Taunter Media

Luis Gutierrez is leading a rally in DC to argue for comprehensive immigration reform.

We simply cannot wait any longer for a bill that keeps our families together, protects our workers and allows a pathway to legalization for those who have earned it…We need a bill that says if you come here to hurt our communities, we will not support you; but if you are here to work hard and to make a better life for your family, you will have the opportunity to earn your citizenship. We need a law that says it is un-American for a mother to be torn from her child, and it is unacceptable to undermine our workforce by driving the most vulnerable among us further into the shadows.

“Comprehensive” sounds good.  But “comprehensive” is not what Gutierrez really wants.

The US, broadly speaking, has three options on immigration:

• Open access;
• No access;
• Some sort of regulated access wherein some people are given permission to be in the US and others are not.

Open access is a non-starter; in a world of six billion people, it does not make much sense for three hundred million who have dramatically more wealth than the rest to allow unlimited membership in the club.

No access is theoretically possible, but a great way for society to ossify.  We benefit from the skills, perspective, and drive that immigrants bring; why deprive ourselves?  To take the obvious example, think of what a great asset our receptivity to immigrants proved to be when we found ourselves in World War II with a xenophobic adversary who had a near-monopoly on nuclear physicists a decade earlier…

If we cannot let everyone in and we need to let some people in, how should we choose and what should we do when we have chosen?

I’ll take them in reverse, to confront the bigger political issue first:

Whoever we decide to exclude, we need to actually make sure that those people are not in the country.  You would think this the simplest part of any immigration policy, but somehow it has become the most complicated.

We spend billions of dollars guarding the border, as if we were playing some giant game of capture the flag.  The Border Patrol chases people.  Sometimes the people are caught and sent back across the border to try again.  More often CPB misses them, and they blend into society.  It is hard to imagine a less efficient use of capital.

A long time ago – back before reliable gunpowder – walled cities were all the rage.  Provisioned adequately, a city could hold out indefinitely against a siege.  The Greeks had to come up with a novel strategy to break into Troy, Hannibal ran aground trying to take Rome, and only the stupidity of the Marquis de Montcalm ruined the simple elegance of Quebec’s defenses.

Then came heavy guns.  All of a sudden – and it really was sudden, just ask the defenders of Vicksburg – it was impossible to wait out a siege.  The attacker would simply shell the fort or city into oblivion.  The only way to defend a city was to do exactly what had been the wrong answer shortly before – engage the enemy before he could get into range.

In an earlier era, when America was farther from the rest of the world, perhaps it made sense to focus on ports of entry.  But that’s silly today.

For a small fraction of the cost of deploying the Keystone Kops along the Rio Grande, we could make E-Verify work properly.  Instead of trying to catch people as they run past at the time and place of their choosing, go after employers and vendors.

Require each firm to verify the identity of each of its employees with the Social Security Administration and the IRS.  If there is a duplicate record – someone is using someone else’s card – or a number not in the system, follow up.  Prosecute employers.  Raid enough meatpacking plants and send enough executives to jail and people will start complying.  It is no greater imposition than asking someone to pay his taxes.

Once the system is in place, expand it.  The reason there are few illegal immigrants in Switzerland is not that there are paramilitary guards on the mountain passes, it is that there is nothing to do when you reach town.  You cannot rent an apartment or try to get electricity or cable television without proof of residency.  You cannot work for anything other than cash in a fly-by-night place.  There is no reason to stay, so people do not.  All this in a calm European country that manages to avoid having vigilantes getting their crazy on by the border.

Any comprehensive reform should make it extraordinarily difficult to be here without following the reform process.  Will it be impossible?  Of course not; we fight more serious crimes, but despite our best efforts they still happen.  People will come and go.  But in ever smaller numbers.

Now for what is the real question: who should we be admitting to the US?

I had an interesting exchange in the comments of my Australia/Argentina post with CrocodileChuck on the question of Australia was able to build a middle class and Argentina was not.  Chuck offers:

When the English came all the way to Australia, they knew it was for good…Argentina had a huge influx of Italians around the turn of the century-who were only interested in making a quick fortune and then returning to Europe. Not the kind of immigration one would select to build ’social capital’: all the blocking and tackling around deferring gratification, fitting in to a new culture, cultivating the family, valuing education and investing in the fortunes of the next generation.

What is curious about this is that the US had a massive wave of Italian immigration as well.  Indeed, as the Glaeser article notes, the US had a disproportionate share of southern Italian immigrants – then as now a vastly poorer place – while Argentina received more northern Italians.  Part of the difference could be explained as willingness to take on challenges: Italians who went to the US were going to a land where they could not speak the language, while those headed to Argentina were declining the greater opportunity in the US for the comfort of a more familiar setting.  But this does not explain the fact that many if not most of the Italians in the early waves of immigration to the US dreamed of returning to Italy.  It is one of the main reasons the language stuck around so long; people thought they would return.

Somehow the US was able to build on the strengths of each successive wave of immigration without losing the core qualities of the country.  We ended up with Italian food and English laws, not the reverse.  Not to put too fine a point on it, that was a miracle.

Now we find ourselves in an age where we don’t need any more unskilled labor.  The frontier is gone, or at least reformed, and we don’t do a lot of metal-bending.  And we have one very large pool of unskilled workers we have not yet integrated.

The official unemployment rate in Detroit is 18.2%, and our unemployment numbers are about as accurate as China’s GDP numbers.  When you hear a business owner say that he needs illegal labor, what he really means is that he does not want to pay enough money to make it worth the while of someone who is eligible for state aid to go to work.  He would prefer to contract with those whose option is grinding poverty in a foreign country.

A comprehensive solution needs to stop this.  It might make the price of oranges increase, or the price of bacon, but we will never have an integrated country until we can ensure that those who are here legally are brought into the economic system.

In the meantime, we should be trying to encourage immigration from people with skills who can help us.  The technology industry has been at the forefront of this campaign; Microsoft and HP are constantly going on about how they need more H-1B visas.  The claim might be overstated – you would expect much faster wage inflation for technology employees if availability really were that scarce – but the greater failing is that in the attempt to fly under the radar, these firms have neglected to mention the values change they are requesting.

Historically, America’s immigration policy was heavily tilted towards Northern Europeans.  We never went quite as far as Australia, which had an explicit White Australia policy until the 1970s, but it was difficult for non-Europeans to gain citizenship until Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.  This Act, however, merely shifted the quotas of each country of origin; it did not change the general idea of treating people as generic units of their departing country.

That is no way to run a railroad.  What kind of HR department would simply hire based on the street someone was born on, instead of what they could do today?  We should be focused on gaining people with the skills and values we need, wherever we can find them.  We are short doctors, especially primary care physicians.  If we can get every South African doctor to move here, should we really say no on account of a quota of South Africans (as opposed to not needing any more doctors)?  What if the South African doctors were willing to practice in rural America, where there is a particularly acute shortage?  If we need more engineers and scientists, why not get them?  Offer a green card to any graduate of a US PhD program.

The flip side is ending the focus on family reunification.  This is the big issue of the Hispanic Caucus, but it is really just the first derivative of country of origin immigration; most Americans have relatives who are not American, and in the small countries of Northern Europe, everyone has a cousin who is American.

So let’s have the debate on comprehensive immigration reform.  Let’s try to figure out how a nation of 300 million people maintains a common set of values.  But let’s be serious about the need to be comprehensive: we need to know the back door is locked before we try to change the entrance policy at the front door.  And that’s what keeps derailing the process.