Alien Nation Review: The Freeman, September 1995
By Mark
Skousen
"We
cannot continue to admit millions of legal and illegal
immigrants if we wish to maintain our standard of
living and our national identity."
-Peter
Brimelow, author,
Alien
Nation
How
often have we heard the refrain, "Well, I'm all
for the free market except . . ."? It's
particularly sad to hear it from Peter Brimelow, an
otherwise friend of liberty in high places. Peter is a
senior editor of Forbes magazine, the most influential
business magazine in the nation. He has written
eloquently about the bloated federal government and
the demise of public education. He even wrote an
article in Forbes praising Mr. Libertarian, the late
Murray Rothbard.
But
now Peter Brimelow has joined those who are calling
for a drastic curtailment if not entire elimination of
new immigrants entering the United States. Peter
demands sanctions and even criminal penalties against
U.S. employers who hire undocumented workers. He also
supports the establishment of a national identity
card, which he says "is hardly more an
encroachment on personal freedom than the income
tax."1 He recommends another crackdown
(Operation Wetback) on illegals by the much-hated
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),
including the use of police attack dogs. Finally, he
endorses building a huge barrier along the U.S.
-Mexico border, something akin to a Berlin Wall. (How
about solving the problem right away by putting up
signs along the border, "Trespassers Will Be
Shot"?) All these plans, of course, would mean
thousands of new federal agents and billions in
taxpayer dollars, but no matter. America's
"lax" immigration policy is a
"disaster," Peter says, and something must
be done.
Isn't
it amazing how a single issue can lead to so much
government intervention?
The
Benefits of Immigration
Currently,
approximately one million legal immigrants are allowed
to enter the U.S. each year (recent legal aliens
included, ironically, Peter Brimelow and his wife).
Estimates of illegal immigrants run as high as two
million a year. Half the world's immigrants come to
America. Is this an alarming trend?
Far
from a disaster, a liberal immigration policy can be
quite beneficial. A cardinal principle of economic
liberty is the free movement of goods, capital, and
people. As Mises states, "In a world of perfect
mobility of capital, labor, and products there
prevails a tendency toward an equalization of the
material conditions of all countries.2
Without this freedom, some areas are overpopulated,
others are under-populated. Wage rates and interest
rates differ dramatically.
A
recent article in The New York Times, appropriately
published on Independence Day, reflects the dynamics
of immigration in the United States: "Dead-End
Jobs? Not for These Three. Immigrants Flourish in the
McDonald's System.3 It testifies to the
energy and talent immigrants can bring to America.
In
January, 1993, the European Community of 12 nations
adopted free immigration. Any citizen of the EC can
live and work in any other EC country without a work
permit. The effect will be a transfer of labor from
low-wage countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece) to
high-wage countries (Germany, France, England). Who
will benefit in the long run? All members of the EC.
The
Cuban Miracle
One
of the best cases in favor of immigration is the Cuban
miracle in Miami, Florida. Here was potentially one of
those disasters that Peter Brimelow talks about. In
the early 1960s some 200,000 penurious immigrants
thronged this stagnant urban community, more than the
total black unemployed youths in all America's urban
areas at the time. It was the most rapid and
overwhelming migration to one American city. Few spoke
English and virtually none had jobs or housing. Yet in
less than a decade, these Cuban immigrants revived
Miami's stagnant inner city and transformed the entire
Miami economy. Even with another 125,000 boat people
fleeing to Miami in the early 1980s, Dade County
continued to have one of the lowest rates of
unemployment in the state of Florida. George Gilder,
who has chronicled the Cuban miracle, concludes,
"As long as the United States is open to these
flows from afar, it is open to its own revival."4
There
are many examples in other parts of the world where
refugees and immigrants have transformed their new
homes. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore come to mind.
Foreign tyranny has led to much economic and social
progress in exile.
Don't
get me wrong. Immigration is not without its side
effects, well-documented in Peter Brimelow's book.
Burdens on local government's educational, health, and
welfare services can be immense. But free people and
free markets can adjust surprisingly well if they are
allowed to. Certainly, no one should object to any
immigrant who is in good health, has a guaranteed job,
and refuses to take welfare.
The
Best Foreign Policy
Unfortunately,
most emigrants leave their homeland not because they
want to, but because they have to. If governments were
less corrupt and onerous in their economic policies,
fewer of their citizens would desire to emigrate. If
they adopted free-market reforms (slashing taxes,
regulations, inflation, and boondoggles), fewer of
their citizens would move to America. Perhaps the
greatest foreign assistance America could give to
Mexico, China, and other countries whose citizens are
moving to America in droves is a copy of Ludwig von
Mises' Human Action or a subscription to The Freeman.
Putting up barriers at our borders is a much more
expensive and dangerous alternative.
Jefferson
said, "All men are created equal." They
shouldn't be penalized just because they happened to
be born in the wrong place.
At
the time of the original publication, Dr. Skousen was
an economist at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida
32789, and editor of Fore-casts & Strategies, one
of the largest investment newsletters in the country.
1.
Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation (Random House, 1994), p.
260.
2.
Ludwig von Mises, Money, Method and the Market Process
(Kluwer, 1990), p. 141.
3.
"Dead End Jobs?" by Barnaby J. Feder, New
York Times, July 4, 1995, p. 27.
4.
George Gilder, The Spirit of Enterprise (Simon &
Schuster, 1984), p. 111. See also Julian L. Simon, The
Economic Consequences of Immigration (Basil Blackwell,
1989).
Reprinted
with permission from The Freeman, a publication of the
Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., September
1995, Vol. 45, No. 9.
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