Immigration V – The Utilitarian Argument
Some people reject arguments about rights and freedom. To these people, natural rights arguments ignore the fundamental importance of results. Humans don’t fundamentally care about means, they care about ends. That’s why they are called ends, Milton Friedman would say. What are the results of immigration? In a capitalist society, people specialize in a certain profession and then trade their labor for the goods and services of other people. When an immigrant enters a profession, they compete with the people currently in that profession. If they provide a service at a lower cost, then people who purchase that service will have more money left over to purchase other goods and services. The total sum of human production will increase. These gains from immigration are equivalent to the aggregate gains from international trade. Some utilitarians adopt a skewed view of utility. They value not increased productivity in general, but the increased income of the poor in particular. If immigrants enter the labor market, they may increase the total income of all Americans together, but competitive forces may decrease the incomes of the specific (poor) Americans that are most competing with immigrants. These concentrated losses are equivalent to the industry specific losses caused by international trade. But immigrants moving into low wage industries in America are almost certainly moving out of even lower wage industries in other countries. Why else would they immigrate? A utilitarian ethic that supported immigration restrictions would value the well-being of poor Americans while ignoring the well-being of even poorer foreigners. This would be an obviously evil utilitarian ethic. It may be inevitable for democratic processes to discount utilitarian gains to poor foreigners. But there is no reason for any individual utilitarian thinker to adopt the utilitarian constraints of their nation’s politics. Neither should a natural rights thinker accept... [Read More...]
Immigration IV – National Security
Perhaps it would be nice if we could let foreigners exercise their natural liberty. But in an era of terrorism, America needs to keep its citizens safe from violent Islamist extremists. If we open up our borders, we risk another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 or worse. This is the deeply irrelevant national security argument. It fails almost any conceivable test as a justification for the immigration legislative status quo (or most feasible restrictive alternatives to it). The 9/11 terrorists, of course, entered the country legally, mostly on temporary visas. If immigration restrictions do not prevent terrorist attacks, then the need to prevent terrorist attacks cannot be a legitimate reason for restricting immigration. The main immigration restrictions have nothing to do with national security. Instead, current law functions something like a lottery. A fraction of applicants to various categories of residency are admitted by an arbitrary bureaucratic review, or through an actual lottery. These quotas make life miserable for immigrants waiting to live or work in the United States, but they do nothing to prevent actual terrorists from entering the country on temporary or student visas. In any event, American immigration is predominantly a Latin American phenomenon. Whatever prejudices Americans have about Mexicans, they are rarely suspected of wanting to wage Jihad or establish a new caliphate on American soil. Hysterical Islamophobia is not a reason to keep out Christian Latinos (or Indian Hindus, or Asian Buddhists). The government would be morally justified in screening out specific people that it reasonably suspected of ties to terrorist organizations. I believe that even this is probably a fool’s errand. The government is not an all-seeing oracle. It is clumsy, inefficient, and operates without any proper incentives. This is one reason why, for example, it is unable to enforce our current immigration restrictions. Conservatives... [Read More...]
Immigration III – The Rule of Law
Illegal immigrants violate American immigration laws. America is a society based on the rule of law. If we change American laws to accommodate criminal immigrants, we will be rewarding them. We will be encouraging them to break the law in the future and to scoff at the authority of law in the present. We must resist law-breaking criminals even if their crimes never end. After all, people may never stop committing theft or murder, but that isn’t a reason to stop punishing those crimes. Or so the argument goes. First some specificity. Granting amnesty (residency) to illegal immigrants does not incentivize people to immigrate, or to break laws. Immigrants do not break immigration laws merely because they rejoice in criminality. They break the laws because they want to immigrate, and the laws make it too hard to do so legally. The opportunities available to immigrants in America are their own incentive. Immigration amnesty simply decreases the disincentives to illegal immigration. Amnesty does not make it easier to commit murder, theft, or any non-immigration crime (one might say “real crimes”). The right question is, should we enforce our current immigration laws? Yes, say immigration opponents, because they are the law. This argument boils down to legal positivism – the unthinkingly amoral idea that what is right is what the law says. Under the doctrine of legal positivism, it was wrong for the American Colonies to revolt against British rule in the 1770s, wrong for black slaves to flee the plantation in the 1850s, wrong for Americans to drink alcohol in the 1920s – and it is wrong for immigrants to ignore immigration laws today. The solution to bad laws or unjust regimes is to end them. Laws that conflict with our basic moral intuitions will never be made legitimate by brute enforcement. Enforcing unjust laws will make people cynically resent, not respect, the power of law. As I resent it today. As, I would... [Read More...]
Immigration II – The Moral Obviousness of Immigration
The case for open immigration is simple. It is simple, that is, for anyone who begins from an assumption of human freedom, rather than arbitrary authority. People should be free to live where they please. They should be free to travel. They should be able to do business or associate with whomever else is also willing. These are obvious, basic freedoms. Because they are so basic, they are extremely important. Any more complicated freedom we could pursue would almost without fail build on them. Life in America would be unimaginable without them. My family’s history would have been impossible. Without the ability to travel across the country, my mother from Chicago and father from Rochester would never have met. My father could not have taken his current job in Kansas City to support his family. I would have been unable to attend college in Massachusetts or work in the District of Columbia. How obviously unjust would it have been to prohibit all of these things? Just as unjust as current immigration law, in America and world-wide. All of the things my parents and I can do easily within this country are, in various arbitrary degrees, restricted or prohibited across national borders. When we forbid people from immigrating from the third world, we condemn them to a shorter lifespan beset by poverty and disease, life in tyrannous police states or corrupt kleptocracies, and the chaos of civil war. How could we defend this? I’ll discuss and reject the possible reasons over the next couple of posts. I’ve moved through the moral argument quickly because it is simple. There is no need to make a thorough review of the strangling annoyances that exist under current law. If you do not share an instinctive appreciation for the value of human beings to live their lives freely, if you do not at least see the facialappeal of open immigration, I would suggest some introspection. What moral principles could deny the right of people to freely seek... [Read More...]
Immigration I – The Right is Wrong on Immigration
There are many things I like about the conservative movement. The conservative Heritage Foundation, for example, espouses principles of free enterprise, limited government, and individual freedom. These are principles I share all the way down to the core of my moral vision. On many political issues I find myself agreeing with the rhetoric of conservatives and even sometimes the proposals of the main conservative political party – the Republican Party. But on the single political issue I care most about, prevailing conservative opinion seems to me so audaciously, breathtakingly wrong that I scarcely believe that I truly have any principles in common with conservatives. Or that conservatives have any principles beyond simple xenophobia and a national collectivism. That issue is immigration. In my hubris, I continue to hope that most conservatives simply haven’t thought the issue through. Most, though not quite all, of their rhetoric, I believe, bears this out. In the spirit of this somewhat bold assumption I wanted to take the opportunity to lay out in moderate detail why I think the arguments against open immigration are either badly wrong or wrongly bad – or both. I will be posting a new section of my argument on this blog every day for the next week and a half or so. It may take a while before I get to your favorite argument for walling foreigners off from America, but if I neglect it in this series altogether then please let me know. If the arguments I do make are weak, sound off in the comments! The sections of my argument, subject to possible revision, will be as follows: * The Moral Obviousness of Open Immigration * The Rule of Law * National Security * The Utilitarian Argument * The Prudential Argument * The Externalities of Immigration * Fairness * The Bad Analogy * The Psychology of Nativism * Ideological Cancer * Systemic Forces * Credit Where it is Due * Conclusion: What Should We Do? * Addendum: What About Citizenship? Read More →
BEFORE You Pass the Unemployment Extension!
Unemployment is the new-old hot button issue that is all over the news again since we finally corked the oil spill in the Gulf for the time being. This is also a topic that affects far more Americans directly, so naturally, it is back on the front burner before Congress takes their August recess. Today it is looking like we are going to get the extension passed without any consideration for how it will be paid for, or what it will even accomplish. There is one talking point I would like clarified by our friends on the left: has the stimulus been successful, or are we in a dire situation? We cannot have it both ways, and yet, President Obama and his cabinet would like you to believe that the stimulus was successful while at the same time lecturing the Republicans on the reasonableness of passing the unemployment extension because we are in a crisis (and God knows, this Administration won’t let any crisis go to waste!). You can’t have your cake and eat it too, although, we are supposed to eat ours. So which is it? Those of us with a more Conservative (or rugged individualism) proclivity are likely to say, “a year for unemployment benefits is ample time! Suck it up and get a job!” Those of us who may be more mindful of taking care of our fellow man (or, at least forcing others to do so through government so we don’t have to do the dirty work ourselves) might argue, “there are no jobs, what are they supposed to do?” Taking only one side of this issue leaves one without a complete understanding of our present crisis’ gestalt. There are certainly a number of situations where people have been using unemployment benefits to subsidize their sloth; while one cannot take away from the fact that some areas of a state simply have no infrastructure for job growth. You cannot deny that the job situation has gotten worse, the New York Times has an interactive map that shows the growing unemployment rates state by state and how they climbed over... [Read More...]
Comparing Bush Spending to Clinton Spending
Yesterday, Jed Lewison of Daily Kos put up a post comparing Clinton’s eight years of spending to Bush’s eight years of spending. The post- which cited the very reputable Tax Policy Center for its budget claims- showed just how badly Bush spent compared to Clinton. According to Lewison, Clinton saved over $100 billion in his final budget, Fiscal Year 2001. I found the post interesting- not the least because Lewison cited the TPC, a partnership of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution- but also because TPC’s (and, thus, Lewison’s) claims are in direct contrast to what the Treasury itself shows in the 2000-2001 Fiscal Year, which is an increase in the federal debt of over $100 billion. I decided to contact Lewison about his claims. Below are the questions I sent, and his responses: 1. According to the Treasury, the debt increased from 9/30/2000 to 9/30/2001. What are the differences between the numbers you used and the numbers from the Treasury? 2. How much of the Bush debt you cited can be attributed to the growth in entitlements started pre-Clinton and pre-Bush years (i.e. not including the Medicare Drug Bill, etc. that added to the debt) and that obviously grew during both presidencies? Lewison’s response: 1) The increase in total debt is basically an increase in the Social Security Trust Fund (i.e., intragovernmental debt, money that the government owes itself, which accounts for a bit over a third of all debt). I’m not an expert on all the accounting rules, but if you look at the non-intragovernmental debt, it decreased. But how Social Security is accounted for is a separate issue from the overall fiscal well being of the Federal government under Bush and Clinton. 2) Outside of new programs like the Medicare drug plan, the rate of growth in entitlements should be a wash; since they are proscribed by law, both administrations would have experienced growth in them. The underlying demographics would have had to have been... [Read More...]
Profiles in Courage in Georgia
Originally published at The Daily Caller. I was recently speaking with one of my teachers from high school, reflecting on her summer reading assignment, JFK’s Profiles in Courage. If you have never read the book, it can be summarized quite simply in that it follows the actions of statesmen throughout the history of our country which took serious resolve and unwavering confidence. That’s not to say that these individuals who were profiled did not face fear in their hearts, fear for their jobs, and possibly fear for their lives. Fear is an emotion and it is understandable to have felt such emotion being placed in the situations that these men were embroiled. Emotions however are not actions, and actions are not words. Words are funny things. They form sentences and go on to form speeches. Speeches stir emotions and cause people to talk about issues. Sometimes this causes people to become involved and take action, which is good. However the difference between words and actions is that a word may or may not cause an action, while an action will always be the process of doing. And the men of Kennedy’s most renowned work were doers. In February of this year, my Congressman, John Linder, announced his retirement from public office. I’ve always liked Mr. Linder even though I was turned down for a position at his state office when I was 20 and looking for work while in college. It has always given me a sense of pride for some reason that my congressman introduced the Fair Tax legislation, even though I obviously had nothing to do with it. So now Linder will take his leave, and Georgia’s 7th District looks for new leadership. The heart of the 7th is Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, home of the Tripple-A Gwinnett Braves and 800,000 of your closest friends (except during rush hour). The district also contains other metro counties including Forsyth, Barrow, Newton, and Walton. The district will be won by a Republican. That’s not... [Read More...]
Resurgent Republicans in the Northeast
Over the last several years, the common mantra among the left (as well as some on the right), has been that New England and the Northeast are doomsday regions for Republicans. There are no Republican Representatives in New England, for example, and only three Republican Senators in the entire NorthEast. Unfortunately for liberals, this mantra has been proven premature. While the Republican resurgence- begun by Senator Brown (R-MA) and New Jersey governor Chris Christie- isn’t necessarily conservative (Christie is a moderate on social issues, and Brown recently voiced support for the financial regulation bill working its way through Congress), it certainly is Republican. One allegedly blue state in particular, New Hampshire- which has kicked out two Republican Representatives; a Republican Senator; and a Republican governor in the last six years- has now competitive races in its four Senate, Representative, and gubernatorial races this year. Another “blue” state, Connecticut, may elect a Republican to replace the corrupt Democratic Senator Chris Dodd. As a conservative, I find this pretty optimistic. While few of the candidates are as conservative as I would like, they are at least less liberal than those Democrats currently holding offices or running for open seats, and in some cases they are very conservative. Admittedly, this is happening in a strong anti-Democratic year, but it’s still happening, and that’s the important thing. One race in particular that I think is being overlooked in the national scheme of political races is the 4th District race in Connecticut. Held by Republicans for decades, it was the last Republican Representative seat in New England until 2008- and Chris Shays only lost by slightly over 2,000 votes that year. The current Representative, Jim Himes, has voted with the Democratic Party line on the big votes- including, but not limited to, cap-and-trade, health care and financial regulations- and is being opposed... [Read More...]
Did Obama Just Admit He Was Born In Kenya? No, No He Didn’t
Look, I’m not “birther” by any means. I really haven’t paid a ton of attention to the issue. But if this video is legit, Obama admits out of his own mouth that he was born in Kenya. ie. Not a natural born citizen. Watch the first 40 seconds or so. After that, well it’s up to you what you think. But I’m mainly concerned with what is coming out of the President’s mouth in a WH.gov video. If the video is legit, we as a country have a problem. Being a natural born citizen as a requirement for the presidency is sort of a big deal. And if we skirt that, then the whole Constitution might as well be skirted and we should just start naming kings. I don’t know where this is going to go, and it would be silly to predict a result. But you watch it and tell us in the comments if you think the video looks legit. -nick Update: I think RJ is right on this. So I pulled the video. Watched it a couple more times and RJ’s point is pretty obvious. Sorry for the brain meltdown. Read More →
