Yearly Archives: 2013

Conversation between Michael Clemens and GiveWell

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Charity evaluator GiveWell often carries out conversations with subject matter experts in a number of areas relevant to the philanthropic directions that GiveWell is considering. Notes from some of these conversations get published on GiveWell’s conversations page.

Recently, GiveWell staffer Alexander Berger had a conversation with Michael Clemens. Clemens is in charge of migration and development at the Center for Global Development, a Washington D.C. think tank. A full PDF of the conversation can be found here.

The part that interested me most in the conversation was the section on migration from Haiti to America:

After the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the United States strengthened its naval blockade of Haiti to prevent Haitians from moving to the US. Together with others, Clemens worked to loosen the restrictions on a US visa program to allow more Haitians to move to the US legally as a part of the post earthquake relief and recovery effort.

For historical reasons, before 2012 Haitians were not eligible for H-­‐2 visas. After the earthquake, Clemens and his collaborators made a very substantial effort to make Haitians eligible for H-­‐2 visas.

  • They pointed out that if 2,000 Haitians were to get H–2 visas every year,over the course of 10 years, the total amount earned by the migrant workers would be more than $400m, a total exceeding the US relief emergency assistance after the earthquake.
  • They had meetings with the staff from both Florida senators and several Florida Representatives, with the office of John Kerry, with the White House, the State Dept., with several nongovernmental organizations and with the Haitian ambassador.
  • In the end, they were able to get bipartisan support for the proposed policy change. Bill Nelson (a Democratic Senator from Florida) and Marco Rubio (a Republican Senator from Florida) jointly signed a letter to Janet Napolitano (United States Secretary of Homeland Security) requesting that she make Haiti eligible for H–2 visas, and she implemented the change.
  • Last year 58 Haitians obtained H–2 visas. as. The reason that more didn’t obtain visas is the fact that there exists no mechanism to match US employers who need Haitian labor to Haitian workers willing to come to the US on an H–2 visa. No H–2 recruiters are currently active in Haiti, and none has yet been willing to become the first mover.

The next section is about the “Potential for scale-up” of this successful advocacy: Continue reading Conversation between Michael Clemens and GiveWell →

US Republicans should not give up on immigrants

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Bryan Caplan at EconLog recently pondered why it is that Asians in the US lean Democratic. I suggested in the comments of Bryan’s post that his view — that Asians don’t feel Republicans respect them — seems right, at least to me. I met Bryan for lunch recently, where the topic came up again, and co-blogger Vipul has urged me to elaborate on the subject here.

The important question here, from an open borders standpoint, is how far do immigrants holding undesirable political opinions justify restrictions on their liberty. Secondarily, whether or not undesirable opinions justify immigration restrictions, how much of an actual concern is this for natives, such as political activists hoping to win the votes of immigrants? Specifically, in the US context, is it worthwhile for Republicans to become more “immigrant-friendly”?

We’ve addressed the first question — do undesirable opinions justify immigration restrictions — a fair bit on this site, and we’ll return to it in the future. But for the second, with regard to the US context, my answer is: if Republicans toned down their rhetoric on immigration, and more generally, embraced a less fundamentally white vision of America, they would be much more competitive than they are now.

Bryan’s question about Asian-Americans particularly is interesting because the Republicans quite concretely favour more Asian (high-skilled) immigration, and back policies, such as extension of the H1-B visa, that promote Asian immigration. One hypothesis is that Asian immigrants, who are very well-educated on average, disdain the Republican party’s seeming anti-intellectual/anti-science bent. This seem plausible to me, but I think it’s overlooking the even simpler explanation that Asians feel Republicans don’t fundamentally see them as part of America.

At this point Republicans are up in arms, protesting that they’re not racist. I agree, most Republicans aren’t. I think even Republicans who say insensitive things probably don’t actually harbour much, if any, meaningful prejudice towards the people they’ve insulted (unintentionally in some cases). But the difference between Republicans and Democrats, I think, is not that one group is necessarily less prejudiced than the other. You can be perfectly unprejudiced towards somebody and still see that person as outside your fundamental community or constituency. That, I daresay, is the Republicans’ problem.

It’s difficult to vote for someone whom you believe doesn’t see you as part of their constituency or community. Even if you understand they don’t dislike you on a personal level, that’s a far cry from embracing you and your community as someone to serve, as someone whose interests they care about. In the comments on Bryan’s post, I referred others to this fantastic piece by Muslim baseball blogger Rany Jazyerli, one that starts:

Almost before I knew that I was an American, and almost before I knew that I was a Muslim, I knew that I was a Republican.

It ends:

I look forward to the day, hopefully in the near future, when I once again vote for a Republican candidate… But first, the Republicans have to stop insinuating that I’m alien to this nation. They have to stop implying that I support terrorists. They have to stop accusing me of being anti-American. And they need to denounce anyone in their ranks who does those things. That, I’m afraid, is not negotiable.

Read the whole thing. Rany’s story may be specific to the Muslim community, but to me personally, I think it’s also the story of why Asian and Latino support for the GOP is at pretty much an all-time low. The Asian vote flipped from 48% for Bob Dole in 1996 (versus 43% for Bill Clinton) to 73% for Barack Obama in 2012. Rany cites research by CAIR (a Muslim activist group) which found that Muslim support flipped from 70% for George W. Bush in 2000 to 4% for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Over lunch, Bryan Caplan mentioned that his father’s vision of America includes people like me — people who, as Bryan put it, “dress normally, don’t wear ethnic dress, work at a bank, fit into white society”. The senior Caplan’s vision strikes me as the vision of the Republican party as well. If that’s how you see the US, then of course it’s fine to be suspicious of Muslims’ and other minorities’ loyalties to the US. Of course it’s fine to suspect the sincerity of Barack Obama’s or Nikki Haley’s religious beliefs, and of course it’s fine to joke about them being “ragheads”. Of course it’s fine to make fun of the names these weird people give their children, just as former Virginia governor George “Macaca, or whatever his name is” Allen did.

Republicans at this point rightly retort that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden make their fair share of racial gaffes too. But I have a hard time believing that a poorly-timed joke about Gandhi segueing directly into lofty praise for the man is at all comparable to calling someone a raghead, or making fun of someone’s culture or name. If the best defence Republicans can muster is that “Democrats are racist too,” that hardly debunks the case that Republicans should be doing more to reach out to immigrant ethnic groups. If anything, it means Republicans could easily stop making insensitive comments and clearly differentiate themselves from Democrats in this regard.

Just compare and contrast the entrenched “give no ground; show no quarter” approach to dealing with Latino-Americans and other immigrants that a current strand of Republican thinking espouses with the approach George W. Bush promoted when he ran for governor of Texas:

Bush has pointedly refused to sign on to his party’s immigrant-bashing agenda. He opposed Wilson over Proposition 187, which withdrew health and public education benefits from illegal immigrants and their children in California.

He’s a strong supporter of Mexico, and he says his warm relations with that country’s leaders have helped him with Hispanic voters. “I’ve talked to a lot of friends who’ll go down to Mexico and they’ll come back and say, ‘God, Bush, you’re really popular in Mexico City,’ ” he says.

Bush gives qualified support to bilingual education, which Wilson and Republican conservatives in Congress have attempted to outlaw. Bilingual education is fine, Bush says, as long as students can pass the state tests he is promoting.

Bush is a vocal opponent of conservative Republican efforts to make English the official language, calling that “a powerful negative message” that repels Hispanic voters.

The natural retort is “And fat lot of good that did George W.” But according to the Pew Research Center, Bush in 2000 cut the Democratic advantage with Latinos from 51 percentage points in 1996 to 27%. In 2004, he reduced it further to 18%. Simply by aggressively building a friendly image with Latinos, George W. Bush reduced the Republican vote deficit among Latinos by 2/3rds. For various reasons, Hispanics may never be a natural stronghold for Republicans, but that doesn’t mean Barack Obama’s mind-blowing 71% of the Hispanic vote in 2012 is the historical norm.

I am not sure if Republicans should hope to return to the halcyon days when they were winning 70% of the Asian or Muslim vote. Certainly I don’t dare claim they can be extremely competitive in the race for the Hispanic vote. There are far too many other confounding issues, such as fundamental policy preferences. But at the same time, it’s difficult to say how competitive the Republicans can be with these ethnic groups when, honestly, George W. Bush aside, they haven’t even been trying.

The conservative social welfare function

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“Social welfare functions” are a good example of the payoff to thinking abstractly. They are answers to a very large question, which might be put: How should human beings live together in society, and what should society’s goals be? If you want to focus on the government, you could frame the question as: What should the government’s objective be? How should it decide between alternative policies? Not every answer to this question lends itself to being summarized in a social welfare function, but many do, some rather precisely, some loosely.

Thus, the political philosophy of John Rawls might be summarized in the social welfare function V=min(U1, U2, U3, …, Un), where V is what society is trying to maximize, and U1, U2, … Un represent the utilities of individuals 1, 2, …, n, where n is the population. Similarly, the utilitarian political philosophy might be summarized in the social welfare function V = U1 + U2 + … + Un. From these social welfare functions, with a little bit of careful further thinking, one can make several deductions. First, both Rawlsians and utilitarians will tolerate some inequality, basically for the same reason: allowing some individuals to get ahead of others gives them the incentive to create wealth. A utilitarian values the self-enrichment of individuals per se. A Rawlsian doesn’t, but he will value it indirectly if the wealth creation spills over and benefits the poorest. Second, both Rawlsians and utilitarians almost certainly would support some redistribution. The Rawlsian does so because he only values the welfare of the poorest, and no matter how much he reduces the welfare of everyone else, if he can benefit the poorest at all, he will do so. The utilitarian will support some redistribution, even if, as is probably the case, it is inefficient and reduces the total wealth of society, because the marginal utility of a dollar is higher for the poorest individuals. But the Rawlsian will support more redistribution than the utilitarian. If we call the amount of redistribution T, there will be some T’>0 that maximizes total utility, and some T”>T’ that maximizes the welfare of the poorest. The utilitarian will prefer redistribution T’, the Rawlsian, T”.

There are more games you can play with social welfare functions (SWFs). You could call democratic any SWF that places equal value on all individuals’ utility, and aristocratic any SWF that places much greater weight on some individuals’ utility than others. (Both the Rawlsian and utilitarian SWFs are democratic, by this definition.) You could call an SWF relatively socialistic if it imputes to individuals highly risk-averse utility functions: that is, a socialistic society will tolerate fairly low average living standards, in exchange for an equitable distribution of income. By the same token, a relatively capitalistic SWF would impute to individuals utility function much closer to risk-neutrality, maximizing incentives for wealth creation while tolerating extreme destitution for some members of society. Now, I want to introduce the concept of a conservative social welfare function. While I thought it up myself, I’m not surprised that a Google Scholar search reveals it has been thought of before, and with the same motivation that made me think of it a few years ago: trade policy. The concept applies directly to immigration. But first, let me try to state it mathematically. Imagine a society which seeks to maximize:

(1)  V(t+1) = f(U1(t+1) – U1(t)) + f(U2(t+1) – U2(t)) + … + f(Un(t+1) – Un(t))

That is, in choosing how to allocate resources at time t+1 it takes into account how resources were allocated at time t. Thus the conservative SWF is backward-looking. But of course, you don’t really know anything about the conservative SWF until you know something about f(). So here’s a bit of characterization of f():

(2) (a)  f(0)=0, (b) f(x)>0 if x>0, (c) f(x)<0 if x<0, and most subtly, (d) f(x) + f(-x) <<0

Conditions 2(a) through 2(c) are rather obvious. Society likes it when people’s utility improves, dislikes it when people’s utility deteriorates, is indifferent when it stays the same. The really defining feature of a conservative SWF is condition 2(d), which implies that society is much more opposed to anyone seeing their utility fall, than it is in favor of seeing people’s utility rise. If a policy harms A while benefiting B by an equal amount, under a conservative SWF, the policy will be rejected. Even if a policy raises A’s utility by considerably more than it reduces B’s, the policy is likely to be rejected.

Now, if you believe that open borders would have an economic impact anything like what, say, John Kennan’s model predicts, then they should pass a Rawlsian or utilitarian test very easily. But open borders might still be rejected from the perspective of a conservative SWF, since in Kennan’s model it reduces wages of all non-migrant workers, while roughly doubling world GDP through huge gains to owners of capital and migrants. Whether this is the “real” reason (if that means anything) for migration restrictions, I don’t know. However, I do have a sort of hunch that conservative SWFs are an important part of the way democratic politics operate. Continue reading The conservative social welfare function →

Open borders: what to do about it (part 3)

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This is a guest post by Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology at Indiana University. Rojas maintains his personal webpage here and is one of the bloggers at the orgtheory.net blog.

This guest post is the third in a three-post series on how one could achieve open borders. The series focuses on public opinion and immigration policy in the United States, but its insights may apply to other nations as well. The first two post of the series can be found here and here.

This is the last installment of a three part series on open borders. My initial post offered some personal thoughts on why I believe in free movement between countries. The second and third posts focus on how open borders might happen. While there is much to be gained in discussing the merits of open borders, it is just as important to think how we can pursue change in concrete terms. I argued that open borders proponents should think more carefully about how we frame, or talk about, open borders. Free migration will require massive social change and advocates should develop ways of presenting their ideas that would appeal to many people, as well as more specific groups, such as jurists, who influence how laws are made and enacted.

Even more important than framing is politics, which simply means the effort that we expend to influence other people and reform our institutions. In writing this post, I do not assume that there is a single way to promote change. History shows us that change happens in many ways and that it is impossible to know in advance how things will change. What we can know for certain, though, is that history favors those who are prepared. The purpose of this post is to describe what open borders advocates might have to do if they want to see their ideas turn into practice.

My discussion is drawn from a recent book, The Making of Pro-Life Activists by Ziad Munson. This scholarly book contains a succinct analysis of the different branches of that movement. Munson notes that most activists focus on one of three activities: public outreach, electoral politics/lobbying and “direct action,” which denotes protest and other actions designed to prevent abortions from being performed in medical clinics. Similarly, the “political” side of open borders will have to address public opinion, elected officials, and forms of protest. Each has an important role that I discuss below.

Public Outreach

I’ll begin with “public outreach” because it is important and relatively easy to do. Public opinion is extremely important because politicians in a democracy won’t promote a policy if they know that the public opposes it. Academic research on social changes has often found that public opinion often changes before the government enacts major new legislation. For example, see Taeku Lee’s book on the civil rights movement. Savvy politicians know that they exploit shifting cultural currents and rarely initiate major change by themselves. That is why open borders advocates should think about the ways to change hearts and minds.

We should look to other movements for ideas about promoting open border to the public. The gay rights movement, for example, found that if enough people “come out of the closet,” then everybody will recognize that gay people are a group, even those that dislike them. Eventually, the presence of this group may be viewed as normal. If the hidden group can achieve some degree of “normality,” then they can become part of a broader social conversation. If enough gay people come out of the closet, then others will realize that their children, or parents, or friends might be gay. It is very difficult to sustain open bigotry if your relatives are openly gay. The lesson is that there is safety in numbers.

Open borders advocates should consider some version of this strategy. At the very least, we should develop a symbol, like the pink triangle for gay rights, that represents our view that people should be free to move as they wish between countries. This is a form of branding and it is important. Continue reading Open borders: what to do about it (part 3) →

Secure the US-Mexico border: open it

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The Associated Press has a great story out on what a “secure” US-Mexico border would look like. It covers perspectives from various stakeholders on border security, with opinions running the gamut from “The border is as secure as it can ever be” to “It’s obviously incredibly unsafe.” I am not sure if the AP is fairly representing opinions on the border issue, but the reporting of how life on the border has evolved over time is fascinating.

One thing that strikes me in this reporting is how casually drug smugglers/slave traffickers and good-faith immigrants are easily-conflated. Is a secure border one where people who want to move contraband goods or human slaves illegally cannot easily enter? Or is it one where well-meaning people can be indefinitely kept at bay for an arbitrary accident of birth? This passage juxtaposes the two quite different situations:

And nearly all of more than 70 drug smuggling tunnels found along the border since October 2008 have been discovered in the clay-like soil of San Diego and Tijuana, some complete with hydraulic lifts and rail cars. They’ve produced some of the largest marijuana seizures in U.S. history.

Still, few attempt to cross what was once the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal immigration. As he waited for breakfast at a Tijuana migrant shelter, Jose de Jesus Scott nodded toward a roommate who did. He was caught within seconds and badly injured his legs jumping the fence.

Scott, who crossed the border with relative ease until 2006, said he and a cousin tried a three-day mountain trek to San Diego in January and were caught twice. Scott, 31, was tempted to return to his wife and two young daughters near Guadalajara. But, with deep roots in suburban Los Angeles and cooking jobs that pay up to $1,200 a week, he will likely try the same route a third time.

The main thing that strikes me about the previously “unsecure” border near San Diego is that border patrol agents were overwhelmed by a mass of people until more staff and walls were brought to bear. But these masses of people almost certainly were comprised in large part, if not near-entirely, of good-faith immigrants. Smugglers and traffickers merely take advantage of the confusion to sneak in with the immigrants. If the immigrants had a legal path to entry, if they did not have to cross the border unlawfully, the traffickers would be naked without human crowds to hide in. If border security advocates just want to reduce illegal trafficking, demanding “border security” before loosening immigration controls may well be putting the cart before the horse.

Even so, as I’ve said before, the physical reality of a long border means that human movement across it can never be fully controlled. Demanding totalitarian control as “true border security” is about as unrealistic as, if not even more so than an open borders advocate demanding the abolition of the nation-state.

The AP covers some damning stories of peaceful Americans murdered by drug traffickers in the same breath as it covers someone trying to get to a job in suburban LA. Even if one insists that murdering smugglers and restaurant cooks should be treated identically on account of being born Mexican, it is difficult to see how one can demand that the US border patrol prioritise detaining them both equally. Yet as long as US visa policy makes it near-impossible for most good-faith Mexicans who can find work in the US to do so, the reality of the border means that thousands of Mexicans just looking to work will risk their lives crossing the border, alongside smugglers and murderers.

The more reasonable policy has to be one that will allow US border patrol to focus on catching the most egregious criminals. That means giving the good-faith immigrants a legal channel to enter the US on a reasonable timeframe, reducing the flow of unlawful border crossings. This is not just my opinion, but that of even a former (Republican) US Ambassador to Mexico (emphasis added):

Tony Garza remembers watching the flow of pedestrian traffic between Brownsville and Matamoros from his father’s filling station just steps from the international bridge. He recalls migrant workers crossing the fairway on the 11th hole of a golf course – northbound in the morning, southbound in the afternoon. And during an annual celebration between the sister cities, no one was asked for their papers at the bridge. People were just expected to go home.

Garza, a Republican who served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2002 to 2009, said it’s easy to become nostalgic for those times, but he reminds himself that he grew up in a border town of fewer than 50,000 people that has grown into a city of more than 200,000.

The border here is more secure for the massive investment in recent years but feels less safe because the crime has changed, he said. Some of that has to do with transnational criminal organizations in Mexico and some of it is just the crime of a larger city.

Reform, he said, “would allow you to focus your resources on those activities that truly make the border less safe today.”

It’s the view of those sheriffs who places themselves in harm’s way to fight those murderers and smugglers (emphasis added):

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino points out that drug, gun and human smuggling is nothing new to the border. The difference is the attention that the drug-related violence in Mexico has drawn to the region in recent years.

He insists his county, which includes McAllen, is safe. The crime rate is falling, and illegal immigrants account for small numbers in his jail. But asked if the border is “secure,” Trevino doesn’t hesitate. “Absolutely not.”

“When you’re busting human trafficking stash houses with 60 to 100 people that are stashed in a two, three-bedroom home for weeks at a time, how can you say you’ve secured the border?” he said.

Trevino’s view, however, is that those people might not be there if they had a legal path to work in the U.S.

“Immigration reform is the first thing we have to accomplish before we can say that we have secured the border,” he said.

…

In Nogales, Sheriff Tony Estrada has a unique perspective on both border security and more comprehensive immigration reform. Born in Nogales, Mexico, Estrada grew up in Nogales, Ariz., after migrating to the U.S. with his parents. He has served as a lawman in the community since 1966.

He blames border security issues not only on the cartels but on the American demand for drugs. Until that wanes, he said, nothing will change. And securing the border, he added, must be a constant, ever-changing effort that blends security and political support – because the effort will never end.

“The drugs are going to keep coming. The people are going to keep coming. The only thing you can do is contain it as much as possible.

“I say the border is as safe and secure as it can be, but I think people are asking for us to seal the border, and that’s unrealistic,” he said.

Asked why, he said simply: “That’s the nature of the border.”

Simply put, if you want a secure US-Mexico border, one where law enforcement can focus on rooting out murderers and smugglers, you need open borders. You need a visa regime that lets those looking to feed their families and looking for a better life to enter legally, with a minimum of muss and fuss. When only those who cross the border unlawfully are those who have no good business being in the US, then you can have a secure border.

The image featured in the header of this post depicts the Puente Viejo bridge connecting Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Via the University of Texas at Brownsville.