I believe I fixed the comments glitch. Somehow I had told MT-Blacklist to force into moderation any comment that included the string “tp:”, and that would be basically everything.
Will somebody please try commenting below to make sure it's working?
Comment Junk
Will Wilkinson 
Re “A devout Friedmanite should stand stoutly against every fence, every border cop, every increase in the INS budget, any proposed database check for a new workers’ legal status, etc.”
That might be true if the effects of those actions were limited to immigration. But the risk of encouraging a general disrespect for the law by such actions would not be trivial if such actions met with significant success. That would undermine one of the important institutions of a free society.
what many forget about ‘illegal immigrants’ is that prior to the tightening of immigration quotas most of the ‘illegals’ were coming to america legally yearly as seasonal workers and so on. has it ever occurred to the ‘anti-immigration’ folk that perhaps something being a law doesn’t make it right? perhaps the immigration laws are unjust or illegitimate, as friedman would view the laws that established the federal reserve as unjust and illegitimate. please, think outside the narrow confines of your prejudices, and be consistent! if you’re for free markets you can’t be for it only in some cases, but all. otherwise, you’re just a hypocrite.
Gee, I’ll try to think outside the narrow confines of my prejudices! Obviously the some unjust laws aren’t worth of respect, just because they are laws. Perhaps less obviously (to you) some unjust laws are not SO unjust that they merit disobedience.
Any decent guest-worker program will be better than illegal immigration (to the extent that the GW program largely replaces illegal immigration- if it’s poorly enough made it will not.) But, there is something right in the idea that it’s bad to have different castes of residents, especially when one group is a perpetual under-caste. For this reason a good guest-worker program will have to include some mixture of incentives for workers to return home and an eventual path to full membership for those who do not but who have contributed for a long enough period of time. I think such a thing is possible though of course it’s at least in part an empirical question.
The problem is that the illegal immigrants will have children, who will in turn be legal residents entitled to welfare. Also, California tried to exclude illegal immigrants form welfare benefits and the Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional. One of the events that distanced Rothbard from Cato was that the latter opposed the referendum that tried to do just that.
TGGP, What are you talking about? The 1996 Welfare Reform Act basically barred most noncitizens from most welfare programs. Here’s an account:
And birthright citizenship can be taken away just like that, too. If it would enable acceptance of a big guest worker population, I would favor a law that would only grant citizenship starting with children born in the U.S. of children of immigrants born in the U.S. That would help reinforce circular migration, I’d think.
I don’t know anything about Cato, Rothbard and the referendum you mention. Gotta link?
Anyway, if you’re right that limiting welfare to citizens is infeasible, then I’m with Friedman in thinking illegal immigration better than nothing. It’s a great reason to be against e-verify, etc .
Will- what do you mean when you say, “And birthright citizenship can be taken away just like that, too”? If this is a claim about whether congress could take away birthright citizenship in a way similar to how the ’96 law took away access to welfare benefits to some immigrants than this almost certainly isn’t true since there’s pretty good reason to think (it seems to be what the supreme court says, for example) that the 14th amendment establishes birthright citizenship and that this could not be eliminated via statute. If you mean a constitutional amendment could be passed, that’s true in some sense but unlikely. (Proposals to change this have come up several times and gone absolutely nowhere, even at times of high anti-immigrant feeling.) Additionally, not granting birthright citizenship seems a pretty clear way to establish a perpetual underclass of the sort that’s not likely to be acceptable on any liberal account. Even if you could argue that guestworkers bargain to have limited rights you can’t say the same for their children. They, after all, enter society just as any of the rest of us do.
Matt, You’re right. It would probably take an amendment.
Perpetual underclasses: You’re making a common mistake, which is thinking that most immigrants want to stay here. There would be hugely more circular migration if migrants didn’t have to worry about the militarized border. As it is, we just keep the underclass further under, in Mexico.
But some people do come to stay, which is why I like the “Your grandkids can be citizens” rule.
I’m not assuming that most immigrants want to stay here. (This is my main area of research and I know it fairly well.) Circular immigration is very common and often has been. (See Saskia Sassen’s Guests and Aliens for an excellent account of this.) But, some will stay and some of their children will stay. (This clearly happened in Germany, after all- it’s not like people who say this are just making it up.) But the situation in Germany, where the children of guest-workers were born into the country, lived there, grew up there, and were in all important senses German but were unable to fully take part in society seems to me a pretty clearly unjust one and one that certainly cannot be justified on any plausible contractarian grounds. W/o birthright citizenship in some form that would happen here, too. You don’t have to think “most” immigrants would stay to think that would be a moral disaster. (And of course if most don’t stay then granting birthright citizenship isn’t as costly as some might think, either.)
Sorry. Shouldn’t have assumed. Good points all, although I think “moral disaster” is way too strong. Not letting more immigrants in is the moral disaster, not intra-state cleavages in citizenship status. If the possible world in which Germans had had jus soli kept more Turks in Turkey, then the status quo is better.
What do you think of 2nd Gen birthright idea?
The problem with the welfare argument is that immigrants do get de-facto welfare through free healthcare via emergency room service. Also, isn’t it considered a type of subsidy, and hence welfare, if they don’t pay taxes?
The benefits of illegal immigration are being increasingly documented, and the dangers have turned out to be overstated, often very much so. For a while now I’ve been an advocate of pretty much what we’ve been doing until very recently. Which would be mostly ignoring the “problem” of illegal immigration. Incarcerate and/or deport the troublemakers. Leave the rest alone. The reason I’ve advocated this idea is because it would be much preferred to any solution that has been proposed by actual politicians. It’s realistic. And it is least invasive, and least costly. I realize the notion that the law be ignored for practical reasons seems to rub many folks the wrong way, but it’s not without precedent. It seems a good solution until the issue can be dealt with in a rational manner.
“What do you think of 2nd Gen birthright idea?”
I don’t see how it can be justified to categorically refuse citizenship to those born in the country because of who their parents are. (All sorts of small modifications can be made though they may be hard enough to administrate as to make them not worth it.) Children of immigrants enter society just as children of citizens do, it seems to me. Would you think it acceptable for the best off to negotiate with the worst off citizens now, to give them higher benefits in exchange for their children not being citizens and so not eligible for welfare benefits? What if we also cut a deal w/ Angola so that these non-citizens could go there if they wanted? I’d think that would be clearly unacceptable since parents cannot bargain away the rights of their children. But the children of immigrants are in the same situation. It would be small consolation for the children of immigrants that their grandchildren could be citizens.
(The sorts of modifications we might try, if they didn’t prove to be too expensive to administrate, would be things like the ‘conditional’ birthright citizenship found in Germany where those who have citizenship in another country via their parents must choose at 18 which they will keep, or a program where, if someone would also have citizenship in another country, she must ‘avail’ herself of the laws of the US for some time before turning 18 to retain citizenship. This would prevent citizenship from being granted to people who had no connection to the US except being born there, though it might be too costly in intrusiveness and investigation costs to enforce.)
The population of the world has gone from 1.6 billion to 6.5 billion since 1914.
Overpopulation, enegy shortages, pollution, running out of natural resources
were not cosiderations in 1914.
Economist only measure progress in by the size of the GDP and nothing else.
Friedman was probably getting old and senile when he made the immigration comment.
THERE ARE TWO SIDES OF EVERY STORY. IT SEEMS ON THIS PAGE THE MAJORITY SEEM TO THINK THAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS OK.
HOWEVER, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PAGE, YOU WILL FIND MANY STRONG POINTS THAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS TERRIBLE.
THE MAIN REASON IS THAT ANYTIME A DEMOCRACY HAS THE FREEBIES, OR ‘GIMME’ ATTITUDE….IT IS SHOWN THAT IN THE YEARS BACK, THIS TYPE OF DEMOCRACY BECOMES DESTROYED IN AROUND 200-250 YEARS….
AMERICA IS NOW IN ITS 232 YEAR, AND EVERY ONE THINKS PAYING FOR UNFORTUNATES IS MORALLY NICE, BUT IN REALITY ,IT IS SURE DEATH.
THE ECONOMISTS AND HISTORIANS HAVE PROVEN THIS FACT VERY STRONGLY AND STATE THAT UNLESS AMERICA GETS ITS ILLEGAL PROBLEM HANDLED WITHIN 4 YEARS…THIS COUNTRY IS SERIOUSLY DOOMED.
THIS NATION IS NOW OVER 9 TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT, BORROWING 866 BILLION FROM ONE OF OUR FRIENDS(?) CHINA TO STAY AFLOAT…..
ADDING MORE TO THE WELFARE ROLES, OR THOSE UNDER OUR OWN POVERTY LEVEL, AND THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER IS AT ITS END WITH HIGH GAS PRICES,HOUSING LOSSES, OUTSOUCING JOBS TO OTHER COUNTRIES, AMERICA IS AN INCH SHORT OF TOTAL BANKRUPTCY……
AND IN A SHORT 4 YEARS , BRINGS US CLOSER TO THE HISTORIANS WARNING THAT DEMOCRACIES ONLY LAST FOR A CERTAIN LENGTH OF YEARS, AND THEN CRASH AND BURN…..
I FAVOR RETURNING ALL ILLEGALS OUT OF THE COUNTRY, ( IT REALLY CAN BE DONE ) AND RESUME IMMIGRATION AS IT WAS CONTROLLED BEFORE WE WERE INVADED BY THESE ILLEGALS AS WAS ROME….!!!
Painful to read.
I have a sinking feeling that a hell of a lot more people think the way “Jer” does, and not the way Milton Friedman did.
Why don’t discourage immigrants’ reproduction, as it was done with slaves? The cost of reproduction is much greater than bringing new young, healthy, ready-to-work immigrants. In fact, illegality, by restricting welfare to immigrants does just that: makes it more difficult for immigrants to reproduce. I think it is a wonderful idea, encouraging illegal immigration. It just honors Friedman’s legacy.
what i don’t like about the illegals the women have babies to get benefits here and they gey benefits they would not be here if they wasn’t getting government help they gets welfare and social security, while many american citizens names are put on backlog list who apply for social security,and ssi benefits i am one of those person who social security and medicaid are not helping yet they won’t hestiate to give big fat checks to the illegals they gets foodstamps, wic, medicaid, free housing, and schooling and this is wrong.
Oh, Ida. You are a gift that, hopefully, keeps on giving.
Will, this is an interesting article. I would be curious to know how you would define a Guest Worker Program.
Almost all proposals for Guest Worker Program that I have seen do not allow free and competitive markets with respect to labor (by contrast free labor markets do exist with respect to the illegal immigrants). In other words, all of the proposals for such programs have details about length of stay, wages, taxation, etc. Some have even insisted that an immigrant under a Guest Worker Program would have to be paid the same as a legal American citizen. With such restrictions the employer no longer has the same incentive to hire the immigrant. So it is still the case that the employer and worker are better off operating outside of the legal framework. Another downside to a GWP is that a bureaucracy will have to be created to administer it.
I wonder if we are just better off just ignoring the problem of immigration for jobs so long as we have a welfare state.