What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
This was a comment made in the comments section of Richard Epstein's post on free trade:
So, what does free trade have to do with open-borders?
My answer to that question, is...everything. Immigration restrictions are effectively tariffs. They restrict the trade of human capital, and trade restrictions ultimately make us poorer.
How do immigration restrictions make us poorer? Those of us who believe in free trade generally subscribe to the concept of comparative advantage. But the concept of comparative advantage, doesn't just apply to goods. It also applies to human capital.
Here's just one of many examples. Americans are typically good at jobs that require extensive use of the English language, while immigrants are not. Immigration allows Americans to specialize in language intensive jobs, while immigrants can specialize in non-language jobs. The skills of immigrants and US workers are complementary. As a result, we are all better off.
And just like imported goods are subject to inspection, we certainly have a right and responsibility to subject immigrants to criminal background and national security checks. But other than that, labor should be allowed to flow into the US without restriction, and that is the only position that is consistent with a belief in free trade.
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Comments:
Nov '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
No, the point is that Smith, Locke, the Founders did not remotely believe in the possibility of open or fluid borders irrespective of the character of peoples. They were political men.
Jan '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Straw Men up!
What if Jesus had said: "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself; unless s/he doesn't physically live next to you, has a different skin pigment, and a different spoken language.'"
What if the Declaration of Independence had read: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men* are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends we shrug and say, "Oh well, it's what the majority wanted." [all men* unless you were not born in the United States and subject to her jurisdiction]
What does President Ronald Reagan mean from about 5:20 of this video? What was all this talk about "teeming with people of all kinds", "a city with free ports that hummed with commerce", and "the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here"
Edited on May 27, 2011 at 5:49amOct '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
I am somewhat shocked by the reaction to this post. To me, immigration restrictions are about taking away the rights of employers and consumers. If I want to hire someone from a foreign country to work in my business or my home- frankly, it's none of your business. Just like an employer should be allowed to negotiate with individuals outside of the union, and how individuals should be allowed to negotiate directly with their doctor and not have a govt bureaucrat get involved, an individual should be allowed to hire who they see fit to hire.
Oct '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
I am somewhat shocked by the reaction to this post. To me, immigration restrictions are about taking away the rights of employers and consumers. If I want to hire someone from a foreign country to work in my business or my home- frankly, it's none of your business. Just like an employer should be allowed to negotiate with individual employees, and just like how individuals should be allowed to negotiate directly with their doctor and not have a govt bureaucrat get involved, an individual should be allowed to hire who they see fit to hire.
Oct '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
I am somewhat shocked by the reaction to this post. To me, immigration restrictions are about taking away the rights of employers and consumers. If I want to hire someone from a foreign country to work in my business or my home- frankly, it's none of your business. Just like an employer should be allowed to negotiate with individual employees, and just like how individuals should be allowed to negotiate directly with their doctor and not have a govt bureaucrat get involved, an individual should be allowed to hire who they see fit to hire.
Aug '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Huh? Do you mean political in the mode of Demoncrats or Republican'ts?
Nah, I didn't think so. You are confusing "political" with "philosophical".
While those men thought the 'ought-ness' of actions came from different origins, they were perfectly willing to debate WHY a certain action was moral or not... Politics ain't morality. However all politics can be reduced to economics. What was that thesis of yours again???? Yes, politics leads to economics...
Aug '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
You sould like pure Homo Economus. Do you not understand that the whole point of nations, and their borders, is to allow cultures to define and reproduce themselves? Cultures are to some degree or another in competition with each other, and one of the ways one culture imposes its influence on another is to dilute it through immigration. And one of the ways cultures defend themselves against others they find uncongenial is to enforce their borders. There are economic incentives both ways, but the cultural point trancends economics. But even if the economics were squarely in favor of mass immigration, it is still normal for cultures to resist cultural influences that they find disagreeable.
Personally, I'm thankful our illegal immigration problem is with Latinos, who are mostly decent folk. But too many of them are still semi-literate peasants who don't assimilate well. Perhaps you've not explored the Southwest, but there are vast tracts, entire counties almost, that seem more like Mexico than the United States, and they're not pretty. That's not worth cheaper lettuce.
If you're have trouble grasping this, try subsituting "Islamic fundamentalists" for "Latinos", and try that on for size.
May '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Willie Beamen is correct to observe that any limitation of the free flows of labor make us poorer. Arguments that favor addressing the observed costs of immigration while ignoring the unseen costs of limits to immigration do us no favors. Attempts to prop up wages by excluding those who would work for less simply leads to outsourcing or mechanization, or simply prevents investment in the first place. If low wages cannot come to where the work is, ultimately, work will go to where wages are lower.
Certainly we have bad policies in place, including teaching multiculturalism instead of American history and English fluency, and a welfare state that subsidizes everything except work and productivity. But these bad policies should be abandoned because they are bad policies, not only because they are exacerbate the costs of immigration. I am more concerned with the 50 million Americans under twenty who as a group don't know American history and have little fluency beyond conversational English, than I am with the ignorance of the new arrival.
Let us return to a pro-assimilation policy and end the welfare state because those are good policies in their own right.
May '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Ugh, the argument in favor of immigration restrictiins that appeals to the costs imposed by the welfare state. Just Google Bran
May '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
May '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Ugh, the argument in favor of immigration restrictions that appeals to the costs imposed by the welfare state. Just google Bryan Caplan, please.
May '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Willie Beamen
KarlUB:
There is very little evidence that American workers are made worse off by immigration. · May 26 at 5:11pm
Come take a look at the building trades in northern California. Native American citizens have most certainly been pushed out of the painting, drywall, carpentry, roofing, remodeling, and paving trades here by immigrants from Mexico and Central America. I know skilled tradesmen who have been denied hire because they can't speak Spanish and have left the state in search of work. That ain't "very little evidence" to me.
I work in a large county hospital. I often walk through the waiting areas and don't hear a word of English. Illegal immigration here is a huge uncontrolled experiment at creating a balkanized nation. Where did I sign up for that? I have nothing against the people who come here for opportunity. If I were in their position I would do the same. But our feckless political class is selling us out, the people who put them in power to make wise decisions on our behalf, and these bums are failing all of us with their cynical open-borders games. Advantages? Maybe. But maybe not.
Nov '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Consider the problem of fluid or relatively open borders from the point of view of Mexican immigration. Too many unassimilated Mexicans in the country leads to America becoming like Mexico. So we have, for example, demographic changes in California resulting in solid Democratic control, so more taxes and regulation, diminishment of free markets and economic growth, all of which is contrary to what an intelligent libertarian (or a real American) would want. The simplistic libertarian immigration policy results in a less libertarian society. The same holds for a host of other matters (sexual morality, identity politics, etc.) that hinge on the character of a people. Hence, moral and political education is crucial. Stated simply, you can't have a libertarian (i.e., self-sufficient, freedom loving) society without intelligent libertarians in it. Such libertarians are made, not born. Mexicans are not like us. "Mexicanness," so to speak, is a kind of particularity over against the particularity that is "Americanness."
Yes, to be an American is to believe and follow universal principles such as individual liberty. But Mexicans in their particularity understand differently (or perhaps even reject altogether) those principles. Hence our particularity is opposed to their particularity, etc.
May '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Reading many of the comments above, it looks like not a lot has changed, (except the ethnicities of the people we want to keep out):
Few of their children in the country learn English ... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.
-Benjamin Franklin on German immigration to Pennsylvania
We should build a wall of brass around the country.
- John Jay regarding “Catholic alien invaders,” 1750s
What means the paying of the passage and emptying out upon our shores such floods of pauper emigrants — the contents of the poor house and the sweepings of the streets? — multiplying tumults and violence, filling our prisons, and crowding our poor-houses, and quadrupling our taxation...?
- Lyman Beecher, on English immigrants, 1834
The enormous influx of alien foreigners will in the end prove ruinous to American workingmen, by REDUCING THE WAGES OF LABOR to a standard that will drive them from the farms and workshops altogether.
- Labor organizer's opinion article in the Philadelphia Sun, 1854
May '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Kervinlee
Come take a look at the building trades in northern California. Native American citizens have most certainly been pushed out of the painting, drywall, carpentry, roofing, remodeling, and paving trades here by immigrants from Mexico and Central America. I know skilled tradesmen who have been denied hire because they can't speak Spanish and have left the state in search of work. That ain't "very little evidence" to me.
What we cannot observe is what would have happened without the arrival of low cost tradesmen. Perhaps Americans were pushed out by lower wage competition (although they also could have worked for less) but it is also possible that the building trade would have lost these jobs because of their high cost in the same way that Detroit, Cleveland, upstate New York simply did themselves in by becoming too expensive.
Nov '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Instugator: 1) strict immigration was a construct of the 20th century.
2) Although your subscription to the increasingly Orwellian political speech is admirable,
Edited on May 26 at 07:20 pm
1) As contributor Courtney points out above, your claim about strict immigration being a "20th century construct" is unfounded. Nice try though.
2) Hate to break it to you, pal, but believing that the citizens of a sovereign nation should have primacy over against immigrants in shaping and conserving the character of their own nation is not, uh, Orwellian. Whether you own up to it or not, you clearly want immigrants to have primacy over citizens' wishes. You're a bigot against the ability of your own country to exercise sovereign choices and deliberations about the shaping of its own character.
Edited on May 27, 2011 at 11:52amNov '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Instugator:
3) Oh and as for that absolute prior agreement thingy, I would submit the existence of both civil war and hyper-inflation in evidence against your 'theory. You need to work on your post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies. · May 26 at 7:09pm
Edited on May 26 at 07:20 pm
Wow, that’s rich. So you’re suggesting that civil war somehow precedes this agreement prior to the whole arrangement of markets, contracts, and associations among individuals? Hate to break it to you again, but civil war precisely means you already have -- guess what? -- an extant political community.
Oh, and there is no post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to work on. The political qua political having a type of independence from economics is something that many scholars of incredibly vast erudition and intelligence have written about. You're obviously completely unaware of them -- indeed, during our last exchange of some months ago, I even linked to some of them, most prominently Harvey Mansfield. But ultimately, as many experienced people have pointed out, those who deny any law higher than that asserted by their own will (i.e., radical libertarianism) are uneducable.
Edited on May 27, 2011 at 12:17pmNov '10
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Don't be. A good number of the otherwise smart commenters on this site are unabashedly protectionist, and dim bulbs in general on the subject of economics.
Feb '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Jan-Michael Rives
Don't be. A good number of the otherwise smart commenters on this site are unabashedly protectionist, and dim bulbs in general on the subject of economics. · May 27 at 3:03am
And I'm shocked by the number of otherwise smart commenters who have never read a history book, or opened their eyes outside of acedemia , or noticed the grand assortment of problems facing the United States today.
Hint: It wasn't because of closed borders- which do not have- or "protectionism"- which as a general rule isn't national policy.
If you think the United States will continue to exist if Mexifornia goes national- good luck with that idea.
You'll need it.
May '11
Re: What Does Free Trade Have to Do with Open-Borders?
Courtney points out that nativism is quite old, but strict immigration as a policy, rather than an idea, is a different question. Aside from the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), immigration is nearly unlimited until the 1920's. The proportion of Americans who are foreign born is roughly half what it was for most of the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Germans, whose great era of immigration was the 1850's continued to speak German and publish in the German language until the two World Wars made such action suspect.
Far more important than the sheer numbers of immigrants or unassimilated residents is the commitment and attachment of Americans themselves to their own culture. As the record shows, you can safely double the number of foreign born residents and allows broad use of languages other then English if the American culture is confident in itself and its vision. If, on the other hand, Americans give up their culture, immigration is really beside the point.