Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
How you see the economics of low-skilled immigration depends on your style of reasoning. Some economists base their arguments on general principles (good things, those); Benjamin Powell offers a useful precis of this position (h/t Jan-Michael Rives). Amid his arguments based on principles, he has the following specific examples:
- Even low-wage immigrants "help" by doing jobs that Americans won't do; according to Powell, only 30% of Arizona's lettuce crop was harvested this year, the rest being left to rot. Apparently for the farmers, offering higher wages wasn't worth the cost.
- Even for high school drop-outs, presumably the ones most affected by immigration of unskilled workers, wages have either risen slightly or, at worst, fallen by 8%.
However, this article also contains too much sunny talk for my taste. Too much criminal behavior? Just admit the good immigrants! Too many low-skill immigrants on welfare? Just eliminate the welfare state! Powell also suggets the following "logical conclusion" to the welfare state argument: if the government should restrict immigration to the US because immigrants might burden the welfare state, it should also restrict native births because children are a drain on the welfare state for 18 years. Apparently a child being nurtured and educated by American language and culture is no different from an immigrant struggling to adapt his language, beliefs, and customs to those of his adopted land.
Put shortly, Powell sees only a narrowly economic side of immigration; he is like the physicist hired to improve the dairy farm who begins his report by saying, "Consider a spherical cow." It is reasoning like this that makes me suspicious of, for example, the Perryman report (h/t Emily E. Smith), which concludes that illegal immigration contributes billions to the state.
I am therefore curious to see how supporters of low-skill immigration respond to this report on immigration from Mexico, published by the Center for Immigration Studies, I believe in 2001. Some highlights:
- Large scale immigration from Mexico is a recent phenomenon: in 1970, immigrants numbered 800,000; in 2000, possibly 8,000,000.
- While most natives do not compete with Mexican immigrants for jobs, about 10 million do; Mexican immigration has lowered their wages by about 5%. [Conclusion: immigration from Mexico hurts the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens.]
- While Mexican immigration has a large impact on wages for unskilled Americans, it has a small impact on prices--between .08 and .2 %. [Translation: the benefits vaunted by "spherical cow" economists have not materialized; the poorer Americans are not buying cheaper goods with their lower wages.]
- About 34% of households headed by legal Mexican residents and 24% of households headed by illegal Mexican residents use at least one major welfare program (contrast about 15% of native households). Moreover, second and third generation Mexican immigrant families continue to use welfare programs at a higher rate than natives.
- Mexican immigration accounts for 1/3 of the national increase in school-age population since 1987. [With huge consequences for natives, as shown in the protests in Tucson over a modest revision to the curriculum.]
- The estimated life-time net fiscal drain on public funds (taxes paid minus services used) for the average Mexican immigrant is $55,200.
- Low achievement in schools persists across the generations for Mexican Americans. [Thus, as the US shifts to a knowledge economy, Mexican immigrants are more likely to become a permanent underclass.]
The report offers the following policy prescriptions:
- Improve the labor market skills of legal Mexican immigrants
- Reduce unskilled legal and illegal immigration from Mexico.
Naturally, all reports bump up against reality. If you reduce immigration from Mexico, you make it harder to complete the jobs the immigrants were doing. Here, for instance, is an article from Georgia that suggests that the new and restrictive immigration laws are keeping farmers from harvesting their crops. Ex-cons, it turns out, don't have the work ethic for field picking that Guatemalans have. At the same time, if "labor costs comprise only 6% of the price of fresh produce," maybe farmers can raise wages to a level that will bring natives into the fields.
And then there is the matter of politics--the art of the possible. Here is an opinion piece from Peter Robinson that simply asks, "What Would Reagan Do?" Most importantly, suggests Peter, Reagan would have found a way to garner support from Latino voters. This is the challenge that Mexican immigration poses to conservatives: seeing the problem clearly, but framing immigration policy as part of a larger vision for American--and North American--prosperity. It's that larger vision, not the spherical cow, that should guide us.
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
I think Milton Friedman's assessment that you cannot have both open immigration and a welfare state holds true. I think there are many open boarders libertarians/economists who I agree with in principle, but as long as you have liberals operating social services and manning the nations bureaucracies, this remains another trans-national welfare program.
Look at the schools, or the Senate's attempt to pass the Dream Act again. This is adding an additional dependent constituency to the country.
My advice is:
Enforce the border
Legalize marijuana
Offer large, open migrant worker programs, and
Keep clamping down on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
In a perfect world, you could simply trade out our current tax system for a consumption tax that would not discriminate based on the legitimacy of your social security info. This would also be a good opportunity to make SS and maybe some other social welfare programs totally means-tested. A guy can dream, can't he?
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 1:36amOct '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
instead of using the term "illegals" or "undocumented" immigrants, I prefer to use the term "mexican migrant workers" or "migrant workers from the south".
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 3:25amOct '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
J. D. Fitzpatrick:
The report offers the following policy prescriptions:
1. Improve the labor market skills of legal Mexican immigrants
2. Reduce unskilled legal and illegal immigration from Mexico.
Or, if Mexico is smart, it should implement the teaching of English as a second language in their public schools starting from elementary.
Jun '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Beasly -
Very well said. I personally think the minimum wage is also hurting us in this down economy. Businesses that would be willing to hire an American citizen for below minimum wage can not afford it, so they hire a migrant worker and pay him under the table, while the American citizen, willing to work for less, is left unemployed with nothing at all.
I was wondering how people feel about "selective immigration." My ancestors came over from Ireland (albeit legally) poor and unskilled. Have the times changed in America to the point that we should be selective in who we grant citizenship to (only the skilled, educated, and wealthy), or should we grant access to all who take the legal steps to the path of citizenship?
Jan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Would you have bet against Julian L. Simon; that people are The Ultimate Resource? To the lover of liberty, Milton Friedman will make sense 11 out of 10 times but on this one there is some wiggle room. The net cost versus the net benefit of even the most uneducated immigrant, by the third generation, will have become balanced and have swung to the net benefit side of the equation. These are on the things, though tough to measure, can be calculated. What it cannot include is the human consequential ingenuity that some of these grandchildren of the original immigrant may bring and the progress this brings.
Anyone who says that immigrants are cool but they need to come here legally is just coming up with a cop-out considering that coming here legally has been made very tough.
Dec '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
It is worth remembering that we outlawed actual slave labor in this country quite some time ago. Folks who advocate for a lower minimum wage seem to forget that fact. The fact is that a person cannot live on a minimum wage. The reason that illegal immigrant laborers do unsavory things like cram twenty-five people into apartments, or steal food from grocery stores, or sell drugs, or do other things is because their sub-minimum wage off the books jobs do not pay them a living wage. Lowering the minimum wage does not improve things.
What small business owners know, is that when so called American workers will not take a job (because it pays too little), the small business owner is left to do it himself. If someone will not mop your floors, you mop the floors.
What is most telling for me about the story of the unpicked lettuce, on my great grandfather's farm, or my uncle's farm, no crop would go unpicked. The kids, or the grandkids, or cousins would do it.
When the farmer's own family won't pick the crop, you know what you need to know.
Jan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Folks that advocate for a higher minimum wage seem to forget this and this
Not true. Plenty of young people without a family to take care of use minimum wage-paying jobs as stepping stones in their career paths as they find roommates and learn to live away from their parents. Your statement is completely false. I and many other did this without dying. In other words: we did, in fact, live!
Mar '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
"I think Milton Friedman's assessment that you cannot have both open immigration and a welfare state holds true. "
I think Liberals and Libertarians and cheap labor Republicans are going to do their damndest to disprove him. Milton says "you can't have both". Our political class says "Oh yeah? Watch us".
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 7:39amOct '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
There are other credible studies that debunk many of the conclusions of the CIS study. But more generally, I find this idea that the power of the state should be used to figure out the precise number of Mexicans that should be allowed to come into the US misguided. Who are these panel of geniuses who are going to sit in Washington and micro manage the flow of Mexicans into the US? And please remember, that when you restrict immigration, you are infringing on the property rights of US citizens. You are telling US citizens whom they can have on their property, whom they may associate with. Private property, individual rights, freedom of association - these are ideas that this country were founded on. As for the cultural argument, I am just not too worried. I don't want the "culture" mandated from the top down any more than I want the economy micromanaged from above. It's a market process. Plus, Mexican food is delicious.
Jan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Yes!
Todd, at any time did you ever post over at FreeRepublic and get into heated discussions with Willie Green?
Mar '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Of all the Libertarian arguments I've seen for open borders, this may well be the strangest of all. Congrats, because that's a tall order.
How... HOW... is it infringing on your property rights to regulate the number of immigrants coming IN to the country?
Second, your property rights do not void the law. You can not, for instance, open a meth lab in your house and claim immunity on the grounds of sacred property rights. And since immigration is the business of any sovereign nation, you also don't have the right to say "I can keep this illegal alien in the country because he's on MY property".
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 8:04amAug '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
CON!
Mar '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
John Marzan
instead of using the term "illegals" or "undocumented" immigrants, I prefer to use the term "mexican migrant workers" or "migrant workers from the south". · Jul 1 at 3:15am
And that would be just as much PC-speak as the "undocumented" nonsense.
Jan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Douglas
Of all the Libertarian arguments I've seen for open borders, this may well be the silliest of all. Congrats, because that's a tall order.
How... HOW... is it infringing on your property rights to regulate the number of immigrants coming IN to the country?
I agree. Property rights is likely the wrong word choice. Natural rights would be the better choice, I think.
Where it says "all men"; should that be scratched out and replaced with the words "United States citizens"? Have to be specific, too, most Latinos that come here are, in fact, North Americans.
The consent of the governed appear to be xenophobic, it seems.
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 8:17amOct '10
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
If I vacation in Central America, and I meet someone whom I'd like to hire to work in my home, I should be able to bring that person to my home as long as they clear a background check.
Preventing me from engaging in this peaceful and voluntary arrangement is a violation of my rights - property rights, freedom of association, etc.
I would never presume to tell you whom you are and are not permitted to associate with.
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 8:43amMay '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
I am sympatheticto libertarian philosophy and I am actually registered libertarian on my voter registration as it seems to prevent jury duty but there can be no rational immigration policy without sealing the borders. If immigration cannot be controled there is no immigration policy. We already have a defacto open border policy.There have been some benefits to this open door policy but the costs are becoming increasingly obvious.
Jan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Hmmm.
Feb '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Todd
If I vacation in Central America, and I meet someone whom I'd like to hire to work in my home, I should be able to bring that person to my home as long as they clear a background check.
Wow. I just don't think the short, one-syllable word "strange" can capture the sheer bizarre other-worldliness of this comment.
Pardon me, but we've tried this sort of policy already. In practice the result is the disaster that was once the American state of California.
It turns out that people who exercise their freedom to hire anyone they want don't consider medical costs for their friends from other lands - just to pick one example - to be any more of their problem than US immigration law happens to be. So in practice other people get volunteered to pay those expenses - and many others - whether they want to or not.
If you ask me that seems like a rather serious violation of the rights of those folks. But that's probably just my xenophobia talking.
May '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Ronald Reagan was a wise, gracious and brilliant man but he was wrong about illegal immigration. His amnesty act made the problem worse. I will gladly offer citizenship to every illegal immigrant who is here when the border is sealed and documentation is a requisite of employment.
Edited on Jul 1, 2011 at 10:16amJan '11
Re: Mexican Immigration: Pro and Con
Xennady
Todd
If I vacation in Central America, and I meet someone whom I'd like to hire to work in my home, I should be able to bring that person to my home as long as they clear a background check.
Wow. I just don't think the short, one-syllable word "strange" can capture the sheer bizarre other-worldliness of this comment.
And what if he really hit-it-off with this person and wanted to marry? OMG, the horror!
Xennady
Pardon me, but we've tried this sort of policy already. In practice the result is the disaster that was once the American state of California.
The disaster that is California probably has to do with other things as well, right?
Xennady
...medical costs...If you ask me that seems like a rather serious violation of the rights of those folks. · Jul 1 at 9:41am
That damned Hippocratic Oath! You know, no one I know advocates for state-run hospitals. But, yes, in a civil society, some people will freeload off the generosity of health practitioners and the costs will get passed on to those who do have the means. It ain't right; just is.