MAKING SENSE OF IMMIGRATION ARGUMENTS Julian L. Simon Congress has finally passed a bill intended to stop illegal immigration bill. The billions to be spent for a big fence and more cops will accomplish little, however, if history is any guide. The bill will serve only to vent righteousness and anger. Consider this evidence of the bewildering and perhaps insoluble nature of the immigration fights. A single policy change - a guestworker program - could at once satisfy the ostensible aims of both the attackers and defenders of illegal immigration. But this good-for-everyone policy is rejected by all sides. The legislative situation is permanently hopeless because neither side of the battle wants the only workable method to reduce the flows of illegals - a guestworker program. The anti-illegal advocates proclaim their desire to ensure our "sovereignty" and the sanctity of U.S. borders, and they wring their hands about the "lawlessness" of illegal entrance. A guestworker program can prevent such lawless border-jumping from Mexico. The graph shows that the Bracero guestworker program during the 1940s to 1960s almost eliminated illegal immigration by substituting legal guestworkers for them. Furthermore, in sober moments the anti's agree that border-sealing campaigns cannot lower welfare expenditures much (if at all) compared to a guestworker program. Indeed, a guestworker program might even reduce welfare costs by returning home those guestworkers who become public burdens. Yet the anti's show no interest whatsoever in promoting a guestworker program that does everything they say they want. Nor is there even a whisper of support for a guestworker program from the defenders of the illegals, even though a program would give the defenders what they say they want: It would convert a class of hunted, rights-less persons into a class of people with legally-guaranteed protections and unafraid of the law. When a controversy cannot be resolved by giving both parties what they say they want, the disputants surely have unrevealed interests. And so it is here. Mixed up in the immigration debate are not just the consequences people talk about - lawlessness, welfare costs, and threats to jobs - but also con- flicts about who has which rights, whose self-interests are considered legitimate, whose wants are to be satisfied, and who deserves our sympathy and compassion. This is a stew-and-a-half. Another illustration of the complexities: One might think Hispanics would favor a less-restrictive immigration policy. Many of them are newcomers, and one would expect them to be sympathetic to others aspiring to do as they have done. One would also expect them to urge policies favorable to relatives, friends, and countrymen in the lands from which they came. But being human and not entirely selfless, many Hispanics favor more restrictive immigration policies because they think (though wrongly) that additional immigrants will hurt them in the labor market and in their tax payments. That is, being humans and ordinary members of a democratic society in which governments dispense various kinds of benefits, immigrants who are already in the country scuffle to get just as much of the public purse as they can, using every form of political rhetoric to do so - just as everyone else does. And they assume that such scuffling for a place at the public trough is righteous behavior and the basic stuff of democratic politics. Indeed, attempting to get as much as one can for one's group is such an accepted definition of politics that if you question its morality, you will be looked at with incredulity. Yet by lobbying for federal welfare benefits to immigrants, Hispanic groups provide ammunition to those who oppose immigration and work toward more restrictive policies, and harm Hispanic and other potential immigrants. So the U.S. Hispanic leaders push for one set of policies that seems to benefit Hispanics immediately but which lead in the long run to other policies which harm Hispanics and other potential immigrants. Then there is the complication of the lumping together of various social policies toward immigration that have different meanings and effects. Specifically, policies toward children are a tough issue here, as they are in all welfare policies and have been since long before the welfare debates in England around the time of Malthus. This gets all mixed up with rights, too. Who has a right to the assistance of the federal, state, and local governments? Do people who were born here have a right not held by those who were not born here but have become citizens? The law seems to say naturalized immigrants have all rights that natives do (except becoming president), but many natives think or feel otherwise. And how about those who are here legally but are not citizens? What about if they have been here for one year versus fifty years? Those who are here illegally? And those who have obtained permission to come here but have not arrived yet? And those who have registered to come here but have not yet received permission? Aside from rights, toward which of these groups should we feel sympathetic and compassionate? Does a hard-working, upwardly-striving Indian or Guyanese or Frenchman who does not have permission to come here, but who would make a large contribution to our economy and require little governmental help, deserve less sympathy (and less governmental assistance) than a native who is too lazy and undisciplined to find and hold a job? Debate on this subject is hampered because it brings into conflict individuals and groups who would otherwise be friends and allies. Hence they prefer not to air their disparate views in public. *** Perhaps dominating all else are our ethnic, racial, and religious tastes. Let us accept that a preference to associate with one's own group, and a desire to promote the economic inter- ests of one's own group, is congenital. Proof enough is the universal desire of parents that their children marry others of the same color/religion/ethnicity/language. An American woman related to me last week how her South-Indian husband's grandmoth- er refused to look at her for a dozen years. Orthodox Jews will sometimes declare dead the child who marries a non-Jew. And so on. Is it surprising, then, that Margaret Thatcher says that she wants to "keep England English" and closed the door to the people of Hong Kong - British subjects - who wanted to leave before the Communist takeover in 1999 so as to avoid "being swamped by people of a different culture". Should it surprise us, then, then even economically- sophisticated persons who understand that immigrants put more into the public coffers than they take out (and contribute funds on net balance much more than do natives) nevertheless focus only on a single element - and a very small one, perhaps 5 percent of the total - of the total fiscal picture, and cite heavier use of welfare among immigrants than among natives as a reason to reduce immigration? So what's the answer? Maybe this issue is beyond hope of rational discussion. But it may help in sorting out the tangle of policies and interests to at least make sure that all the parties who have a stake in the matter are represented in one's thinking, and that all their interests are considered. Specifically, the group that most complicates the analysis consists of persons who are outside of the U. S. and who might immigrate here in the future. And if they do immigrate, they might or might not be eligible for certain benefits, depending on U.S. immigration policies. To repeat, the joker in the deck is that if one tries to ensure that immigrants already here will be eligible for certain benefits, one reduces the likelihood that potential immigrants will be able to immigrate even without any social benefits at all. And the persons whom one might expect to understand this and to act in a fashion helpful to the potential immigrants instead advocate policies that may well lead to less immigration. Their leaders seem blind to this possible outcome, and talk as if they are acting in the interests of compassion toward the needy. And that's only the tip of this mostly-submerged intellectu- al wreckage. Julian L. Simon of the University of Maryland and Cato Institute is the author of The Economic Consequences of Immigration. 301-951-0922, fax 301-951-8468, 110 Primrose St., Chevy Chase, Md. page 1 articl96 immwel96 October 4, 1996