I've thought about this for a long time, as an American who twice lived overseas as a bona-fide long-term resident of another country. My wife, a first-generation immigrant to the United States, is just one of many examples of first-generation immigrants to the United States I know, from many countries.
From the article: "George Mason economist Bryan Caplan, whose writing at EconLog inspired Naik's interest in open borders, has offered 'keyhole' solutions as a substitute for black and white, yes-or-no questions on immigration. 'If immigrants hurt American workers, we can charge immigrants higher taxes or admission fees, and use the revenue to compensate the losers,' Caplan wrote last year. 'If immigrants burden American taxpayers, we can make immigrants ineligible for benefits. If immigrants hurt American culture, we can impose tests of English fluency and cultural literacy. If immigrants hurt American liberty, we can refuse to give them the right to vote. Whatever your complaint happens to be, immigration restrictions are a needlessly draconian remedy.'"
Further along in the article, what is to me the scariest possible outcome of huge immigration is mentioned: "Naik points out that 'political externalities' may be a major drawback of allowing anyone who wants to move to stable, wealthy nations to do so. Gallup polls have found that 700 million people would like to permanently move to another country, many of them from developing nations with failed political systems. If the U.S. or another wealthy nation were to see a sudden large increase in immigrants from these countries, it's possible that the new populace will vote for bad policies in their new home. As Naik puts it, some people believe that 'if you're coming from a place that has a problem, you are probably part of the problem, and if you move to a new place you might bring the problem with you.'" I would indeed want a keyhole solution to acculturate new immigrants to United States political culture (which I have seen done, for my wife) before allowing them to vote in local or national elections. One great advantage that the United States has over many other countries is that its sources of immigrants are so diverse that the immigrants tend to educate and broaden the perspective of one another. As I have related before here on Hacker News, all my grandparents were born in the United States, but three of the four spoke a language other than English at home, and my two maternal grandparents, one born in Nebraska and one born in Colorado, received all of their schooling in the German language. My grandparents learned English and learned American attitudes about civic culture because they interacted with other people who had come here from other places besides where their ancestors came from. That's always the strength of American society, and that's why I'm generally sympathetic to very open immigration policies. I am aware many Europeans don't feel the same way, but most countries in Europe LOST population to emigration until rather recent times, so the European experience with the benefits of immigration is not as deep as the American experience.
The other reason the policy suggestion is plausible to me is that I have visited Hong Kong, a territory that was flooded with immigrants during my lifetime, on more than one occasion. Countries that receive large influxes of people from elsewhere can learn to deal with that.
AFTER EDIT: Here's the website with the policy case for open borders
It's worrying to see that Caplan thinks his "keyhole" solutions are politically feasible.
Let's say you let the genie out of the bottle and allow open immigration with several restrictions (higher taxes, no right to vote) for this new group of immigrants. First you have a problem with deciding when to lift these restrictions (10 years, a test, only the next generation?).
Even if you find a solution, you will be breeding resentment due to imposed inequality. Now you are facing a protest and political movement composed of immigrants and their citizen sympathizers who are demanding the ever-popular "justice, equality, etc". For a recent example see the illegal immigrant Debate in the US. Southern illegals are already entering the US (illegally) as if the borders are open, already face discrimination and restricted rights and already have a political movement to fight for things that matter to them.
>Even if you find a solution, you will be breeding resentment due to imposed inequality. Now you are facing a protest and political movement composed of immigrants and their citizen sympathizers who are demanding the ever-popular "justice, equality, etc". For a recent example see the illegal immigrant Debate in the US. Southern illegals are already entering the US (illegally) as if the borders are open, already face discrimination and restricted rights and already have a political movement to fight for things that matter to them.
Worst case I see is something like France, (and I'm picking on France, but my understanding is that this is super common. Japan and much of Europe also have a 'blood' component to citizenship.) where they don't have 'by right of the soil' citizenship; you can be born in France, but still not be a french citizen, because of who your parents were. And yeah, they see problems from it. They have a permanent underclass of hereditary non-citizens.
Personally, I think that as long as we keep that particular Americanism (which is to say, if you are born on US soil, you are a full American, and at least legally equal to any other American, regardless of who your parents were or what you look like, or what hoops you choose to jump through.) I think we'll be ahead of the game (vs. other countries)
"keyhole solutions" I think are feasible if they aren't multi-generational. You /really/ don't want to grow that multi-generational non-citizen underclass. If you only have those restrictions on people who immigrate, and not their children born here? I would see that as an expanded guest worker type program, and it would probably have similar political consequences as an expanded guest worker type program.
Jus Soli[1] has its own share of challenges and problems[2][3]. Personally I would prefer the US to abolish or drastically modify the American Jus Soli provision. It has caused too many heart-breaking situations where the illegal immigrant's child is a citizen and has to enter the foster system because his parents get being deported.
Overall only education, integration and the political clout to refuse to sacrifice democratic principles in the face of potential demands from new immigrants is a way that open immigration can work.
meh, the idea is to give yourself a way to heal mistakes you make. You will make mistakes. insuring that anyone born here is a citizen, I think, is a good start to insuring that those mistakes will heal.
It's also a nice, neutral way of defining 'American' that doesn't have racial overtones.
The big problem I see is creating this 'underclass' of people who don't have the rights of a full citizen. I mean, it's normal to do this when someone immigrates; depending on visa, sometimes they can't even legally work. Or they can work, but they are put in a legal position, for instance, where they have to leave the country 15 days after they get fired.
But, to me? the really bad thing would be to make that hereditary. To say you don't have full citizenship because your dad didn't have full citizenship, even if you have never set foot outside of America.
"jus solis" means that whatever legal restrictions we place on immigrants will fade with time, as they die off.
Discontented people within your borders are a much bigger problem then discontented people outside your borders though.
Also, as a potential future immigrant (native English speaker, doing a PhD in the US, not very culturally distant from Americans except perhaps for a greater appreciation of Monty Python) I would feel extremely alienated if told I had to pay higher taxes for the rest of my life just because I was born elsewhere. The current immigration system may be frustrating at times, but at least I can hold onto the hope that if I become a citizen here, I will have the same rights as everyone else. (Except running for president, which isn't relevant to my planned career path anyway.)
"If the U.S. or another wealthy nation were to see a sudden large increase in immigrants from these countries, it's possible that the new populace will vote for bad policies in their new home."
Then perhaps the solution is to not give them the vote, at least at first. Here's an example: Australia decides to set up a new city on an isolated part of its coastline. It accepts very poor immigrants from anywhere and pays them very low wages to work in factories. They cannot vote for 20 years and cannot move to any other part of Australia, but they can choose to return to their country of origin at any time. The city is administered and policed by Australians.
The idea is to repeat the experience of Hong Kong where British rule mixed with cheap immigrant labour produced very rapid rises in standard of living. It's basically the same as the Charter Cities [1] proposed by Paul Romer, except that the city is located in the rich country rather than the poor one.
Social capital is important in societies. Trust between people, people's trust of authorities, trust between corporations.
When people migrate from regions where there is no trust in the government, it's natural that some of these bring problems with them. You could say it's no fault of their own -- they are used to the authorities being the bad guys and don't care to follow their rules or tax law.
Do you think that's part of the cause of (relative) turmoil with respect to the recent influx of immigrants into the (previously) culturally uniform, high-social-capital society of Scandinavian countries such as Finland?
I don't know. A north african friend of mine explained to me how important the difference was. How in his country, you were successful if you were in a situation to be corrupt and make money off your government job. The less legitimacy the government has, the more sense it makes.
To Americans reading this: You have nothing to win from discrediting "the government" or "othering" it, it does you no good. Make the problem yours and solve it; no one else but you owns your country.
I think immigration has had a huge influence on those countries. It comes down to trust. The liberal policies of the Scandinavian countries work to the extent that people trust each other. And people don't and can't trust unassimilated immigrants in the same way they can trust people who are similar to themselves.
Sounds logical that you'll get a major cultural clash when you insert people who have had to "gouge the system" and live every man for himself in their native land into a society where "helping one another" and giving for the communal good from which everyone benefits. (ex: high taxes in Scandanavian countries and great public infrastructure w.r.t. health, education, etc.)
Bryan Caplan's essay (http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-...) doesn't mention immigrant crime. Or, if you like, the extra crimes that will be committed by those whom Caplan is happy to penalize: the poor folks living next to you who pay higher taxes, are ineligible for benefits, don't have the right to vote, etc. What would be the Caplanian response here?
I've never seen a good idea come out of George Mason's econ department, and Caplan is no exception. They push the kind of head in the clouds politically oblivious oblivious economics that became passe outside hack thinktanks years ago.
rayiner, aren't you from an immigrant family yourself? It would be really helpful to have your perspective on this issue, so either by an edit of the parent comment here, or by a new reply below, why not follow the model of Paul Graham's essay "How to Disagree"
I am from an immigrant family (I am in fact first generation, having moved here from Bangladesh at age 5 with my parents), which shapes my perceptions and makes policy proposals like Caplan's seem naive to me. They seem to me the kinds of ideas that seem attractive to those blessed by good government and a viable culture for so long that you think that human society is naturally that way. My family left Bangladesh to get away from Bengalis and Bengali culture. It seems ridiculous to me that someone born here would want to import that toxic culture into the U.S. wholesale by allowing free immigration.
I don't think a point by point rebuttal of Caplan would be fruitful. I disagree with him fundamentally, about everything from the relevance of macro-economics to political debates, to the notion that "world GDP" matters as opposed to "American GDP per capita." A people, acting through a sovereign government, have no obligation to care about the well being of anyone but their own. I think there is a fundamental equivalence between the set of people who would fight in a war to preserve a nation and the set of people that nation's government should care about.
Speaking for Bangladesh: everything from attitudes about women and Jews and gays to acceptance of free speech to business ethics to expectations regarding the rule of law.
My father was a college student at the time of the Bengali independence. He had great hope for the country when it adopted a constitution with western-style attitudes (secular democracy). But now he's bitter because the people reinstated the theocracy, made Islam the official religion, made the religious leaders ever more powerful, turned the democracy into dynastic rule by two families, and perpetuated the culture of corruption and graft that exists in government and business. This didn't just happen to them. They're not the victims of external forces. They got the government and society they deserved and tolerated.
There are good people and smart people in Bangladesh. Letting people immigrate in a controlled way, and an emphasis on adoption of American culture, works. But but letting them just import their culture wholesale would mean the destruction of what makes America worth living in in the first place.
From the article: "George Mason economist Bryan Caplan, whose writing at EconLog inspired Naik's interest in open borders, has offered 'keyhole' solutions as a substitute for black and white, yes-or-no questions on immigration. 'If immigrants hurt American workers, we can charge immigrants higher taxes or admission fees, and use the revenue to compensate the losers,' Caplan wrote last year. 'If immigrants burden American taxpayers, we can make immigrants ineligible for benefits. If immigrants hurt American culture, we can impose tests of English fluency and cultural literacy. If immigrants hurt American liberty, we can refuse to give them the right to vote. Whatever your complaint happens to be, immigration restrictions are a needlessly draconian remedy.'"
Further along in the article, what is to me the scariest possible outcome of huge immigration is mentioned: "Naik points out that 'political externalities' may be a major drawback of allowing anyone who wants to move to stable, wealthy nations to do so. Gallup polls have found that 700 million people would like to permanently move to another country, many of them from developing nations with failed political systems. If the U.S. or another wealthy nation were to see a sudden large increase in immigrants from these countries, it's possible that the new populace will vote for bad policies in their new home. As Naik puts it, some people believe that 'if you're coming from a place that has a problem, you are probably part of the problem, and if you move to a new place you might bring the problem with you.'" I would indeed want a keyhole solution to acculturate new immigrants to United States political culture (which I have seen done, for my wife) before allowing them to vote in local or national elections. One great advantage that the United States has over many other countries is that its sources of immigrants are so diverse that the immigrants tend to educate and broaden the perspective of one another. As I have related before here on Hacker News, all my grandparents were born in the United States, but three of the four spoke a language other than English at home, and my two maternal grandparents, one born in Nebraska and one born in Colorado, received all of their schooling in the German language. My grandparents learned English and learned American attitudes about civic culture because they interacted with other people who had come here from other places besides where their ancestors came from. That's always the strength of American society, and that's why I'm generally sympathetic to very open immigration policies. I am aware many Europeans don't feel the same way, but most countries in Europe LOST population to emigration until rather recent times, so the European experience with the benefits of immigration is not as deep as the American experience.
The other reason the policy suggestion is plausible to me is that I have visited Hong Kong, a territory that was flooded with immigrants during my lifetime, on more than one occasion. Countries that receive large influxes of people from elsewhere can learn to deal with that.
AFTER EDIT: Here's the website with the policy case for open borders
http://openborders.info/
mentioned and linked in the submitted article.