Discussion on Immigration Policies

I've always been amused

by a kind of a paradox.

Suppose you go around and ask people...

The United States, as you know, before nineteen fourteen,

had completely free

immigration.

Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores, and

if he landed on Ellis

Island, he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Y-you will find hardly a soul

who will say it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it

was a good thing.

But then I suppose I say to the same people, "But now what about today?

Do you think we should have free immigration?" "Oh, no," they'll say.

"We couldn't possibly have free immigration today.

Why, that would, uh, that would, uh, flood us with immigrants from

India and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a,

uh, a bare subsistence level."

What's the difference?

How can people be so inconsistent?

Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before nineteen

fourteen and free immigration is a bad thing today?

Well, there's a sense in which that answer is right.

There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before

nineteen fourteen, is not possible today. Why not?

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs.

It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare,

and you cannot have both.

If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in

which every s- re- every resident is, uh, is

promised certain minimum level of income or a minimum level

of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not,

produces it or

not,

well, then it really is an impossible thing.

If you have free immigration in the way in which we had it before nineteen

fourteen,

everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited.

The people who came benefited because nobody would come unless he

or his family thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere.

And the new immigrants provided additional resources,

provided additional possibilities for the people already here, so everybody

can mutually benefit.

But on the other hand,

if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a

pro-rata share of the pot, to take the extreme example, or even to

a low level of the pot, then the effect of that

situation

is that free immigration would mean a,

uh, reduction of everybody to the same uniform

level.

Of course, I'm exaggerating. It wouldn't go quite that far,

but it would go in

that direction. And it is that perception

that leads people to adopt what at first seem like

inconsistent values.