Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog

The Ambrosini Critique has been doing a long series on papers showing that immigration has almost no downside.  I highly recommend reading all the links contained in this (what I suppose to be) summary post.  They’re all good.  The conclusion:

In the last few years, researchers have shown that when all of these factors are taken into account, the surprising result is that immigrants don’t seem to have a negative effect on native wages or employment levels. In fact, its likely that immigrants have even been a net positive for natives, a result that this paper has replicated.

I’ve certainly assumed that immigration did depress wages for natives, but that the other benefits outweighed the costs.  From reading this, I see that even that cost may be exaggerated.

From Mr. Harsanyi at Hit&Run:

The uplifting tale of the hard-boiled immigrant, dipping his or her sweaty hands into the well of the American dream, is one thing. Today we find ourselves in an unsustainable and rapidly growing welfare state. Can we afford to allow millions more to partake?

When Nobel Prize-winning libertarian economist Milton Friedman was asked about unlimited immigration in 1999, he stated that “it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.”

I completely agree with the sentiment.  But do the facts of immigration back this up?  Immigrants across the only border that people ever talk about “guarding” are generally young and looking for a job.  It may be possibly true that they would be net recipients of welfare (i.e. get more welfare than they pay taxes on their work), but what about Medicare?  Medicare makes welfare look like pocket change — and it is a primarily generational tax transfer; that is from working young to the old.  In this case,  immigrants look less like freeloaders and more like suckers.

Given the way the demographic numbers are pointing, with the percentage of young, working Americans declining, and the percentage of old, not-working Americans increasing, we may need a ton of immigrants (who are overwhelmingly in the first category) to make this work in the long term.  I am convinced that even if immigrants are free-riding on welfare, the fact that they (and illegal immigrants moreso) are net contributors to the Medicare redistribution more than makes up for it.  If there is a program that is going to bankrupt America, it is Medicare — not welfare.  Therefore I can’t get angry about young, relatively healthy workers coming here and helping put off our financial apocalypse.

Update:

I honestly don’t care how much people want to police the border, or crack down on illegal immigrants.  I want the completely legal routes to working here to be made much wider.  I want the world to actually resemble the one the crazy build-a-wall people imagine: where the only ones trying to sneak across the border are criminals — because anyone who is just trying to get a job has an easy and low-cost method of getting in.

Conor F. has more on the “let more people in and we don’t care how you police the border” idea.

This is pathetic.  Is there somewhere I can donate to a fund for Haitian emigration?  It seems like a few hundred for a plane ticket and some bribes to the INS would be a more cost effective form of (permanent) aid.

3 months old but still good.

Yeah, yeah, it was published on the sixth, but whatever:

El Paso also has some of the laxer gun control policies of any non-Texan big city in the country, mostly due to gun-friendly state law. And famously, El Paso sits just over the Rio Grande from one of the most violent cities in the western hemisphere, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, home to a staggering 2,500 homicides in the last 18 months alone. A city of illegal immigrants with easy access to guns, just across the river from a metropolis ripped apart by brutal drug war violence. Should be a bloodbath, right?

Here’s the surprise: There were just 18 murders in El Paso last year, in a city of 736,000 people. To compare, Baltimore, with 637,000 residents, had 234 killings.

The more I read about the story of American immigration, the more I come to think that it’s the single thing that has contributed most to America’s success.  For basically 230 years, we’ve siphoned off the most freedom-seeking, hard-working people from the rest of the world — and it has done wonders.

So, to all of the people who chose to become Americans, instead of just being born one: thanks for making it a place that even a cynical asshole like me is proud of.

I think a large part of the anti-immigration feeling is directed at Mexicans because it’s believed that they’re “just” coming here for better jobs — it would be harder to feel a lot of rage against refugees fleeing here for their own safety.  Now it looks like some Mexicans are doing just that:

Aguirre immediately gathered up his family and darted across the border into El Paso, Texas. He hasn’t returned to Juarez since that day.

Aguirre is seeking asylum in the United States, and he’s part of a growing trend among Mexican citizens looking to escape the violence and corruption of their homeland. 

Now, it’s still not a huge amount:

In 2003, the USCIS reported 54 asylum cases from Mexican citizens. In 2008, that number reached 312. 

I’m not sure most Americans are quite aware of what’s going on south of the border.  I don’t know if I’d call it civil war, but when the military has to patrol the streets each day, I’d say that it’s not a very good situation.  

And the worst part is, a great deal of the violence is our responsibility.  On top of all the standard good reasons for labor mobility, I’d say there’s a moral obligation here as well: if you help screw up someone’s country, you should let them leave that country and join yours.  I thought we should do the same for Iraqis or Afghanis as well, so there’s no reason to turn back Mexicans.  Alas, my government disagrees with me… again:

But asylum requests based on fear of violence aren’t easy cases to make. Last year, the United States approved less than half of those cases.

Classy.  And if you’re not convinced that our drug prohibition contributes to this, then ask yourselves: why aren’t the tobacco cartels shooting up Juarez?  

I know it’s trite to say this, but no one is really paying enough attention to what’s going on here.  I realize that AIG bonuses are a lot more interesting than a cocaine-fueled civil war on our southern border, but…  I guess it’s just old news, there’s been one going on in Colombia for decades, right?