Notes Towards a Policy Platform: Part IV
Short one: immigration.
I live in New York City. New York City is really crowded. Most of the country isn’t. We have plenty of room to grow, and if we want to amortize our debt effectively, we should do it over a modestly growing population.
But we need a population that is more productive. Right now, we’re selecting our immigrant population very peculiarly. We strictly limit the number of highly-skilled immigrants. Unskilled immigrants who sneak in we harass and generally leave vulnerable to economic exploitation and other suffering, but we don’t do much of anything punish the exploiters.
It seems to me that a very simple way of cutting the Gordian knot of immigration would be to auction visas.
Each year, Congress would set the number of visas available for auction. They would then go up for bid by anybody. With a visa in hand, anybody who passed some form of security check to make sure you’re not a criminal, spy, terrorist, etc. would be permitted to reside in the U.S.A. for the duration of the visa, and work, study – whatever.
NGOs could purchase visas for political or economic refugees. Employers could purchase visas for desired employees. Universities could purchase visas for desired students. Individuals could purchase their own visas to do whatever.
Work here without a valid visa? Somebody’s defrauded the government; you should have purchased that visa at auction. There’s really no good excuse for not having one. Sanctions could be split between the individual and the employer according to some formula. Take the whole question out of the hands of the INS and give it to the IRS, who seem to get better results generally.
With such a system in place, I think you’d immediately see an uptick in the average skill level of the immigrant population. The economy would benefit from reduced labor market friction. And the American people would get the benefit of the revenue from the auctions, which would offset the socialized transaction costs of absorbing immigrants.
The United States is anomalous relative to other countries that are generally open to immigration (e.g., Canada, Australia) in paying negligible attention to trying to attract skilled immigrants. Rather than having the government decide who we need to bring in, this is basically a proposal to let the market decide.
It’s a cool idea, but I’m not sure it would work politically, in that it would’t calm calm the angriest anti-immigration voices. I don’t know, but I suspect that many if not most of the angriest voices about immigration today don’t really care if it’s 500,000 Mexicans walking across the border to work illegally or 500,000 Indians, Chinese, Nigerians, etc winning auctions to work legally. I guess you could set it at a lower than necessary number to appease this group, but unless you increase the number of visas to what the labor market requires, the underlying problem pulling Mexicans and Central Americans northward (not to mention the issues at home that are pushing them across) aren’t really addressed.
In any event, I’d be interested in reading the logistics fleshed out a little more. Assuming the visas are affordable for small business, do they have to go to a foreign country to find the recipients of the visa? (For instance, an independent restaurant searching for its kitchen staff.) That would seem to make the process too onerous for many people you’d want participating. Or is the idea that the potentially employees would already be here illegally and the purchase of the visa would allow them to work?
— pc · Mar 18, 03:01 PM · #
pc: Lou Dobbs could buy up visas and burn them in a pile on TV. “It’s like cap and trade for brown people!”
— Matt Frost · Mar 18, 06:46 PM · #
very nice thank you..
— sesli sohbet · Mar 24, 02:15 AM · #
I found one of the best ways to get comments is to ask questions.
— hip hop clothing · Mar 25, 05:43 PM · #