Sometimes immigration critics will make a watered-down version of the prudential argument. Instead of claiming that an increase in immigration will destroy the country outright, they object that immigrants inflict unnecessarily painful costs on their host nation. These costs can be roughly divided into two categories – welfare costs and crime costs.
If our nation cannot afford to give immigrants access to welfare, then the solution is simple. We should stop giving immigrants access to welfare. It does immigrants no favor to deny them both welfare and their right to immigrate.
The evidence that immigrants commit more crimes seems shaky to me. But even if it were true, it would not follow that America should restrict immigration. Immigrant groups historically cluster together in the same neighborhoods. Immigrants will bear the brunt of their own supposed costs in crime. Although we may weep for them, if we shut our eyes to the suffering they would have experienced in their native country, we are only shedding crocodile tears. It is best to let them make their own choice between living in a high-crime neighborhood in the US and a possibly higher-crime one in their home country.
I haven’t put too much effort into rebutting the externality argument for two reasons. First, many of the stronger “externality” arguments are variations on the “prudential” arguments discussed before. Second, I find it difficult to care. The mere suspicion of externalities is not a justification for denying central human rights. We could not legitimately throw poor Americans in prison just because we hoped this would reduce crime or the burden on the welfare state. Nor could we deport them to Mexico. Nor should we be able to deport poor Mexican immigrants.
said
Wallace Forman
@ 7:13 AM.
Comments (2)
The case for open immigration is simple. It is simple, that is, for anyone who begins from an assumption of human freedom, rather than arbitrary authority. People should be free to live where they please. They should be free to travel. They should be able to do business or associate with whomever else is also willing.
These are obvious, basic freedoms. Because they are so basic, they are extremely important. Any more complicated freedom we could pursue would almost without fail build on them. Life in America would be unimaginable without them. My family’s history would have been impossible. Without the ability to travel across the country, my mother from Chicago and father from Rochester would never have met. My father could not have taken his current job in Kansas City to support his family. I would have been unable to attend college in Massachusetts or work in the District of Columbia. How obviously unjust would it have been to prohibit all of these things?
Just as unjust as current immigration law, in America and world-wide. All of the things my parents and I can do easily within this country are, in various arbitrary degrees, restricted or prohibited across national borders. When we forbid people from immigrating from the third world, we condemn them to a shorter lifespan beset by poverty and disease, life in tyrannous police states or corrupt kleptocracies, and the chaos of civil war. How could we defend this?
I’ll discuss and reject the possible reasons over the next couple of posts. I’ve moved through the moral argument quickly because it is simple. There is no need to make a thorough review of the strangling annoyances that exist under current law. If you do not share an instinctive appreciation for the value of human beings to live their lives freely, if you do not at least see the facial appeal of open immigration, I would suggest some introspection. What moral principles could deny the right of people to freely seek a better life?
said
Wallace Forman
@ 6:43 AM.
Comments (0)
