Tag Archives: Shikha Dalmia

Cato’s March 21, 2013 immigration event

The video is embedded below.

  • For the first twenty minutes, Shikha Dalmia argues for more “low-skilled” immigration, citing some of the studies discussed at the suppression of wages of natives and US-specific suppression of wages of natives pages.
  • For the next twenty minutes or so, Stuart Anderson makes the case for “high-skilled” immigration and discusses some of the politics and real-world constraints related to green cards and H-1Bs.
  • For the next ten minutes, John Tyler of the Kauffman Foundation argues that immigrants are entrepreneurial based on some studies. The studies and related stuff are discussed here.
  • For the last ten minutes, Alex Nowrasteh discusses the impact of immigration on native wages, repeating some of the material covered by Shikha Dalmia from a somewhat different perspective. His discussion here builds upon his blog post on the subject. On the subject of the welfare state/fiscal burden objection, Nowrasteh discusses a Cato bulletin (and working paper) that I blogged about here.

You can also view the event on the Cato page here.

Shikha Dalmia’s new paper on immigration

Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation has a paper arguing for open borders in a US context here (PDF download here (17 pages)). People who are familiar with the Open Borders website and blog will probably not find much new about the paper, but it still makes for interesting reading. The first page of the paper, with some discussion on the attitudes towards immigration of historical figures such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx, included some nuggets of information that were new to me. Dalmia’s paper is mainly focused on the US-specific suppression of wages of natives and the welfare state/fiscal burden objection, but she also considers some more niche objections such as overpopulation and environment, cheap labor leading to a technological slowdown, and increased footprint.

For those new to this blog, please check out our pro-open borders reading list which includes links to articles, papers (including Dalmia’s), and books making the case for open borders from a variety of perspectives. For balance, you may also wish to read the anti-open borders reading list. You might also want to check out our video section while you’re at it.