Inspection for Infectious Diseases: About the Only Coherent
Argument for Immigration Controls**
Most people who worry about such things worry about immigration, not emigration. They worry about all those hard-working and smart people coming into their country. Interestingly, some worry (and it’s frequently the same people) about all those hard-working and smart people leaving their own country. (People who worry about both strike me as remarkably confused; if it’s terrible for their home country for those people to leave their country, because they take with them their skills and labor, it’s hard to see how it’s so terrible for the arrival-country for them to enter, since which they bring the skills and labor the absence of which is alleged to be so bad for their home country.*) This BBC story raises a number of very interesting questions about emigration.
(*I’m aware that one’s attitude may depend on whether one views the new entries as direct competitors, since they may have a negative impact on one’s income in the short run, but the arguments about aggregate interests is incoherent.)
(**During much of American history, the main controls on immigration were not designed to keep out labor or to keep American culture “pure,” but to keep out contagious diseases and to ensure that people could support themselves.)
I’m not sure I quite agree with you here, Tom.
However it has manifested itself in legislation, I think the real fear of the anti-immigrationists has not been chiefly either economic competition or contagious disease. I think they fear cultural change more than anything, and these two rationales have mostly been convenient stand-ins.
Today the anti-immigrationists fear the Mexicanization of the American southwest; they fear that their children will have to learn Spanish (perish the thought!), turn Catholic, and never bother with American football. They see Mexican values as antithetical to American values, and they fear that American values will be diluted and lost in a culture where people of Mexican ethnicity predominate. In this respect, they ought to worry about emigration as much as they worry about immigration, as each will change the key ratio. But the fact that they do not only confirms that theirs is an irrational belief.
I suspect that for the recent Mexican immigration as for the Irish, Chinese, Jewish, and other waves of immigration, both economic competition and disease have served as convenient stand-ins for this underlying fear of cultural contamination: Economic and public health regulation both have a long legislative history in this country, and they are much easier issues to argue about before the public. Cultural contamination is a more nebulous fear, one much harder to legislate about directly. Yet I do think it’s the real motive more often than not.
If I’m right, then this underlying motive does tell us something very interesting about the anti-immigrationists: Fundamentally, they lack the confidence that the American way is teachable. It must be inherited, they seem to think, and to their way of thinking, the capacity for liberal democracy is not given equally to all people.
Now, while it certainly takes some education and acculturation to absorb the values of liberal democracy, I do not think that this is an impossible task. When we consider also that the people who come to America are self-selected to have a favorable opinion of their new homeland, and to share to some degree in its values, the task becomes all the easier.
I’m not saying that economic competition in the labor market and fear of contagious diseases are the primary reasons for restrictionism (although when immigration was fairly liberal, fear of disease actually was the primary reason for restricting entry when it was restricted, and not an unreasonable one), but the two reasons I gave are (depending, the first case, on who one is and the length of one’s time horizon) at least fairly rational.
The cultural argument makes less sense, for reasons you mention. Note, however, that even you concede that it may take some time for education or assimilation to the values of a liberal society to take place. In that case, it would raise the question of whether limits on the flow should be placed; is there an influx that would be too fast for such processes to be able to perpetuate a liberal and tolerant social order?
(My primary interest in the post was the questions that are posed, not by immigration, but by emigration. If it’s so bad for a country, why would immigration not be good, and why do some opponents of freedom of movement bewail both emigration and immigration on grounds of economic welfare?)
you concede that it may take some time for education or assimilation to the values of a liberal society to take place. In that case, it would raise the question of whether limits on the flow should be placed; is there an influx that would be too fast for such processes to be able to perpetuate a liberal and tolerant social order?
It’s an interesting question, but I don’t think that we are likely to be anywhere near the limits yet. As a proportion of the population, I’m fairly sure that immigrants today are not so many as they were during the largest waves of immigration during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It may be that no nation ever really reaches such a tipping point in practice — and yet I think it’s undeniable that cultural values have to be taught and retaught for a liberal democracy to survive. Iraq makes a useful example of a failure in this case, demonstrating that a liberal democracy is very difficult to create without some appreciation of how the system should work.
But back home, second- and third-generation Americans are still overwhelmingly likely to adopt English and to earn more than their parents. While neither of these indicates straight away that they are adopting American values, they are rather reasonable barometers, and both suggest that we have nothing to fear.
I agree. There are cases where immigration may pose problems of cultural/political continuity (those issues crop up on the Middle East, the Caucasus, and similar places), but I don’t think that the U.S. (despite Patrick Buchanan’s worries about a “reconquista” in the SouthWest) is anywhere even near a danger zone in that regard.
Many of those worries about immigrants are produced by a situation when the newcomers, named by Dr. Palmer as “hard-working and smart” turn out to be lazy guys wanting to live using welfare preferences and criminal communities. Probably in a truly liberal world there would be no place for welfare, thus, only smart and hard-working would go abroad…
Would the same support for illegal immigrants by libertarians be the same if 12 million Haitians crossed the border illegally?
The commenter at 7:02 PM implies that racism is somehow at work in the views of pro-immigration people. What silly nonsense.
The immigrants currently entering the U.S. are mainly already from groups that are racial minorities in the U.S. People who are pro-immigration are not susceptible to being charged with racism.
If Haitians want to come and work, why note welcome them? Why should they be treated any differently from other groups?
I also find myself puzzled by the remark about Haitians.
The US Government pays the Haitian government to deter Haitian Boat people from coming to the US.
Haitians are stopped in international and US waters by US Navy or US Coast Guard vessels and forced to return to Haiti. While Cubans are given automatic sanctuary when they set foot on American soil.
Toby,
You are making race an issue. I said Haitians. I didn’t mention color. Also, you may not know it but there are Black Cubans. Again, I said Cubans. I didn’t mention color. You are the one that has a hang up with race, because, I never mentioned color.
Do you think that businesses that hire immigrant labor, legal or illegal, are lobbying on the behalf of Haitian boat people, whom are fleeing the same despair, if not worse, as Mexicans, Cubans, or other Latinos? I am willing to say Haitians would be willing to do the jobs that the aforementioned are doing.
Tom,
What I find puzzling is the disingenuous of my fellow libertarians in the upper-class income bracket. Most libertarian policy analyst and advocates are far removed from the middle-class or working class community. They only analyze the positive that immigrants bring and not the disruption or disturbances. From a libertarian’s point of view, immigrants only bring wealth and not social problems. Why is that? It’s because upper class libertarians do not live in the communities that are affected by the negatives of immigration.
I do not have a problem with immigrants legal or illegal, as long as they don’t violate the property and liberty of others. However, I am suspicious of pro-immigrant advocates whom only highlight the positives and dismissing the negatives.
“The US Government pays the Haitian government to deter Haitian Boat people from coming to the US.”
This is virtually the definition of an unlibertarian program, and it should go without saying that I oppose it. Likewise to the unequal treatment between Haitians and Cubans, which I would end immediately if I could.
I think that Jason neatly summarizes my own response, as well.