CIAO DATE: 03/2012
Volume: 32, Issue: 1
Winter 2012
Editor's Note (PDF)
James Dorn
Immigration has been instrumental in U.S. history in promoting economic development and increasing the range of options open to people. Millions of immigrants have come to America in search of opportunities to improve their lives and to raise their families. They have taken great risks and worked hard to ensure a better and freer future for themselves and their families.
Introduction: Is Immigration Good for America? (PDF)
Daniel Griswold
The question of whether immigration has been good for America has been on the minds of Americans since the beginning of our republic and continues in the pages of this issue of the Cato Journal. As the United States enters another presidential election year, President Obama has been calling on Congress to enact immigration
reform while his administration has been deporting record numbers of unauthorized immigrants. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates have been competing with each other to adopt the toughest positions to enforce existing law, including the completion of a fence along the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Outside of Washington, legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, and other states have enacted laws designed to make life more difficult for undocumented immigrants.
Why Should We Restrict Immigration? (PDF)
Bryan Caplan
Consider the following thought experiment: Moved by the plight of desperate earthquake victims, you volunteer to work as a relief worker in Haiti. After two weeks, you’re ready to go home. Unfortunately, when you arrive at the airport, customs officials tell you that you’re forbidden to enter the United States. You go to the American consulate to demand an explanation. But the official response is simply, “The United States does not have to explain itself to you.”
Immigration and Economic Growth (PDF)
Gordon Hanson
As the 2012 presidential campaign gets under way, there will be intense public debate about the direction of economic policy. The continuing torpor of the U.S. economy and mounting government debt oblige candidates to detail how they would improve prospects for economic growth and reduce the federal budget deficit. We are sure to hear a great deal about plans to lower taxes, reduce government regulation, improve U.S. education, and rebuild infrastructure.
But it is a near certainty that no candidate will make immigration part of his or her vision for achieving higher rates of long-run economic growth. To be sure, stump speeches will contain pat pronouncements about securing American borders, restoring the rule of law, or bringing undocumented immigrants out of the shadows, depending on the candidate’s political orientation. Yet, it is a safe bet that after
getting through these bullet points candidates will seek to change the subject. Immigration is a divisive issue that most national politicians prefer to avoid. President Obama checked his immigration box by making a halfhearted call for immigration reform in May 2011. That proposal was quickly buried under many more pressing items in his legislative outbox.
Immigration, Labor Markets, and Productivity (PDF)
Giovanni Peri
According to a survey in 2008, about 50 percent of Americans perceived immigration as a problem rather than as an opportunity (Transatlantic Trends 2008). Similar surveys conducted in the prerecession years of 2007 and before also showed that Americans were much less supportive of more open immigration policies than they were of other aspects of globalization such as free trade or free capital movements (Pew Research Center 2007). Since the onset of the
recession of 2008–2009 and during the jobless recovery of 2010–11, public opinion about immigration further deteriorated. The idea that immigrants take American jobs, depress national wages, and threaten the U.S. economy has become even more rooted, as often happens during economic recessions. The political discourse accompanying the economic and labor market impact of immigrants is very intense
and pervasive in the media but often generates “more heat than light” (Goldin, Cameron, and Balaarajan 2011: 163).
America's Demographic Future (PDF)
Joel Kotkin, Erika Ozuna
Perhaps nothing has more defined America and its promise than immigration. In the future, immigration and the consequent development of what Walt Whitman (1855: iv) called “a race of races” will remain one of the country’s greatest assets in the decades to come. At a time when anti-immigrant fervor has been building, a number of states—including Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama—have enacted draconian laws aimed at apprehending undocumented immigrants. Those laws are widely seen even among legal immigrants and long-term residents as hostile to immigrants. Indeed, newcomers are already leaving those states. This Latino exodus has been happening in once-thriving neighborhoods in Gwinnett and
Cobb counties in Georgia—as shown in business closures, arrest statistics, and declining church attendance—caused both by the economy and the increased immigration enforcement (Simmons 2010). Nationwide, there has been a declining number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, a decrease of 1 million from 2007 (Hoefer, Rytina, and Baker 2011).
America's Incoherent Immigration System (PDF)
Stuart Anderson
If the U.S. Congress and executive branch agencies formulated coherent policies, then here is what our immigration system would look like: highly skilled foreign nationals could be hired quickly and gain permanent residence, employers could hire foreign workers to fill niches in lower-skilled jobs, foreign entrepreneurs could easily start businesses in the United States, and close relatives of American
citizens could immigrate in a short period of time. If all those things were true, then we wouldn’t be talking about America’s immigration system.
The Economic Consequences of Amnesty for Unauthorized Immigrants (PDF)
Pia Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny
Immigration policy reform has reached an impasse because of disagreement over whether to create a pathway to legal permanent residence and eventual U.S. citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. The United States first—and last—offered a large-scale amnesty as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986. Despite increased border enforcement and provisions for employer sanctions, the law failed to curtail unauthorized immigration. The 9/11 terror attacks renewed the emphasis on national security and led to stricter policies regarding undocumented immigrants. Over the past decade, border and interior enforcement has increased, while avenues that allowed some illegal residents to adjust to legal status have been eliminated, and a growing number of states have adopted laws aimed at driving out unauthorized immigrants.
Immigration and Border Control (PDF)
Edward Alden
For the past two decades the United States, a country with a strong tradition of limited government, has been pursuing a widely popular initiative that requires one of the most ambitious expansions of government power in modern history: securing the nation’s borders against illegal immigration. Congress and successive administrations—both Democratic and Republican—have increased the size of the
Border Patrol from fewer than 3,000 agents to more than 21,000, built nearly 700 miles of fencing along the southern border with Mexico, and deployed pilotless drones, sensor cameras, and other expensive technologies aimed at preventing illegal crossings at the land borders. The government has overhauled the visa system to require interviews for all new visa applicants and instituted extensive background checks for many of those wishing to come to the United States to study, travel, visit family, or do business. It now requires secure documents—a passport or the equivalent—for all travel to and from the United States by citizens and noncitizens. And border officers take fingerprints and run other screening measures on all travelers coming to this country by air in order to identify criminals, terrorists, or others deemed to pose a threat to the United States.
Internal Enforcement, E-Verify, and the Road to a National ID (PDF)
Jim Harper
Successful “internal enforcement” of immigration law requires having a national identity system. If expanded, “E-Verify,” the muchdebated effort to control illegal immigration through access to employment, will become such a system, and it could easily be converted to controlling many dimensions of Americans’ lives from
Washington, D.C.
Is Birthright Citizenship Good for America? (PDF)
Margaret Stock
The Declaration of Independence famously asserted that “all men are created equal,” but this assertion did not become an American constitutional reality until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause—intended to overturn the infamous U.S. Supreme Court
decision in the Dred Scott (1857) case—states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Traditionally, the clause has been interpreted to confer U.S. citizenship on anyone born within the United States
whose parents are subject to U.S. civil and criminal laws—which has historically meant that only babies born in the United States to diplomats, invading armies, or within certain sovereign Native American tribes have been excluded from birthright American citizenship. Alarmed by the thought that unauthorized immigrants, wealthy tourists, and temporary workers are giving birth to thousands
of U.S. citizens, some want to change the long-standing rule by reinterpreting or amending the Citizenship Clause. But will this proposed change be good for America? Will it benefit America to reduce substantially the number of birthright U.S. citizens—and put in place more complex rules that would provide that U.S.-born babies are not created equal?
Immigration and the Welfare State (PDF)
Daniel Griswold
Among the more serious arguments against liberalizing immigration is that it can be costly to taxpayers. Low-skilled immigrants in particular consume more government services than they pay in taxes, increasing the burden of government for native-born Americans. Organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federation for American Immigration
Reform have produced reports claiming that immigration costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year, with the heaviest costs borne by state and local taxpayers. No less a classical liberal than Milton Freidman mused that open immigration is incompatible with a welfare state. Responding to a question at a libertarian conference in 1999, Friedman rejected the idea of opening the U.S. border to all
immigrants, declaring that “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state” (Free Students 2008).
The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (PDF)
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda
The U.S. government has attempted for more than two decades to put a stop to unauthorized immigration from and through Mexico by implementing “enforcement-only” measures along the U.S.-Mexico border and at work sites across the country. These measures have failed to end unauthorized immigration and have placed downward pressure on wages in a broad swath of industries.
U.S. Immigration Policy in the 21st Century: A Market-Based Approach (PDF)
Richard Vedder, Joshua Hall, Benjamin VanMetre
On most issues of public policy one can predict the position that individuals will take based on their ideological orientation. Immigration policy, however, is one topic where ideological perspective is historically useless in predicting individual positions. The decision of whether or not to liberalize immigration policy or to place greater restrictions on it is something that creates a divide not only
between political parties but also within the parties themselves. Peter Brimelow (1999) is one prominent voice from the right who believes that the current immigration policies not only second-guess the American people but threaten the American nation. Brimelow is a strong supporter of placing restrictions on immigration at levels that are much lower than those that currently exist. A similar position is taken by the libertarian political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Specifically, Hoppe (1998) argues that the United States will continue to suffer until policies are implemented that subject all migration to the condition of legally binding contractual invitations between the private domestic persons and the arriving immigrants.
James Madison by Richard Brookhiser (PDF)
John Samples
Richard Brookhiser, a longtime senior editor of National Review, has contributed more than most to satisfying the revivified demand for books about the lives and works of the American Founders. He has published books about Washington, Hamilton, the Adamses, Gouverneur Morris, and now James Madison. His biography is both serious and readable.
The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan (PDF)
Aaron Powell
Grab anyone at a coffee shop, political rally, or cocktail party. Ask him, “Do you think we have a duty to vote?” Chances are he’ll say “Yes.” Follow it up with, “Is it because there’s something special about voting that places it above other duties we might have, like say
avoiding speeding or paying our taxes?” It’s a safe bet you’ll get a “yes” to this one as well.
Jason Brennan calls the thinking behind these twin affirmatives the “folk theory of voting ethics.” It’s the common view of civics classes, straw polls, and town hall meetings. The folk theory is what we all learn in school, along with the three branches of government and the Founding Fathers.
The Concept of Justice: Is Social Justice Just? by Thomas Patrick Burke (PDF)
Trevor Burrus
Justice is the primary object of political philosophy. Yet, like so many of our highest aspirations, we are prone to use capacious words that can create consensus in their most abstract formulations but engender discord, if not worse, in more specific forms. “Justice” has
always been like this. During a civil war or an intense political conflict, both sides will preach the justness of their cause, and neither will claim to be fighting on the side of “injustice.”