The Impossible Question of How Many Immigrants We Should Take From Mexico
Over at his excellent policy blog, Reihan Salamconcludes a post as follows:
We are a wealthy country with a vibrant culture. If our immigration policy is motivated by humanitarian concerns, we obviously wouldn’t focus on Mexico as opposed to the world’s poorest countries. And if our immigration policy is not motivated by humanitarian concerns, we’d presumably want to place a greater emphasis on drawing skilled migrants rather than less-skilled migrants, as Richwine and many others recommend. In either case, we’d need a very different immigration system. The main case for the status quo, or for a comprehensive immigration reform that entrenches existing patterns, seems to rest on interest group politics.
Maybe that’s right, but it doesn’t seem self-evident to me.
If we’re concerned with self-interest, the United States should certainly admit more high skill immigrants, but perhaps it should also prefer Mexican immigrants to similarly skilled immigrants from poorer countries. Were I arguing for that proposition, I’d point out that the Mexican diaspora can help future immigrants to transition and flourish more easily than (for example) a French speaking Haitian. Presumably our proximity and similarity in cultures matters too. I’d add that if our immigration policy serves as a release valve in some countries (which countries most benefit from that?), and remittances serve as a kind of indirect foreign aid, then our interest in Mexican stability might also militate in favor of preferring immigrants from our southern neighbor to newcomers from places father afield.
And if our concerns are strictly humanitarian, we cannot just consider poverty levels in a prospective immigrant’s country of origin: we must also consider how economically successful immigrants from that country are upon arrival in the US, their pattern of remittances, how efficiently their relatives back home use those remittances, whether there is a brain drain effect, even cultural factors that affect how happy people are moving to a foreign place far away from friends and family… it gets very complicated.
I don’t actually have an opinion about whether we should take more or fewer immigrants from Mexico, or what our immigrant mix would be if we wanted to maximize humanitarianism — about the only thing I know is that it’s in our self-interest to take a lot more high skill immigrants, and that all the other questions grappled with in this post are insanely complicated.
I calculated the impact of Mexican immigration on global carbon emissions here:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/100808_carbon.htm
— Steve Sailer · Aug 13, 10:02 AM · #
This is not an impossible question — high-skilled Mexican workers tend not to emigrate.
I agree — might write a follow-up post on this, but almost all of these factors push us towards emphasizing countries other than Mexico, including impact on family structure in the country of origin. And I’m not sure you read my earlier posts on the subject, but remittances are the strongest reason: redistributing to a middle-income country through remittances makes a lot less sense, on humanitarian grounds, than redistributing to a very poor country.
All that said, we could value the lives of Mexicans more than other non-Americans because (a) they are closer and (b) many Americans are of Mexican ancestry. That seems to be roughly what’s going on.
— Reihan · Aug 13, 02:10 PM · #
Why not just regulate the flow and stop worrying about who from where? Stinks of social planning, and I don’t trust it.
It makes a ton of sense on strategic grounds, since we share a border with them. Think of it as anti-Morlocking our periphery.
— KVS · Aug 13, 02:25 PM · #
Also, Reihan, I have a question for you, the policy dude, about a possible spoon full of sugar.
Here’s the question: why not reward all those who took the time to get work permits while complicating matters for those who are here illegally? That is, upon administrative fee and proof of permit, give all holders of work permits permanent resident status; mandate all future work permits to be applied for and delivered to country of origin/domicile; drastically streamline the application process for work permits; aggressively crack down on illegal immigration, especially employers; maybe even build a wall — all at the same time. Wouldn’t that help the medicine go down for both sides (and Hispanics), and subdue but not eliminate the more pressing problems (with apologies for your global humanitarian concerns) of chaos, undocumentation, exploitation, criminality, and the shame of a shadowy American underclass?
As importantly, wouldn’t this solution be politically practicable?
— KVS · Aug 13, 02:55 PM · #
Why do we want to let in high skill immigrants? If we are going to be social engineers, isn’t it more advantageous to our country to have current americans in the high skill, high pay jobs? At the very least current american citizens have all kinds of family-ties already in the country that will benefit from the high-skill jobs, where as immigrants have most of thier family in another country. And if we want americans to go to college becasue of the social benefits, why do we want to import competition—the cream of the crop from some other country, a ringer in other words—to compete with average americans?
I personally have no idea what we should do about immigration, but if were are going to talk about filtering immigrants, it seems like we might want them to, at least start out in, jobs that are less desired by current citizens.
— cw · Aug 13, 04:52 PM · #
Pretty much every industrialized nation in the world filters immigrants, except ours as it relates to our southern border. Letting anyone in the US originating from our southern border, while strictly controlling all other immigration, is a form of social engineering. But this discussion is premature. If we only have limited control over the flow of peoples from the south, then it will not be possible to have a real policy about what level (or type) of immigration is optimal. “This is so complicated!” or “I don’t like social engineering” are excuses for inaction or ignoring the issue.
— JC39 · Aug 13, 07:33 PM · #
We should let in however many want to come. The labor market is no different than any other market. They’ll come when there is demand and when there isn’t, they won’t. There is no real reason to restrict movement of free people other than security. Supply and demand takes care of everything else.
— Console · Aug 14, 12:44 AM · #
Neither one of them mentioned that MX already has a good deal of political power inside the U.S., and more immig. from that country will give them even more power. The MX gov’t is directly or indirectly linked to several non-profits, they attend public meetings in cities from coast to coast to push their agenda, and Bush even made a pledge to the MX people and the MX gov’t to push amnesty. Yet, oddly enough, that doesn’t factor into Conor’s calculations. Why is that? And, what would he do about it?
— 24AheadDotCom · Aug 16, 11:02 PM · #
Console is right. In fact, I see no difference between people and any other good like refrigerators.
— 24AheadDotCom · Aug 16, 11:04 PM · #
I like a marginal benefit approach to immigration. For each class of immigrant (comprising country of origin, occupation/ skills, age), we ask the following question: Does America benefit from having more of you?
Living in California, it’s pretty easy to answer that we don’t really need more men standing around in front of Home Depots hoping for day labor or aged non-English speakers lining up in front of churches for free food. We probably could use more young engineers, mathematicians, biochemists, doctors and statisticians from anywhere. We probably don’t need anymore women’s studies or education phds. I personally would like to see more models and pop singers from Scandinavia and the Baltics. More cricket players from the sub-continent could be cool as well as more soccer stars from Latin America.
This is a fun game – we could tune this on an annual basis. Some years we might even decide that we don’t need more of anything, taking a break, others we might open the floodgates to New Zealand skiier and rugby players. Anything would be better than the system we have now.
— aclay1 · Aug 18, 06:27 AM · #