On my way back up towards Boston from Miami I sat next to an Argentine who had been living and working in Washington, DC for many years, lured by a plum job at an international organization. We talked about the parallels between the current U.S. economy and the Argentine economy circa 2000, i.e., just before their currency collapsed 3:1. Both economies had been losing manufacturing jobs as goods were imported from China and other centers of cheap highly skilled labor. Both economies therefore had been running large trade deficits. Both governments had been pandering to voters with massive spending programs and paying for them with budget deficits and therefore borrowing. What would, she asked, save the U.S. from suffering the same fate as Argentina? Esp. now that so many white-collar jobs could be exported to India?
My answer was “People like you! Smart immigrants.” The U.S. has the world’s brightest academics, many of them who are themselves immigrants, in its universities. This lures the brightest young people here to Stanford, Harvard, University of California, Caltech, et al. Once they’ve spent 6 years in the U.S. getting a PhD they find that the U.S. offers the best opportunities for building a company or a group within a university and they stay, thus luring the next generation. Susumu Tonegawa is a good example of the process. Born and educated in Japan, one of the world’s most sophisticated nations, he nonetheless chose to come to the U.S. for a postdoc. He eventually ended up as a professor of biology at MIT and won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1987. Tonegawa remains at MIT and any young Japanese biologist who wants to learn from him must come to the U.S. A country that has collected all of the world’s smartest people should always be able to do something new, interesting, and profitable.
(A somewhat funnier way to look at the issue is Greek syllogism:
- every American president must be native-born
- Americans are smart and therefore always choose the best person to be president, from among the pool of qualified people
- ergo, George W. Bush is the finest example of a native-born American
And that’s why we need to bring in foreigners…)
A sadder way to look at the issue is one that I’ve brought up before in this blog. We don’t bother fixing inner-city neighborhoods and schools or trying to integrate the poorest Americans into our economy because it is cheaper to bring in immigrants who already have a good education and work ethic. George W. Bush seems to be expressing this idea in a proposal discussed in today’s New York Times: “Bush Would Give Illegal Workers Broad New Rights”:
“… Under Mr. Bush’s proposal, which effectively amounts to an amnesty program for illegal immigrants with jobs in the United States, an undocumented worker could apply for temporary worker status here for an unspecified number of years, with all the employee benefits, like minimum wage and due process, accorded to those legally employed.
“Workers who are approved would be permitted to travel freely between the United States and their home countries, the officials said, and would also be permitted to apply for a green card granting permanent residency in the United States.
“Administration officials said that Mr. Bush would also propose increasing the number of green cards issued each year, which is now about 140,000, but they did not provide a specific number. …
“Mr. Bush’s proposals apply to all illegal immigrants in the United States, which officials estimate at 8 million to 14 million people. About 60 percent are thought to be Mexican. No one is certain how many undocumented workers there are among all illegal immigrants, but Mr. Fox has said that some 3.5 million of the workers are Mexican.”
So circling back to the original question… We can be sure that our currency won’t collapse because all the world’s smartest people live here and also many of the world’s hardest-working. So we can rest easy and take a vacation even. But perhaps not in Europe where their currency has become 50% more expensive in the last 1.5 years for those of us who hold dollars…
According to Philip’s logic, the great depression should have never happened. Was the US substantially different in 1929? It had tons of smart immigrants from all over the world, and yet the economy suffered a total collapse.
A more significant difference that will prevent the US from going into Argentine-style collapse in the near term is that US debt is designated in the US currency. As the dollar falls, US foreign debt doesn’t grow, the trap that Argentina fell into. In the longer term, foreign trade will be conducted in a strong currency from a large economy: if the domestic plan is to inflate away the deficit, the Euro will usurp the dollar’s central role.
To really stick it to George Bush for screwing up our economy, we should amend the constitution to allow foreigners to hold the office of President, and then elect Jacques Chirac in 2004! Consider this my official endorsement.
To really stick it to Bush for ruining our country, we should amend the constitution to allow non-natives to hold the office of President, and vote Jacques Chirac in 2004! Consider this my official endorsement.
This policy seems like a political gimmick to me. On one hand, legal immigrants looking to get a permanent resident status here have to wait years to get a Green Card and on the other, millions of these illegal immigrants get all kinds of immunity. Because of these policies they are back-logging the entire Green Card processing at INS. How do you justify that law-abiding immigrants are getting penalized because of millions of immigrants who quite clearly don’t care to be law-abiding. Go figure.
At the moment, there are 3 workers for every retiree. In 10-20 years, there will be 1.5 workers/retiree.
Unless we want to tax workers at a very high level, or watch retirees starve, we’ll need more workers. Immigration is the best way to deal with coming demographic issues.
Gee, I was just thinking that Homeland Security-related Visa delays (see http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=10931 ), charging foreign students a fee to be spied on (see http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13437 ), fingerprinting people at the aiport are all excellent ways to squander our lead on immigrant-friendliness now that shrinking European countires have begun to realize they need immigrant workers to fund their pensions (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2053581.stm ) and are starting to compete with us for the world’s best and brightest.
Our only hope is the xenophobes in Europe will continue to flex their political muscle ( http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901031222-561442,00.html ).
Funny, just the other day I was thinking that academic and business visa delays ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=10931 ), making foreign students pay to be spied on ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13437 ), fingerprinting people at their airport and charging $100 for a visa application were excellent ways to squander America’s lead in attracting skilled immigrants to Europe, whose shrinking population now realizes it needs immigrants to maintain its pensions ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2053581.stm ).
The only hope is that xenophobes in Europe ( http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901031222-561442,00.html ) will continue to try and make the immigrants there feel less welcome. Maybe then Bush will have turned around some of the security delays and more draconian tactics.
Funny, just the other day I was thinking that academic and business visa delays ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=10931 ), making foreign students pay to be spied on ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13437 ), fingerprinting people at their airport and charging $100 for a visa application were excellent ways to squander America’s lead in attracting skilled immigrants to Europe, whose shrinking population now realizes it needs immigrants to maintain its pensions ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2053581.stm ).
The only hope is that xenophobes in Europe (link deleted to pass spam filter) will continue to try and make the immigrants there feel less welcome. Maybe then Bush will have turned around some of the security delays and more draconian tactics.
Funny, just the other day I was thinking that academic and business visa delays ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=10931 ), making foreign students pay to be spied on ( http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13437 ), fingerprinting people at their airport and charging $100 for a visa application were excellent ways to squander America’s lead in attracting skilled immigrants to Europe, whose shrinking population now realizes it needs immigrants to maintain its pensions ( link deleted to pass spam filter ).
The only hope is that xenophobes in Europe ( link deleted to pass spam filter ) will continue to try and make the immigrants there feel less welcome. Maybe then Bush will have turned around some of the security delays and more draconian tactics.
Immigrants will also considerably show down the ageing of your population. An estimate from a recent article in the Economist says that by 2050 the average age in the U.S will be 30+ (I forgot the exact number) while the average age in the Europe will be 50+.
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Philip,
You are right that U.S. needs immigrants, so that the country has better presidential candidates than George Bush.
But U.S. might now have to live with the likes of George Bush, since the brighter immigrants are now going to Canada, and not to U.S.
That settles it, I’m taking my own food with me when I travel abroad.
We certainly need immigrants. The question is what type and how many.
Massive illegal immigration reduces productivity, letting employers through serf labor at problems rather than having to invent new machines to do the job.
Bush’s amnesty rewards illegal behavior. It will encourage even more illegal immigration, and that will lead to yet another amnesty down the line. That (second) amnesty will be called the “one final amnesty” just like all the preceding amnesties were, and it will be followed by a third, fourth, etc. etc.
And, according to administration representative Margaret Spellings:
In other words, nearly all jobs – even those that currently pay a high wage – are at risk from Bush’s proposal. Those jobs will be offered to Americans first. But, with bidding on those jobs open to millions in India and China, at what wage rate?