Immigration Myth-Busting - Redux
2020-05-28 · Guest: Alex Nowrasteh (Cato Institute) · 51:28
Debunking common myths surrounding immigration
Bob Zadek interviews Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute to debunk common myths surrounding immigration. They discuss the economic impact on wages, the relationship between immigration and crime, the welfare state, and the historical shift from legal guest worker programs to modern illegal immigration.
Topics: Immigration, Economics, Cato Institute, Welfare State, Crime Rates, Constitutional Law, Labor Markets, Hong Kong
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Alex Nowrasteh
Introduction and the Cato Institute [00:17]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. We are always the show of ideas, never, ever the show of attitude.
This morning I’d like to welcome back to the show—often I like to mention how many times the guest has been back, but the only word I can use for our guest this morning is “countless times,” and both countless times and not nearly enough. I’m happy to welcome back to the show again my friend, my mentor in matters relating to immigration and liberty in general, Alex Nowrasteh. Alex is the Director of Immigration Studies at Cato’s Institute—at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. Immigration policy, global liberty, and prosperity. It doesn’t get any more important than that.
Alex has written extensively on immigration policy, has appeared on countless—there I go again—on countless media appearances on television and in blogs. His insights into immigration, his data-driven, data-driven, fact-intensive studies are a must-reading. Whatever your point of view is, you must start with the data, and if you start with the data, you start with Alex’s writing.
So Alex, thank you so much for joining us this morning to talk about immigration policy. And Alex, before—before we start, I just want to mention, just because I’m so compelled to do it, the wonderful work that your organization, the Cato Institute, does. At times like this with the—with all that’s going on between the virus and now the rioting that’s happening across the country, I find myself, from the moment I wake up, I bury myself in writings and in statements issued by the Cato Institute. Cato is a free-market, libertarian-ish or libertarian think tank which furthers small government, personal freedom, maximum control over one’s life, freedom to run your life the way you wish, and they are non-partisan. They appear before Congress all the time. They are the go-to think tank when Congress really wants to get rid of the hyperbole and find out what the real facts are. Congress and state legislatures always turn to Cato.
And the way I’ll summarize it: Cato for me helps me when I find myself in a battle between my heart and my mind, a battle that Aristotle wrote about, that Thomas Jefferson wrote about, and now I’m mentioning. When I have a battle between my heart and my mind as to what proper policy is, I go to Cato because Cato speaks to both at the same time, and it is the source of reason in troubled times. So Alex, thank you for your work and thank you for the wonderful work of Cato.
Alex Nowrasteh: Well, Bob, thank you so much. And I just want to say, this work wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of yourself and people like you, those who come to our website, read it, absorb the ideas, spread them. And I just want to say about the non-partisan nature of Cato: we get cited about equally by Republicans and Democrats, you know, on different issues on Capitol Hill. So I think we’re doing something right when both political parties, the two major political parties, can both find aspects of our philosophy and approach that they can agree with, they can glob onto, and that they can push out there in public.
Bob Zadek: And I will promise every listener to this show and to the podcast, I will promise you: you will learn from Cato’s writing and from Alex’s writing, and here is the important part of the promise: nothing will make you angry. They do not fan emotional flames. They dispassionately and with great force simply lay out the facts. They have a point of view, but they defend their point of view with facts, not with hyperbole. And that is why Cato is so essential to political and public life in America.
The Constitutional Basis of Immigration Law [05:31]
Bob Zadek: Okay, Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Now let’s roll up our sleeves and let’s do a deep dive into immigration policy. Now, immigration policy, even the concept of immigration policy, is almost strange in a way that there is almost nothing in the Constitution that empowers our government to affect who can come into this country. It was simply assumed, well, of course people who want to come here can come here. So isn’t it a fair place to start that there was no such thing as immigration policy other than, of course you can come in if you meet some minimal standards? And that has—that was the history of our country for the first 100-plus years of our life. So can we start with that point? Is that an accurate statement, Alex?
Alex Nowrasteh: Yeah, I would go even further. There’s no—in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which lays out Congress’s power, there was a power to grant naturalization, which is the process for becoming an American citizen. But there is nothing in there about immigration restrictions, the ability to come here and live and work. Nothing at all.
And up until 1875, there were zero federal restrictions on immigration. You could come in, and under federal law, you could have it on your face tattooed saying “I’m a murderer,” and there was no law on the federal books that would have stopped you from coming in. I think that went a little too far in that way, but it was assumed that the states would, at the point of entry in an American state, in New York or Philadelphia or Baltimore, that states would be the ones that would handle this.
And they largely did. The predecessor to Ellis Island was Castle Island in New York, where they sort of quarantined people who were sick, they tried to deport people who were obviously criminals or insane, decades before the federal government got involved in that. And beginning in 1875, the federal government started to ban criminals, prostitutes, people who they considered to be moral degenerates and others. In 1882, they banned the Chinese.
And it wasn’t until the case in 1889, a Supreme Court case, where the Supreme Court said, yes, the federal government has power to restrict immigration, and Congress has something called plenary power, which basically means they can do whatever they want without restriction. This is sort of judge-made law that said just due to the fact that the U.S. Congress has sovereignty in the United States, the U.S. government has sovereignty, they can therefore do whatever they want over immigration.
This is not consistent with what the founders believed. There is no sovereignty clause in the Constitution like that. There’s no clause that says that the Congress has power over immigration. It was assumed that any sovereign government would be able to do this by the time this Supreme Court case was enacted. But all of the other powers that we assume a sovereign government has, from raising an army to levying taxes to organizing itself, those were all spelled out in detail in the Constitution. Immigration was not.
So I think it’s fair to say the founders didn’t want the federal government to be able to limit immigration. They thought the states would play a role in sort of keeping out those who were undesirable. And this manifestation of immigration law and control—and just to put it in context, immigration law today is second in complexity to the income tax code on U.S. books—this was sort of unimaginable to people in the past. It was just assumed that people, free people, would be able to come here to live and work, and most of them would eventually be able to become citizens. And then you fast forward to today, and it’s the exact opposite. The assumption in American law is that nobody is allowed to come, with the exception of a handful of individuals selected by the government.
The Myth of Wage Suppression [13:01]
Bob Zadek: And what’s so interesting to at least to me is that one of the bedrock founding principles of our country is the abhorrence and the unwelcoming in any way of hereditary status. We have no peerage in the U.S., unlike the UK, which is where most of our traditions came from. We always have in our gut disliked status which one inherits. And yet the status of living in America is an inherited status. If my parents are here, if I am the child of an American, I am an American. It has nothing to do with the quality that I have or anything about me other than the accident of birth. So a country that was founded despising peerage now promotes peerage today. Just like one can inherit the title of Baron of something or other, because you are of American birth, you are an American, and that is contrary to core values.
Also, just to mention in passing, that the first immigration statutes were born, as so many bad policies are, out of racism. At that time, it was racism and dislike, if not stronger words, of the Chinese. There was the Chinese Exclusion Act. We’re not going to get into the history; it’s just plain too ugly and too unpleasant except for instructive purposes.
But this policy, carried forward to today, is born of forms of racism, if not xenophobia, fear of people who are just different than us. Now, Alex, so immigration policy today, as you have pointed out, is incredibly complex. For reasons we don’t need to get into, I want to focus on during the hour we have together is: what are the profound myths in America which are encouraged by those people who favor exclusionary policy? Those people who make the politicians and the like, and influencers as they are sometimes called, will make a series of arguments, quote-unquote arguments, in favor of an exclusionary immigration policy. And none of those arguments have their basis in fact. And I’d like to dispel, in as much time as we have, some of the major myths because they can be classified in groups, and we’re going to cover them in groups. But what—give us an example, Alex, of the myths, of the fallacies, of the made-up basis for an exclusionary policy. Let’s start with one example that comes to mind, maybe perhaps the strongest example of a myth that is used to justify a punitive to would-be immigrants immigration policy.
Alex Nowrasteh: So I think the most common one we hear is that immigrants are going to come in, they’re going to take our jobs, they’re going to lower American wages, and they’re going to make all of us poorer as a result. And this is one where the evidence against that argument is so strong that it basically convinced every economist who studies this issue that it’s not true.
So a restrictionist will say, an immigration restrictionist will say, “You know, immigrants come in, they increase the supply of labor, and like supply and demand, that’ll just lower wages.” But the thing is, they always say supply and demand, but they only focus on supply and they ignore demand. Because immigrants are people. They come here, they buy things, they live, they also increase the demand curve. And the net result of this—you know, this increase in supply, more workers, increase in demand of these workers buying things and being more productive here in the United States—is that the wages of native-born Americans actually slightly, just slightly, go up as a result of immigrants coming to the United States.
Research by George Borjas of Harvard University, an economics professor over there, who is the most widely cited skeptic of the benefits of immigration, even he finds that immigrants from about 1990 to 2010 increased the wages of native-born Americans by about one-half of a percentage point. Now, that’s not a big amount, but that is the exact opposite result that immigration restrictionists predict. And that is because immigrants, unlike say apples or tons of steel, increase demand in the economy as a whole.
So it’s the same fallacy we hear from other people, from our friends on the left, who talk about how there’s a fixed supply of resources, we need to redistribute these resources, the government needs to redistribute them because there’s only so much to go around. Well, there’s not a fixed supply of jobs, there’s not a fixed supply of the types of work that people can do. These things can change, and having more people here in any economy in the world is beneficial for that economy, helps growth, increases jobs, increases wages in the long run. So that I think is the most common argument that we hear, and it is the one that has been rebutted by economists across the political spectrum so thoroughly and so completely that it’s frankly become a boring subject in the academic literature because it’s so overwhelming, the evidence is contrary to what the immigration restrictionists say.
Productivity and Capital Investment [16:01]
Bob Zadek: Alex, I’d like to drill down just a tiny bit. You have mentioned that influx of immigration doesn’t take away American jobs—and I’m going to revisit that issue in a moment—doesn’t take away American jobs, and it has the effect, albeit slightly, of increasing the wages of native-born American workers. Now, can you help us understand how that actually works? What is the economic dynamic that causes this relationship: increased immigration raises the wages of native-born workers?
Alex Nowrasteh: Sure. So, yeah, wages for people are determined by their productivity. It’s how much stuff you can make for your company. So if I can produce a maximum of $15 of revenue for my firm for every hour that I’m working, then I cannot be paid more than $15. It is the absolute maximum because otherwise the company would be losing money and they would fire me. The company wants to pay me less than that, but because I’m a worker who wants to make money, I can always go to another company that will pay a little bit more because I can produce $15. So from this supply and demand interaction, we get basically workers being paid what they’re worth, that is up to that $15 an hour.
But the thing is, workers also need tools. They need capital in order to be productive. These are the machines, computers, the tools that we use to help us with our jobs. You know, try to think of a construction site where they’re building a house and nobody has access to any hammers or nails or anything like that. They wouldn’t get much done. So what happens is—and this is sort of drilling down into these economic models—is that the productivity of these workers, which remember determines their wages, is determined by the supply of workers and the supply of these capital goods.
So what happens is, in the short run, more immigration comes in, lowers the price of labor, but it also increases the profits to capital. So what happens is businesses and others take advantage of this lower-priced labor in the short run, but they make more and more investments in capital because the profits from owning capital increase. So very rapidly what happens is wages can slightly go down with more immigration in the short run, but as businesses build more capital to take advantage of the lower labor cost, and because capital has a higher return on investment now, you get an increased supply of capital, and that raises productivity, which raises wages.
Now, the important thing is investors and businesses, they’re not stupid. They anticipate this. So what happens is you don’t even typically get that short-run decline, but you basically just get the increasing wages because businesses and the economy anticipate a million or so immigrants coming in every year to work, so they make those investments in capital in advance, before they even arrive.
Competition and the Labor Market [19:32]
Bob Zadek: So therefore, so it’s clear on so many levels that as to the myth that immigration lowers wages, it’s wrong on every level imaginable. But not only that, there are two other comments I’d just like to make very briefly. Number one: “Immigrants are going to take away my job.” I have always railed against the concept of “my job.” No one owns a job. You have a job because your employer has concluded that you are the best person at the rate they pay you, the best person to do the function that you perform. And it is only your job because you have priced your services at what they are worth, and therefore you have found a buyer for your services. The moment that you demand to be overpaid, or the moment somebody else can do exactly what you do for a lower wage, you lose, as you should, your job. Nobody is entitled to be paid more than they are worth. Now, that’s a very simple concept, but once you embrace that truism, you cannot resist immigration, because if somebody is willing to come in to do your job cheaper, then you have to find some way to make yourself valuable or accept the fact that maybe you’re not the best person for that job. Now, Alex, when also—
Alex Nowrasteh: If I can—let me say something about that if you don’t mind. Like, I completely agree with that. And I know there’s probably some listeners out there who are thinking, “Well, of course he says that, you know, he has a secure job, no competition with immigrants.” But that is not true. Like, I work in a non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C., and under American law, my think tank can hire an numerically unlimited number of H-1B visas, who are high-skilled specialty workers, to work in my job. So I am competing with all the higher-skilled workers around the world to keep my job at all times. I’m facing more competition than virtually any other area in the labor market. And I have lots of colleagues from around the world who have come in on these different visas, you know, from Argentina, Costa Rica, from Eastern Europe, from South Africa, from India, from all over the place.
So this is not, you know, some kind of abstract idea for me. What you just said, this is reality for me, except it’s with the entire world. And it has led, I think, to a better institute, a more productive institute. It has led me to be a more productive worker. And I would not, for reasons of principle, oppose the hiring of somebody to come in who can do this job better than I can. In fact, I care so much about this cause, I want my employer to find somebody who’s better than me. If they can do it better than me, then they should get my job. And I know I have a mortgage and that’s hard to say at times, but that’s the principled way. And I am exposed to that competition every single day. I have to prove myself every single day. And I know a lot of people are listening to this and being like, “Well, duh, that’s how jobs work.” And I agree with you, it is how they work. But as opposed to most people in this country, I am intensely exposed to foreign competition, and it makes us better. It makes us more productive, makes us better workers.
Bob Zadek: And let’s remember that if wages go down because of immigration, that is in effect an increase in economic well-being for a large majority of Americans because the products they buy cost less. And therefore the price of food, the price of clothing, the price of everything goes down, and that is not a small number. And therefore everybody benefits. This rising tide of productivity benefits everybody.
So there—it’s hard to find a victim in immigration, and it’s easy to find those people who are the beneficiaries. So the fact is, of course you can always point to some economic dislocation. And remember that every time we invent something that is a, quote, “labor-saving device,” labor-saving is a nice way of saying somebody gets fired. They are no longer productive because a machine can do it better. And I don’t think any American would want to criminalize innovation because it eliminates jobs. We thrive on immigration; we need it to survive as a planet. And therefore lowering wages is a worldwide goal in effect, and those people who find themselves out of work because the skill they offer is now at the price they want to sell it for is overpriced, they simply have to find a new way to offer a service at a price people are willing to pay. And that goes on throughout the economy all the time. It’s been happening since the beginning of work through and including today. So the fact that there is a fear of dislocation simply means people stop being overpaid.
The Bracero Program and Illegal Immigration [29:16]
Alex Nowrasteh: And there’s a great example of that, by the way, if I could give you an example of that just to sort of ground it. From 1942 to 1964, the United States had this temporary guest worker visa program for Mexicans to work in agriculture. It was called the Bracero Program. And this program during the time brought in millions of Mexican workers to work temporarily in agriculture, then they’d go back home at the end of the season.
And this program was ended in 1964 during the Johnson administration because the labor unions, like Cesar Chavez’s labor unions, United Farm Workers, lobbied Congress to end this program. And they did a lot of other nasty things, like call the INS on illegal immigrants, they formed a line on the border like a border militia to try to push people back, all this nasty stuff. And they succeeded in ending this program, and their argument was “This will raise our wages.”
There’s recent evidence that has come forward by some fantastic economists who have taken a look at this, and they found that the wages for farmworkers actually slowed—their growth slowed down after this bill was passed. After the Bracero Program was ended and these workers could no longer come in, the wages for American workers in agriculture actually went down. It had the exact opposite effect of what people thought, because all of a sudden it became cheaper for farmers to instead of growing vegetables, to instead grow wheat, because the price of labor had changed, because this market had changed. So it has the exact opposite effect of what people think. Fewer people does not lead to higher wages. It leads typically to lower wage growth and economic stagnation.
Bob Zadek: You know, Alex, until you mentioned that, I had totally forgotten that we had the Bracero Program. And I knew that it stopped; I couldn’t remember—and thank you for that—why it had stopped, because it worked so amazingly well while we had it. It gave people south of our border jobs, they sent money home, it allowed us to have fresh produce cheaper, and farmers prospered. It was win-win-win, except for the small group of unionized, mostly immigrants but who were naturalized in our country, who wanted to protect their job from competition. And it was simply a way to build a monopoly, build a guild, build a governmental protection that you can be overpaid and nobody can stop you. I had forgotten that, so thank you so much, Alex.
Alex Nowrasteh: And just one small point on this: the result of ending that legal program is not that all the workers went away and no Mexicans came again. That is what created the modern era of illegal immigration that we know and live with today. The government took away the ability to come here legally and to work, replaced it with nothing, and as a result, people still wanted to come here and work, Americans still wanted to hire them. So instead of coming legally, instead of getting a work permit, instead of the U.S. government knowing who they are, they came illegally, they crossed the border illegally, they overstayed another visa like a tourist visa, they hired smugglers and coyotes to work in the United States. And as a result, 60 years later, we have a large illegal immigrant population because they couldn’t come legally. And that has been the great terrible legacy of stopping legal low-skilled immigration: it’s just replaced by illegal immigration.
Bob Zadek: Now, Alex, you had mentioned that when the Bracero Program stopped in ‘64, the immigration didn’t stop, it just illegal activity became illegal. And that points to—I don’t want to get off on a tangent, but I have to make this point—that points to a very, very all-too-common event in American life, and that is the government criminalizes an activity that everybody thinks is beneficial, or at least shouldn’t be criminalized. You criminalize natural human harmless behavior—think gambling, perhaps even prostitution, perhaps artificially low speed limits, minimum wage laws. You criminalize activity that everybody feels is beneficial, and therefore people will do it anyway, as a result of which we end up having growing disrespect for the law because it prevents you from doing something that everybody wants to do. So all you do is you send parts of the economy deeply underground and criminalize people who are not lawless; they are not harming anybody else. And it builds—it’s harmful for civic life because it builds profound disrespect for the law, which is so detriment to our core values. And that was exactly what you described with the criminalizing of the natural impulse farmers have to hire workers and workers have to work. Once you criminalize that activity, it’s going to happen anyway, just like criminalizing drugs and so many other activities. So thank you for mentioning that point.
Alex Nowrasteh: Exactly. If we want people to respect the law, the law has to be respectable.
Bob Zadek: Absolutely. That’s a wonderful way to put it. Thank you for that. That’s a perfect way to summarize, and in a much more brief way than I did, to summarize the principle we both embrace. So thank you so much. You can be my writer, Alex, my ghostwriter.
Immigration and the Welfare State [33:01]
Bob Zadek: Now, Alex, another area of mythology surrounding immigration is this whole area of welfare. Why should we pay for people who are in the country illegally? And this whole myth that illegal immigrants or immigrants in general constitute a drain because they immediately, once they cross the border, they have access to our extensive welfare system of wealth transfers, and therefore they drain the economy. Help us understand: is there any truth in that whatsoever?
Alex Nowrasteh: There’s a little bit of truth, but mostly it’s sort of a misunderstanding. So first off, the United States does have a large welfare state. About 66% of all federal government outlays are for welfare programs. That includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all the means-tested program, food stamps, etc. The thing is, under U.S. law, a new immigrant who is legal to the U.S. does not have access to these benefits for the first five years that they are here, with the exception of a few small programs, such as school lunches, which are one of the cheapest welfare programs, and for some emergency Medicaid.
Illegal immigrants don’t have access to means-tested welfare benefits, with the exception of the two programs I already mentioned, and some states are allowed to extend welfare to some of these people if they want to, but all that money has to come out of the state budgets. Because the way welfare works in the U.S. is the federal government gives block grants to states of a lot of money, and then states have to contribute an equal amount to the welfare programs in their own state. So if the state decides to give welfare to legal immigrants or illegal immigrants who are here who are not eligible out of the federal programs, then that money has to be extra money that state government throws in on top of the amount that they’re already granted.
Now, digging down into this further, what we see is that immigrants in the U.S. use on a per capita basis considerably less welfare than native-born Americans, between about 20 and 40% less, depending on the program, than native-born Americans do. Now, this is remarkable because immigrants are much more likely to be poorer than native-born Americans are. They’re much more likely to have less than a high school degree—about a third of immigrants have less than a high school degree—but they’re also much more likely to work, have higher labor force participation rates, have higher rates of starting businesses. They’re more entrepreneurial, they’re more driven, and as a result of this, and because of some of the laws on the books that restrict immigrant access to welfare, they consume a lot less welfare than native-born Americans do.
But you know, I’m opposed to the existence of the welfare state. I don’t think it should exist. So I think what we need to do—and this is something that we have done in the past—is to build a higher wall around the welfare state, not build a wall around the country. If welfare is what somebody is concerned about when it comes to immigration, then they should focus on limiting access to welfare. They shouldn’t focus on tinkering with American demographics by restricting immigration. Like, you and I know the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare are on the verge of bankruptcy. These are terrible, unsustainable programs. But we want to reform those programs. We don’t want to get rid of the elderly. You know, they’re our fellow citizens and human beings. I don’t want to get rid of anybody. But the way that we take care of this problem is to reform the welfare programs, and that’s the way that we should view it with immigration. If there’s a problem with welfare and immigration, then we should build a wall around the welfare state, not around the country.
Immigration and Crime Rates [37:05]
Bob Zadek: Now, another myth, a big one, relevant today this morning because of the horrible rioting around the country, the lawlessness if you will, is that immigrants commit more crimes and they disrupt life in the country because they don’t conform to American legal standards. Is there a relationship in those parts of the country which have a lot of immigrants—California, New York, Florida, Texas—is there any relationship between increased criminal activity and pockets of immigration or pockets of immigrants living? And if there is a relationship, what is it?
Alex Nowrasteh: So there is a relationship between immigrant populations in the country and crime, and that relationship is: the more immigrants there are, the less crime there is in these areas. And that is a finding that has gone back for over a century and is even maintained until today.
So if we take a look at nationwide incarceration rates, what we find is that illegal immigrants in the U.S. have an incarceration rate about half that of native-born Americans, and legal immigrants have an incarceration rate about half that of illegal immigrants. So basically, legal immigrants have an incarceration rate 75% below that of native-born Americans, and illegal immigrants have one about 50% below native-born Americans.
Now, the problem with that research I just stated is it’s based on estimates of the illegal immigrant population. So because the U.S. government doesn’t keep track of those who are incarcerated by their immigration status—it only keeps track of whether they’re foreign-born or not—so we have to make some estimates using statistical methods to find who’s an illegal immigrant there. So that might be kind of funky with that incarceration data.
Fortunately, there was one state that actually does track the immigration status of people once they are arrested and convicted on the state level for state-level crimes, and that is the glorious state of Texas, which does track this. And what we find is, in Texas, just like we found with the incarceration rates nationwide, is that illegal immigrants have a criminal conviction rate of about half that of native-born Americans, while legal immigrants have a conviction rate of about half again that of illegal immigrants.
So the relationship seems to hold in a great state like Texas, which is governed by Republicans, has a tradition of tough law enforcement, and that is along the border with Mexico and has the second-highest illegal immigrant population rate. Now, one of the things I want to say is let’s say, for instance, you know, the numbers that we hear about the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is like 11 to 12 million. Let’s say that those numbers are wrong, and let’s say that there are, you know, millions more illegal immigrants in the U.S. Well, that means, since we know the number of people who are in prison, that the illegal immigrant and legal immigrant incarceration and crime rates are even lower than what I’m talking about. So if we’re wrong about the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. and it’s a lot higher than we think, then that means their crime rates are a lot lower than we actually think they are.
Bob Zadek: So therefore—and that’s a very common argument, rhetorical argument, used by those who oppose immigration, that it simply invites lawlessness. Remember Donald Trump’s loathsome comment about rapists and murderers in referring to the Mexicans, that mindless, hateful, somewhat racist comment? That is simply an inflammatory argument which again has no data to support it.
Do Immigrants Undermine Institutions? [41:29]
Bob Zadek: Now, Alex, if you were going to make an argument against open borders, which you and I both passionately favor, is there any argument in support of restrictive immigration policy?
Alex Nowrasteh: There is an argument that if the evidence supported it would convince me to close or restrict immigration a little bit. And that’s the argument that immigrants might bring with them ideas, voting patterns, opinions about the nature of government, anti-capitalist opinions that could undermine—that could influence public policy and undermine our prosperity. I mean, the only reason why America and other rich countries are rich is because of our economic and political institutions. We have relative free markets, relative rule of law, relative security. So if immigrants come in and they’re all a bunch of communists or fascists or something like that, anti-capitalist, and they vote for those things and they change these institutions, it could be that we’d be in the long run poorer as a result of immigration because they come from countries that are so much worse. So maybe they bring these ideas with them and as a result they could overwhelm and undermine what makes us a, you know, a wealthy, prosperous, and free country.
I actually, along with Benjamin Powell, who’s a professor at Texas Tech University, we wrote a book about this that’s going to be coming out later this year or early next year from Cambridge University Press. We analyzed all of the evidence of this: do immigrants from poor countries, from countries with bad institutions, do they undermine institutions in developed countries and make them poorer or worse? And we find no evidence that this has ever happened anywhere.
And furthermore, we find a lot of evidence that they actually improve institutions in places like the United States. And one of the ways that we think this happens is that immigrants do undermine labor unions. They destroy labor unions because labor unions can’t organize effectively when there’s immigrants in an area. And labor unions are the one most powerful vehicle from which left-wing politicians gain power, become more progressive over time, and have the money to successfully organize, get out the vote, and run campaigns. So labor unions, to the extent that they are harmed and undermined by immigration, are the main losers of this.
And it’s no mistake that when immigration was most closed in this country, from the mid-1920s up through the mid-to-late 1960s, was the time when the federal government, state governments grew in size tremendously because labor unions were growing. And labor unions started to shrink and collapse beginning in the late ’60s and early ’70s, exactly at the same time that immigration laws were liberalized and starting to come in. So if we want to defend our institutions from sort of left-wing anti-capitalist ideas, one of the best ways to do that is to increase immigration because it undermines the most successful and progressive institutions in this country pushing for anti-capitalist policies, and those institutions that they undermine are labor unions. So if we want to defend these, more immigration is absolutely a way to go.
Bob Zadek: Alex, when you were talking about making a straw man, a hypothetical argument at my invitation, that the argument against immigration is they bring in bad ideas, anti-capitalist ideas, fascism and the like, which are contrary to our values, I found myself smiling, a confession. Why was I smiling? Because that is the argument that people in Colorado and in Utah and in Texas make as Californians leave California because they can’t stand the political climate and they move to more conservative states and they bring with them their progressive voting habits. And therefore there is almost proof that your fear exists interstate in the United States. So people in Utah don’t want immigration from California because they bring these nasty ideas that I find that I have to live with every day. So actually on an interstate basis, that dynamic that you don’t favor exists in our country. I say that even though it has very little and no relevance to immigration, but living in California and watching people load up their U-Hauls and move to more conservative states, I had to mention that point.
Alex Nowrasteh: And I want to say—and I want to say something related to that if you don’t mind. I’m a native Californian. I was born in LA, and I moved out to Virginia a long time ago for university. But what’s funny is when you take a look at the voting patterns of people from California who settle in Texas, they’re actually more conservative than the native-born Texans. They vote more Republican than the native-born Texans in that state. So if it wasn’t for migration, interstate migration, Texas would be slightly more Democratic than it is currently, because the people who want to go to Texas—not all of them are Republicans, not all of them are conservatives, not all of them support current Texas state policies—but most of them do. So the net effect is actually a retrenchment of a lot of these conservative policies in places like Texas.
Bob Zadek: So California’s two major exports to the rest of the country are avocados and conservatives. Interesting. Those are the two ways we contribute to improving life in the rest of the country.
Strategic Immigration: Hong Kong and China [48:01]
Bob Zadek: Now, Alex, regretfully we’re kind of running out of time, but I want to mention, only because it’s so timely on the subject of immigration, what’s going on in Hong Kong. Because there are profound opportunities to improve our country, improve or further our arguments against China’s regressive policies, and to improve economic life in America in what’s going on in Hong Kong. Speak for a few minutes how the U.S. from a standpoint of immigration policy can take advantage of the repressive attitude of China towards formerly free Hong Kong.
Alex Nowrasteh: So I think there are two things that we can do to hit back at China and benefit the U.S. at the same time. The first way is to basically give green cards or grant asylum status to anybody in Hong Kong who wants to come here. Say, if you want to come here from Hong Kong, you go ahead, you come here, you leave behind that communist tyranny that is building over there, come start a new life in America. We’ll make it easy for you by granting you immigration status.
The second way to do it—and I think this should be done in tandem—is to take a look at all of China and say, if you’re a skilled Chinese worker, if you have a college degree or above, you come to the U.S., we’ll give you a work permit, you live and work here. This would result in a flow of the most highly skilled and productive workers in China and undermine decades of effort by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate the brain drain. It would make it worse for them, better for us, and it would undermine so many of their policies to try to get skilled people to come to China, and it would be a great benefit to the United States.
Bob Zadek: And a huge public relations benefit. And imagine China trying to—they have a big border. Imagine trying to build a Berlin Wall around China. Kind of a daunting task, even though they already have a wall. I think their existing wall would be ineffective.
Closing remarks [50:01]
Bob Zadek: And Alex, we only have about a minute to go. Before I turn it over you for closing remarks, I want to just comment, only because it’s so timely on the subject of immigration, what’s going on in Hong Kong. Because there are profound opportunities to improve our country, improve or further our arguments against China’s regressive policies, and to improve economic life in America in what’s going on in Hong Kong. Speak for a few minutes how the U.S. from a standpoint of immigration policy can take advantage of the repressive attitude of China towards formerly free Hong Kong.
Alex Nowrasteh: So I think there are two things that we can do to hit back at China and benefit the U.S. at the same time. The first way is to basically give green cards or grant asylum status to anybody in Hong Kong who wants to come here. Say, if you want to come here from Hong Kong, you go ahead, you come here, you leave behind that communist tyranny that is building over there, come start a new life in America. We’ll make it easy for you by granting you immigration status.
The second way to do it—and I think this should be done in tandem—is to take a look at all of China and say, if you’re a skilled Chinese worker, if you have a college degree or above, you come to the U.S., we’ll give you a work permit, you live and work here. This would result in a flow of the most highly skilled and productive workers in China and undermine decades of effort by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate the brain drain. It would make it worse for them, better for us, and it would undermine so many of their policies to try to get skilled people to come to China, and it would be a great benefit to the United States.
Bob Zadek: And a huge public relations benefit. And imagine China trying to—they have a big border. Imagine trying to build a Berlin Wall around China. Kind of a daunting task, even though they already have a wall. I think their existing wall would be ineffective.
And Alex, we only have about a minute to go. Before I turn it over you for closing remarks, I want to just comment, only because it’s so timely on the subject of immigration, you often hear people say they are opposed to illegal immigration. And I always ask them when they say that, which part of it do you oppose: the illegal or the immigrant part? If you oppose the illegal part, I agree with you; let’s make it all legal. If you oppose the immigrant part, then just admit that’s your problem.
Now, Alex, just in closing, I want to thank you again as I started this show. Incredibly thoughtful work you do at Cato, and I want to equally thank Cato. And please convey it: Cato is an essential natural resource in our country. Without Cato, I would fear for the direction our country would go. And Cato has managed to remain sane and preserve the shining city on a hill we all cherish. So thank you so much to my friends at Cato, and a special thanks to my good friend Alex Nowrasteh for joining us this morning. Bob Zadek saying so long for now. Have a good Sunday. I’ll be back again next Sunday, sure as anything. Thanks so much.