Who I Hope We Are Not as Americans

So let me get this straight. We drew this imaginary line in the desert. We’ll no longer use force to move people from this side to that side, but we will still use force to prevent movement from that side to this side.

This is good news for the people who are on this side at the moment, and I share their joy. But it does little for their less fortunate cousins who never made it here in the first place.

The president talks about “who we are as Americans”. I’d have hoped that we as Americans were not so basely hypocritical as to find it imperative that we stop bullying Group A (i.e. those who are here), but equally imperative that we continue to bully the even less fortunate Group B (i.e. those who aspire to be here).

This is a day to celebrate and a day to mourn.

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39 Responses to “Who I Hope We Are Not as Americans”


  1. 1 1 Brett

    Well, one thing we are not as Americans is Mexicans. And vice versa.

  2. 2 2 Doctor Memory

    Based on the forming reaction, it seems that even Mr. Obama’s minimal hope for what we are or might be was, in many of our cases, far too optimistic. But much as with the multiple manifest imperfections of the ACA, I am nonetheless delighted to see the ball at least in motion even if the goal is still far in the distance.

  3. 3 3 Roger

    It is not hypocritical for the American president to announce a policy favorable to his fellow Americans. But it might be hypocritical for a president to do something that he previously said was illegal.

  4. 4 4 Charles G. Phillips

    Is the following fact set a false equivalency with open borders? The University of Rochester has drawn an imaginary line that separates tenured professors from poorly paid, hard working scholars whose academic credentials and work ethic are, for the majority, indistinguishable from those with tenure. The University uses the prospect of tenure to enforce this arbitrary divide, and deploys its resources toward the compensation of its tenured professors in a fashion that makes it impossible to provide satisfactory employment to the non-tenured class or to increase significantly the tenured class. The University utilizes an arbitrary process (easily compromised by rent seekers) that perpetuates the status quo and leaves the less fortunate cousins of the tenured fending for themselves.

  5. 5 5 Ken B

    Steve writes as if there were something magical in the geography, that those on one side of the line are blessed, and those on the other cursed, merely as a matter of location. But it isn’t location, it is the social order. And ours has rules and norms. It matters if those rules and norms are followed or not; social orders are fragile things. Even ours.

  6. 6 6 Ken B

    The NYT front page is amusing.
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7kuRmuLwAhw/VG8tUT3OJnI/AAAAAAAADKg/NecJdLMIC3A/s1600/reagan2014.jpg

    First, they provide political cover for Obama by choosing a photo where he looks presidential.
    Secondly, it highlights that amnesty, properly and legally enacted, is a Republican policy.

  7. 7 7 Jimbino

    I’m on this side, but I’d rather be on that side. Why can’t someone work out a way for me to trade places with someone on the other side? My desires for liberty are being frustrated just as his are. Why should a person have to marry or breed in order to gain the privilege of crossing over to the other side? Being ready and willing to work, to invest, or to spend your money appears not to be enough. No, you need to marry and breed, multiply the detrimental effects of your carbon and species-killing footprint on this crowded planet.

  8. 8 8 James Kahn

    Even Milton Friedman recognized the incompatibility of open borders and a welfare state. It seems to me the entire debate hinges on where you stand on that tradeoff, and on what you believe the tradeoff is quantitatively. For every 1000 immigrants, how many lives improved through economic opportunity versus added to welfare and medicaid rolls?

    If it were feasible to have a work or self-supporting requirement (as there effectively was for the first 150 years of the country’s existence), the case for allowing more to come from that side to this would be more clear cut. I never worry about the “taking our jobs” nonsense, or even “lowering our wages.”

  9. 9 9 Jack PQ

    @4 (Charles Phillips) I don’t know if your comment is just snark or an honest criticism. Let’s assume you are serious.

    Your analogy fails because in your parallel you are comparing Americans to Mexicans. A better analogy, using your example, would be to say that today, we decide that all those PhDs who are untenured lecturers currently working will receive tenure, but this does not apply to all those PhDs who are not currently under contract (say they are not teaching this session) and all those ABDs who are about to get PhDs and about to start working as lecturers.

    The point is about the arbitrariness of applying the rule to one group and not the other.

  10. 10 10 David Wallin

    @4. For the sake of full disclosure, I am a tenured at my university. First, Rochester is a private entity, not the government. Second, the prospect of a job with the possibility of tenure is essentially open to anyone (obviously after meeting prerequisites, like an earned doctorate). I do not embrace your Rochester case as being parallel to the matter at hand.

  11. 11 11 Steve Landsburg

    Charles G. Phillips: Your analogy fails (utterly, totally, and completely) because the University is drawing lines between the people *it* wants to transact with and the people it doesn’t want to transact with, whereas the government is drawing lines between the people it will allow *others* to transact with and the people it won’t allow *others* to transact with. This analogy is so completely off the mark that I wonder whether you could have intended it seriously. (I see that Jack PQ also wondered if you were serious, but his reasons are not mine, and in fact I’m not even sure I understand him.)

  12. 12 12 David Wallin

    And who is getting the “good” treatment? Those who have broken our laws? Who gets the “poor” treatment? Those who have not.

  13. 13 13 khodge

    It’s not quite the inverse of what you are saying but I have always felt that if the freedom loving people of the group are forced to stay on their side of the line and not allowed to cross to our side, perhaps they would be able to correct the situation on their side, lessening the need for a hard and fast line.

    To take an extreme example: is Venezuela better off when (a) it can ship all of its problems (the best and brightest) to the US or (b) it has to deal with how Marxist economy treats its best and brightest?

  14. 14 14 Al V.

    Steve @11, not to incur your ire, but I do see a partial equivalence in Mr. Phillips’s example. It is true that Rochester is drawing lines between people it will transact with, but it is also drawing lines between people that students will transact with. Of course, the students, by choosing to attend Rochester, are granting to Rochester the right to draw that line.

    However, isn’t that the same choice that we make by electing a government? By electing xenophobic candidates, aren’t we choosing to delegate to the federal government the right to draw those lines?

  15. 15 15 Al V.

    David Wallin @12, I always struggle with the concept that people on one side of a border have broken a law, while those on the other have not. If I am a resident of a Latin American country, not only have I not broken a U.S. law, but I am not subject to U.S. laws at all. And then we say that simply by stepping across an invisible line, a person has broken a law. Is there another situation where a person transitions from not being subject to a law, to having broken it, without transitioning through the state of being subject, but not breaking it?

  16. 16 16 iceman

    I agree with the middle ground here – if Mexico wanted to ratify our constitution (such as it once was) to get statehood,the more the merrier. We should want people who want to come here to make a better life for themselves through self-achievement. However coming to represent a claim on current residents is something over which they should have some say.

    A proposal to address true political intentions/suspicions: those currently here can stay as legal residents but never achieve certain privileges of citizenship like voting (and possibly some public benefits); if you want the full monty, you have to go back and get in line.

  17. 17 17 Charles G. Phillips

    Professor Landsburg: I presented my question in a direct and serious fashion. I defer to your judgment that my analogy completely misses the mark, but am not persuaded by your explanation. You suggest, I think, that the University as a free entity can choose those it wishes to hire and those it does not. I think, further, that you are differentiating between the term “government” as you use it and the term “people”. The “government” is imposing upon citizens a prohibition from dealing freely with non-citizens on an arbitrary basis. For purposes of discussion, let us assume that the terms government and people are interchangeable (as I believe they are). On this basis, the people are deciding what immigration policies to adopt and agreeing collectively to be bound by these decisions. The people (as represented by its government) decide with whom they wish to transact and with whom they do not. I will take your word for it that the lines the University draws are different from those drawn by the citizens of the U.S., but they don’t seem so different to me. I enjoy your blog and respond to your observations when I think I have a different point of view worthy of consideration. Your “are you serious” response suggests that I did not advance today’s discussion.

  18. 18 18 Steve Landsburg

    Charles G Phillips: Fair enough; your argument makes more sense on its own terms than I gave it credit for. But I have a great deal of difficulty accepting those terms. I am one of the people, and my government is preventing me from transacting with Mexicans I’d like to transact with. When I signed on with the University of Rochester, I agreed to live by certain communal decisions. But I never signed on to the US immigration policy in any sense that I see as analogous. I do grant, though, that analogies are in the mind of the analogist, and your mind might filter things very differently than mine does.

  19. 19 19 Roger

    “my government is preventing me from transacting with Mexicans”

    What is the problem — your grass needs to be cut and you are unwilling to pay the going rate? Or the burritos at your local restaurant are not spicy enuf and you want something more authentic?

    Bringing Mexicans in to mow your lawn imposes a bunch of other costs on our society. Are you willing to pay those, or are you expecting someone else to pay those for you?

  20. 20 20 Josh

    #19. “Bringing Mexicans in to mow your lawn imposes a bunch of other costs on our society. Are you willing to pay those, or are you expecting someone else to pay those for you?”

    Bullshit. What costs ? Landsburg gets his yard cut at a competitive rate and Mexicans get paid more than thy could in Mexico. Itehr ride they wouldn’t have come here.

    Entitlements are a separate issue. And what makes Mexicans less entitled to them than we are ?

  21. 21 21 James Kahn

    #20 “Entitlements are a separate issue. And what makes Mexicans less entitled to them than we are ?”

    The same thing that ought to make someone who never bothered getting health insurance less entitled (than someone who had insurance all along) to it upon learning he has an expensive illness. Or that would make someone with a terminal illness less entitled to a life insurance policy than someone who had a policy and then learned of a terminal illness. Welfare benefits are a form of insurance. Almost any insurance requires some sort of waiting period, or at least being part of a large group that is not self-selected.

  22. 22 22 Steve Landsburg

    James Kahn: I find your insurance analogy puzzling. To make sense of it, I’d have to believe either that

    a) I voluntarily signed on to an insurance contract which, coincidentally, all other American citizens also signed onto, though all Mexicans chose not to

    or

    b) Although we never explicitly signed such a contract, we all believe we’d have signed it behind the veil and are therefore morally bound to honor it.

    The problem with a) is that I do not recall signing such a contract. The problem with b) is that if I were behind the veil, I can’t imagine wanting to sign a contract that says I get the benefits of the American welfare system provided I’m lucky enough to be born in the US in the first place, but not if I’m unfortunate enough to be born elsewhere. On the contrary, I’d want to insure against the relatively *bad* outcomes (like being in born in Mexico), not against the relatively good ones (like being born in, say, Shaker Heights).

  23. 23 23 Daniel

    @ Roger,

    “Bringing Mexicans in to mow your lawn imposes a bunch of other costs on our society. Are you willing to pay those, or are you expecting someone else to pay those for you?”

    Krugman had it right this morning. The costs are going to be there anyway because the cost of deportation is going to be much, much higher than the costs of letting them stay, and even if we could do it, congress would never appropriate the funds. It’s a sunk cost. The only choice we have is whether or not to extend them the basic rights of not being in fear of being involuntarily seperated from the their American children by random chance. And since they’re here, Steve has every right to set up mutually beneficial agreements with them.

  24. 24 24 Xan

    Roger #19, you might find this previous post from Dr. Landsburg illuminating.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/1997/04/be_fruitful_and_multiply.single.html

    The main question you have to ask yourself both with regards to population growth and immigration is, “are people a net benefit, or a net cost?” The main costs that an immigrant imposes are the resources he/she consumes. In a properly functioning market, the immigrant can consume resources only be contributing resources of equal or greater value. (If the market is not functioning properly, then that’s a good reason to fix the market, not to restrict immigration.)

  25. 25 25 Xan

    Roger #19, the case to be made for benefits to Americans is strong enough on its own. But I also find it helpful to think of the benefits to immigrants, which are so well described in this other article. The article is focused on laborers in other countries, but the argument can be analogously applied to immigration issues. Written by Paul Krugman back when he was still an economist, not a dishonest, partisan journalist.

    http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

  26. 26 26 vikingvista

    “It matters if those rules and norms are followed or not”

    It seems one of those norms has morphed into ‘guilty until proved innocent’.

  27. 27 27 Roger

    Krugman’s recent column says that he favors welcoming the anchor babies, regardless of cost. He says, “speaking for myself, I don’t care that much about the money”. That is to be expected from a leftist ideologue, I guess. The Landsburg column gives an argument for illegal aliens to have more babies. The older (undated) Krugman column is in favor of cheap labor from the Third World. No one wants to talk about the costs of immigration.

  28. 28 28 Steve Landsburg

    Roger: I’m happy to talk about the costs of immigration. What do you estimate them to be?

  29. 29 29 James Kahn

    #22 Steve
    It’s closer to (a), where you didn’t literally sign an agreement, but you and all Americans, through your elected representatives, set up a nationalized social insurance plan. Whatever the merits of that plan, the risk pool was conceived to be the legal residents of this country, the same group that could be charged “premiums” for it. It’s not really viable if people not in the group can self-select into it and get benefits.

    It may in some sense be inferior what would have been chosen under the veil of ignorance, but once the veil is lifted, you can’t really hope to get the same outcome voluntarily. Just like once people have information about their health or longevity, you can’t get the ideal health or life insurance that you could have gotten before that information was revealed. But it’s still better than nothing.

  30. 30 30 Advo

    @Steve,
    I don’t think you have ever explained why you think Americans should be morally obligated to let people move into their country and use the infrastructure and institutions built and paid for by Americans over decades and centuries.

  31. 31 31 Josh

    “I don’t think you have ever explained why you think Americans should be morally obligated to let people move into their country and use the infrastructure and institutions built and paid for by Americans over decades and centuries.”

    I thought African slaves built our country ? And what about the native Americans… We took their land.

    Anyway, your comment doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t you want immigrants moving here? Isn’t an immigrant providing labor to an American good for the American? Especially if the American gets it at a better deal from the immigrant and the immigrant gets paid more here than in his home country ?

    American Competitors to the immigrant may be the only losers, but competition is part of life.

  32. 32 32 Roger

    Josh, I don’t know whether you are serious, but the vast majority of Americans are against unrestricted immigration. The recent election proved that. If you want to know the reasons, just ask anyone. And yes, the costs exceed the benefits. I do not have estimate of the dollar amount. I just ask who is willing to pay those costs, and everyone seems to want to push them to someone else.

  33. 33 33 Advo

    @Josh,
    Americans and their ancestors paid a lot of money and put in a lot of work to build the US and its infrastructures.
    Admitting more people will in many ways diminish the value of what they have built for those already there.
    Why do Americans have a moral obligation to share their wealth with non-citizens?

  34. 34 34 Josh

    What are we sharing ??? I am a Mexican wanting to work for you , an American. You pay me. I work for you.

    The only loser may be the American competitor. But there is also an American winner of there is an American loser.

    Any land the Mexican buys he pays for right ? And he will pay taxes. What are we sharing ?

  35. 35 35 Advo

    Your infrastructure and your administrative and legal institutions,
    access to which is valuable.
    Giving other people access diminishes the value that access has for existing Americans (i.e. roads are overcrowded, the police is overworked).

    In this way, restrictions on immigration work sort of like property rights.
    Unrestricted access to US infrastructure (physical and otherwise) will decrease the incentive for existing US citizens to invest in infrastructure – in a world without borders and with unrestricted immigration, there’s an essentially unlimited number of people seeking to take advantage of such investments.

    Immigration would continue until access to US infrastructure and job market becomes essentially worthless. Why would US taxpayers invest in any improvements if there’s nothing in it for them or their children?

    Due to this problem, it’s quite possible that unrestricted immigration would lead to a decrease in overall utility.

  36. 36 36 Steve Landsburg

    Advo: Thanks for your most recent post. It is, I think, the best possible explanation of why there are costs to immigration and I agree with it.

  37. 37 37 Johnson85

    What about the cost of violating long standing political and social norms?

    I would like more open immigration (don’t think I would want truly open borders but mainly b/c I think it would make our current problem with respecting property rights worse) but I also like the rule of law and separation of powers. I think it’s a really bad idea for a president to take the approach that he is not bound by the constitution, but only by the threat of political repercussions. While most of our presidents take liberties with executive power, I don’t recall any president openly claiming that if Congress doesn’t want him to violate the constitution, they should authorize him to do what he’s going to do with or without proper legal authority. I don’t know how it will show up, but I think there are going to be serious costs from setting this precedent.

    I know the constitution isn’t perfect, but considering it’s track record in promoting liberty, I would have expected you to value adherence to it a little more, even if violating it temporarily increases liberty for illegal aliens currently in the U.S.

  38. 38 38 nivedita

    Is there any particular reason to think that Advo’s argument is true?

    Within the US, migration is basically unrestricted. Yet we see cities building lots of infrastructure. The unrestricted migration of the rest of the population into the city somehow hasn’t yet made the access to their infrastructure and job market worthless.

    And I doubt anyone has yet argued that cities should be able to keep out the country bumpkins to preserve their market value.

  39. 39 39 Advo

    Nivedita, the amount of people within the US who would benefit from moving to another city/region is very limited, considering the costs and risks involved. If I remember correctly, research has showed that you don’t see big migrations unless people expect an increase in living standard of at least a third. What’s more, most of the people who migrate easily integrate into the existing system of taxation and investment as they are educated and prosperous.

    The number of people outside the US who would substantially benefit from moving to the US is currently somewhere between 2 and 4 billion, the vast majority of which are impoverished and relatively uneducated.
    The migration to be expected from open borders is simply on the order of a thousand times higher than existing migration within the US.

  1. 1 Who I Hope We Are Not as Americans | The Liberty Herald
  2. 2 Two Notes on Immigration

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