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

Robots or Immigrants?

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There’s been some buzz lately about falling birthrates in the United States.

The U.S. birthrate plunged last year to a record low, with the decline being led by immigrant women hit hard by the recession, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

The overall birthrate decreased by 8 percent between 2007 and 2010, with a much bigger drop of 14 percent among foreign-born women. The overall birthrate is at its lowest since 1920, the earliest year with reliable records. The 2011 figures don’t have breakdowns for immigrants yet, but the preliminary findings indicate that they will follow the same trend. (via Marginal Revolution)

Here’s Ross Douthat’s take and Megan McArdle’s take, both very eloquent, and thoughtful, and worried, as is Bryan Caplan‘s take. Douthat mentions immigration obliquely but doesn’t think it’s a solution to demographic decline:

But deeper forces than the financial crisis may keep American fertility rates depressed. Foreign-born birthrates will probably gradually recover from their current nadir, but with fertility in decline across Mexico and Latin America, it isn’t clear that the United States can continue to rely heavily on immigrant birthrates to help drive population growth.

This isn’t quite convincing, because the US wouldn’t need high immigrant birthrates to drive population growth. High levels of immigration would suffice to drive population growth. McArdle goes into more detail about the possibility of more immigrants as a solution to demographic decline:

In theory, you just export capital to younger societies, or import young immigrants.  But there are some problems with this theory, the largest of which is that the whole world is getting older almost all at once.  Every country is facing (or soon will) the same looming demographic pressure.

That’s an exaggeration. It’s true that birthrates are falling virtually everywhere in the world, but they’re still pretty high in Africa and many other developing countries (with India, 20.60 births per 1,000 persons, well above the United States, 13.68). There will be plenty of young immigrants to draw in for a long time yet. McArdle argues that there are limits to investing a broad as a strategy for securing the future: Continue reading Robots or Immigrants? →

Answer to Vipul’s question about enforcement

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This post is in answer to Vipul’s post “Immigration enforcement — what’s morally acceptable? A question for fellow open borders advocates.” I have indeed thought a lot about this. In fact, to establish the answer to this question was one of my main goals in writing Principles of a Free Society, though I don’t focus my arguments on that question in any one place in the book. Vipul asks: “I feel that harping too much on [criticism of enforcement] is dismissive of… legitimate concerns, namely, how can you enforce any immigration policy — or any specific keyhole solution — without some enforcement teeth?” Yes, that’s why I had to be a rather careful policy designer in Principles. Because I think conserving good institutions is very important, but at the same time, deep moral logic compels me to regard most of the sorts of measures governments use to control immigration today as unjust. Morally, I think ICE is pretty much on a level with any gang of robbers: an organization whose raison d’etre is unjust violence.

My starting point in Principles is natural rights:

A human being is mind and body. The body has a particular telos, or peculiar flourishing, of which we have some natural understanding. Thus, we see the difference between a healthy body and a body wounded, injured, decrepit, or sick, though it would probably be impossible mathematically to define the difference in microphysical terms. To flourish, the body must have food, water and air; must not be subjected to cold or heat too extreme or for too long; must not be pierced by sharp objects or crushed by heavy blows; must not be exposed to certain substances, certain types of radiation, certain intensities of sound; must be allowed a certain degree of movement and a certain degree of sleep; should not spend too much time in water or darkness; and so forth. Each body is naturally subject to one human mind. To be subject to that mind is part of the body’s telos. The means by which the body can be subjected to the power of other human minds– it can be beaten, wounded, dragged in chains, and so on– trespass against or violate the body’s telos. The body should belong to its natural possessor. (Principles of a Free Society, p. 1)

I call this the habeas corpus principle, “taking some liberties with a venerable phrase from the English common law, yet faithfully capturing, I think, both its strict semantic sense and its highest historical significance.”

To cut a long story short, you can’t violate natural rights except as retribution for violations of natural rights. Utility can’t trump natural rights because (a) a person must generally be presumed to be the best judge of their own utility, and (b) utility isn’t interpersonally comparable. The state’s claim to a special right to use violence must derive from a social contract if it is to be just at all. Most problematic here is taxation. Ordinary law enforcement is (if the laws in question are just) retribution against violations of natural rights, usually at the behest of the victim, so that’s fine. But what justifies the state in forcing people who have violated no one’s natural rights to pay it money.  To this, I give a handful of answers which are not that satisfying, but which I think are the best you can do. Three of them are:

  1. Violating rights to protect rights.Even if utility does not trump rights, might an action be acceptable which violates rights but prevents other rights violations so that there are “less” violations (whatever that means) than otherwise?
  2. Free-rider problems.It’s possible that Pareto-improving collective action could be prevented by interminable problems of negotiation. Perhaps a state is assuming power justly if doing so improves the welfare of all members. (Interpersonal utility comparison is not a problem in this case, but it’s still a problem that utility is unobservable.)
  3. Payment for judicial services.Complex forms of property rights, such as corporate property rights with their separation of ownership and control etc., are probably only possible with the help of state coercion. To the extent that the state facilitates wealth creation through provision of sophisticated property rights (which arise from natural property rights but are too complex for casual moral intuition to settle disputes about), it may be justified in extracting some of the wealth thus created from the beneficiaries of judicial services.

Where does this leave the undocumented immigrant? To simplify somewhat, he has violated no one’s rights, and no one has a right to interfere with him. Continue reading Answer to Vipul’s question about enforcement →

Who favors open borders?

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The World Values Survey records quite a bit of information about public opinion related to immigration. I’d like to do in-depth analysis of it at some point. Here are a few things I’ve noted so far (no rich statistical analysis yet though):

  • Young people worldwide are more favorable to open borders, but the effect is very slight. There is no sign– yet– that generational change will tilt the world towards open borders.
  • Children of immigrants are somewhat more favorable to immigration.
  • There seems to be NO correlation worldwide between attitudes towards immigration policy and self-positioning on the left-right spectrum. (This surprised me.)
  • There seems to be no correlation between social class and attitudes towards immigration policy, unless it’s that the middle classes are a bit more favorable.
  • Correlations with life satisfaction are weak; however, the most strongly restrictionist attitudes seem to be more common among people leaning towards dissatisfaction with their lives.
  • People who trust foreigners “completely” are more favorable to a welcoming immigration policy (well, duh), yet 13% of those who don’t trust foreigners at all still say “let anyone come.”
  • People who don’t want immigrants as neighbors are more likely to favor strict limits on or prohibition of immigration (58%, to 42% of those who don’t mind immigrant neighbors) but some of these, too, favor “letting anyone come.”
  • No difference between men and women.

There are large differences across countries in attitudes towards immigration policy. Only 48 countries seem to be covered by the survey, but among those, two-thirds have public opinion more favorable to immigration than the United States, as measured by the share saying “let anyone come.” In particular, Mexican attitudes towards immigration policy are more liberal than Americans’. Some commenters at this site have suggested Asia as an example of a more restrictionist society that nativist Americans might desire to emulate. The WVS data suggest that this is true at the level of public opinion: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia have some of the lowest shares of open borders supporters in the world, though in the terms of the number favoring “strict limits” or more, South Koreans are more liberal on immigration than Americans are.

What I find most interesting in the international data is that some developing countries have far more favorable attitudes towards immigration than any rich country. In Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, nearly half the population favors letting anyone come. India has an unusually large number of open borders supporters as well, though it is also tied for highest in terms of the number of people supporting complete prohibition of immigration. Several countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America also seem to have more open borders supporters than any of the rich countries, except Sweden, which appears to be an outlier, with a far more pro-open borders populace of any rich country included in the survey.

Country Let anyone come As long as jobs available Strict limits Prohibit

1

 Vietnam

49%

27%

22%

1%

2

 Burkina Faso

43%

45%

10%

1%

3

 Rwanda

41%

48%

8%

2%

4

 Ethiopia

40%

28%

27%

5%

5

 Mali

34%

46%

16%

4%

6

 Morocco

28%

41%

20%

11%

7

 Romania

23%

42%

23%

11%

8

 Uruguay

23%

56%

17%

3%

9

 Peru

23%

50%

21%

6%

10

 India

23%

22%

25%

30%

11

 Ukraine

21%

53%

19%

7%

12

 China

20%

51%

21%

8%

13

 Ghana

18%

39%

36%

6%

14

 Sweden

18%

54%

27%

1%

15

 Guatemala

17%

55%

21%

7%

16

 Argentina

15%

45%

34%

6%

17

 Serbia

14%

26%

46%

14%

18

 Bulgaria

13%

55%

24%

8%

19

 Moldova

13%

50%

26%

11%

20

 Poland

12%

35%

46%

6%

21

 Mexico

12%

45%

25%

17%

22

 Zambia

11%

30%

44%

15%

23

 Brazil

9%

47%

33%

11%

24

 Georgia

9%

19%

56%

16%

25

 Finland

9%

40%

48%

3%

26

 Turkey

9%

43%

27%

21%

27

 Italy

8%

49%

37%

6%

28

 Canada

8%

51%

39%

2%

29

 Spain

8%

48%

42%

3%

30

 Slovenia

7%

56%

29%

8%

31

 Germany

7%

43%

45%

5%

32

 USA

7%

37%

49%

8%

33

 Chile

6%

50%

35%

9%

34

 Cyprus

6%

36%

51%

7%

35

 S Africa

6%

16%

48%

30%

36

 Switzerland

6%

67%

26%

1%

37

 Indonesia

6%

15%

72%

8%

38

 Andorra

5%

72%

22%

1%

39

 Egypt

5%

25%

43%

26%

40

 Thailand

5%

16%

65%

14%

41

 Norway

4%

53%

42%

1%

42

 Trinidad And Tobago

4%

32%

55%

10%

43

 Australia

3%

54%

41%

2%

44

 S Korea

3%

56%

36%

5%

45

 Japan

3%

42%

50%

5%

46

 Taiwan

3%

30%

58%

9%

47

 Jordan

2%

28%

46%

25%

48

 Malaysia

2%

8%

72%

18%

 

Another very interesting pattern emerged when I dug down into the data involving religion. When asked “How important is God in your life?” on a scale of 1 to 10, about half the respondents answered “10” and half answered something less.  I was distressed to discover that those for whom God was very important in their lives seemed to have less favorable attitudes towards immigration. But when I broke it down by religious demonination, I found something different. While Muslims who regard God as very important in their lives tend to be more restrictionist, Christians of each denomination are more likely to support open borders if they are strongly in touch with God, as shown in the table below (which includes all denominations for which there were over 500 observations in the WVS dataset):

 

How important is God in your life? (scale: 1-10)
Religious Denomination <10 10
Roman Catholic 9% 15%
Protestant 7% 15%
Evangelical 7% 11%
Orthodox 13% 19%
Church of Sweden 16% 19%
Muslim 19% 13%
Buddhist 7% 9%
Ancestor worship 44% 57%
Hindu 12% 15%

 

The percentage in each cell represents the share of respondents saying “Let anyone come.” Note that it is not the case that Christians are more supportive of open borders in general. Many factors affect support for open borders, and it seems that public opinion in rich countries is often less favorable to open borders. And of course most rich countries are nominally/historically Christian. So Muslims are actually more likely than most Christian denominations to favor open borders. But within each Christians denomination, there is a statistically significant (though fairly small) positive correlation between rating God’s importance in one’s life “10” and advocating “let anyone come.”

Continue reading Who favors open borders? →

“No Irish need apply”

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First, this post is not anti-Irish. I’m not Irish, at all, but I attended Notre Dame (the “Fighting Irish”), and I lived in Scotland for a while when I was 16 and love Scottish music, and maybe even more, Irish music. There was an Irish band called Colcannon my family and I used to listen to when I was a kid. I like to sing Irish songs like “The Fields of Athenry,” “Raglan Road,” “The Patriot Game,” “The Sally Gardens,” and “There’s Whiskey in the Jar.” In 2008, I went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Lousiville, Kentucky, and rode one of the floats singing and playing guitar in the rain, to cheering crowds. More generally, Americans nowadays have a soft spot for the Irish. St. Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s national holiday, is now more or less recognized as an American holiday too. I think John Kerry tried to pretend at one point to be Irish, and Joe Biden joked that his running mate was “O’Bama”– the point is not to mock politicians, but that there was a perception that Irishness is an electoral asset. Two of the most popular presidents in US history, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, were of Irish ancestry. Everyone now more or less sees Irish immigration as a success story that America can rejoice and take pride in.

But it wasn’t always thus, and part of the folklore I grew up with is that back in the bad old days, there used to be prejudice against the Irish, with employment advertisements sometimes saying “No Irish need apply.” There’s a song about it. You can listen to it here, it’s fun. Lyrics:

No Irish Need Apply

I’m a decent boy just landed
From the town of Ballyfad
I want a situation,
And want it very bad
I have seen employment advertised
It’s just the thing” says I
But the dirty spalpeen ended with
No Irish Need Apply’ “
“Whoa,” says I, “that’s an insult
But to get the job I’ll try”
So I went to see the blackguard
With his “No Irish Need Apply”
Some do count it a misfortune
 To be christened Pat or Dan
But to me it is an honor
To be born an Irishman
I started out to find the place,
I got it mighty soon
There I found the old chap seated
He was reading the Tribune
I told him what I came for
When he in a rage did fly
“No!” he says, “You are a Paddy
And no Irish need apply”
Then I gets my dander rising
And I’d like to black his eye,
But I cooled it down and asked him why
No Irish Need Apply
Some do think it a misfortune
To be christened Pat or Dan
But to me it is an honor
To be born an Irishman.
And says I to hime your ancesters
 came over here like me,
To try and make a living
in this land of liberty
They were greeted here with dignity
And thought to reep and sow,
By the Indians who owned this land
They didn’t tell you no,
But I’ll get a job in spite of you
For I’m willing heart in hand,
Thank God there’s better men than you
All over this great land.
Some do think it a misfortune
To be christened Pat or Dan
But to me it is an honor
To be born an Irishman.
And they say that in America
It always is the plan
That an Irishman is just as good
As any other man,
A home and hospitality
They never will deny
To strangers here forever say
No Irish need apply,
But there’s some bad apples everywhere
A dirty lot says I,
And a decent man may never write
No Irish need apply.
Some do think it a misfortune
To be christened Pat or Dan
But to me it is an honor
To be born an Irishman.

The whole song is a splendid libertarian parable. The immigrant comes seeking work. He faces discrimination: “No Irish need apply.” No one doubts his right to come. No one doubts the employer’s legal right to discriminate, but the narrator thinks it’s morally offensive to discriminate. He goes to meet the employer, and while he doesn’t get the job, he gives him his moral comeuppance by expressing his contempt, appealing by the way to the Pilgrims as a precedent, as I did in my last post. In spite of his disappointment and the temporary setback, he’s confident that he’ll get a job, since he’s confident that only some employers discriminate against the Irish. One of the lessons of the economics of discrimination is that it shouldn’t matter much if a few people discriminate, as long as many others don’t. Continue reading “No Irish need apply” →

In defense of the Pilgrims

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By what right did 100 English Puritans, remembered as “the Pilgrims,” arrive at Cape Cod late in the year in 1620 and establish a new settlement called Plymouth Plantation? None was needed. Or if you prefer, by the right over the earth which God granted to all mankind when He told Adam and Eve:

Be fruitful and multiply: fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth… Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing herb that sows seed on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. I also give every green plant as food for all the wild animals of the earth, for all the birds of heaven, and for everything that creeps on the earth in which is the breath of life. (Genesis 1:28-30)

The Pilgrims came to North America, not with the intention to harm anyone or to take the fruit of anyone else’s labor, but rather, to provide for their own sustenance through their own labor, and to practice their religion in peace. They had no authorization from the English king to settle in New England. They did have authorization from the English king to settle in Virginia, which had been carefully procured through their contacts in the Virginia Company. It seems clear, however, that they had few scruples about acquiring such authorization, regarding it rather as a guarantee that the monarch wouldn’t physically destroy any settlement they might establish. They had considered settling in Guyana, and ruled it out partly because the Spanish would likely destroy such a colony militarily, especially if it flourished. They had no authorization from the native Americans to settle. That is not because they regarded the natives as inherently inferior or as lacking human rights, as a certain detail in William Bradford’ history Of Plymouth Plantation makes especially clear. Having just reached Cape Cod, late in the year and short of supplies, at one point the Pilgrims took some food from the Indians after these had run away in fear:

After this, the shallop [a light sail-boat] being got ready, they set out again for the better discovery of this place, and the master of the ship desired to go himself, so there went some 30. men, but found it to be no harbor for ships but only for boats; there was also found two of their houses covered with mats, and sundry of their implements in them, but the people were run away and could not be seen; also there was found more of their corn, and of their beans of various colors. The corn and beans they brought away, purposing to give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them (as about some six months afterward they did, to their good content). And here is to be noted a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that hear they got seed to plant them corn the next year, or else they might have starved, for they had none, nor any likelihood to get any till the season had been past (as the sequel did manifest). Neither is it likely they had had this, if the first voyage had not been made, for the ground was now all covered with snow, and hard frozen. But the Lord is never wanting to his in their greatest needs; let his holy name have all the praise.

In short, they stole.

About the later end of this month, one John Billington lost himself in the woods, and wandered up and down some five days, living on berries and what he could find. At length he lit on an Indian plantation, twenty miles south of this place, called Manamet, they conveyed him further off, to Nawsett, among those people that had before set upon the English when they were coasting, whilst the ship lay at the Cape, as is before noted. But the Governor caused him to be inquired for among the Indians, and at length Massassoyt sent word where he was, and the Governor sent a shallop for him, and had him delivered. Those people also came and made their peace; and they [the Pilgrims] gave full satisfaction to those whose corn they had found and taken when they were at Cape Cod.

Clearly, the Pilgrims did not regard their moral rules as applying only among themselves. They didn’t feel too guilty of a theft of food that they desperately needed, rather thanking God for the opportunity. But they were determined to repay it, and they did so. Indians and whites alike were men, and had the rights of men. The Pilgrims came neither to enslave, nor to dispossess. They did not initiate violence, and though heavily armed and not afraid to use force in a just cause, they sought a path of peace amidst the endemic warfare of the Indian tribes. They were not particularly resentful when the Indians did resort to violence, for they held themselves to a higher moral standard than they expected of the Indians, having benefited from the light of the Gospel, as the Indians had not. They were not violating the rights of the native Americans of those times by settling among them, just as undocumented immigrants today are not violating the rights of native Americans today by settling among us. Human rights consist in the safety of one’s person and property. Against this, one might suppose that there is some sort of a collective right over a slab of territory, which is controlled by the “sovereign” government or the majority or whatever, such that unauthorized immigrants like the Pilgrims or Mexican fruit-pickers are violating. But there isn’t. That’s why the Pilgrims did nothing wrong, and why it’s quite right that Americans continue to take pride in them and celebrate them.

If you accept this, you can accept the story of the First Thanksgiving in the proper spirit: as a sort of national epic for America, a great and heroic adventure leading to the founding of a nation, with this distinction from most other national epics: that it is (a) true, and (b) peaceful. It is a story of great faith and courage, but also of humility. Its heroes are common men. They take no credit but give it to God. It began with some rural Englishmen who took it upon themselves to be more devout than was fashionable at the time. They wanted to restore pristine Christianity. They began to assemble in certain congregations, and to be persecuted. Having heard that there was religious freedom in Holland, they resolved to emigrate. It is interesting to compare their twelve years’ sojourn in Holland with their arrival in America. From Bradford’s account, they seem to have asked no one’s leave to settle there, nor to encountered any hindrance to so doing. Bradford does not specially remark that Holland had open borders. It suffices to say that Holland was a “civil [civilized] country.” The Puritans had fears about moving to Holland: Continue reading In defense of the Pilgrims →