And we can’t have that, can we?
“If they could” does not translate into “If the US will let them”. Most of those people are poor and don’t have the means to travel anywhere. Some of them are members of oppressive regimes that do not allow citizens to leave the country.
Not only that, but as jobs get taken and surplus resources get distributed, our country will look less and less attractive to potential immigrants and they will start migrating elsewhere, especially if my “Free Labor” movement takes hold in other nations. I will guarantee you that neither 75% of Mexicans, nor 1 billion people overall, will ever immigrate to the US. In the micro sense, as more uneducated people come to the US, our country will be more attractive to educators, if medical professionals are in short supply, they will have more of an incentive to come. Especially if we allow them to come and bid for their own wages on the open market.
All of those problems are temporary anyway. The pioneers were always closely followed by hungry and helpful businessmen trying to make a buck. There may not have been enough doctors in 1849 San Fransisco, but I bet by 1855 there were more than enough, as well as teachers, retailers, blacksmiths, stagecoach manufacturers and repairers, horse doctors, etc. In addition to all the gold rushers. Whenever people migrate, there is always a support structure looking to profit (and supply, let’s not forget that buyer-seller is usually a symbiotic relationship) not far behind.
You could say that such a move would redistribute some of our wealth from the US to other nations, but you could say the same about free trade. Buying TVs from Korea means we are giving Koreans American money that could otherwise be kept in our own isolated economy. But that neglects all those inexpensive TVs we just obtained through no work of our own!
Just like “paying a bunch of Mexicans with American money” redistributes cash, but people forget all that quality labor we’ve received in return, not to mention if you let them live here, the money stays here, albeit spread out more. You may echo unions and say “Cheap labor is not quality labor” and in some cases you’d be right. It definitely drives down wages. But if the buying public prefers cheapness over quality (which is demonstrated by their spending patterns and who could deny it anyway?), that just proves that expensive American labor is less preferable overall than cheap foreign labor, regardless what the protectionists think.
Think about it. Why would I pay more to help out an American stranger when I can pay less and help out a foreign (or soon to be American) stranger? Just because of the patch of land he was born on? This is why people start throwing around the term “racism”. It’s not exactly accurate, but if you follow the train of thought deep down, people who are against immigration would rather benefit Americans at the expense of foreigners, usually and especially if those foreigners are darker skinned. However, I think my “Free Trade” analogy (Thanks for the compliments Fear Itself! :)) demonstrates why it may be beneficial for Americans long term (and perhaps the world economy as a whole) to allow the free migration of labor between nations.
I’d send 50 bucks and it’s not even my problem.
Look at this from a security perspective. In the op, illegal immigration was correctly separated into two categories:
- Entered legally, overstayed visa or work permit.
- Entered illegally by not going through official entry methods.
The folks who came here legally but overstayed have been screened and their names have been run through databases. Since this category has been allowed entry into the USA we know where they are from, how many are here, and what their current status is. Not so much from category 2.
Personally, I would have preferred my tax burden for the auto industry bailout to have gone towards immigration reform and enforcement.
As opposed to the filthy rich people sneaking across the border now? 
Some. Still, there are 1B Indians to start with, and no such requirement exists. Immigration to the US was often from the poorer strata of societies. They scrimped what they could, and they made it over here. Transportation is cheaper, quicker and safer today than it was 100 years ago.
If we opened the borders, anyone who wanted to come here would be highly motivated to get in before we closed them again. No one would believe they would remain open indefinitely.
Well, I don’t know what the doctor situation was in SF in 1855, but if you want to look it up, get back to us. And while you’re at it, you can consider the difference in licensing required between then and now. The two situations are not comparable.
I have no qualms about free trade, even when it is unilateral. We know that works. Open immigration in a modern context has no empirical support showing that it can work. And given the situation with people wanting to blow things up in our country, it would be extremely dangerous to throw the border open.
Now, if we lived in a more or less libertarian world, that would be another matter. People would come here knowing there were no government guaranteed social programs to help them and no minimum wage laws to prop up unskilled labor wages, and therefore no real incentive to move here from wherever they lived.
But isn’t this the same argument made for trade protectionism? That we have to protect our industries with restrictive tariffs and import quotas?
I am still unsure about throwing open the doors entirely, yet DrCube’s analogy made me go Hmmm…
Quoth billfish678:
That’s what created this country. The reason America became so strong to begin with was precisely the fact that for most of our history, we let anybody who could get here stay here. You see, there’s always a selection effect: Even if the country of origin has no legal barriers to emigration, like India, moving across the globe still isn’t easy. The folks who come aren’t the lazy bums: They’re the ones who are motivated enough to get up and do whatever it takes to make life better. And when they came to America, they kept on getting up and doing whatever it took.
Even if it only takes, say, a year to save up enough money to pay for the trip, realistically speaking what proportion of people will have the discipline to save up for a year, just to have a chance to make a better life? Or maybe it only takes a particular Indian a month to save up the money: That’s not such a great demand on discipline. But an Indian who’s making that much is probably a professional, one of those doctors or lawyers or teachers who’s needed to support the poorer immigrants.
But import tariffs distort free trade the same way minimum wage laws (and other social services) distort the free flow of labor. Get rid of government services and the minimum wage, and then we can talk about opening the border.
Now I’m confused. I thought the problem with the influx of immigration was lowering domestic wages, by people willing to work without benefits.
Seems like the real solution is to raise and enforce labour standards.
You could reduce that figure down 6 billion if you just left canada out of this… Hell, there are plenty of place along that border where the local citizens are actually hassled by the needless security. You don’t hear the Canadian border states hollering for tightening the border. Trust me, we are not destitute enough to participate in the American dream illegally.
And if you want to apply the race card to be fair, we do have about 6 million browns and blacks here in Canada.
$39.95.
plus shipping.
Act now, and we’ll send you two. Just pay the shipping.
some how I don’t believe that supplies are running out anytime soon 
A fair proportion of the US population was brought here by governments. The European tyrannies wanted rid of excess population, & the Yanks wanted fighters loyal to them & not to the indigenous nations. Seized laborers & pathetic deported dregs graded into grateful refugees as US history progressed, but it’s not that any one country had its entire population spontaneously immigrate–nor that enormous proportions of populace immigrated for individualist economic reasons. The Irish first came in the numbers they did because they were forcibly trafficked as slaves by the English. Other nations mostly lost fractional population, or a small local minority following a war. Your posts lack a sense of scale.
Also, you have a ridiculously inflated view of how desirable living in Yankea is. Of course you like it, it’s home. But to a foreigner, it’s a strange country where the people don’t know how to dance, there are too many guns, &/or its weather is lousy.
Is there empirical support for the idea it can’t work?
We had lots of nativism when this was a laissez-faire state. Socialism was seen as an import from undesirable & racially inferior aliens. And I would be very surprised to find anyone now is moving to the USA for the social programs to alleviate Yank poverty.
…Well, any significant group. I will grant that many persons from the Third World want to come to the First World for the better economy & possibly less vicious political culture. And halfway functioning hospital & school systems may be part of that complex. But they’re not going to stay away because we cut welfare.
They’d also probably be too busy starving or dying of adulterated medicines or just not allowed to leave. There wouldn’t be much point in moving from one hell to another anyway.
Nonono. In the 1920’s it was about protecting labor standards from “non-Nordic” Eastern Europeans who wanted unions, work weeks capped at 40 hours a week, & living wages. Now it’s about labor standards, until it’s not. Until it’s about “assimilating” the “immigrants” (now here for generations) we already have–into a “proper” USian culture that venerates “conservatism” & has internalized the same mythologized US history that despises & disregards the Jew Socialist Franklin Rosenfeld who “destroyed this country.”
There’s a huge difference between the selfish/class politics opposition to immigration by native-born working class Democrats, & the idealistic opposition to immigration by romantic “libertarians” who are still somehow happy to restrict freedom of movement.
And if you can duckthink your way into idealizing your own immigrant ancestors & feeling grateful for their struggle to make it to the Greatest! Country! in the WORLD![sup]TM[/sup] while feeling it utterly necessary to prevent anyone from an alien culture making the same trip without the explicit active permission of the government, even as you claim to hate government intervention in the economy, even as you support “free trade” agreements that are governments intervening in each others’ economies…
Then you’re a real American! Congratulations!
I don’t see where there is a lack of scale. The immigration you’re talking about was peanuts compared to the waves of immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century:
Well, if you live in the first world that may be true, although I don’t where you’re getting this bit about people thinking Americans don’t know how to dance. If you live in the third world, which most people do, then Yankea is the place to be. Especially when Yankea is the only country in the first world with open borders.
No, because no first world country has been foolish enough to try it.
They’ll stay away if they know all they’ll earn is a few pennies an hour, and there is no social safety net.
Or…we can just ponder the carrying capacity of the resource base that all industry springs from. One hundred years ago, numerous immigrants expanded the nation’s long-term ability to transform resources into wealth, while creating short-term stressors on the economy. Now, numerous immigrants just dilute the labor pool, and pile ever more demand upon an ecosystem that is already breaking.
The vastness of America’s purple waves of grain has long since been spoken for, but these resources can still be diluted The US, Canada, and Europe now serve as an overflow sump for the excess population generated in the third world. We can certainly find room for hundreds of millions more precious, desperate, starving people, but only if we ourselves are willing to starve along with them.
The fallacy is that America’s endless resources and industry have a place for all who wish to partake. The reality is that all who arrive must shoulder there way into a work force that is already at capacity, and add their incremental needs to the increasing total demand that we extract from the landscape.
Please believe me when I state that I would be willing to let 50 million more industrious, humble immigrants into the US if an equal number of shit-for-brains, un-prejudiced progressives were willing to travel in the opposite direction.