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Migration: how many, what kind, and why it matters

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This post is an introduction to a planned series of posts (some by me, some perhaps by others) that explore questions related to how many people might move under various changes that lead towards open borders (locally or globally). The goal of the current post is to explain why I consider the question extremely important. A subsequent post will take a somewhat opposite stand: namely, try to sketch a case for open borders that is independent of how many people might move. Later posts will look at specific policy changes, some of them realistic and others less so, and estimates of what might happen under these. Another area I plan to explore is the question of what the most critical bottlenecks are to large-scale migration (the most obvious candidates are housing and infrastructure) and what limits they set on migration rates.

A while back, I wrote a blog post critical of what I called “economic determinism”: the idea that migration flows are determined completely by economic conditions and that legal barriers to migration have practically zero effect on the magnitudes of migration flows. There are factors other than economic conditions and legal barriers to consider as well, of course: factors such as cultural connections between the sending and receiving country. Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s recent book Global Crossings: Immigration, Civilization, and America drove this point home for me. So, I guess the position I am broadly critical of could be expanded beyond economic determinism to what I might call “restriction irrelevantism”: the idea that restrictions imposed by nation-state governments on migration are largely irrelevant in terms of their effect on the magnitude and nature of migration flows.

Vargas Llosa is definitely not an economic determinist, but whether or not he’s a restriction irrelevantist remains to be seen. This article seemed to suggest that he might be, but op-eds tend to be oversimplifications, and his book, which I haven’t completed reading, may offer a more nuanced picture. I was nonetheless somewhat disappointed by the fact that Chapter 3 of the book, titled “Why They Move” and otherwise excellent at considering the motivators for migration, gave short shrift to the idea that different degrees of restrictionism in different target countries might significantly affect people’s decision of whether or where to migrate.

In any case, this blog post is not about the somewhat extreme position of restriction irrelevantism, which may or may not have real proponents. The majority of proponents and opponents of open borders do not subscribe to restriction irrelevantism. Rather, I think there’d be general agreement that millions more would move, temporarily or permanently, under open borders. But “millions” is a vague term. It could range from an extra five million people over the next two decades to an extra 100 million migrants (many of them temporary) within 2-3 years of global open borders (the main data for how many would move under open borders in terms of the stated preferences of potential migrants are the polling data on migration, which suggest that over a billion people want to go to other countries temporarily or permanently, and about 500-700 million people think they would make long-term moves if they were allowed to). One could come up with a fairly diverse (albeit less so) range of estimates for the number of people who might move under a more targeted open borders regime. For instance, if the United States announced open borders for Haiti (population about 10 million), one might envision a scenario of anything between 2 million people moving to the United States over the next year to a roughly equal number moving to the United States over the next two decades.

The closer the proposed change is to the status quo, the less likely the range of disagreement, but since we are talking here about relatively radical ideas such as open borders, there could be considerable divergence of opinion.

Closely related to the question of how many is the question of who. Many arguments offered by open borders advocates rely on the crucial idea that migrants self-select, i.e., it is not all that easy to migrate to a new land, and therefore migrants are not representative of the populations they hail from, but rather, are selected for positive qualities. As BK has pointed out in the comments (see for instance here and here) you can’t have your cake and eat it too for selectivity: if your estimate says that 25% of the population from region A will move under open borders, you can’t assume that the average migrant who moves will be selected to be in the top 1% of people from region A.

While the precise economics behind double world GDP estimates tends to be complicated, an important point is that all the estimates of huge economic gains also predict that this happens through large numbers of people moving. If, in fact, large numbers of people do not move, then at any rate these specific estimates are not applicable (there may be other mechanisms by which world GDP might increase considerably, such as innovation, but at any rate the specific estimation exercises of the papers would be flawed if very few people moved). For instance, in his blog post about John Kennan’s paper on Open Borders, Nathan Smith writes:

In predicting the volume of migration, Kennan does not assume that humans are strict homini economici who will go wherever they can earn the most. He writes:

One might initially expect that in a world with open borders, everyone would move to the most productive location. But this ignores the strong attachment to home locations that is evident in the data.

He takes this into account by making the migration decision probabilistic, such that the proportion of people who stay in a country is the same as the proportion of the rich-country wage that is paid in that country. For example, if there are open borders between the US and Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rican wages are 2/3 of those in the US, then 2/3 of Puerto Rican adults would stay in Puerto Rico. This roughly fits the data in that particular case, but there is no theoretical motivation for that particular functional form. Relative to a homo economicus model in which everyone who could earn more elsewhere migrated, this assumption causes Kennan to understate the economic benefits of open borders. On the other hand, it also makes Kennan’s version of open borders less scary than it would be if all who stood to gain economically from migration migrated.

This still posits a large number of people who’d move under open borders. Nathan writes later (emphasis mine):

Now, two big things we would like to know about open borders are (a) how many people would move, and (b) how much would world GDP actually increase. If I’m not mistaken, Kennan could easily derive estimates of these things from his model. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t tell us how world GDP would rise under open borders, in the short or the long run. He doesn’t tell us how many people would move, or where they would come from. I think Kennan’s model implies a short-run increase in world GDP of about 65%, and I’m pretty sure in the long run world GDP would double. Since the increase in the effective labor supply comes from growth in the populations of rich countries where labor productivity is high, I think Kennan’s model implies that rich countries’ populations would more than double due to immigration under open borders.

Another related concern is swamping. One of the main concerns of people ranging from hardcore restrictionists to moderate pro-immigrationers and even some who identify as being pro-open borders is that true open borders would lead to very large numbers of people moving over short time periods in a manner that would strain housing, electricity, water supplies, and other infrastructure in the countries receiving the immigrants. The typical response is to point out that (i) borders can be opened somewhat gradually to minimize the possibility of an immediate flood of people (see here for instance), and (ii) in any case, migration flows will tend to be self-regulating and people are likely to plan ahead at least somewhat before making a big move. Evaluating the legitimacy of swamping as a concern is part of the reason why it’s important to get a handle on how many might move under migration regimes that move the needle considerably towards open borders.

Finally, in addition to the direct relevance of understanding migration counts and selectivity, making correct predictions, or at any rate, refraining from making laughably wrong predictions, can help build one’s credibility as an advocate or analyst of migration regimes in the eyes of others approaching the matter from the outside view.

Thomas Sowell on Immigration

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This post was originally published at the Cato-at-Liberty blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

Thomas Sowell is an influential and prolific writer whose books span the social sciences.  My shelves are full of them, decorated with underlines, marginalia, and dog-eared pages.  But in his recent columns and comments on immigration, Sowell has not approached that topic with the same rigorous attention to detail that he has in his books.  His reliance on incomplete historical examinations in his columns leads him to seemingly support a vast array of government interventions.  In these writings, Sowell makes the same mistakes that he accuses the “anointed” of making in many of his books.

In the column I’ll focus on, professor Sowell’s claim that today’s debate about immigration reform is not as fact-based as previous debates.  The implication is that a lack of facts will lead to poor policy decisions today whereas the policy changes 100 years ago were well thought out and fact-based.  He wrote:

A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by Senator William P. Dillingham.

First, Sowell’s description of the Dillingham Commission’s commitment to facts is inaccurate.  It was a bi-partisan committee formed in 1907 to investigate the impacts of immigration on the United States – especially the so-called “new immigrants” from Eastern and Southern Europe.  The Commission was staffed by Progressives who believed that scientific managerial methods could effectively plan large parts of society and the economy by using the power of the government.  With the exception of one member, William S. Bennet of New York, the commission was stacked with members who had previously supported immigration restrictions. 

The Dillingham Commission produced 42 volumes by 1911, arguing that the “new immigrants” were fundamentally different from old immigrants who came from Western and Northern Europe.  Their culture, rates of economic success, and assimilative potential were supposedly severely constrained.  Those are the same claims made by today’s immigration opponents.  The Dillingham Commission suggested that immigration restrictions (ranging from relatively modest literacy tests to outright quotas and other massive interventions) could solve this “problem.” 

Information gathered by the Commission that showed new immigrants succeeding and assimilating was ignored or explained away because it contrasted with the world view of the commission members.  When charitable societies started to report on questionnaire slips that large numbers of Western and Northern Europeans received aid, “the slips were returned to societies for further information or for corrections.” The Commission defined retardation for children as being behind in school – an absurd definition designed to exaggerate retardation among non-English speaking immigrant children.  In American schools, the Dillingham Commission found that 66.9 percent of Polish Jewish students and 63.6 percent of Southern Italians students were retarded.  The Dillingham Commission was intensely worried about Asian immigration. 

Today’s immigration debate is better off without these types of “facts” produced by a commission designed to reach a certain conclusion. 

The Commission’s findings were similar to Sowell’s comment: “The immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred years ago.”  Literally, Sowell is correct, but the implication that they are different in ways that make them less suited to modern American society doesn’t follow.  Immigration restrictionists 100 years ago said the same thing about Southern and Eastern European immigrants, looking back fondly on the Germans, Nordics, and Irish immigrants who came before.  Brutal terrorist bombings carried out by Italian anarcho-communists, including 38 mail bombs in 1919 and numerous attempts on the life of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, confirmed the pessimism. 

Before the Dillingham Commission, immigration restrictionists in the early and mid-19th century thought the Germans and Catholic Irish were unassimilable compared to the Scots-Irish and Huguenots who came before.  One worry about the Germans was that their collectivist culture and political struggles in Germany would clash with the individualism necessary to make freedom flourish in America.  Catholics were considered to harbor a deep anti-republicanism and a culture inimical to liberty.  Time has shown how absurd those worries were.

Thomas Sowell wrote two books explaining the flaws of supporting massive government interventions based on the recommendations of elites – especially in the face of so much historical and economic counter-evidence.  In the Vision of the Anointed, Sowell rightly criticizes the Ralph Naders of the world for spinning tales of doom and gloom that call for government intervention based on very little evidence.  He humorously calls these people Teflon prophets.  But Sowell is acting as a Teflon prophet when it comes to immigration.  In a cagey way, he predicts that great harm will come to the United States due to immigration.  He does not propose a policy solution but because he describes a supposed problem with such a dire tone the reader is meant to feel that he should oppose immigration liberalization. 

Did the Dillingham Commission’s fears that new immigrants and their descendants would fail to assimilate come true?

Asians and their descendants, a group viciously criticized by the Dillingham Commission, have culturally assimilated and their rate of economic success exceeds that of other Americans.  You don’t have to take my word for it, just read what Thomas Sowell has written on the issue.  Italians, Jews, and other immigrant groups criticized by the Commission also culturally assimilated and their descendants have been very successful.  The Dillingham Commission was clearly wrong about these immigrant groups.  Immigration restrictions inspired by that Commission imposed large costs on America: We likely lost an opportunity to have at least tens of millions of more productive citizens from Europe, Asian, and elsewhere – unintentionally sentencing many to death.   

The Dillingham Commission also claimed that there were just too many people and the economy could not create enough wealth to sustain a high standard of living – a ludicrous proposition thoroughly demolished by Julian Simon.  With a population of just over 92 million people in 1910, the Commission concluded that too much immigration was slowing America’s economic growth and that large numbers of new people were not necessary for industrialization because that phase of economic expansion was behind us … in 1910.  Such grandiose claims of the future that call for government intervention could only come from the self-proclaimed anointed. 

The Dillingham Commission was severely criticized when it was released and was not accepted as fact as Sowell claimed.  A criticism of the report famously questioned its entire statistical methodology and conclusions.  That criticism, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, dismissed the “popular delusion” that immigrants displace American workers by writing: “[i]n the long run … supply and demand approximately balance each other.”  Just as then, similar disagreements have continued to this day over other immigration studies.     

The Dillingham Commission’s immigration restrictionist recommendations were based on poor statistical methods, an undue faith in the ability of Progressive social-reforms to guide social development, and a rejection of labor market economics.  The Dillingham Commission was not an honest study to determine the facts of immigration as Professor Sowell described.          

Second, Sowell brings up the Boston terror attack as a warning against immigration of people with cultures that are incompatible with Western values.  He has a point about security, but it’s not that immigration should be curtailed.  As much as this is painful to consider, some criminals and terrorists will always be able to sneak in regardless of our immigration policy.  The question is not whether we want no criminals or a lot of criminals, the relevant question is: which system will prevent more criminals and terrorists from entering at an acceptable cost? 

A legal system that prevented all immigration and tourism would prevent some criminals from coming in and could have prevented the Boston terror attack, but at a gargantuan economic cost not to mention the violation of individual liberties such a policy would entail.  But a more open immigration system that screens people for criminality but lets peaceful people through will reduce the size of the haystack and make it easier for law and immigration enforcement to catch the criminal and terrorist needles.  Public policy should be based on facts and not anecdotes.  There is evidence that there should additional screenings and investigations for some immigrants but that does not mean blanket bans on the immigration of certain ethnic or religious groups should be instituted.

Thomas Sowell’s trust in the findings of a Progressive immigration commission that recommended massive government interventions based on manipulated statistics – a near textbook example of a Teflon prophet – is in blaring contrast to the rest of his work that produces many reasons to be skeptical of such schemes.  In 100 years, will Americans look back fondly on today’s immigrants and their successful assimilation as they have in other periods of American history?  Or will this be the first time that immigrants and their descendants don’t become Americans?  Given the rapid rate of assimilation across the board, with varying rates of success, there is little to distinguish today’s immigration experience from that of our forefathers.   

From Blog to Book

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

I’ve decided to try taking my contributions to Open Borders: The Case in a new direction. As I see it, Open Borders: The Case started out as an informational website, then turned into a blog, but never became exactly the running commentary on current events that is perhaps the most typical style of a successful blog. Its raison d’etre seemed to be rather the systematic working out of the case for open borders. Since that involves a certain amount of refutation of widespread fallacies and a certain amount of internal debate, it can drive an agenda of daily posting to a certain extent. But the blog style per se isn’t particularly conducive to cumulatively building a sustained case. I started feeling I’d largely covered the ground, at least in as much depth as the format permitted, and also, forgetting what I’d already written about.

So, my new idea is to spearhead a novel sort of book project. I have a tentative outline, which will doubtless change as I move forward, reflecting my own thoughts and the suggestions and contributions of others. Links will accumulate there to new content as it is written. I envision it as a collaborative project, amalgamating the writings of like-minded people: not a mere anthology– it will have more structure than that– but not quite having the character of a co-authored book, in which the authors bear equal responsibility for all parts and who wrote what is concealed. If other people do participate, we might end up with chapter-specific bylines. Like the Bible: multiple authors and styles, but a relatively unified message. (Obviously I don’t imagine the book will be remotely as important as the Bible, but I’m using it as an example of the kind of diverse authorship I’m thinking about.) My plan is to post new chapters here, as Open Borders: The Case blog posts, and at the same time, to create them as public Googledocs, to which there will be links both from the blog posts here and from the outline. The blog posts will stay as is; the Googledocs will be subject to revision. Fact-checking is for a later stage. For now, I’ll try to be accurate, but I won’t be as careful as I would be if I were intending immediate publication in a book or an academic journal article. Hopefully commenters will do some of the fact-checking for me (for us). At some point down the line, I might submit it to a prestigious university press, but it’s almost as attractive just to publish it through Kindle Direct Publishing, and use the blog itself for initial publicity. After that, the text might go on expanding, preparing the way for future editions. I’ve never heard of a book being written this way. We’ll see if it works.

If anyone wants to help with this project, feel free to just write chapters and link to them in the comments of this or future posts. I’ll take a look.  There is no need for posts to be written in the order they are planned in the (tentative) outline: feel free to start anywhere in the outline, or nowhere in it, writing whatever seems important to you even if I haven’t (yet) included it. I’ll think about where to work it in. No need to try to match my style, either, just relevant facts and valid arguments.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s how the argument may begin:

1.A. The world is, in theory, divided up into sovereign nation-states, separated by well-defined borders

The modern world, that is to say, the world as of 2013 and a few previous decades, is as a matter of official doctrine divided up into sovereign nation-states, with well-defined borders clarifying the scope of the jurisdiction of each state. “Sovereignty” is a concept rarely defined, though its modern sense can be traced to the absolutist political philosophy of Thomes Hobbes in the 17th century. It essentially means having the last word, not being able to be interfered with. For some purposes, it is synonymous with “independence,” but at a deep philosophical level the ideas of political independence and political sovereignty should probably not be equated. Sovereignty implies immunity to external interference. But it also implies a right of making laws, and usually implies an unlimited right of making laws, which is so broad as to include a right of acting coercively without the sanction of any publicly promulgated law. The belief of Thomas Aquinas and other medieval jurists that human laws are unjust and lacking in real authority unless they are based in the natural law and serve the “common good”– a notion hard to make sense of today but which to medieval jurists meant something objective– is inconsistent with the modern notion of sovereignty, and Thomas Hobbes had to do battle with the ideas of medieval churchmen in order to establish his idea of sovereignty. Modern national sovereignty was established, not only on behalf of nations as against dynastic or colonial empires, but on behalf of the secular authorities as against the church, and on behalf of the centralized state and its decrees as against local authorities, customs, and often individual conscience. At any rate, whatever “sovereignty” means, it is now by a global consensus imputed to about two hundred political entities, with relatively little disagreement about which political entities are included in the list, or what their boundaries are.

The establishment and maintenance of this world order depends on a high degree of legal and cartographical ingenuity. In past ages, mankind lacked the skill to draw such sophisticated maps. Some borders, such as the US-Canada border, correspond to lines of latitude or longitude, and could not have been drawn thus until mankind had sufficient knowledge to conceive and apply these spatial concepts. Older borders are sometimes marked by natural features of the landscape that are more readily discernible, such as rivers and mountain ranges, but by no means always. In other cases, territorial boundaries were physically marked. I have heard that there were in ancient times two stones located near one another in Greece. One of them said, “This is Athens. It is not Megara.” The other said, “This is Megara. It is not Athens.” Hadrian’s Wall and the Great Wall of China, though they were exceptional cases, may serve as vivid examples of physically marking a border. In other cases, territorial borders between states were vaguer. In any case, the concept of a “sovereign state” is a modern one. In past ages, it seems that “whose territory is this?” would not always have been felt to demand such a clear and unambiguous answer as it would be expected to evoke today. And while political entities resembling modern states and jealous of their territorial sovereignty sometimes existed, it was not the case that the entire territory of the earth was claimed by one or other of these entities, still less that the major powers agreed among themselves in recognizing each other’s territorial claims. To a naive modern person, it might seem that “the world is divided up into sovereign nation-states with well-defined borders” is a mere truism, one of the constant facts of political organization, arising, somehow, from human nature and/or from reason. But it is not. It is a peculiarity of our own modern civilization, which future ages may find odd and difficult to understand.

Thomas Sowell on the Economics of Immigration

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Post by Alex Nowrasteh (occasional blogger for the site, joined April 2012; pieces published are by default republished from other sources with permission). See:

FINANCIAL INTEREST DISCLOSURE: Nowrasteh has a paid job as immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute (since April 15, 2012), and formerly had a similar role at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This post was originally published at the Cato-at-Liberty blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

Thomas Sowell, distinguished social scientist and columnist, recently criticized Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his statement that America needs immigration reform to avoid a “worker shortage.” Ryan was trying to explain that allowing more workers to come in the future would allow the economy to grow. He incorrectly used the word “shortage, which has a specific meaning in economics, and Sowell was right to criticize him for that. 

However, the economics of immigration are far more complex than Sowell’s writings let on. After dinging Ryan for his word choice, Sowell went on to explain that if American farmers don’t have enough workers, they will just raise their wages to attract Americans into the profession:

In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage… And as long as there is an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much… And it’s a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense.

If Sowell is going to quibble about words like “shortage,” it’s fair to criticize Sowell’s use of the word “unlimited” to describe the supply of farm workers coming from Mexico. If the supply of workers in agriculture was truly unlimited, or infinite, the wage would be 0. Furthermore, Americans are not “looking for any kind of work.” If they were, they would be lowering their wages quite a bit more than they currently are, until they become attractive hires. Relatively sticky wages even during periods of high unemployment are evidence that people are not “looking for any kind of work.”        

Issues of economic vocabulary aside, Sowell only described one possible outcome from a reduction in the supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers: an increase in wages. The far more likely reaction is that American farmers will stop growing crops that require many workers. Without a large supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers, labor-intensive farming would either shrink dramatically or disappear entirely.  American farmers would either grow different crops that could be profitably harvested mechanically or stop farming. American consumers would either import fruits and vegetables that require large numbers of workers from countries where those workers are abundant, or scale back their consumption of those food stuffs. Fewer workers also means fewer consumers of these agricultural goods, decreasing demand and partly offsetting some of the increase in price that would occur from a decrease in supply. Those effects would be the economically efficient outcome if increased labor scarcity was driven by changes in the free market. In this case, however, the increase in labor scarcity would come from legislation mandating such scarcity.

Insights from labor economics help explain why the American growing of fruits and vegetables would diminish if low-skilled immigration was ended. If the marginal value of the worker’s production is greater than the wage, it is profitable for a firm to hire that employee. For example, if a worker’s marginal value product (MVP) is $10 per hour, it is profitable to employ that worker at a wage of less than $10. (If MVP = wage, the employer is indifferent assuming no transaction costs). Based on the enormous range of work and welfare options open to Americans, farmers would likely have to pay wages so high to attract enough American workers that most labor-intensive agriculture would be unprofitable. Alabama provides an example.

Furthermore, it’s hard to see why it’s desirable to increase the wages of low-productivity farm workers by increasing their scarcity. Raising the wages in occupations that don’t require a high school degree is antithetical to other aspects of public policy that seek to increase the rate of high school graduation (whether or not that is a valid concern for government). There is evidence that more immigration further incentivizes Americans to actually finish high school. The government should not create a policy designed to increase wages for low-skilled farm workers that could drive relatively higher-skilled Americans into those occupations. Since educated workers have more choices in the labor market, the effect of attracting them into lower-productivity professions through changes in policy will likely diminish economic and productivity growth.

Speaking of immigration reform proponents, Sowell states, “They say Americans won’t do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries.” In this instance, Sowell cherry-picks his opponent’s arguments and chooses to address the ludicrous ones while ignoring those with substance. Americans sailed wind-powered ships around the world and used horses instead of cars for centuries. That, however, is not an argument that a government law should increase the scarcity of modern ships and cars. Sowell is right that Americans could do these low-skilled agriculture jobs. We could also become hunter-gatherers again. But that does not mean that we should, if cheaper and better options are available. Sowell does not say that we should exclude low-skilled immigrants but his tone and the conspicuous absence of him criticizing economically ignorant arguments from the anti-immigration-reform side are serious indications of his opinions on the issue.         

Furthermore, Sowell is right that the economy would adjust to a decrease in the supply of low-skilled labor, but he fails to mention that it would do so by shrinking. The economy would likewise adjust if the American government declared that electricity was illegal or all imports were banned. Arguing that the economy would adjust to artificially created scarcity does not justify creating such scarcity through government fiat.     

Immigration restrictions increase labor scarcity, especially in niches of the labor market where relatively few Americans work. The main effect of increasing labor scarcity by further restricting the supply of low-skilled immigrant workers will not be to raise the wages of Americans, thereby drawing them to pick crops; it would be to kill large portions of the agricultural sector and other portions of the economy that demand large numbers of relatively low-skilled workers to operate most efficiently and profitably. 

Sowell’s surface explanation of how wages would adjust without low-skilled immigration, which leaves out how the economy would shrink and other well-known effects, is written in a way to obfuscate rather than enlighten. On this issue, Sowell ignores the lessons he has developed throughout his career, and instead seems to support extensive government interventions (his writing is cagey enough that he could claim to not support any policies, but the tone is clear enough) with little evidence besides anecdotes.

Weekly link roundup 4

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Here’s our fourth weekly link roundup (for all our weekly link roundups, see here). As always, linking does not imply endorsement.