Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Instead of Cutting Legal Immigration in Half Over a Decade, Let’s Increase It
I want to make sure I understand this. President Trump is supporting an immigration bill from GOP Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue that would replace, as The New York Times explains, “a system that favors family ties in deciding who can legally move to the United States with one based on skills and employability.”
So more a merit-based system that gives an edge to those who have advanced skill and restricts those who don’t.
I campaigned on creating a merit-based immigration system that protects U.S. workers & taxpayers. Watch: https://t.co/lv3ScSKnF6 #RAISEAct pic.twitter.com/zCFK5OfYnB
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2017
The end result here, according to The Wall Street Journal paraphrasing a Cotton aide, is that “the legislation would decrease overall immigration to about 638,000 in its first year—a 41% drop—and to about 540,000 by its 10th year—a 50% reduction. The number of employment-based green cards issued each year would remain at 140,000.”
A few things:
First, the US is hardly an immigration outlier here, whether it’s the average annual inflow of immigrants as a percent of population or the stock of immigrants as a percent of the population.
Second, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that “the impact of immigration on average native-born workers remains small and inconsistent, with no evidence to show a large detrimental impact on less-educated workers.”
Third, economists strongly agree that the average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of highly educated foreign workers were legally allowed to immigrate to the US each year.
Fourth, a demographic-driven slowdown in US labor force growth means real GDP growth is likely to be slower in the future than in the past.
Fifth, slower labor force growth means we need faster productivity. And “evidence also shows that immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs play a disproportionate role in driving the technological advances that power productivity growth in the United States.”
So given all that, isn’t this bill off point? How about a bill to sharply boost overall immigration with an emphasis on attracting many, many more immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs? This from McKinsey: “The nation could generate tremendous impact on productivity in the near term and beyond 2020 by increasing the annual flow of high-skilled immigrants.”
And as I have also noted:
Roughly half of U.S.-based unicorns — technology startups worth at least $1 billion — were founded by immigrants, with India the top nation of origin. As venture capitalist Paul Graham tweets, “This is a good time to remember that without immigration the U.S. will only have 5 percent of the top people in each field.” And more to the point regarding the Trump ban, as The Atlantic notes, “Iranian-Americans founded or hold leadership positions at Twitter, Dropbox, Oracle, Expedia, eBay, and Tinder.”
If a smart person with a good idea wants to do great things, shouldn’t America be the place that helps make that ambition happen?
Published in Economics, Immigration
This is so ….muddled. Ok yuh, college isn’t for everyone. It’s not for all Americans, (contrary to B Hussein’s position) and it’s not for all immigrants. What’s your point? Tellin’ me American kids aren’t smart? If they aren’t, it’s because of a concerted effort by education theorists to dumb them down. “Don’t teach any facts, just let them learn from each other. ” Bovine excrement. Shovel it out.
And “high school kids and college kids need jobs too”? Yuh–and those are the very jobs they won’t be ale to get if we don’t control immigration, legal and illegal.
Recently we heard that regs about field workers had to be relaxed to let non-citizens do it. Does this mean it’s work Americans “just won’t do”? No, it means it’s work Americans won’t do as cheaply as non-citizens. It’s kinda like slavery.
It’s clear we don’t need more immigration. I thought one of the Left’s ” arguments” was always that its immigrants who need us. (Wasn’t that the point of Acosta’s rant, so brilliantly countered by Miller?)
And the only logical response to that is,
we’re sorry your native country is such a dung pit, and we’ll help you when we can, but we do have to take care of
America first!
This is so typical, and I really want to spotlight it:
No one on this thread has called potential immigrants “dirty foreigners” except you.
and yuh, the US birth rate is a bit low, though not as bad as Germany the last time I looked . Could that be because of the cultural self hatred touted by the Left and now, the NT Right? People do stop breeding when they lose faith in their culture…that’s introductory Anthro. Restore their pride, their wellbeing, and they’ll start breeding again. Our prolific president and his progeny set a good example.
The anti-immigration folks are advancing a traditionally Leftist/Progressive policy position. There is nothing conservative about thinking you can engineer an economy or treating Americans as victims.
I just thought it was a funny looking word. I’ve frankly never seen it before. I guess my lack of investments is stunting my vocabulary. :)
The bigger the catchment of people, the better the brains of the best.
American universities are the best, and a Good Thing for America, because they focus on excellence and that focus means they’re interested in the brightest graduate students in the world. They don’t limit themselves.
‘Drill baby drill!’
No, it’s a natural by-product of a maturing 1st world economy. Which is why immigration is needed for population growth (and subsequent economic growth). The “self-hatred touted by the Left and now, the NT Right” viewpoint is just grievance mentality that does nothing to advance serious policy proposals, but does a bang-up job keeping the base for populist amateur clowns like the current occupant of the White House all fired-up and distracted.
I considered “Flagging” that last comment.
Oh riiiiight..I forgot. We don’t even have a “culture” in America. We’re fresh out. If we don’t let indigestible clumps of non-Anglphone people in and allow them to live in enclaves like Mollenbeek, well, we just don’t have anything to which we can point with pride.
Culture is the element in which humans exist, we swim in it like fish in the ocean. “Policy” is, like chum in the water. You and I are talking about two different concepts.
What is the goal? Boosting national GDP or boosting GDP per capita? They will entail very different strategies.
The thing that is nuts about this post is the author seems to think there is this huge untapped reservoir of scientists and technical people clamoring to get into the US, but can’t. It’s a myth. But then the author pushes a lot of myths. That’s what Think Tank People do. Contrive and spread myths. If you provided visas for all the graduate students in the US you wouldn’t be filling up the quota set. There would be lots of room left over. (There are about 200,000 in grad schools in the US at the moment, BTW.) Not all want to stay. Not all are single. But then lots of those spouses are among the 200,000. So there’s lots of wiggling about this number.
The entire piece is a lot of hokum.
Moderator Note:
Insulting and rude[redacted]
Money. Aptitude. If you’re able to get an undergraduate engineering degree, then only a certain percentage are capable of going on to a masters and doctorate. The graduate can make a lot more money (usually) by getting a job rather than going on to grad school.
An Indian student who has graduated from IIT sees the amount a grad student in the US gets as more money than they can get staying in India.
Very different incentives.
Y’know what else seems funny? I don’t think anybody disputes that the birth rate drops as women become better educated. So, uh, we bring in all these genius immigrants and their presumably similarly situated wives–and they won’t breed either.
No, sounds like if we want population increase, we either need to start keeping American women illiterate, barefoot and pregnant–or we let in immigrants from cultures where that’s already the norm.
Or, as I said earlier, we need to heal our own culture so Americans will be inclined to breed again–even though we do believe in educating women! Reproduction is, is after all a life-affirming, faith-in-the-future activity.
You’ve gotten that 1,000,000% correct.
Yeah, thanks for the recognition. I don’t recall including a direct insult at any specific members in my comments, but, I’ll let the fact that you resorted to doing so speak for itself.
Ooooh I hate it when I miss seeing a comment that later gets redacted! Do tell! No, dont–the moderators have advised that any repetition makes their job so much harder….
And we’ll all be more impoverished, live in smaller houses, and have less disposable income.
I suspect increasing supply does increase demand for low skilled workers at the margin, but there are losses in the process and the increase in supply will be larger than the direct increase in demand so still a net negative. Worse the overall trend in our society is a net reduction in the need for low skill workers, so this supposed increase in demand also has to overcome a head wind caused by increases in technology and by government regulation for example high minimum wages. It doesn’t add up.
Hey! Yuse gize up dare are da ones wit weird accents. But I do like your cheese curds. Remember, Abe Frohman was the sossage king of Chicago not Kenosha.
A country with 326 million people does not need to import more. We have too many already.
Ahem, Abe Frohman.
Thanks, I corrected it. In my defense I typed it correctly the fist time, but my “smart” phone corrected me.
There is much truth in what you say.
By what method did you come by the knowledge to plan the United States population and economy?
We need more. When the best and brightest from all over the world come and live here, then we can stop.
By reading and worshiping Pat Buchanan.
Immigration (of any kind) isn’t the problem.
Socialism is the problem.
We need to stop giving people our hard earned money for free. And we need to also stop the birth right citizenship for people here illegally.
If we don’t give them free education, free money, free medical care, etc., then I don’t give one flying flip who comes to this country as long as they are law abiding.
We need to change the direction of the national discourse on this subject. We need to challenge the socialism that causes the problems, not the immigration that is simply a symptom of socialism.
Of course you’re right, but to end some of the dependency causing programs, price controls on wages, etc. we would benefit from excess demand for workers that would result from a period of lower immigration and time to acculturate the waves from quasi western countries.
I seem to be the only one shocked by the actual statistics cited in the OP.
If I understand it correctly, the proposal is to shift from an immigration policy based on family ties to an immigration policy based on employability. And after ten years under the proposed new system — ten years!!! — employment-based immigration will be about 26% of total immigration. 140,000 out of 540,000.
I do not understand why this new policy would have to be implemented so slowly.
I don’t agree, but I love this comment. You have to put it in Latin and use it at the end of everything that you post, like Cato the Elder. Carthago delenda est!
Sorry, I don’t know how to say “deep dish pizza” in Latin.