We live in a world in which growing unemployment in America is a painful reality. As the demands of globalization require outsourcing, jobs at home necessarily dwindle away, leaving people impoverished. American leaders have a moral imperative to respond to the changing world. Although free trade is economically beneficial and ideologically consistent with American values, the massive unemployment left in its wake needs to be addressed. Such a response ought to take the form of significantly reducing immigration and thus protecting jobs and social services for native citizens.
When thinking about immigration, we must primarily think about the effects of such a policy on existing native citizens whom the government is obliged to protect. Who benefits from an open immigration policy? Obviously, immigrants benefit economically, or, logically, they would not come to America in the first place. Their employers benefit too, insomuch as they can hire cheap immigrant labor. However, both the immigrants' and the employers' gains comes at someone else's loss. Those who compete with immigrants lose and have to lower their expectations of fair pay.
Christian's claim, "Theory suggests that economic regions may accommodate increases in labor supply by increasing production of labor intensive goods rather than lowering wages," simply does not make sense. Economic regions would only move toward increased production of labor-intensive goods if labor became cheaper in relation to capital. Since the price of capital isn't going anywhere, this change would only be possible if wage rate decreased. At the end of the day, maybe there will be just as many jobs, as Christian hopes, but they will be lower paying jobs. Christian genuinely misses the redistributive consequences such a schema suggests. Immigrants have less return to capital as they usually have less education and marketable skills. Since there is already massive unemployment in our country, if companies really thought it was worth it to increase their return to capital, they would do so by hiring an unemployed current citizen of the U.S. Since this hasn't happened in the status quo, we can assume that it won't happen with increased immigration.
Christian does not argue for completely open immigration and instead relies on stock economic safeguards. Economist Gary Becker speaks of having a flat fee for immigrants who want to enter the country, claiming that these immigrants are the type we want to draw as the ones willing to work will happily pay the fee. My problem with this is twofold. First of all, whether or not immigrants are willing to pay the fee is irrelevant. The question is whether or not they are able to pay the fee. If they are not able to pay the fee, it does not necessarily follow that they will not be good workers. Moreover, Becker argues that these fees should be financed by the United States in the event that the immigrants cannot afford to pay. Not only are we unable to guarantee that that money will be refinanced, but we cannot justify taking that money away from social programs which drastically need it.
Immigrants should not be allowed admittance to the United States if their presence would be likely to decrease the country's total welfare. Whereas Christian wants to dilute thinking about the welfare of America to dollars and cents, I like to think of American welfare in terms of upholding an ideology. One of the fundamental roles of the government is to protect its people. In having a more open immigration policy, we allow our borders to remain largely unprotected. Drug trafficking becomes harder to regulate, as does the admission of terrorists into the United States. The "free rider" program is not ameliorated in the slightest. If an immigrant comes to the United States, pays the fee through a U.S. governmental subsidy and does not find a job, then he is necessarily a drain on resources. First of all, if he cannot find or afford housing then he becomes a massive public health risk. I agree with the moderate argument that although we can cut Medicaid benefits, it would be unethical to cut emergency medical treatment benefits. Emergency treatment still assumes a huge cost, especially if we consider that natives are left with worsened health care.
The benefits of a more open immigration policy could only be realized if we had a labor shortage. The reality of the situation is that jobs are scarce, and social services are expensive in a capitalist society. The intellectual thought experiments proposed by Becker or even the brilliant economist Richard Posner do not take into account the need for job protectionism. American leaders are beholden to American people. The jobs and well beings of Americans are at stake.
Maleck can be reached at mcmaleck@amherst.edu