All posts by Nathan Smith

Nathan Smith is an assistant professor of economics at Fresno Pacific University. He did his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University and has also worked for the World Bank. Smith proposed Don't Restrict Immigration, Tax It, one of the more comprehensive keyhole solution proposals to address concerns surrounding open borders. See also: Page about Nathan Smith on Open Borders All blog posts by Nathan Smith

Response to Steve Sailer: The Art of Flourishing While Being Swamped

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Steve Sailer writes:

For many years, the Wall Street Journal editorialized in favor of a five word Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “There shall be open borders.” So, I’ve long been interested in trying to estimate just how many people would move to the U.S. if this highly respectable policy recommendation were ever actually implemented.
George Borjas pointed out that about 1/4th of all Puerto Ricans moved to the U.S. mainland after open borders started. The flow was only slowed by granting immense tax breaks to American companies who set up shop in Puerto Rico.
Even without open borders, over one-fifth of all Mexicans in the world live in the U.S.
And, as I pointed out in VDARE in 2005, about five billion people live in countries with lower average per capita GDPs than Mexico.
So, open borders advocates ought to at least provide us with an estimate of what fraction of that five billion they would expect to immigrate here (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the effects of open borders wouldn’t diminish the appeal of the United States to immigrants, which it no doubt would)…
[quoting the New York Times] A 1986 compact gave the United States continued military access, while the Marshallese got the right to work and live in the United States indefinitely without visas. More than a third of the Marshallese — about 20,000 — have seized the opportunity.

I may attempt a numerical estimate of this sort at some point. But my main response to the concern about being swamped is that immigrants get surplus value from coming, and some of this can be taxed away to hold native harmless, for example via DRITI taxes. A few very crude calculations may illustrate.

1. Suppose the 1/3 rate from the Marshall Islands applied to the 5 billion in countries poorer than Mexico. Roughly 1.5 billion immigrants come to the United States, where they earn average incomes of, say, $40,000. (This is a concession to Sailer’s suggested assumption that “the effect of open borders wouldn’t diminish the appeal of the United States to immigrants.” If immigrant incomes fell sharply under open borders, though this is plausible, Sailer’s assumption wouldn’t come close to holding.) In this case, immigrants would be earning $60 trillion of GDP. If we tax this income at a 10% rate, that gives us $6 trillion with which to compensate natives. If we distribute this among (roughly) 300 million native and naturalized citizens, we could pay out $20,000/year to every citizen, or $80,000 to every family of four. Alternatively, we could structure it progressively, with, say, $50,000/year minimum income for every citizen, which would then be reduced by 25% of labor income, so that individuals earning $200,000/year or more would get no benefit. For the moment I’m assuming that (a) all currently existing taxes remain in place, (b) immigrants pay currently existing taxes in addition to the surtax, and (c) government spending per capita remains roughly constant. But very likely the best plan would involve large tax cuts, and government might be able to provide services to a larger population without a proportional increase in its costs. I’m talking about the medium-to-long run here. Granted, to scale up the US population by six quickly would be difficult.

2. Suppose, more conservatively, that 1/10 of the people in countries poorer than Mexico, i.e., 500 million, moved to the US, and earned an average of $20,000/year. That’s $10 trillion of immigrant-generated GDP. We could tax that at a 20% rate and get $2 trillion of GDP, enough to pay benefits averaging $20,000 per person per year to the poorest one-third of Americans, in cash and in kind.

3. Maybe the “worst case” scenario is if a whole lot of people come but don’t earn much. Suppose 2 billion people immigrate to the United States and earn an average of only $10,000. That’s $20 trillion of immigrant-generated GDP. We could tax that at a 15% rate and get $3 trillion worth of revenue with which to hold harmless native-born US citizens (now a small minority of the resident population), for example by providing benefits at an average rate of $20,000 per person per year. Owners of real estate– that’s most Americans– would enjoy huge windfall gains by selling out to developers as the greatest building boom in the history of the world erected teeming hordes of tenements to house the huddled masses. Water prices would probably rise a lot, and huge quantities of food would have to be imported, but on the other hand, many, many factories would open, as the US would swiftly rise to overwhelming dominance in manufacturing. Not only affluent families, but probably unemployed natives dependent on transfers from the government, could hire personal servants.

As I said, these estimates are crude, even fanciful, and I’m not sure how useful it would be to attempt to make them more precise. (For example, do the costs of government scale linearly, super-linearly, or sub-linearly with population? An interesting question, but too controversial for any answer to be of much help– though “linearly” would be my first approximation.) It seems clear open borders wouldn’t be introduced overnight in this fashion. In all the scenarios suggested, native-born US citizens would comprise an absolute minority of US residents, and within US residents, transfers would be going from the relatively poor to the relatively rich. Would such an arrangement be politically sustainable? Well, there are plenty of precedents, e.g., pre-revolutionary France. But that parallel might suggest another danger: a kind of immigrant French Revolution, with the huddled masses overthrowing the privileged natives by force. Having raised that specter, let me add that it is not a remotely plausible threat for now. Anyway, the crude calculations should make it clear that as far as the mere economics are concerned (putting institutions to one side, and assume one doesn’t scruple to redistribute surplus value through tax-and-transfer policy), the upsides of being swamped swamp the downsides.

What if foreigners could vote in US elections?

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I’ve sometimes wondered why foreigners can’t vote in US elections. “What?” you ask. “Why should they be able to? That’s crazy!” Well, they do have a stake in it. Many of them pay attention to US elections. They are affected by the outcomes of US elections. To grant foreigners the right to vote in US elections might seem, prima facie, to be obviously against the interests of US voters, whose ability to choose their own government would be diluted. Yes, but what if it were reciprocal?

For example, suppose that the US and Canada made an agreement, whereby every Canadian got 1/5th of a vote in every US election, and every American got 1/5th of a vote in every Canadian election. Never mind the electoral college and whatnot for now, just think of the math. If there are 300 million Americans and 20 million Canadians (close enough for now), Canadian votes would have a pretty small weight in US elections, while American votes could potentially dominate Canadian elections. Canadians might still take the deal, though, if US policies affect them heavily and they want to have a say. On issues of domestic policy without international ramifications, it might not matter much: Canadians wouldn’t have reason to care about them one way or the other. But there would probably be narrow issues, say fishing rights in the North Pacific, which might be important to many Canadian voters and not on Americans’ radar screens at all. It’s not that such issues would decide US elections; rather, US politicians would flip pre-emptively to prevent them from doing so. It might lead to more harmonious international relations and stronger alliances. For haters of George W. Bush, consider this: he wouldn’t have had a chance if every European got 1/5th of a vote. But for supporters of the War on Terror, consider this: there would be a lot more Tony Blairs, and a lot fewer Jacques Chiracs, in the world. Free trade would almost certainly benefit. So might collaboration on global public goods, e.g., CO2 emissions, NATO military spending, international transfers and foreign aid. It could lead to more funding for science, which has positive spillovers. Americans voting in German elections would ignore many German domestic issues but might respond to appeals for funding science and technology, or protecting patents.

The effects are hard to predict, but one thing, I think, is almost certain: It would lead to much more freedom of migration. Suppose the issue is: how easily will American issue work visas to Canadians? Americans will know virtually nothing about the issue. Canadians will know a lot. An American candidate’s share of the Canadian vote would depend heavily on his position on the Canadian visas issue. The issue would probably have very little visibility in the US. Even if the Canadian vote was small– say 1 million effective votes, compared to 100 million cast in the US– it would be well worth gaining at such a negligible cost. By the same token, American voters would quickly secure for themselves the right to work in Canada. And it would not be a question of annexation. Canada would still have an independent government, as would the US.

My co-blogger John Lee is good at evoking horror at the arbitrariness, the fundamental neglect of basic justice and human rights, of which immigration systems are guilty. I think a little democracy would take care of this in a hurry. US consuls would not remain mini-dictators for long if foreigners had a say in the matter. Gratuitous, senseless, cruel visa denials would go viral among foreigners, and politicians would look for ways to make the process tolerably just to appease the foreign vote, with its small but far from insignificant weight, and probable unanimity.

The idea of foreigners voting in US elections, and vice versa, is at once simple and unheard-of, which makes me suspicious of it. If it’s as good an idea as it seems at first glance, why haven’t I heard anyone else suggest it? But I can’t see what is wrong with it. It seems like it could actually be Pareto-improving, its main effect being to correct policies that injure foreigners out of all proportion to any benefits they provide to natives. Immigration restrictions are the most obvious case, but foreign policy, global public goods, and trade restrictions are other examples. I think the idea deserves to be part of the conversation.

More on immigration and the Bible

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Post by Nathan Smith (regular blogger for the site, joined April 2012). See:

From my reading of the Old Testament, it’s quite clear that the Bible supports open borders, full stop. But I should acknowledge that this isn’t the consensus view. Here is an article that claims “The Bible Gives No Sanction to Open Borders.” The author, John Vinson, is in blockquotes, I’m not.

For religionists sympathetic to mass immigration, legal and illegal, Old Testament Bible verses saying “welcome the stranger” and “love the stranger” are the ultimate trump cards and justification for their position. This absolute certitude is ironic when it comes, as it often does, from religious liberals who commonly regard much of the Old Testament as Hebrew mythology, with little authority to command ethical obedience in the modern world. The Old Testament’s condemnations of homosexuality, for example, carry little weight with these liberals, if indeed they notice them at all.

I don’t think I’m one of the religious liberals Vinson is talking about, but anyway, one can accept that the Bible teaches something and not advocate making that the policy of contemporary states. I think the Old Testament provides a pretty good template for immigration policy, though not one that exactly corresponds to what I’d prescribe. I don’t want us to return to the Mosaic law when it comes to religious freedom (worshipping pagan gods could be punished by death) or slavery (permitted under the Mosaic law, albeit in an ameliorated form), or marriage (polygamy was tolerated).

In contrast, their literalistic embrace of “welcome the stranger” without reference to context or scholarship is characteristic of the uninformed dogmatism they often attribute to fundamentalists and other Christian conservatives. In fairness, this characteristic sometimes is true, but the general tendency of people who take the Bible seriously is to weigh verses carefully from every standpoint of learning and insight.

Yes, as long as you’re not just using that as an excuse to pretend the Bible says what’s convenient for you to have it say.

One who has done so on the pro-stranger verses is biblical scholar and archeologist James K. Hoffmeier. In his book The Immigration Crisis – Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible, Hoffmeier sheds a great deal of light on these verses and the issue of immigration from a biblical perspective. Hoffmeier convincingly argues that Middle Eastern peoples in biblical times controlled their borders and regulated immigration much as countries do today. Among them was ancient Israel.

To understand how Israel’s system worked, Hoffmeier shows, one must understand the meanings of different Hebrew words which English Bibles translate as “stranger,” as well as “foreigner,” and “alien.” The passages that command hospitality, love, and protection toward people so named use the Hebrew word “ger.” The ger, says Hoffmeier, was what today we would call an alien with permanent resident status. The Bible specified that such persons were to enjoy most of the same rights as Israelites, while at the same time requiring that they obey the laws of Israel. But others called stranger, foreigner, and alien did not have these benefits or obligations. The Hebrew words from which they derive are “zar” and “nekar.”

I suppose Hoffmeier knows Hebrew and in that respect has an advantage over me. But I suspect he doesn’t know much about immigration policy if he thinks “Middle Eastern peoples in biblical times controlled their borders and regulated immigration much as countries do today.” Passport regimes are a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Open borders were the norm as recently as the 19th century.

Consequently, the modern day writers who claim that the Bible sanctions illegal immigration, by referencing the pro-stranger passages, are drawing a completely false analogy. The strangers in this context were legally admitted people who agreed to abide by the laws of the land.

The Biblical texts do suggest that resident foreigners were expected to abide by the Mosaic law. That they had “agreed” to do so does not seem to be the case, because some procedure would have to take place whereby they agreed, and no such procedure is discussed in the Mosaic law. And I don’t see how anyone could have read the Book of Judges and suppose that any legal infrastructure existed to “legally admit” people. In the Book of Ruth, it seems clear that she didn’t ask permission, but simply came. Neither rules nor administrative procedures for “legally admitting” people are defined in the law. I haven’t read Hoffmeier’s book, but it seems clear the Biblical ger were neither like modern legal immigrants, who have received permission from a sovereign government, nor like modern undocumented immigrants, whose presence is a violation of the law. They just came, and were expected to abide by the rules. Continue reading More on immigration and the Bible →

Rand Paul’s interesting precedent

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While I don’t generally buy into the views of Ron or Rand Paul on foreign policy, Rand Paul’s filibuster, which is being credited with giving new momentum to the GOP, sets a promising precedent. Paul’s insistence that the president has no constitutional authority to use drone strikes against Americans on US soil was morally obvious, yet at the same time profoundly subversive, since it implies that there are, after all, limits on state authority, and therefore that the doctrine of sovereignty in the pure Hobbesian sense is fall. Bravo! Interestingly, since the Republicans have a reputation as the hawkish party, strong on national security, Paul’s stand actually went against part of what Republicans identify with, but the political configuration allowed Paul to appear, sort of, as the voice of the GOP against the soulless statism of the Obama administration. Paul’s message was fundamentally the doctrine of human rights or natural rights: it’s wrong to kill innocent people, period.

It probably wouldn’t work right now, but one wonders whether at some point in the future, Republicans could be flip-flopped on the immigration issue with similar ease. If a Republican candidate opportunistically assailed the Obama administration for its draconian deportation policies, that would doubtless alienate some of the base, but the GOP might look like white knights and protectors of the weak, and become more popular in some quarters, and Republicans who aren’t particularly nativist might just embrace it. What’s at stake here is the moral high ground. Seizing it is really a lot of fun, and it can pay off in the oddest and most delightful ways.

Self-driving cars and undocumented immigration

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Technology has altered migration patterns many times. New modes of transportation– railroads, faster and safer ships, cars, airplanes– made migration cheaper and easier. The internet and cheap international telephony have made it easier for migrants to stay plugged in to their home countries, and possibly discourage assimilation among migrants, though on the other hand, modern technology and cultural globalization probably encourage pre-assimilation. The internet also encourages international dating. What about the next transportation technology that seems to be in the pipeline, self-driving cars?

It’s always hard to foresee how new technologies will change society, the economy, and people’s way of life. But I’ll try. Self-driving cars probably won’t crowd out private car ownership anytime soon, but they will make it optional. A car sitting in a parking space is a waste. It’s a waste of both the car and the parking space. The taxi cab model uses cars and space more efficiently, but of course, it’s labor-intensive. Labor is expensive. That’s why even a short cab ride can cost $10-$15 or more. But a self-driving taxi cab could be much cheaper. In some ways, it would be more convenient as well. Presumably you could summon one with a smartphone, and order it to drop you off at the entrance of wherever it is you want to go. If you’ve been drinking, no problem. Also, you’re not require to drive the same car, day in, day out. Cab companies, with a much larger volume of business, could offer a large selection. Got a big load? Order a roomier vehicle. By yourself? Order a miniature one-car cab. Electric cars might benefit, because people wouldn’t suffer from “range anxiety.” Smartphones plus self-driving cars might allow for sophisticated forms of carpooling, with minivans planning out complex routes on the fly so as to serve many customers at the same time. Some parking lots would turn back into green spaces. It’s hard to say whether cities or suburbs will benefit more. Currently, it’s suburbanites who have to bear the burdens of car ownership. City dwellers can do without them, relying on public transit instead. On the other hand, city dwellers may be very glad to be able to get out of town at will, and to take a self-driving cab when they’re in a hurry, or late at night, instead of navigating buses and metros.

What does this have to do with immigration?

1. If long-distance cargo transport came to be dominated by self-driving trucks, that might complicate border control. Currently, it’s probably not too difficult for a US citizen to bring someone in by car across the Mexican border, hiding them in the trunk, say. But it’s risky, because if the driver gets caught, they can be punished. (I can’t seem to find out what the punishment is, but I think it’s pretty serious.) But what if there’s no driver? Maybe you could punish the owner, but what if you can’t find the owner, or can’t find out who the owner is? Or what if the owner says the illegal immigrant was there without his knowledge or permission?

2. Once undocumented immigrants arrive, one of the things that makes life difficult for them is that they might not be able to get drivers’ licenses. But in the age of self-driving cars, drivers’ licenses will no longer be a sine qua non of modern life, even in the suburbs. Many natives may not bother to get them. Undocumented immigrants will do just fine without them. They’ll have an unprecedented range of movement, without needing the fake papers.

3. Professions that involve home visits may be especially facilitated by self-driving cars. In jobs that involve a lot of time on the road, not having to be behind the wheel will be an immense blessing. The stressful and boring time spent watching the road can be spent socializing on Facebook, or studying, or watching movies, or taking classes, or maybe even doing some kind of paid work that can be done on a smartphone. Since undocumented workers seem disproportionately to be involved in driving-intensive jobs– housecleaning, landscaping, etc.– self-driving cars will make their lifestyles pleasanter. Perhaps that will even lure more of them to come. Those professions will also be easier to get into when one will no longer need a car, or a driver’s license.