The Benefits of Immigration
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Donald Boudreaux is the chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. He was the president of FEE from 1997 to 2001.
In my October "Notes from FEE" I challenged a case, made by some market-advocates, for immigration restrictions. I have since received scolding letters and E-marls from numerous people predicting that open borders would bring all manner of calamities. While some writers were less certain than others about the baleful consequences of unregulated immigration, only one correspondent fully shared my support for eliminating all immigration restrictions.
These many letters have prompted me to think longer and harder about immigration. Alas, my opinion remains unchanged: we should welcome all immigrants. Government should not redistribute income to immigrants, but neither should government prevent immigration.
Each immigrant comes to America to make himself better off. Suppose government no longer redistributes income to immigrants. Would immigrants still relocate here? You bet! A handful will come because some Americans are willing to use their own resources to care for them. Most immigrants will come because each has sufficient skill and ambition to profit in the market.
Absent government welfare payments to immigrants, immigrants who do not seek work burden no one other than family or friends who voluntarily assume this burden. I here ignore such non-working immigrants who receive no government handouts. These immigrants do not raise the ire of anti-immigrationists. Opponents of immigration object most vehemently to immigrants who are eager to work.
Such objections are mistaken. Let’s see why.
Juan is a hypothetical immigrant. He arrives in America and immediately begins looking for employment. Before finding a job, he must secure food, clothing, and shelter. He may do so from funds brought with him from his native country, or he may depend upon the kindness of family, friends, or charitable organizations here in the United States. In either case, because such transfers are voluntary, no American is harmed.
If Juan resorts to theft, however, the story is different. Some Americans are indeed harmed. But criminal law is the appropriate tool for dealing with such thievery. Restricting immigration on the grounds that a handful of immigrants behave criminally would be like denying drivers licenses to everyone just because a small percentage of people drive recklessly. More focused and less ham-fisted means are available in both cases for weeding out the bad apples from the good.
Juan, however, is no thief. He’s a worker. Suppose that Juan has no skills of any value to any American. He can do nothing that any American is willing to pay for. In this case, Juan will eventually return home. No American is harmed. (Actually, Juan would probably not come to America in the first place. People so destitute of skills are unlikely to leave home in search of work in a foreign and highly competitive economy.)
But Juan is extremely unlikely to lack any skill for which Americans are willing to pay some mutually agreeable wage. Readers who doubt this claim should consult that cornerstone of economics called the theory of comparative advantage—a theory, by the way, that exposes the senselessness of identifying people economically as being "above average" or "below average." The theory of comparative advantage makes clear that everyone is above average at some tasks and below average at many others.
When Juan finds employment, not only is Juan made better off, but so, too, is his employer. Consumers are also made better off, for the higher output or lower cost that Juan’s availability makes possible for his employer is shared with consumers through reduced prices or improved product quality. Nothing to complain of so far.
Some people, however, are harmed by Juan’s availability—namely, American workers who compete with Juan. If Juan’s most marketable skill is nearly identical to the most marketable skill possessed by Sam the American, Juan is a potential rival for Sam’s job. Because of Juan, Sam’s income may fall.
Protecting Sam from income loss, though, is inappropriate. To prevent Juan from entering America is to do nothing more virtuous than to protect Sam from competition. But it is also to prevent George and Bill and other Americans from freely dealing with Juan, who is someone they would otherwise choose to deal with! To restrict immigration is to deny to Americans their freedom of association. Sam, then, becomes a monopolist under immigration restrictions. If Sam suffers income loss when these restrictions are lifted, he is no more worthy of our solicitude than is any other monopolist whose monopoly privilege unravels.
Suppose that government grants me the exclusive privilege to write newspaper op-eds. No longer can publishers carry the likes of Walter Williams, George Will, Maureen Dowd, or Russell Baker. Protected from such competitors, my income skyrockets. Now imagine that government withdraws this privilege. Publishers— and readers!—are again free to patronize op-ed writers other than me. My income plummets.
Should you feel sorry for me? Of course not. Would you conclude from the fact that this heightened competition reduces my income that the wealth of the nation falls? Of course not. Likewise, productively employed immigrants invariably increase the nation’s wealth by intensifying competition and expanding the division of labor. Immigration restrictions, in contrast, reduce economic growth. Prosperity cannot be bred by monopoly protections.
immigration opponents also fear that open immigration means overcrowding. This worry is overblown. First, the United States is sparsely populated. Second, owners of private property have incentives to keep their properties from being overcrowded. The proper solution to overcrowding is privatizing those property holdings not yet privatized, not forcibly stopping productive people from coming to our country.
Third, overcrowding is an elusive concept. Among the people who wrote to complain that immigration spawns overcrowding was a resident of New York City. But this person clearly doesn’t mind crowds. If he did, he’d move to Oklahoma or Mississippi.
Manhattan is one of the most densely populated spots on earth. Yet it is also one of the wealthiest. New Yorkers often complain of crowds, but no one is compelled to live in that city. The reason people live there is because economic opportunity in New York is vast. Living in close contact with lots of people is a price that many of us voluntarily pay for the opportunity to take advantage of the wealth-producing capacities of an extensive division of labor.
New York and Los Angeles are crowded but wealthy. Oklahoma and Mississippi are sparsely populated but much poorer. This fact alone is ample evidence of the great economic benefits of immigration.
Comment by ktmkidd6 on 23 March 2009:
thanks alot. this helped me so much on my immigration essay i had to write for history class.
dont worry i cited it
Comment by Will on 6 April 2009:
MISSISSIPPI ISN’T POOR!!!!!!!!
Comment by Alma on 7 April 2009:
Thanks!! I had to do an essay on immigration and this gave me alot of information.
Comment by Shunom on 26 April 2009:
This is incredible and should be publish nationwide to countries that are still ignorant of the advantages of immigration.
Comment by Oscar on 22 July 2009:
Great information! I cited you as a source for an essay i am working on.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 23 July 2009:
Ktmtkdd6, Alma, and Oscar,
Before you write papers citing Mr. Boudreaux’s brilliant work you might want to look at the title and understand that his analysis is not neutral.
As Ms. Akers has done in similar articles Mr. Boudreaux does not differentiate between legal and illegal immigration. This is a disingenuous attempt to pretend that any variety of immigration is beneficial when it is not.
On an intuitive level it is easy to prove that an influx of poor and uneducated does not benefit a country. If it did then Latin America, Africa, India, and Asia would have the largest economies on Earth growing by leaps and bounds every time one of the impoverished birthed another child. This is not the case.
So the problem isn’t “Juan” coming here to make a better life. The problem is millions, of “Juans”, “Chens”, “Appos”, and others coming here with their families looking for a better life and making ours worse in the process. Finite resources and infinite population means less for you and your children.
You should also not Mr. Boudreaux’s use of the name “Juan” in his commentary. Why didn’t he use “Angus” or “Kim” or a neutral name such as “John Doe?” In debate we call this “Race Bating.”
Mr. Boudreaux indicates the “Government should not redistribute income to immigrants, but neither should government prevent immigration.” Unfortunately the US has broad entitlement programs that are being expanded and Mr. Boudreaux should be well aware by this point in his life that it is unrealistic to assume these programs will be disbanded soon, if ever.
On the other hand Simpson-Mazzoli and McCain-Kennedy demonstrates that unlimited immigration is not nearly as unlikely. So the question you should be asking is if you want to support a flood of “Juans” and their kids with your tax dollar or if you would like to see better roads, schools, and other public works, cheaper tuition, less expensive health care, and better wages because Mr. Boudreaux’s fantasy of a social services free society isn’t going to happen.
Even if we could disband every social program this would not be in the public interest since poverty breeds disease, social unrest, and crime. The Middle-Class and Upper-Class gain benefit from elevating the Lower-Class by creating a cleaner, healthier, and more stable society to live in.
In addition to this an educated workforce is able to research, develop, and produce better products that improve the quality of life for everyone in the community. Education is the primary reason that mud huts are the pinnacle of engineering for tribesmen in Africa while we’re building skyscrapers. We need doctors to cure cancer. We need engineers to go the Moon. We need technicians to repair computers. Educated immigrants can help us achieve these goals the poor and uneducated can’t.
We also have laws such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) that forces private hospitals to treat people regardless of if the patient can pay for it or not. The bad debt has bankrupted hospitals and closed Emergency Rooms throughout the United States.
Mr. Boudreaux compares preventing foreign workers for being employed in US positions to a monopoly when the opposite is true. Allowing unlimited immigration would provide access to the labor in a foreign market without giving the worker and the consumer equal access to the markets this labor was imported from. This would cause a decrease in the scarcity of labor, an increase in the scarcity of housing and other consumables thus lowering wages and increasing prices. That’s great for landowners and businessmen but terrible for workers and consumers.
Unfortunately it can take entire pages to explain the folly in a single sentence so it would take an epic treatise to correct all of Mr. Boudreaux’s mistakes. Hopefully this “short” explanation will give you incentive to do your own research to debunk his sophism rather than using it as a source.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 28 July 2009:
Interesting take James.
One thing I can agree with Buchanan is if WWI had not ended the way it did then WWII would not have occurred.
I think the better suspect to blame is Versailles than Britain. If Versailles had not been so punitive the German economy would not have tanked and there is a good chance the Republic would have survived. By destroying Germany’s economy it undermined the Republic, fostered animosity towards the US and France, and generated the hate that Hitler exploited.
I find it amazing that so much destruction and carnage was caused by a single document.
Comment by Amanda on 22 November 2009:
this is great!
really helped me with my immigration essay I had to write.
Comment by Anthony on 24 November 2009:
Cited and used for essay. Thanks
Pingback by Haitians Can Stay in U.S. for Awhile | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty on 18 January 2010:
[...] Timely Classic “The Benefits of Immigration” by Donald J. [...]
Comment by Atherton-Bloxham on 18 January 2010:
To James Madison Fan
Every point that you bring forth, has been thoroughly analyzed and logically de-constructed by the Austrians that write for fee.org, fff.org, mises.org, cafehayek and the independentinstitute.org. as a starting point. There are now several excellent books exploring both the economic and the philosophical position for the free movement of “labor, goods, and capital.” It is critical that those who say they support individualism and the voluntary market process, re-think the logic in their anti immigrant position. The very idea of Administrative rules and regulations, quotas etc, are based on a collectivist ideology administrated by “experts.” This is not an arcane economic argument but is of immediate importance. The hostility and blame, fueled by the type of erroneous arguments you make,could explode.
Comment by James on 18 January 2010:
I notice you have taken to the PC habit of dropping off “legal” and “illegal” when using the word immigrant. So when you make statements like, “Each immigrant comes to America to make himself better off.
I doubt that is always true in all cases and much less true in the case of illegal immigrants.They may come make themselves better off, but not us. Illegal immigration is the type of criminal activity that most Americans are opposed to.
You can crunch numbers and spout off statistics all day long, however if you have ever known anyone who has legally immigrated to America, you would know that it is a very long, expensive, and harrowing experience. Legal Immigrants pay thousands of dollars in fees, wait endless hours in government lines, fill in dozens of forms written in government doublespeak, are accused with being criminals,have their character and intentions constantly questioned and scrutinized, and have to spend years waiting and dealing with arrogant,and bigoted government employees for something that is never promised and never known and only grudgingly given at the last possible moment.
To give illegal aliens, the ones who bypass this tortuous process, special considerations, special rights, and fast tracked immigration visa is nothing less than a travesty, and should not be tolerated it matters not the race, nationality, or religion of the immigrant, but the character of the person should matter a lot !
Comment by Joshua on 26 January 2010:
I would like to know whether the author distinguishes between legal and illegal immigration. I agree with the economic benefits of immigration. However, many illegal immigrants do not pay taxes. Being from California, we see millions of dollars spent on educational, medical, and social services for illegal immigrants who do not pay taxes. What does the author propose as a solution for this predicament?