Posted on 12/01/2003 11:28:35 PM PST by farmfriend
Immigration: A Better Way
By Arnold Kling
"I have met wealthy elites, academics and journalists from Mexico City who privately laugh that they are exporting their Indians and Mestizos, their unwanted, into the United States. Their smile disappears when I reply that we instead figure what they suppose to be riffraff are the real cream of Mexican society...who in fact are superior people to those who oppress them at home."
-- Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia, p. 31
Hanson's book is passionate, hot-headed, disjointed, and self-contradictory -- much like our immigration policy. In this essay, I do not propose a way to make immigration policy perfect. However, I have some suggestions to make it better.
Minimum Requirements
I have two issues on which I feel strongly. One is that this country must continue to be a haven for the oppressed. The other is that we should not rely on unenforceable laws.
My ancestors were driven from Europe by ethnic violence. Today, there is ethnic violence in Africa and elsewhere. If victims in those countries can escape, and they choose to come to America to make a new life, then I feel that they should have such an opportunity.
People who come to this country to escape oppression should desire assimilation. They should embrace our language, our values, and our democratic principles. We should not go out of the way to make it easy to speak a foreign language in the United States, or to remain in a separate culture within the United States. People should be sufficiently grateful to be living here that they adapt to our ways. In the process, the United States can absorb elements of other cultures, without breaking into separate tribes.
My other big issue is to get rid of what I have called legamorons, meaning any law that could not stand up under widespread enforcement. As it stands, our immigration laws are not going to be enforced. Keeping them on the books is hypocritical and only serves to keep us in a state of denial and evasion over the fact that we need to re-think immigration policy.
Guest Workers
The immigrants that I want in this country are people who would be tortured or killed if they remained in their native lands. Simply wanting to improve your economic opportunities does not entitle you to become a U.S. citizen, in my way of thinking.
However, there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to improve their economic lot in life. I think that we can accommodate guest workers on a win-win basis.
What I propose is that we have a guest worker program with the following characteristics.
1) Anyone who is not a terror suspect or criminal is eligible.
2) All guest workers must register with a private employment agency. That employment agency must provide health care coverage and ensure that all necessary regulations are followed and taxes are paid. Private employment agencies that engage in tax evasion or other regulatory violations will be prosecuted.
3) Taxes will include a payroll tax of about 20 to 25 percent, which will be collected by the employment agency and remitted to the government. This will cover contributions to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds (even though guest workers will not be eligible for benefits under those programs), as well as cost of providing government services at the Federal, State, and Local levels.
4) Families of guest workers will not be eligible for health care or education, unless they purchase insurance coverage for the former or tuition for the latter.
5) Households and businesses must hire workers who are either U.S. citizens or legal guest workers, meaning that they are registered with private employment agencies. Hiring a non-citizen "under the table" will be a violation of the law.
The key to the guest worker proposal is the last point. If the households and businesses that hire illegal immigrants do so in order to save the cost of paying taxes, and they will not pay the taxes even when an employment agency handles all of the paperwork for them, then what we have is more than an immigration problem -- we have a tax rebellion. It may take some education and persuasion to overcome this tax rebellion, but we need to face that issue if we are going to have a sensible immigration policy.
A formal guest worker program would have two effects on the cost of a foreigner working in the United States. Those costs would be increased by the taxes collected and the fees paid to employment agencies. Other costs would go down. These would include the cost of evading border patrols to enter the country, the cost of living underground, and the cost of having only a limited set of employers willing to hire illegal immigrants.
Tariffs vs. Quotas
In economic terms, replacing a law against foreign workers with a guest worker program in which guest workers are taxed is the equivalent of replacing a quota with a tariff. A quota system restricts supply by putting up regulatory barriers. A tariff system restricts supply by raising the price. Tariffs are generally more efficient than quotas.
Just as laws against recreational drugs create business opportunities for criminal enterprises, laws against immigrant workers create business opportunities for criminals who traffic in illegal workers. They also create profit opportunities for households and businesses willing to exploit the foreign workers. Quotas always create such narrow groups of beneficiaries.
For citizens competing against illegal immigrants for jobs, the playing field might be more level with a tariff (guest workers paying taxes) than with a quota (laws that deter some foreign workers but not all). Today, citizens subsidize immigrant workers by paying taxes for government services that benefit the immigrant. With a guest worker program, immigrant workers would pay their fair share.
The tax rate for guest workers would provide a means with which to fine tune the competition between domestic and foreign workers. If we believe that foreign workers are driving domestic wages too low, we can raise the tax on foreign workers. On the other hand, if the economy is at full employment and we want continued expansion without inflationary pressure, we could lower the tax on foreign workers.
The Enemy of the Good
There is a saying that "the best is the enemy of the good." The truth in that saying is that people will let a problem fester while fighting over what is the ideal solution.
A guest worker program with taxes is probably no one's ideal solution to the immigration issue. However, until the ideal solution lands in our laps, my contention is that it would make things better
This is typical of you, Chutch.
You accuse me of bigotry. I respond with further statements of fact. You fail to refute or even address any of the facts.
You instead respond with more purely, emotional race-baiting.
Now, anyone you label "VDARE types" (whatever you mean by that) have to disprove your deliberate lies about them and your distortions of what they said or what your afflicted mind thinks they said.
You don't need your brother the clergyman, you need a shrink. :(
On the contrary. We have had an ongoing guest worker program for quite some time: the H2A visa. And it has precisely the effect I pointed out, which is, that it actually encourages more illegal immigration in the form of family members crossing illegally to join up with the H2A visa holder wherever they might be.
The implication of your post is that illegal immigration occurs because of a labor shortage in the agricultural labor market, and that if we had a program that legalized such traffic, then the situation would stabilize. This is simply not true, and it has been amply demonstrated that illegal immigration occurs because of the difference in living standards and the availability of taxpayer funded social welfare in this country. Were we to expand the H2A program and rechristen it "Bracero II", with no quota, the numbers of people still trying to cross into the U.S. would vastly outnumber the available Ag jobs.
Illegal immigration from Mexico occurs because of the massive increase in the Mexican population since 1960, the utter and abject failure of Mexico's political and social "institutions", and the rise of court mandated participation of illegal aliens in the social welfare benefits of the United States. No guest worker program will ever solve those core realities.
Actually, they are. Federal regulations prohibit the airlines from letting you on a plane without some government-issued ID.
I have not seen such a ban on the Free Republic guidelines and policies page.
He once did ask me not to post articles from Vdare, which I do not do. He has not said anything about not putting links to vdare on one's personal profile.
There have been several studies done, including by the CIS that suggest we could reduce labor demands in agriculture dramatically through increased mechanization, which is no secret to anyone.
As long as an endless supply of cheap and compliant workers are handed to farmers on a silver platter there will never be an incentive to modernize. And the illegals will never stop coming, guest worker programs or not.
"Bigot"
Definition:
Anyone winning an argument against a leftist or neoconservative.
"Neoconservative":
Definition:
Closet leftist.
How exactly is this statement untrue? Are you seriously denying that genes affect intelligence and creativity?
Not true. I know people who refuse to produce "their papers" all the time, and they still get on the plane. They go through a bunch of hassle from the TSA drones. But they still are allowed to get aboard. The Lemuel Penn case says that you are NOT required to show "your papers" to board the aircraft; it merely makes boarding much more convenient.
Affect, yes. Determine? F*** no, goombah. And that's what Sam Francis is arguing.
I've read the case. It says nothing of the sort.
If your friends board without papers, then they are doing so illegally, and the TSA people who let them on are failing to enforce the law.
No, I'm saying people's genetic makeup is one of many factors that determines people's intelligence, creativity, and talent. Where did this talk of superiority come from?
Genetics are not the defining factor. The defining factor is what one makes of the talents and the life God has given them.
You are in as much denial as the people who denied that the Earth orbits the sun. Genetics, which in part determine what talents you have, are one factor among others. Of course what you do with your talents is important, but you can't do much with talents you don't have.
I do not see how race or culture can have an effect on that.
It is a scientific fact that there are genetic differences between population groups that results in the different groups having different talents.
Now obviously, talents are not everything, but they are important. Without talent, you can't be a worldclass athlete. Without talent, you can't be a virtuoso pianist. Without talent, you can't be a brilliant mathematician or scientist.
Of course, just having talent is not enough. You have to work to develop it. But just the same, talent it is necessary.
But we're getting off topic. Please point out to me exactly where Mr. Francis' statement is wrong.
In other words, he's saying DNA equals destiny.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.