Sense on immigration: let them in

Here's a link to the review I did for this Sunday's Register on Jason Riley's recent book on immigration: "Let Them In." Jason, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, did an excellent job with this short book, making the case for open borders largely by confronting six of the most common arguments against more extensive immigration head-on, with logical arguments backed up by facts. You know the arguments, and some readers may have used them:

The country is already overpopulated and more people will degrade the quality of life; more immigration is dangerous to the environment; immigrants take jobs that "belong" to native-born; this wave of immigrants is dangerous to American culture; opposing immigration is a good "wedge issue for Republicans; unrestricted immigration is a danger to national security. All of these arguments, I'm afraid, are poppycock.

Of course, as some of the comments on the OCR Website illustrate, some people seem immune to reasoned argument, rejecting the book's argument without reading it. How sad that so many political positions are the result of emotion rather than reason or anything approaching weighing the evidence -- or even giving it a moment's consideration.

Immigration Ironies

On the same day yesterday two developments regarding immigration were interestingly juxtaposed. Federal agents conducted the biggest immigration enforcement raid of the year at an Iowa Kosher meat plant, rounding up about 300 people suspected of being in the country illegally and/or using a Social Security number fraudulently.

On the same day the Manhattan Institute (generally conservative with some mildly libertarian leanings) released a study that used various measures to show that recent immigrants (past quarter-century) are assimilating into the United States at a faster rate than did previous generations, even though they have less mastery of English and earning power than did those who came at the turn of the 20th century. The study used factors like rates of citizenship, military service, rates of homeownership and English facility to see how quickly immigrants came to resemble native-born citizens. The results seem to demonstrate, as Jacob Vigdor of Duke, who conducted the study, put it, "that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."

A troubling aspect of the study was that Mexicans have a relatively low assimilation rate (as compared to Vietnamese, for example), which can mainly be attributed the the fact that so many are here illegally. Being illegal cuts off a lot of paths to assimilation. To me, the conclusion should be that we should get those people legalized as quickly as possible (if the buzzword "amnesty" doesn't make it politically impossible) and adjust or eliminate the quotas so the marketplace rather than bureaucrats laying down arbitrary numbers decides how many immigrants the U.S. economy "needs" and can absorb without undue friction. The workplace raids can't get them all and turn out to be disruptive (in this case a small town's primary business is crippled, at least for a while). We need to change our policies to be open to more immigration (but not to subsidize immigrants) which will make assimilation easier.

Court decision on immigration enforcement wise

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on federal Judge Charles Breyer's decision to halt the proposed "no-match" immigration enforcement program that would have required companies to fire workers 90 days after being notified that an employees' Social Security card didn't match government records. Judge Breyer noted that the SocialmSecurity Administration has admitted that its records contain millions of errors, and ruled that innocent workers would get caught up in the program, and that it would be extremely disruptive to businesses -- as it was no doubt intended to be. The administration, I believe, purposely chose a potentially disruptive enforcement mechanism in the hope that the massive disruption of the economy would get more votes for the "comprehensive" immigration reform that failed so decisively earlier this year. The judge ruled on fairly narrow grounds, however -- that the government didn't follow the rules in changing its enforcement program and didn't do a required study of the impact on small businesses, as federal law requires.

I would go further and suggest that the government has no right to tell a private company who it can hire and fire, for just about any reason.

If you scroll down and check the comments, you'll see our readers were not exactly enchanted with our position.

Immigration realities

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the recent spate of immigration raids. Our perspective is somewhat different than what most conventional thinkers would suggest. Money quote:

"It will probably be a long time, if ever, before a consensus emerges around our editorial position, that the quotas for immigrants are too low, and the best approach would be to allow anybody who wants to come to immigrate (except terrorists and those with infectious diseases), but making it clear that they are not eligible for any government benefits until they have lived, worked and paid taxes here for a reasonable period of time.
"But we keep hoping."