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Should we just build a big fence?
To keep out Mexicans, that is.
For purposes of argument, let us say you are anti-immigration. And let us say the fence would cost nothing to build and maintain. You still might not want one.
Mexicans illegals enter the U.S. through two major channels. They run (or swim) across the border, or they buy illegal papers. Usually the papers cost more than the hiring the crossing guide. The papers make for an easier and safer journey, for obvious reasons. Mexican women, I might add, are more likely to use false papers, given their (their father's?) greater aversion to the physical strain of four days in the desert.
If you shut off the desert walks (assume the fence is impregnable, ha!), more Mexicans will use illegal papers.
Did I add I would expect the cost of the papers to fall, not rise? Many Mexicans don't trust the purchase of papers, as opposed to the desert walk. If the walk were impossible, networks for manufacture and sale of the papers would become much better developed. The illegal papers would become much cheaper and much more widely used.
In other words, more young women will come. Many of the Mexican men will have wives here, not back home. Many more young Mexicans will be born on U.S. soil.
Get the picture? Hispanamerica is coming, like it or not. Let's deal with it constructively.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 12, 2006 at 07:23 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Hispanamerica will generally be a good development for the US, primiarliy because of the higher degree of religious participation. Hispanamerica is the expected consequence of demographic trends, not immigration law enforcement. An effective wall, better document scrutiny and employer sanctions can, however, ensure that the population of hispanamerica will join this society via legally sanctioned means. The crucial issue concerning illegal immigrations remains the illegality.
Posted by: John Sterling at Apr 12, 2006 7:57:08 AM
I was for basically free movement accross borders five minutes ago, but an increase in the number of young Mexican women... Now you've go me thinking.
Posted by: joshg at Apr 12, 2006 8:24:55 AM
Hi Tyler,
I love the blog and more or less the whole of the GMU Law+Economics faculties, but this argument just seems disingenuous to me.
First you equate 'anti-immigration' with anti-illegal Mexican immigration. One can be pro-immigration, but want immigrants who will provide net benefits to current citizens. Mexican-Americans commit murder at a rate more than ten times as great as Asian-Americans, have average IQs 10-15 points lower, earn lower incomes, and underperform educationally unto the 4th generation. Increasing H1-B issuances (and allowing permanent admission of talented immigrants, using a combination of IQ and English tests, educational credentials, and auctioning off green cards combined with bonds against use of social services) clearly has net positive externalities, and the distributional effects benefit the poor and unskilled at the expense of the better-endowed. For illegal Mexican immigration the situation is precisely the reverse.
Illegal Mexican immigrants working at below minimum wage produces economic value of no more than $10-15,000. Many work in subsidized agriculture, where they merely help landowners farm the governmnet. Regardless, in the absence of immigrant workers the efficiency costs of automating these jobs, paying higher wages for them, or reducing their number would be small in proportion to the economy as a whole. These limited benefits are small enough to be overwhelmed by external costs on citizens: emergency room use, government schools ($9,000 per child in California), and increased police/prison costs, not to mention direct costs of crime (valuing lives at 7-10 million dollars). Worse, their children will tap welfare, Medicaid, and other redistribution programs more heavily and contribute less in taxes than the median citizen.
On a societal level there are other problems. Increasing the proportion of Mexican-American citizens increases electoral support for both socialism and social conservatism, which should draw libertarian scorn. Both economic illiteracy (as studied by Bryan Caplan) and nasty attitudes such as homophobia and anti-Semitism are more prevalent among this population. Lowering the average sophistication of the population encourages the dumbing down of popular culture and art. More Hispanic citizens means more affirmative action in education and employment, with associated efficiency costs and social discord. A looser labor market means greater unemployment and associated social ills among African-Americans and native poor, problems in themselves as well as burdens on taxpayers.
So I think it is unreasonable to equate importing Indian programmers, Chinese engineers, French academics, etc, with illegal entry of Mexicans to work on subsidized farms, doing jobs that are automated at slightly higher cost in other countries.
Moreover, on the merits your argument is flawed: we should not build a wall because it will increase the number of children getting birthright citizenship? Anti-illegal immigration folks ALSO oppose giving birthright citizenship to the children of illegals (and public schooling at taxpayers' expense), just as citizenship is not accorded to the children of foreign ambassadors. Further, advocates also want to make ID documents harder to fake (biometrics, national database, etc), while policy heretofore has often been quitely constructed to make it easy to fake documents (see various state efforts to issue driver's licenese to illegals.)
"Hispanamerica is coming, like it or not." But many countries are quite effective in limiting the flow of illegal immigration (not eliminating it, but not taking in millions of illegals) and there are a variety of options available. If you reduce the benefits of illegal entry and raise the costs, you will reduce immigration, unless the Law of Demand has been suspended for immigration.
Some of the options include the wall (which has been very effective in blocking terrorists in Israel, a group somewhat more determined than Mexican migrants), effective employer sanctions, the elimination of welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, imprisonment for those re-entering the country after deportation, the aforementioned change to birthright citizenship, etc. Perhaps the most important change would be actual enforcement of the immigration laws, which various administrations have refused to do under political pressure from businesses employing illegal immigrants and racial lobbies. When you combine these factors with the higher cost of living in the United States, the unpleasantness of living 'underground,' and the fact that the vast majority of illegals were productively employed before entering the United States it is not difficult to imagine a serious reduction in the number of people for whom illegal entry would be attractive. staunching of the flow of immigrants.
The idea that it is impossible to enforce borders and discourage illegal immigration (including by means like denying birthright citizenship, preventing American taxpayers from paying several times an immigrant's annual income in education costs) is just silly, and I am disappointed to hear this argument from you rather than a positive case for admitting large numbers of unskilled workers (not to mention beneficiaries of tax dollars and future voters.)
Posted by: Anon at Apr 12, 2006 8:36:15 AM
Abstractly, Tyler is saying that if you do X, then Y will likely happen as a secondary effect.
On this point we agree.
Then there's the assertion that Y will outweigh X so that X is useless and implicitly we shouldn't do X.
This is a problem I typically have with non-economists, not economists. The mere existence of a secondary effect does not
mean that the primary effect will be lost. Or in alternate situations, just because the secondary effects are called secondary because of their ordinality in time, it doesn't mean that they'll be secondary in magnitude.
Or in other words, I'm shocked that this post is apparently only considering direction and not both direction and magnitude when summing vectors.
A better (and I think less blinkered by the result that you want) argument would have been to point out a wall won't stop all illegal immigration from Mexico and that the new steady-state may be hard to predict as the sudden shock to the system will cause a ripple of effects.
Giving an example of one ripple, the increased illegal paper business that Tyler correctly forsees would almost definitely be countered by an electronic immigrant database (which has already been proposed, though for other purposes) that will make the use of illegal papers for entry significantly more difficult. This may (now getting fuzzier than a climate forecast) spawn Mexican computer gangs which will spur interest in computing leading to the creation of Tequilla valley thereby relieving some demand to immigrate.
Something like this I would've bought (well perhaps not Tequlla valley as a result of the wall, it's just a bridge too far). Not "Hispanamerica is coming, like it or not. Let's deal with it constructively.", i.e., a wall is entirely useless.
Beyond just presenting a credible argument, a better one (though probably not doable in the setting of a quicky blogpost) would've been to 1) examine the effectiveness of walls (in terms of percent decrease in illegal immigration), 2) estimate the likely effectiveness and 3) place the effectiveness side by side with the likely cost of the wall (a much easier number) and then ask is if the effect worth the cost.
To help sort out the ripple effects, an empirical study of the effectiveness of walls throughout the last century could be employed (e.g., Israel, Berlin, the soon to be wall on the Saudi Arabia/Iraq border, various security fences around private and public installations). While we still wouldn't know the precise steady-state, we would likely be in the ballpark.
Without having such a study in hand, we can turn the old economist/100 dollar bill on the street joke on its head (that can't be a $100 bill, someone else would've already picked it up) and make an estimate.
Fences/walls must be effective on net, we already build them everywhere.
Personally, I expect that a wall will cut down on illegal immigration 95 to 99% which makes a wall worth it to me even if that remaining 1-5% breeds more per capita, the absolute number should decrease (such a high breeding 1-5% is almost definitely a represented in the current pool of illegal immigrants).
Posted by: Jody at Apr 12, 2006 8:40:35 AM
Q: How did California and Texas become part of the US?
A: We stole them from Mexico (you can look it up).
They are the west bank and golan heights of north america (and our
fence would be no different than the Israeli fence except that afaik, we
don't have a problem with Mexican suicide bombers).
Mexico is simply taking back what is rightfully theirs in a much more peaceful manner
than the how we aquired it. I think we could more than pay for the alleged
drain on social services with the savings achieved by eliminating all patrolling and
enforcement activities on our southern border. If the number of mexicans
living in the US tripled, so what?
My advice: learn spanish. its a wonderful language.
Kevin (non-anonyomous) Grier
Posted by: kevin at Apr 12, 2006 8:47:02 AM
Kevin answers his own question-
Q: "If the number of mexicans living in the US tripled, so what?"
A: "[CA and TX] are the west bank and golan heights of north america.... Mexico is simply taking back what is rightfully theirs"
Such an implicit separatist movement may or may not come to pass (it already is in existence though small in number), but it is at least one answer to "so what" and it is incredible to see both presented in the same post.
Posted by: Jody at Apr 12, 2006 8:54:05 AM
As a single male, I will now change my opinion, Congress, get thee to fence building.
Posted by: nelsonal at Apr 12, 2006 9:00:49 AM
Kevin,
Learning book Spanish does not help anyone in the US learn to communicate with the illegal aliens from Central and South America since virtually all of them are illiterate in Spanish and speak a dialect that is almost devoid of intellect. Learning Spanish from illegal aliens would be the same as learning English from blue collar whites in West Virginia.
Also, since Mexico is a contruct of Western European governments it has no more claim to a particular piece of North America than any other country in North America. PS, the US did not "steal" Texas but the Texans successfully seceded from Mexico before the US was officially involved.
Maybe Mexico should give itself back to the Aztecs?
Posted by: superdestroyer at Apr 12, 2006 9:27:32 AM
Some of the critics in the comments are overreacting or putting words in my mouth. I'm just saying a fence won't stop the growing hispanization of the United States. Just look at the legal population already here, for one thing. Furthermore the U.S./Mexico situation is unique. Look at the numbers, the length of the border, and the differences in per capita income, among other features of the problem.
I'm not saying that *no policy* would keep out many more Mexicans. Very very tough penalties would do the trick, among other options, or for that matter WMD. I am saying that no policy we will or might adopt will succeed in this manner, given the other associated costs.
And watch out. If you call my argument "disingenuous" again, I might sue you!
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Apr 12, 2006 9:36:44 AM
I think you are largely correct in saying that it is politically impractical to reduce Mexican immigration by a large amount. But this by itself doesn't mean that those of us who oppose it are wrong and should suddenly start singing its praises. And arguments based on political feasibility have a sly underhanded way of being self-fulfilling - 'hey, no one will ever do *that*, so let's just stop talking about it already...'.
So far as the papers go, I imagine that if this is perceived as a major leak or likely to become one we could make this route more difficult as well. There are many ways to make documents harder to fake.
Posted by: bbartlog at Apr 12, 2006 10:00:24 AM
And that Muslim terrorist threat is coming whether we like it or not. And those ridiculous airport screens never work anyway. We should just let people get on planes and then sort out the consequences. I mean, if we try to stop them, they'll just figure out some way to do the same thing in a more lethal way. So the best defense is none at all.
Posted by: smallee.com at Apr 12, 2006 10:04:46 AM
Tyler you should turn off the comments like you used to do. Racist screeds like superdestroyer's don't belong on this site.
Posted by: kevin at Apr 12, 2006 10:14:11 AM
Without getting into the more abstract points of this debate, I do recall an instance in US passport history that may be relevant. A couple of decades back, maybe more, the State Department came up with a new passport. It was a high-tech jobbie meant to be impossible to counterfeit to any useful degree. That proved untrue. It was possible to counterfeit the new, higher-tech jobbie. The first discovery of a passable counterfeit was in the Phillippines, shortly before the launch of the official version. Before.
Posted by: kharris at Apr 12, 2006 10:25:54 AM
If Mexican immigration is so unstoppable, why has it only been this high in recent decades. Why not during the 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's, etc?
I know American changed it's immigration policy (in the 60s or 70s, I think) to not be biased in favor of Europeans, but since this is all illegal what prevented the Mexican from moving here in large numbers in the 30s and 40s?
The wage difference had to have been large. There were sizable Mexican contingents in the US (just not on the current scale) so word must have gotten back to Mexico about the potential wage gains.
I'm generally curious what the cause was for the upturn in immigration. The usual reason I here--change in US immigration policy to a less racist policy--doesn't seem to fly since this issue is based on the Mexicans ignoring the law anyway.
thanks,
Dave
Posted by: Dave at Apr 12, 2006 10:45:22 AM
John Sterling says "The crucial issue concerning illegal immigrations remains the illegality." If so, then a solution is readily at hand: simply abolish the immigration quotas. There will then be significantly more immigration, but it will all be perfectly legal. If the crucial issue truly is illegality rather than immigration per se, then John should be perfectly happy with this solution.
Anon also protests Tyler's conflation of anti-immigration sentiment with anti-illegal-immigration sentiment. He then discusses ways to discourage illegal immigration, but his arguments for doing so don't hinge on illegality but rather on the immigrants' lack of skills and their Latino culture.
Anti-illegal-immigrationists are anti-immigrationists. The legality question is a smokescreen.
Posted by: eddie at Apr 12, 2006 10:48:08 AM
If you look at the data, when border control enforcement was weaker (during the 70s and 80s), the typical immigrant would get in and out the US several times--we had revolving migration. From the 90s on, with slightly more severe enforcement, all you get is: 1) People will have to try 3, 4 or 5 times until succeeding. 2) Once in the U.S., you dont exit anymore. Building the wall would just do that: migrants will just try harder, and once there, they will have kids so that they cannot be kicked out.
Posted by: Javier at Apr 12, 2006 11:08:51 AM
I agree with eddie. Furthermore, I'm sick and tired of people quoting a bunch of statistics saying Mexican-Americans are more criminal, less intelligent, lazy, etc. Cite your sources, racists.
Posted by: cb at Apr 12, 2006 11:09:19 AM
For the nativists -- under what circumstances would you favor increased immigration? Given that no immigration policy can eiminate all potential criminals from crossing the border, what do you think would be an acceptable failure rate? For example, would you accept an immigration policy that allowed immigrant populations who committed crimes and went on welfare at rates comparable to say, Irish immigrants? Or Canadian immigrants?
If immigrants were not allowed to vote for say, 20 years (and thereby could not vote themselves increased welfare in any reasonable time frame) would you then support allowing free immigration?
Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Apr 12, 2006 11:12:34 AM
So you're arguing that the market for illegal papers is a declining cost industry? That is, as the demand for illegal papers increases after the wall is built, the resulting increase in short run prices/profits will spur a long run supply response that (because of decreasing costs) exceeds the demand initial stimulus, thus causing prices to fall.
I like it! I may have to use this in class. It might even be true.
Posted by: Bob Lawson at Apr 12, 2006 11:12:55 AM
You've already been told why your argument is lame. See Jody's post. People do currently walk across the border; it's the lowest cost method for most illegals. Ergo, to seal it up with a fence will raise their costs. I see no reason at all to believe that forged papers will then become so cheap that their price would drop to the level of walking.
But even if that is so, you're still making the cardinal mistake of assuming that Americans are stupid. They do one thing to solve a problem, but it turns out that doesn't solve it. So, they just give up. Is that reasonable? Or is it more likely, once the failure is manifest, they try something else? This ain't rocket science.
If the fence works (against walkers) but then other channels open up wider, you can bet the exact same political will that the fence expresses will express itself in other ways. Presumably, we'd then make documents harder to forge. Is that so hard to believe? Is making documents harder to forge a "very very tough penalty"?
Posted by: Leonard at Apr 12, 2006 11:17:01 AM
"How did California and Texas become part of the US?"
Texas seceded from Mexico and then asked to be admitted to the U.S. And Mexico's claim to California was pretty dubious considering the distance from Mexico City to California and Mexico's inability to defend it.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Apr 12, 2006 11:42:20 AM
Are the Mexicans using forged/counterfeit Mexican passports with genuine US visas? If so, I don't think these papers are hard to pick up. Even if they are using passports of other countries, I don't think it is easy as Tyler makes it out to be.
I have worked in passport fraud and investigations for a few years and have never seen a good counterfeit which I couldn't detect with a UV light and portable magnifying glass-type equipment. There are some good ones out that which are hard to spot with the naked eye, but most counterfeit documents are very poor and mistakes are very common.
There are many security features in a passport and some are very hard to replicate or the counterfeiters don't know about them.
Forged passports where people replace the photo, in the older style passports or the entire cover (cover page, biodata page and back page and cover) leave tell-tale signs.
The only problems are with original passport issued to a fake identity - where I come from we call them false passports. This is what the visa application process is for.
Or with imposters where a genuine passport is used by someone who is not the real holder because they look similiar, again the visa application process can help here. If the immigration officer has access to the visa application, there are a number of ways to test the person - the average person trying to enter a country illegally isn't smart enough to memorise all the necessary information or if you experience in interviewing people you can learn ways to trap them.
Posted by: Jay at Apr 12, 2006 11:56:28 AM
Tyler does not go far enough in his analysis to develop a real strategy to the problem. "Hispanoamerica is coming, like it or not" actually means: as long as Mexico remains poor and impoverished people will keep coming.
So it seems to me the solution is for a prosperous Mexico. How can Mexico become prosperous? In this regard NAFTA is good because any future prosperous Mexico needs access to the US market, and competition is needed to make Mexican businesses efficient and lean. But that is not enough.
The real root cause of Mexico's poverty is the corrupt nature of Mexican politics and their elites. Recently some good has come (Zedillo and Fox to some degree), but overall the system remains too corrupt. Ireland was able to transform itself from the backwater of Europe into the Celtic Tiger in 10 years. Why can't Mexico?
How much growth is needed in Mexico before Mexicans decide it's not worth the hassle to come to the US? Now that's a marginal question!
One thing that needs to be understood is that illegal immigration is the saftey valve of the corrupt Mexican elite. That is why Mexico does nothing to stop illegal immigration, and why in fact they do everything they can to encourage. Why bother to improve things if any troublemakers can be forced into moving to the US? Why aren't all the illegal immigrant marches, concerned about the status of Mexicans, not done in Mexico? Why do they wait to come here to march? What if some of that discontent was kept where it belongs, in Mexico?
What if the US can bottleneck the border just enough to rise the discontent in Mexico because people who would otherwise leave must stay? How much more discontent is needed before pressure comes to the Mexican elite to enact serious reforms that improve Mexico? That's another marginal question.
Furthermore, take the analysis even further. If the solution to Mexico's problems is for the US to solve them, then why address the problem only after people leave? If we accept that "Hispanoamerica is coming, like it or not" why not drive the solution in Mexico? Why not have an American-funded grammar school system IN MEXICO to teach English, American history, and good citizenship? Why not, since the Mexican government implicitly accepts it is a failed state, say - disestablish yourself and let Washington administer Mexico as a US territory so we can bring the benefits of America directly to the people of Mexico? Let US law break up the haciendas, give land grants to the peasants, and arrest the corrupt politicians so that the native genius and work of Mexicans can happen in Mexico not just the US.
This would require a radical change in US foreign policy. I don't expect it to work, but doing so would change the debate to where it's needed: the root causes. The root cause is Mexico, so let's work to change it. In either case, building a wall puts the pressure on Mexico to respond.
That's what needs to be done, and that's what Tyler's analysis fails to look at.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at Apr 12, 2006 12:16:31 PM
A comprehensive report by Jeffrey Passel for the Pew Hispanic Center (in 2005) identifies the 4 occupations with the highest concentration of illegal immigrant workers. In order, these occupations are farming, cleaning, construction, and food preparation.
Anti-immigrant people can use this information to make sure they never benefit from illegal immigration.
1. Every time you buy fresh fruit or vegetables, tear up some money. Illegal immigrant labor makes that produce cheaper.
2. Every time you go out to a restaurant, tear up some money. Illegal immigrant labor makes those restaurant meals cheaper.
Of course, the list could go on. The bottom line is that illegal immigration makes the migrant better off, and on average it makes everybody already in the U.S. better off as well.
Brian
Posted by: brian at Apr 12, 2006 12:26:23 PM
Documents may be easy to fake; information isn't. If you're applying for a job at my company, and you're a twenty-something man and your Social Security number belongs to an eighty-something woman in Rochester, NY -- and I can check that at my desk, right now -- then you don't get a job until you get that sorted out. Of course, that wouldn't matter to casual labor, but to any business that pays taxes, denying deductions for wages paid to illegal workers would be a serious deterrent to hiring them.
Posted by: Linda Seebach at Apr 12, 2006 12:32:12 PM
