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Immigration enforcement ideas
My preferred immigration plan would be to massively increase the number of visas, set a very minimal bar to meet--not a terrorist, not a criminal, not carrying a hideous contagious disease--and then auction off various tranches of visas, classed not by type but by length of stay. Let the visas be transferrable. Then let immigrant communities do enforcement for you, as illegal immigrants suddenly threaten to erode the price of their valuable asset: the right to stay in-country.
That is from Jane Galt.
The implicit model is that once people have spent money for an asset they value that asset more than they would value their prospective income stream from living in the United States. Jane postulates a kind of endowment effect for immigrants. Moving away from family-based immigration also limits potential trustable allies for law-breaking.
I suspect that auction-based proposals will result in too few legal unskilled immigrants, and also more illegal immigration of the unskilled, but I would not rule out this idea just yet. I'm still waiting for someone to write down an impossibility theorem for a good immigration policy, noting that much of the domestic demand is for immigrant traits (e.g., cheapness and immediate readiness to work) which are strongly correlated with illegality. That is some employers want (explicitly or implicitly) to deny some of their workers the benefits of integrating with the U.S. capital stock. Has anyone analyzed immigration policy in terms of finding optimal price discrimination on the side of a country-sized monopsonistic buyer...?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 25, 2007 at 11:51 AM in Law | Permalink
Comments
Sounds a lot like indentured labour as per the British empire post slavery.
Posted by: Mark at Jun 25, 2007 12:43:31 PM
seems self-evident to me that auctioned visas would wind up in the hands of brokers, probably the same dudes who are charging kilobucks to smuggle peasants across the border in moving vans. The availability of legal visas not involving coyote-guided steeplechases or trafficking in stolen documents would increase the appeal of US immigration to the Mexican upper classes, who would be well-equipped to bid visa prices beyond the reach of laborers.
If I, as a US citizen, were to want an entry visa to go get a job in another country, I generally would have to find an employer willing to sponsor a resident visa. That's also currently generally the case for foreign workers wanting to come to the US (e.g. the H1B program). I probably don't need to point out that most illegal immigrants as day laborers working for small businesses hardly likely or able to invest in visa sponsorships.
National borders are artifices which by their very nature interfere with the operation of free markets. Pretending they don't exist won't magically make them go away; the whole purpose of visas is to isolate a national economy as a closed system.
The ultimate free-market solution would be to remove the economic effect of the border, admiting anyone who wanted to work. In order to avoid the problems currently endemic to Mexican society, this might have to be coupled with more vigorous enforcement of vagrancy laws, although our local experience has been that criminal behavior of illegal aliens has been minor in comparison to criminality on the part of US citizens preying upon their known behavioral patterns.
Posted by: xf at Jun 25, 2007 1:56:40 PM
My mental variation of this was to allow legal immigrant waiting in line to be eligible to hire a bounty hunter to remove an illegal immigrant, and open up a "fast-track" slot for them (like FDA testing) if they paid for it. I would phase the implimentation of this, and allow existing illegals to sell their slots before the bounty hunters are allowed to market their services. Penalties for repeat illegal immegration might need to be adjusted, and I'd take fingerprints/DNA with the deportations to enforce it.
Of course such a thing would never happen.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 25, 2007 2:26:37 PM
Don't we do this with taxi drivers?
Posted by: Christopher at Jun 25, 2007 2:57:50 PM
Maybe I misunderstood, but I don't see why her model depends on the endowment effect. If visas are transferable, then a rational agent with a visa possesses an asset that can be sold and the value of which will decrease with illegal immigration (illegal immigration being a substitute for the asset the visa-holder possesses).
As to the impossibility theorem for good immigration policy, what's the problem with the status quo? You want high immigration, but you also want the immigrants to be cheap (which sometimes means the minimum wage can't hold) and ready to work (correlated with illegality) and then there's the reasonable argument against immigration which points out that access to the social welfare system means new immigrants impose costs on everyone already here. Okay, why aren't all these problems solved by making immigration illegal and never enforcing said laws? You get lots of immigrants who are cheap and don't touch the social welfare system, right?
Posted by: ryan at Jun 25, 2007 4:38:51 PM
Are problems with illegal immigration an argument in favor of the EITC and against a high minimum wage? If the the minimum wage were low and EITC high, the native-born citizens could take the low-paying jobs and have their income supplemented by EITC. Illegals wouldn't get the supplement.
Posted by: Slocum at Jun 25, 2007 4:53:20 PM
Tyler notes: "that much of the domestic demand is for immigrant traits (e.g., cheapness and immediate readiness to work) which are strongly correlated with illegality."
Cheapness is also strongly correlated with low human capital, and low human capital is strongly correlated with a lot of traits we don't want in fellow citizens, neighbors, coworkers, and the eventual co-ancestors of our posterity. Further, American culture is such that in the bottom third or so of our society, many human capital facets, such as work ethic and honesty, tends to decline over the generations and other human capital facets, such as education, tend to plateau quickly. So we need to start with as high human capital immigrants as possible.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 25, 2007 6:59:37 PM
"American culture is such that in the bottom third or so of our society, many human capital facets, such as work ethic and honesty, tends to decline over the generations and other human capital facets, such as education, tend to plateau quickly" (Steve Sailer)
1. Any evidence supporting all these statements? I mean, are there any serious (i.e., published peer-reviewed articles) showing that poor people are generally less honest/lazier than the wealthy?
2. There is evidence that, at least in schooling levels (Smith, AER v93, no2), Latinos make important progress across generations. This is a fact often overlooked because comparisons are usually made between, say, CURRENT 2nd generation and CURRENT 1st generation, while the relevant comparison is CURRENT 2nd generation and its predecessor: 1st generation 25 YEARS AGO. Once this adjustment is made, it's clear that pretty significant progress takes place in schooling levels across subsequent Latino generations... that is, no "plateau"
2. Immigrants are, by definition, not raised in American culture, so these pessimistic statement does not necessarily apply to them, right?
Posted by: Ricardo at Jun 25, 2007 7:56:13 PM
There is evidence that, at least in schooling levels (Smith, AER v93, no2), Latinos make important progress across generations. This is a fact often overlooked because comparisons are usually made between, say, CURRENT 2nd generation and CURRENT 1st generation, while the relevant comparison is CURRENT 2nd generation and its predecessor: 1st generation 25 YEARS AGO. Once this adjustment is made, it's clear that pretty significant progress takes place in schooling levels across subsequent Latino generations... that is, no "plateau"
Simply not correct. There appears to be a significant plateau if fourth generation Mexican-American performance is any indication.
If there were significant progress, we would expect states with longstanding Hispanic populations, like California, to have large numbers of Hispanic contributors in more intellectual demanding fields like high tech. Instead, we find Mexicans are a non-factor in such areas.
If you want to see where decades of Hispanic integration lead, you can check out the stats for New Mexico.
Posted by: tommy at Jun 25, 2007 11:03:29 PM
We just need to charge admission for an unlimited number of work visas. The price of the visa should be wholly determined by the price level that is as high as possible but still capable of producing order at our border by reducing the number of border jumpers to an easily interdictable level.
The price would also be ultimately restrained by the prices coyotes charge. Our price should probably be no larger than half the coyotes' prices in order to put them out of business.
yours/
peter.
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Posted by: aizhengw at Jun 27, 2007 2:20:09 AM
Why not charge citizens to keep their citizenship? Those that couldn't afford it, being unproductive, could be forced out.
Posted by: James at Jun 27, 2007 6:53:13 AM
Whatever your plan, how about we only implement it with countries that allow the same? I.e. If China has a very restrictive immigration policy, then we too shall have a restrictive one in regards to Chinese citizens. Because it's easy to see a world in which the groups who enforce their borders permeate and inhabit the nations of those who don't. It would be in the interest of countries with small economies and large birthrates to do this to rich open-borders democracies emphasis on democracies.
Posted by: James at Jun 27, 2007 7:07:10 AM
Illegal residents could enlist to serve two or three years in a work program to serve this country in whatever capacity their skills indicate. Our government insists that not enough people will take such jobs as cleaning up after disasters like Katrina, repairing the facilities in National parks, maintaining our worn-out military hospitals, etc. Skilled workers are needed in hundreds of government-run facilities. These people would be paid a living wage and the same benefits as any other entry-level government worker. After satisfactory completion of time served, they could apply for citizenship. We certainly have the ability to facilitate such a program through such offices as military recruiting services, etc., which could easily be modified to do background, educational and health checks, scan these "citizens-to-be" for skill levels and assign each of them to be sent to wherever is needed. The heads of household would probably suffice for the family to qualify. We have the ability, the facilities, the busses for transportation, the "uniforms", and more than enough illegal residents. Why can't we use our heads and actually accomplish something we could all accept? Oh, the "illegals" Then, get on the bus and go home!
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