people--I'm one of them--who think that sounds like a really good idea, which will balance the needs of a growing economy with the need to keep out criminals and assimilate the newcomers. But that's what we were promised 20 years ago, and it was a lie. We got the amnesty but not the enforcement.
So this time around, we sensibly want enforcement first, amnesty second. For that, we are called racist demagouging anti-immigration hypocrites.
Posted by: Rob Lyman on June 20, 2007 3:59 PM"Think about it this way: Canada has an "open-border" policy with respect to American short-term visitors, but property rights seem to have held up just fine."
Yes, this is true, but the analogy breaks in two places. Short term, and American. You don't wish to stay and work, and the two countrys have similar standards of living. If that wasn't the case, we would flood their border, and they would be forced to do something about it.
Also I am pushing the idea of ownership to the country level. If I own my house, it is mine for most circumstances. I set the rules for entry. So it is with this country. We own it, and it is WE who decide who can come in. WE can also change that, but it is not up to outsiders to tell us to do so...
Posted by: D on June 20, 2007 4:08 PMIf I read your comments correctly, you are saying that they have an INTRINSIC right to come here.
I'd be curious how you got to this reading; I don't think this at all, nor do I think I expressed this. (I do personally favor more lax policies, but that has nothing to do with intrinsic rights... it is simply my opinion).
For you this seems to be a base assumption: That the legal alternative for most of them... ISN'T good enough.
I'm suggesting that the "legal alternative" is simply not an available alternative.
all right, I'll bite... who GETS to decide what is the best legal way of getting here?
We do, nor do I remember saying otherwise.
What I am suggesting is that, as I said in my very first response, the suggestion that there are those who "can't be bothered" does two things: it implies that there is a legal alternative available to most people, and it implies that those people are too lazy to abide by it.
I think this construct mischaracterizes an already difficult issue - it pretends the issue is that people are breaking the law because they can't be bothered to follow a perfectly reasonable process.
As the laws stand, a would-be immigrant has two real available choices: break the law, or stay put. Any realistic plan for dealing with immigration reform (either by tightening or loosening) needs to account for this, and not pretend that immigrants are simply choosing Illegal Path A instead of Legal Path B.
If, as you say, the product is not for sale. Then it isn't. By what right do you force me to sell it?
I'm not. I'm just asking you not to pretend that it is for sale in a way that suggests that people can't be bothered to pay for it.
Posted by: Brad L on June 20, 2007 4:16 PM> But that's what we were promised 20 years ago, and it was a lie.
Were we, really? 20 years ago I certainly wasn't following the press on the issue :) My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that then, just as now, the promises of enforcement were coupled with amnesty for current illegal immigrants, not with significant restructuring of immigration policy.
I think amnesty is largely irrelevant to the issue of controlling illegal immigration. Well, I'll even agree it is detrimental in and of itself, because, in the context of restrictive immigration policy, it reinforces law-breaking behavior. What would help is not an amnesty, but a channel for controlled legal immigration that would be big enough to absorb large part of people who would otherwise enter illegally, as they do now. Even if that large part is 25% rather than 95%, the pressure will be reduced drastically -- waiting in line becomes a realistic option for many.
Now, if we were to change the immigration policy like that, the issue of amnesty will be seen in a different light. It will still send the wrong message, to a degree, but it would be far weaker (especially if the new border enforcement provisions will include explicit lifetime ban from admission or any prospective legalization). But it just might be a better option overall than hunting for the illegals one by one and deporting them. After all, the latter never worked very well before.
Where we agree, or so I suspect, is that current bill is not going to do much good. Amnesty is just not the right carrot to be used together with the stick of enforcement.
Posted by: ...Max... on June 20, 2007 4:21 PMMy understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that then, just as now, the promises of enforcement were coupled with amnesty for current illegal immigrants, not with significant restructuring of immigration policy.
I think you're right, and I was sloppy in what I said.
The salient point is: you can't trust the politicians to follow through on promises of future enforcement. Thus, regardless of what the new policy is going to be, enforcement has to come first. Build the wall, crack down on employers (but leave the illegals alone, because you can't do anything to them that will deter them which won't also be brutal and inhumane. It's not like they're all that scared of deportation). Do that, and perhaps DC will have enough credibility to work a "comprehensive" solution.
The current bill, of course, offers zero stick and a "carrot" which is in many ways less attractive to illegals than the status quo. So no, it's not likely to do much.
Posted by: Rob Lyman on June 20, 2007 4:29 PMI would recommend all who are sincerely interested in the economically optimal immigration policy for America should read this study from the Council on Foreign Relations, which I will excerpt below.
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/ImmigrationCSR26.pdf
For a given labor inflow, the productivity gains from immigration will be larger the scarcer the skills of the incoming immigrants. A given type of worker may be scarce either because the U.S. supply of his skill type is low relative to the rest of the world, as with workers who have little schooling, or because the U.S. demand for his skill type is high relative to the rest of the world, as with computer scientists and engineers.
Due to steady increases in high school completion rates, native-born U.S. workers with low schooling levels are increasingly hard to find. Yet these workers are an important part of the U.S. economy—they build homes, prepare food, clean offices, harvest crops, and take unfilled factory jobs. Between 1960 and 2000, the share of working-age native-born U.S. residents with less than twelve years of schooling fell from 50 percent to 12 percent. Abroad, low-skilled workers are more abundant. In Mexico, as of 2000, 74 percent of working-age residents had less than twelve years of education. Migration from Mexico to the United States moves individuals from a country where their relative abundance leaves them with low productivity and low wages to a country
where their relative scarcity allows them to command much higher earnings. For a twenty-five-year-old Mexican male with nine years of education (slightly above the national average), migrating to the United States would increase his wage from $2.30 to $8.50 an hour, adjusted for cost of living differences in the two countries.27 While the net economic impact of immigration on the U.S. economy may be small (as discussed below), the gains to immigrant households from moving to the United States are
enormous.
...
For the nation as a whole, the NRC estimated that in 1996 immigration imposed a short-run fiscal burden on the average U.S. native household of $200, or 0.2 percent of U.S. GDP.42 In that year, the immigration surplus was about 0.1 percent of GDP.43 A back of the envelope calculation then suggests that in the short run immigration in the mid-1990s reduced the annual income of U.S. residents by about 0.1 percent of GDP. Given the uncertainties involved in making this calculation, one should not put great stock in the fact that the resulting estimate is negative. The prediction error around the estimate, though unknown, is likely to be large, in which case the -0.1 percent estimate would be statistically indistinguishable from zero. Using this sort of analysis, we cannot say with much conviction whether the aggregate impact of immigration on the U.S. economy is positive or negative. What available evidence does suggest is that the total impact is small.
...
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a think tank that advocates reducing immigration, has recently applied the NRC methodology to estimate the fiscal impact of illegal immigration. The CIS finds that in 2002 illegal immigrants on net received $10 billion
more in government benefits than they paid in taxes, a value equal to 0.1 percent of U.S.
GDP in that year.44 With unauthorized immigrants accounting for 5 percent of the U.S.
labor force, U.S. residents would receive a surplus from illegal immigration of about 0.03
percent of GDP. Combining these two numbers, it appears that as of 2002 illegal immigration caused an annual income loss of 0.07 percent of U.S. GDP. Again, given the uncertainties surrounding this sort of calculation, one could not say with much confidence that this impact is statistically distinguishable from zero.
...
From an economic perspective, the question for policymakers then becomes whether the costs of halting illegal immigration would significantly outweigh the possible benefits...For the sake of argument, take literally the estimate that illegal immigration was costing the economy the equivalent of 0.07 percent of GDP annually as of 2002. In that year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service spent $4.2 billion (or 0.04 percent of GDP) on border and interior enforcement, including the detention and removal of illegal aliens, in a year in which half a million net new illegal immigrants entered the country.46 The $13 billion in proposed border security spending for next year is already two-and-a-half times that figure at 0.10 percent of GDP. With the already huge increases in spending, the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border (as measured by apprehensions) is estimated to have fallen by about 27 percent last year. How much money would be required to reduce illegal immigration to zero? Even far short of sealing the borders, the funds spent on extra enforcement would vastly exceed the income gained from eliminating the net fiscal transfer to households headed by illegal immigrants.
Posted by: GDM on June 20, 2007 4:34 PM"Think about it this way: Canada has an "open-border" policy with respect to American short-term visitors, but property rights seem to have held up just fine."
Yes, this is true, but the analogy breaks in two places. Short term, and American. You don't wish to stay and work, and the two countrys have similar standards of living. If that wasn't the case, we would flood their border, and they would be forced to do something about it.
As I said, these are structural challenges, not philosophical ones. I was responding to the idea that if you favor lax immigration policies ("open borders"), you somehow reject property rights.
Also I am pushing the idea of ownership to the country level. If I own my house, it is mine for most circumstances. I set the rules for entry. So it is with this country. We own it, and it is WE who decide who can come in.
No argument there. I'm not against our right to have an immigration policy. I think our current one is unnecessarily restrictive, is not particularly in our best interests, and would be far costlier to meaningfully enforce than to revisit.
Of course, I do think we should consider the costs of enforcing a law when deciding whether a certain law/enforcement package is what we really want, and I think this is not the same as letting other people decide what laws we choose.
Posted by: Brad L on June 20, 2007 4:44 PMOpponents of current levels of immigration from Mexico keep asking for evidence that "The actual data shows they seem to be assimilating just fine--at least if we define what your grandmother did as "just fine"."
A lot of evidence was already provided (and completely ignored) by Sri in his post above.
Here is more regarding language assimilation:
"Surveys indicate that the majority of U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants mainly speak English, and by the third generation, 96 percent prefer English. What happened with past immigrant groups is also happening with this one."
Link: http://www.reason.com/news/show/120759.html
A lot of evidence was already provided (and completely ignored) by Sri in his post above.
Probably because copying and pasting someone else’s op ed piece is generally an unpersuasive way of debating.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on June 20, 2007 5:20 PM"As the laws stand, a would-be immigrant has two real available choices: break the law, or stay put. Any realistic plan for dealing with immigration reform (either by tightening or loosening) needs to account for this, and not pretend that immigrants are simply choosing Illegal Path A instead of Legal Path B."
I totally agree.
I also believe immigration helps America, illegal or otherwise, as long as it does not reach a point where we can't assimilate them. I also believe people are better off living in America than in Mexico. I'm against enforcement because it hurts Americans AND it hurts immmigrants.
I'm also against open borders with Mexico because we would have trouble assimilating the hordes of Mexicans that would flood in (see first sentence of above paragraph). I'm for maintaining the current level of enforcement at the borders to make it difficult for Mexicans to flood in. I'm against deportation absolutely and completely. Deportation ruins lives and doesn't bring any economic benefits to Americans. If immigrants survived the desert and the coyotes to get to America, they should be allowed to stay.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on June 20, 2007 5:34 PMLast sentence of the second-to-last paragraph I meant to say: "I'm against tighter enforcement because it hurts Americans AND immigrants."
Posted by: Zhong Lu on June 20, 2007 5:36 PMA lot of evidence was already provided (and completely ignored) by Sri in his post above.Probably because copying and pasting someone else’s op ed piece is generally an unpersuasive (not to mention lazy) way of debating. I’d wager that most people as soon as they see someone pulling that in the comments section just scroll right on by without bothering to read.
As far as the op ed piece you cited (but thankfully didn’t post in total) as “evidence,” the author doesn’t support his claims but I can guess that he’s referring to the APSA study that came out last March (click on my name for the link if you’re interested). That’s the one whose results most closely match the numbers he claims but it was also a survey weighted towards how well legal immigrants assimilate into the United States. Or as the authors stated