Immigration and jobs

Despite the common concern that immigrants to the U.S. take jobs that would otherwise go to American citizens, immigrants actually create jobs and promote innovation. Two recent articles in The Economist look at this topic. In the March 7, 2009 issue, a study by Harvard economist William Kerr and University of Michigan economist William Lincoln looked at how patent production changes in response to changes in the number of H-1B visa holders, immigrants with technical skills. When the number of H-1B visas was increased by 10%, total patenting increased by 2%, caused mostly by patent activity by immigrants. However, rather than reducing the number of patents by the native population, those also increased.

In the March 14, 2009 issue's special report on entrepreneurship, it's noted that H-1B visas are capped at 85,000/year, and a maximum of 10,000 from any one country, increasing the wait for large countries such as India and China, where the wait time is about six years. There are over one million people waiting. This issue also notes that about half of Silicon Valley's startups are founded by immigrants, and about 25% of all U.S. science and technology startups have a CEO or CTO who is an immigrant, and these companies employ 450,000 people and generate $52 billion in annual revenue. A quarter of U.S. patent applications in 2006 name foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.

The Constitution-free zone

Via the Reason blog: The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Martinez-Fuerte established an exception to the Fourth Amendment, allowing the federal government to establish roadblock checkpoints within 100 miles of U.S. borders to stop people and search for illegal immigrants and smuggling.

The ACLU notes that 190 million people live within 100 miles of U.S. borders, providing this helpful map. (Although Lake Michigan is entirely within U.S. boundaries, by treaty Canada is allowed full navigation rights to the lake--so it's not clear if that 100-mile boundary would actually be as in the ACLU's map around Lake Michigan.)

There are currently 33 checkpoints in operation within the boundary area. Here's some video footage of one of them in Arizona:


(Via Checkpoint USA, which has numerous videos of interactions at one of these temporary checkpoints.)

Arizona Republicans turn on themselves

On August 7, the Arizona Republic reported:

The race for a state Senate seat in west Mesa broke out into a wide-open brawl Wednesday, with allegations that Rep. Russell Pearce attacked his wife nearly three decades ago and Pearce's campaign firing back that the charge is false and the height of sleazy campaigning.

A mailer sent to voters in west Mesa cited a divorce petition that LuAnne Pearce filed in 1980. In it, she charges that her husband had a violent temper, hit her and shoved her. The petition also says that two days before the filing, Pearce "grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down."

The petition was later withdrawn, and the Pearces remain married.

This mailer came from an organization called Mesa Deserves Better, chaired by Republican fundraiser and dirty tricks operator Nathan Sproul, who is former head of the Arizona Republican Party and former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition. Sproul was previously mentioned on this blog during his support of the failed gubernatorial campaign of Len Munsil, when he was complaining about a campaign by a deceptively-named group called the "Arizona Conservative Trust" that criticized Munsil.

Another mailer from Mesa Deserves Better made reference to Pearce's connection to J.T. Ready of Mesa, a white supremacist who has taken part in neo-Nazi rallies. Mesa Deserves Better also rightly opposes Pearce's anti-immigration stance.

Sproul is known nationally for engaging in deceptive tactics in multiple states to help George W. Bush and other Republicans get elected by forming "get out the vote" organizations which worked to get Republicans registered to vote and to deter or discard Democrative voter registrations.

In reality, the Republican would be better off without Pearce or Sproul.

Milton Friedman's argument for illegal immigration

Will Wilkinson gives a long quotation from an argument by Milton Friedman, along with some explication. The basic argument is that free immigration to jobs is a good thing, free immigration to welfare is a bad thing, and in the absence of a separation between legal residency and eligibility for welfare, the best result is achieved by encouraging more illegal immigration:

But the important takeaway here is this: Friedman’s view is that a certain kind of unrestricted welfare state makes illegal immigration good, because it severs residency from welfare eligibility. Friedman is unequivocal about the desirability of free migration. Anyone really committed to Friedman’s stated view about welfare and immigration should by no means try to restrict immigration, but instead should try to enable illegal immigration. A devout Friedmanite should stand stoutly against every fence, every border cop, every increase in the INS budget, any proposed database check for a new workers’ legal status, etc. I think it makes more sense to argue first for a guest worker program. But if that is in fact impossible, then Friedman has it right: more illegal immigration is the best we can do.

See the fuller discussion at Will Wilkinson's blog.

UPDATE (June 13, 2008): And, of related interest, a discussion of how the benefits of remittances are really the benefits of labor migration, and how Switzerland, despite being difficult to immigrate to, has the highest percentage of foreign-born in its population of any OECD country, also both from Will Wilkinson. The latter provides further evidence for the logical separability of citizenship, residency, work rights, and welfare eligibility.

A nice argument for more open immigration

Will Wilkinson makes a nice argument for the morality more open immigration policies, and immorality of more closed immigration policies.

Geraldo takes on O'Reilly

Via Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, here's video of Geraldo Rivera arguing with Bill O'Reilly about illegal immigration. Geraldo does a great job of actually getting his points out on O'Reilly's show, though he has to raise his voice to do it. I agree with Geraldo, pointing out that this move of attacking illegal immigration because of some other problem (in this case, drunk driving) is a deceptive way of arguing against illegal immigration, unless there is some evidence that illegal immigrants as a group create more of the problem than other people.

Ron Paul in Phoenix

Last night I attended a small event where Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke about his candidacy for president as a Republican. I found it a bit of a disappointment. On the plus side, he is making opposition to both the drug war and the war in Iraq a major part of his campaign. He also opposes warrantless wiretapping, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the Military Commissions Act. And in response to a question from one of several atheists present, he indicated his support for the separation of church and state (and opposition to Bush's faith-based initiatives). On the minus side, his stance on illegal immigration is to "secure the border," deny benefits to illegal immigrants, and eliminate birthright citizenship. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's stance on illegal immigration (double Border Patrol officers, implement a guest worker program, and provide a mechanism for illegal immigrants to pay a fine and become legal residents) makes a whole lot more sense than that. Also on the minus side, as Sameer Parekh has pointed out at his blog, his stance on free trade is to oppose anything that he sees as a compromise on free trade (like major free trade agreements), which makes him look like he's pandering to protectionists--his web page makes no indication that he support free trade, which strikes me as dishonest.

Nutjob Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson was there, and she asked a question about Bush's "stealth campaign" to establish a North American Union; Paul responded that he opposes creation of such an entity and a common currency for such an economic area (the "amero"). This is going into WorldNetDaily and Alex Jones conspiracy theorist territory, conflating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (a meeting between the three heads of state to increase economic cooperation) with the ideas of Robert Pastor, a professor at American University, about creating a political union. If the EU can't approve a Constitution (with France and the Netherlands rejecting it) and still has holdouts on the euro (Britain and Norway), how likely is it that countries as different as the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would combine into a single political entity?

I'm glad Ron Paul has provided a consistent voice in Congress against the war in Iraq and erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the global war on terror, but I'm afraid he probably wouldn't make a very good president (though I did make a small contribution to his campaign which I'm feeling some buyer's remorse for this morning). My preference is to see a Democratic president and split control of Congress--gridlock seems to be the most effective way of achieving economic growth and slowing the erosion of our civil liberties.

UPDATE (April 12, 2007): The argument that Paul makes about illegal immigration--that we should stop it because of the impact on welfare--is aptly turned on its head in this post from last year at David Friedman's blog.

UPDATE (February 11, 2008): Here's a debunking of a number of Ron Paul claims, including the NAFTA superhighway.

Arizona election results

The good news: Arizona did not elect aspiring theocrat Len Munsil (who was soundly defeated by incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano), got rid of corrupt Congressman J.D. Hayworth (replacing him with former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell), narrowly voted down an amendment to the state Constitution to ban gay marriage and anything "similar to" it, and voted in favor of greater protections against eminent domain abuse.

The bad news: Arizona re-elected Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Rick Renzi, approved the creation of a new bureaucracy to continually raise the minimum wage (the main effect of which is to reduce teen employment; it has negligible positive effects for low wage earners, versus something that would genuinely be effective like reducing payroll taxes), passed the worse of the two anti-smoking measures, banned probation for methamphetamine abuse offenses, and passed all of the anti-illegal immigration measures (declaring English the official language, prohibiting illegal immigrants from posting bail or being awarded certain kinds of damages in court, and limiting educational services to illegal immigrants).

Teenager Jarrett Maupin (Al Sharpton, Jr.) was elected to the Phoenix Union High School District Board in Ward 2. Maupin, who was a member of the Republican club at Brophy College Prep before switching schools to St. Mary's and becoming a Democrat and protege of Sharpton, charged that Brophy students demonstrated their racism by referring to "blackboards."

Rep. Russell Pearce sends out email article from white separatist website

State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), one of the most vocal opponents of illegal immigration in the Arizona legislature, sent an email out to supporters that contained an article from the National Alliance's website. The article, titled "Who Rules America? The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken," criticized the media for promotion multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting "any racially conscious White Person" as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.

Pearce says he does not agree with the article, but forwarded it after reading the first few paragraphs, which he agreed with. Once he realized the nature of the article, he sent out an apology to supporters and asked them to delete the original email and not forward it further.

The Arizona Republic quotes a Pearce apology, beginning with a quote that sounds like he's been taking grammar lessons from Yoda:

"Ugly the words contained in it really are. ... They are not mine and I disavow them completely. Worse still, the website links to a group whose politics are the ugliest imaginable. I am saddened and embarrassed that this went out with my name on it and I am also saddened at the loss of the friend who sent this to me. His heart is dark and I am unable to get him to see that what drives him is ugly and evil at its core."

This comes after Pearce has been under fire for his comments in support of a 1954 federal deportation program called "Operation Wetback." Pearce has defended himself by observing that this was, in fact, what the program was called. I don't know if he prefaced his references to it by pointing out that he recognizes that the name is offensive, but if he did so he shouldn't have been criticized for the use of the name. His support of the program, however, is certainly subject to criticism.

I wonder if Pearce also thinks the Jerome Deportation or Bisbee Deportation (both of 1917) were good ideas--both involved numerous Mexican workers (as well as European immigrants), though they were deported by train to New Mexico at the behest of vigilantes working for the mining companies, with the assistance of the local authorities.

ASU student in immigration nightmare

Former Arizona State University student president Yaser Alamoodi, still a student at ASU, was arrested at 6 a.m. on September 6 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They took him to Eloy (about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson), where he sits in a detention center.

The 29-year-old Tempe resident came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 1996 under a student visa. He describes himself as "extremely secular. I was the president of my university. I have a commitment to everything America stands for, women's rights to civil rights." But because he married a U.S. citizen and they agreed to divorce in August, the divorce process invalidated his pending green card application.

And because his passport and citizenship are from Yemen, the country where his father was born but which he's never been in, that's where he will be deported to. His attorney says he can stay in detention in Eloy and fight the deportation for six months to "years," he can allow himself to be deported to Yemen and try to get a student visa to return to finish his degree, or if his wife stops the divorce process he would be allowed to stay.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor

I guess the skeptics were wrong on this one. Turns out the aliens were in Hangar 1083, not Hangar 18.

(Via jwz's blog.)

How the terrorist watch list decreases border security

The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General has issued a report on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol activities at U.S. ports of entry that "indicates a significant decrease over the past few years in the interception of narcotics and the identification of fraudulent immigration documents, especially at airports." The problem is that when people are stopped whose names resemble those of individuals on the terrorist watch list, they have limited discretion about how to proceed, which causes them to spend a large amount of time dealing with each such case. Spending time on those cases detracts from their ability to do anything else, and the accumulated information collected in such incidents doesn't appear to be put to effective use:

When a watchlisted or targeted individual is encountered at a POE, CBP generates several reports summarizing the incident. Each of these reports provides a different level of detail, and is distributed to a different readership. It is unclear, however, how details of the encounter and the information obtained from the suspected terrorist are disseminated for analysis. This inconsistent reporting is preventing DHS from developing independent intelligence assessments and may be preventing important information from inclusion in national strategic intelligence analyses.

The report advises giving more discretion to supervisors at ports of entry, giving security clearances to port of entry counterterrorism personnel, establishing consistent reporting standards, and reviewing port of entry staffing models. It also advises that port of entry personnel collect biometric data from persons entering the country "who would not normally provide this information when entering the United States."

More at Bruce Schneier's blog.