Tag Archives: Alex Nowrasteh

Cato’s March 21, 2013 immigration event

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The video is embedded below.

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

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

Michael Clemens on the “path to citizenship”

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Michael Clemens, who heads the migration-related initiatives at the Center for Global Development, recently wrote a blog post titled Care About Unauthorized Immigration? The ‘Path to Citizenship’ Is What Matters Least. Like my co-blogger Chris, Clemens is critical of overemphasis on the path to citizenship. Clemens:

I am not saying that the status of unauthorized immigrants isn’t important. I’m saying that the policy step of a path-to-citizenship is unlikely to be an important determinant of the unauthorized immigrant population, even in the short term.

This is clear from U.S. history. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan created a path to citizenship for most of the 3 million unauthorized immigrants then living in America when he signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Watch what happened to the unauthorized immigrant population. By 1990, just four years later, you couldn’t even tell that anything had happened: [view graph at original link]

Later in the same post:

If you’re concerned about the phenomenon of unauthorized immigration or the plight of unauthorized immigrants, pay less attention to the path-to-citizenship. Keep one question foremost in your mind as you read the forthcoming details of the Senators’ and president’s proposals: What are they offering U.S. farmers to get the labor they need without going under? What are they offering U.S. parents to get the childcare they need without breaking the bank? These are the provisions that will shape unauthorized immigration for tomorrow’s America.

My thoughts:

  • From a pro-open borders perspective, the path to citizenship is the least important of all issues being discussed.
  • From the political externalities perspective, the path to citizenship is very very important.
  • I think that while Clemens is correct that citizenship or the lack of it is not much of an incentive to migrate, the data offered by Clemens don’t quite support that conclusion. The graph displayed by Clemens does suggest that a path to citizenship will not reduce future unauthorized immigration. I’m not exactly sure who argues this, though it does seem like the sort of thing that somebody who hasn’t thought clearly about the issue might say. But restrictionists usually argue the opposite — that a path to citizenship for past unauthorized immigrants will incentivize increases in future unauthorized immigration. This, I suspect, is true. Clemens’ graph doesn’t extend much before 1986, but it’s easy to see that the rate of increase must have been slower before 1986, because the total number of unauthorized immigrants couldn’t have been negative. So, it does seem like the 1986 immigration reform incentivized future unauthorized immigration. What’s not clear, though, is whether citizenship specifically had that effect over and above being granted legal status. So overall, the marginal effect of citizenship seems to be unclear.
  • Even if a path to citizenship is not important for migrants or for open borders advocates, it’s very important for political parties, who are after all negotiating with their political competitors about future voters — the people who’ll decide the parties’ future fate. I don’t see eye to eye with Peter Brimelow, but he’s right that granting citizenship to migrants is about electing a new people, and political parties have a self-interest in electing people who’ll elect them. This doesn’t mean they’d always follow that self-interest — there might be other pragmatic and ethical considerations — but the issue will weigh heavily in negotiations. BK pointed out in the comments that even pro-immigration Republicans don’t expect large numbers of newly minted immigrant citizens to vote for the Republicans, hence they are more likely to support guest worker programs. Democrats do seem to have an advantage with migrant votes, and hence support a path to citizenship, but supporting guest worker programs may cost them union support, which might make them reluctant to do so, as Alex Nowrasteh pointed out:

    So why doesn’t the proposed immigration reform include a comprehensive guest-worker program? Surprisingly, the main issue is not opposition from conservative Republicans. It is unions and their supporters who do not want it.

    In the 2007 immigration reform push, an amendment that would have ended the guest-worker program after five years destroyed Republican support.

    The then-leaders of the AFL-CIO, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, the Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers and the Teamsters all wrote letters opposing guest workers and supporting the amendment.

Alex Nowrasteh’s new policy analysis of guest worker programs

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Alex Nowrasteh‘s latest policy analysis on guest worker programs has just been published by the Cato Institute and can be accessed here on the Cato Institute website (here’s the direct link to the PDF). Alex makes many similar points to what I made in a blog post a month ago replying to Daniel Costa, but he also includes some historical background and other details that make for more compelling reading. Among the historical precedents he references is the case of Metics in ancient Greece, which my co-blogger Nathan blogged about half a year ago. He also has an interesting description of how “worker abuses” have been carried out not just by private firms, but by government bureaucrats, and how more flexibility on the part of workers to change jobs and less government discretionary authority can help curb these abuses. Here’s how he puts it:

Abuse is not confined to firms. Some of the worst abuses of guest workers have occurred at
the hands of government employees. During the Bracero Program, Department of Labor (DOL) inspectors often slapped, berated, and cursed at Braceros for asking questions. According to one eyewitness: “Nobody had any patience. Immigration, Public Health, Labor Department—it’s all the same. Everybody curses at the Braceros and shoves them around.” Violence and abuse perpetrated by government inspectors and bureaucrats was endemic. The Braceros were frequently humiliated, but as one observer recalled, “migrants usually just stood there and took the abuse–what else could they do–they felt pretty bad about it. I must have seen a lot of Braceros cry after they were talked to in this way.”

Abuse by government bureaucrats has diminished over the years or become stealthy, but the entire problem could be removed by contracting out, licensing, or just relying upon private companies to carry out inspections, recruitment, health checks, and other guest worker functions. Visa portability that lets guest workers change jobs with a minimum of paperwork or notice to employers as long as the worker notifies the government after the fact deprives abusive employers of employees, incentivizes good behavior, and acts as an enforcement mechanism that punishes employers who do not treat employees as well as competing firms. Visa portability allows workers to regulate their own work environment or change it at will.

Read the whole policy analysis (direct link to PDF).

The economic effects of Arizona’s immigration crackdown

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The state of Arizona in the Southern United States, which shares a border with Mexico, has carried out various immigration crackdowns over the past few years, the most recent of which has been the SB-1070 law. Pro-immigration groups, along with various civil rights advocacy groups, have generally opposed these laws as wrong-headed, while groups opposed to immigration (particularly illegal immigration) have been generally supportive of these laws. Some pro-immigration groups, such as the Immigration Policy Center, have argued that the strategy of attrition through enforcement, which is the general approach that Arizona has followed, is flawed:

These conclusions are bolstered by new research from the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in Los Angeles and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. This research indicates that, when it comes to Mexican migration patterns, “northbound flows are holding steady with signs of increasing unauthorized migration, while southbound flows are decreasing. The result is that the size of the Mexican-born population in the United States has fully recovered from losses experienced during the recession.” Moreover, “given the available indicators as of mid-2012, it appears that even a relatively small increase in the demand for Mexican labor in the U.S. economy would prompt a positive response in the migration flows despite intensified enforcement efforts by the federal government, several states, and some local governments.”

I’ve been critical of this economic determinism in the past, and I think that in this respect, restrictionists are right when they argue that increased enforcement (a) decreases the number of new illegal immigrants entering the state, and possibly decreases the total number of illegal immigrants entering the country, and (b) leads some immigrants to leave the state, though this is usually to other states, not the country. Now, in the case of Arizona, the fact that other nearby states like California and New Mexico did not carry out similar crackdowns means that most of the attrition from Arizona happened at the expense (or to the benefit, depending on your point of view) of these nearby states. This reconciles the “economic determinist” observation that state-level immigration crackdowns did not affect the overall flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, and that the decrease is completely explicable by economic trends, while simultaneously vindicating restrictionists’ claim that attrition through enforcement does work at the state level.

But the mere fact that restrictionists’ “attrition through enforcement” strategy “works” in the sense of reducing the number or proportion of illegal immigrants (relative to the counterfactual) does not imply that the strategy “works” in the more relevant sense, i.e., that it brings about the improvements in native quality of life that restrictionists hope to achieve with their policies. To figure out what’s happening to native quality of life, it’s not good enough to look at the proportions of illegal immigrants. Rather, one needs to look at what’s happening to native.

For convenience, I provide here a spectrum of five possibilities:

  1. Dramatic cut in native quality of life. This kind of apocalyptic narrative relies on the idea that immigrants do jobs natives won’t do, and on the questionable assumption that when immigrants leave, the jobs will vanish entirely and there will be no adjustment or reconfiguration. In this view, for instance, if 90% of restaurant workers are illegal immigrants in a city, then when the immigrants leave, then 90% of restaurant jobs will vanish.
  2. Modest cut in native quality of life. This narrative relies on the economy readjusting to the absence of immigrant labor, but while the readjustment optimizes for the new ground realities, the fewer resources available overall means that native quality of life reduces somewhat.
  3. No effect on natives. In this view, either the readjustment is perfect, or the reduction in other problems that immigrants create (crime, welfare state use, etc.) compensates for the economic inefficiencies generated by their departure.
  4. Modest gain in native quality of life. In this view, native wages go up with less immigrant competition, and natives have more resources for themselves now that there is less crime, welfare state use, etc. by immigrants. A few rich and powerful natives lose out because they have to pay higher wages.
  5. Dramatic gain in native quality of life. In this view, all immigrant jobs get replaced by natives doing the same job, so native unemployment goes down to (near-)zero, crime is at an all time low, and the economy undergoes a renaissance.

(1) and (5) are relatively extreme positions, which people more often accuse their opponents of espousing than they themselves espouse. The relevant range is (2)-(4). My view is that the truth lies somewhere between (2) and (3). But is there any research on the issue in the context of Arizona?

The Immigration Policy Center has a page with various ways that Arizona’s immigration crackdown has hurt the state. Some of the data here does would lead a person to be skeptical of whether Arizona’s immigration crackdown has been beneficial to the state. Still, one does not need to be a hardcore restrictionist to find the material on the page unconvincing. The main problem: most of their anecdotes do little to specifically separate out the costs and benefits to natives in isolation, which is what the state-level citizenist really cares about. Also, some of their cost statements seem hypocritical. For instance, they argue that bad publicity from the law, and legal challenges to the law, themselves cost the state of Arizona a lot of money. That’s true, but it sounds an awful lot like victim blaming to me, given that the Immigration Policy Center is at the forefront of generating the bad publicity and supporting the legal challenges.

To my knowledge, the best single piece on the Arizona immigration crackdown, that specifically considers and attempts to isolate and discuss the effects on the native population, is the paper The Economic Case against Arizona’s Immigration Laws by Alex Nowrasteh. Alex traces what happened in Arizona and the nearby states of California and New Mexico in some of the industries that most heavily use (illegal) immigrant labor and would be most likely to be affected (positively or negatively) by Arizona’s crackdown: agriculture, construction, and the restaurant industry. Since there is too little data on SB 1070, Alex looks at the effect of earlier, less comprehensive, crackdowns on immigration.

His findings differ somewhat for the three sectors, but the construction sector findings are perhaps the most interesting: the share of natives employed in construction declined somewhat over the period studied by Alex, even as the share of immigrants employed in construction declined much more. Moreover, the decline in the population share employed in construction for Arizona was more than for California and New Mexico (Alex also told me over email that the decline in share of native employment in construction was also more for Arizona than for California, although he does not mention this detail in his paper). The comparison with other states is relevant because the confounding factor of a recession in the United States around that time that disproportionately affected the construction sector. Similar data discussed by Alex makes the strong case for position (2) in the spectrum I listed above: the immigration crackdown did not spell disaster for Arizona, but likely had a small negative impact on native quality of life.

I have a few reservations about the paper, which I will discuss in a subsequent blog post. Clearly, as with all social scientific analyses, there is a lot of guesswork involved regarding counterfactuals. If you start off with the neutral position which I list as (3) on the spectrum (i.e., no effect on natives), it’s possible that reading the paper, you may still stay at (3), though my sense is that the evidence presented in the paper should move you at least somewhat towards a (2). But at any rate, I don’t see the evidence as moving one’s position towards the restrictionist side.

To my knowledge, there isn’t any comparable analysis written from a restrictionist perspective. The Center for Immigration Studies has a page on SB1070, but this focuses almost completely on the legal aspects, not on the economic effects. The best I could do with a quick search on various restrictionist websites was an article on VDARE titled Arizona Economy Booming Without Illegal Aliens. But this three-paragraph article doesn’t offer any direct evidence — only a link to and quote from a USA Today news item:

As of February, the state had added 42,6000 new, non-farm jobs over the previous year, and state revenues have increased 8.7% so far in 2012. The Arizona Office of Tourism found the state generated $17.7 billion in direct travel spending in 2010 — a 7.9% increase over the previous year. Brewer said there may have been a negative effect in the immediate aftermath of the law, but that the state has rebounded and the “Arizona comeback” is here.

“Businesses are coming. People are recruiting,” Brewer said. “We should get a lot of kudos for what we’ve accomplished.”

Although this discussion might be more directly relevant to SB1070 — since it is over the time period relevant for SB1070, as opposed to Alex’s analysis which is for an earlier period — it does not seem to me to be a very convincing argument for the positive effects of Arizona’s immigration crackdown (just as some of the Immigration Policy Center’s anecdotes are not too convincing in the other direction). If there are more thorough and sophisticated analyses of the economic effects of Arizona’s laws from a restrictionist perspective, I’d definitely like to read through them. Please leave links and references in the comments if you know of any good analyses.

I’ll blog my criticisms and reservations regarding Alex’s paper in a subsequent post.