craschworks

Randall Parker, in his futurepundit persona, finds an enormous number of fascinating science articles. As parapundit, he's virulently anti-immigration. Most of the time I resist the temptation to respond to his parapundit posts, but this time I couldn't resist:

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/003053.html

Randall,

I've been reading your blog (via the Livejournal RSS feed) for over a year, so I'm familiar with many of your arguments. (And I have great admiration for the breadth of your reading — futurepundit is quite fascinating.)

That said, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to respond to a suggestion to read a book-length archive of blog posts. So instead I'll respond to the specific points you raised.

1) Whether or not poor Mexicans can pay for the bonds depends on a) the amount of the bond b) the expected earnings of the Mexican in the U.S. Assuming for the moment that the purchase of such bonds could be enforced, how much of a bond would you require before allowing the average Mexican into the U.S.?

2) You claim that a barrier could be erected for between $2 – $8 billion. Leaving aside whether such a barrier would be effective, proponents of government initiatives are not known for their accuracy in estimating the costs. For example, In September 2002, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Iraq war would cost $1.5 billion to $4 billion per month. In fact, it costs between $5 billion and $8 billion per month. Moreover,

“Prior to the war, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay estimated the war would be about 1 to 2 percent of the gross national product, or about $200 billion on the high end. Lindsey left the White House post several months later. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels called Lindsay's estimate “very, very high” and told news organizations the cost would likely be between $50 billion and $60 billion.” (5)

The U.S. has already spent $312 billion on the war, and current CBO estimates put the final tally at $700 billion. (2) The costs of all earlier wars have been similarly underestimated. (2)

And it's not just war — the costs of Medicare, Social Security, and other great society programs have been similarly vastly underestimated. For example:

“At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion,” wrote Steven Hayward and Erik Peterson in a 1993 Reason article. “The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was supposedly a 'conservative' estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.” (4)

Why should I believe that your projected costs are not similarly underestimated?

3) Even if such a wall were built at your projected costs, I have no confidence that it will work. The U.S. has spent $40 billion so far this year alone in the “War on Drugs” (3) (up from $1 billion/year in 1980), yet the street cost and purity of drugs has remained the about the same as it was 20 years ago (in inflation-adjusted terms).

Why should I believe that a “War on Illegal Immigrants” will be any more effective?

You write:

“Nearly half of all illegals came in through legals ports of entry. So the construction of a barrier on the border with Mexico would probably cut illegal immigration by about half.”

This assumes that immigrant behavior is static. Do you think that immigrants will just throw up their hands? Illegals already pay large bribes to coyotes to take them across the desert. How much more would it cost to bribe a border guard? And what about the thousands of commercial vehicles that cross into the U.S. every day? The tourists and businessmen?

In my opinion, so long as there is a large differential between median U.S. and Mexican wages, there will be an inexorable pressure for immigrants to come to the U.S.

Ironically, I think that immigration restrictions make it more likely that immigrants will stay in the U.S. than they would otherwise. Since crossing the border is so risky, once an immigrant makes it into the U.S., they stay and build new lives here. If it were easier to cross the border, I think a lot of immigrants would come here to build up a nest egg, then move back to Mexico to start their own businesses, secure in the knowledge that they could come back to the U.S. if their venture doesn't work out. This would a) provide venture capital, thus allowing Mexicans to build up their own economy b) create demand in Mexicans for a U.S. style legal environment (instead of the current cronyism and corruption that characterizes Mexican law now) c) raise living standards so that Mexicans have enough time, money, and energy to lobby for political reform d) reduce pressure on Mexicans to move to the U.S. in the first place.

3) Just as the War on Drugs has caused enormous damage to our civil liberties, I expect a War on Illegals would have similar consequences. You write:

“The solution to our immigration problem is to build a wall and then start deporting all the illegals.”

So first you want to build a Berlin Wall around the United States. Assuming you agree with Krikorian's proposals, you also support stepped up “document audits”, asset forfeiture, and a national id card system required to own a car, start a business, go to school, or do pretty much anything. Doesn't this ring any alarm bells for you? Are you so confident in the benevolence of government officials that you would give them the power to track your every move?

4) You complain about the costs of uninsured llegals. But how exactly is an illegal immigrant supposed to get a good paying job with insurance without documentation? Most high paying jobs don't pay cash under the table. And what value is a good education if you can't get a job doing anything other than menial labor?

Yes, Mexicans use social services (healthcare, education). Why shouldn't they? We allow them to use them. We should stop subsidizing them. Of course, you could argue that there is now a voting constituency for tax-subsidized healthcare and government schools, and it would therefore be quite difficult to eliminate the subsidies. And I would agree. But I see them as problems regardless of whether immigrants come to the U.S. or not.

5) You wrote:

“Take away the Mexicans and rebuilding would stll get done. But it would get done by American citizens at higher wages.”

If a Mexican and a U.S. citizen of equal skill applied for the same job, and assuming that each imposed the same level of externality, would it matter to you who got the job?

1) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/17/MNG5GDPEK31.DTL&type=printable
2) http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0321/p02s02-woiq.html
3) http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
4) http://www.reason.com/sullum/112803.shtml
5) http://zfacts.com/p/447.html