Immigration Frameshop (Part 1?)

Good links from Mike Linksvayer: Open immigration to destroy capitalism! and Against xenophobia. Both of them a really good on the theme that free and open markets are an important component of social justice.

That said, open immigration has been an easy sell to those with a libertarians and economics; closed borders have been an even easier sell to most of the electorate. In my local newspaper, there was a rather disheartening editorial by a former immigrant, who (ironically?) suggested that the borders be closed to foreign labors for fear of "cheap labor". This kind of message is clearly winning out over intellectualized arguments by economists. I've mulling a strong counter-message that has more of an intuitive and emotional base. I'd love some feedback.

Why immigration? Because we need to make more Americans. America has influence around the world, but it's identity has been suffering as of late. You could say that the "American Brand" has been grossly mismanaged, seen as how the political stock of Hamas and other pro-fundamentalist apparatchiks has grown in the post-Iraq world.

I would say that our openness to new immigrants and new ideas is a great tool to improve America's reputation in the world. By helping hard-working immigrants find prosperity in America, we can be making the equivalent of "brand evangelists" for America. When they visit home and communicate with their loved ones, they'll have some first-hand experience that America is more than the one-sided stories their politicians give them.

Make no mistake: the current immigration regime is draconian and cryptic. (Ask anyone with the misfortune of working through it.) We can strike a balance between the demand for security and more fair borders.

...

Let me know. Does this framing have some potential?

I work in the software industry. Even though I work for a US company, about 70% of my team members are not US citizens! I think this is great. I get to learn about their cultures and have interesting political debates. Even though they have directly benefited from US immigration (a grueling process, they tell me), many of my coworkers are against open immigration. Maybe they want to keep their job competition down. I have been surprised how xenophobic my coworkers from European countries can be.

One Indian coworker made an interesting suggestion for a transition to a (more) open immigration: start top-down. People are afraid that immigrants will bring down wages and live on US welfare. Start with the immigrants that will provide the most value and least cost. Make green cards or US citizenship easier for immigrant students in US graduate schools. They are smart people and US citizens paid to educate them (at public universities, at least), so we should get our money's worth by letting them work and innovate here in the US. If that program goes well, extend the top-down immigration program down to immigrant students in US undergraduate schools and on down.

It's already significantly easier for foreign graduate students to get green cards than the run-of-the-mill foreigner.

One of my favorite books on marketing is "Marketing Warfare" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It is bit dated and cheesy, but I found it very illuminuating.

Wikipedia has some nice summaries of their marketing warfare strategies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_warfare_strategies
And the marketing warfare strategies for a company (or country like the US) in a defensive position: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_marketing_warfare_strategies

There are five fundamental defensive principles are:

1. Always counter an attack with equal or greater force.
2. Defend every important market.
3. Be forever vigilant in scanning for potential attackers. Assess the strength of the competitor. Consider the amount of support that the attacker might muster from allies.
4. The best defense is to attack yourself. Attack your weak spots and rebuild yourself anew.
5. Defensive strategies should be the exclusive domain of the market leader.

"Brand evangelists"? Doubtful. America has had quite relaxed immigration policies, but that still doesn't stop many in the Third World from hating us. Hamas' predecessors hated America long before the Iraq War 1 and 2. So claims of "mismanagment" are dubious. No amount of "brand evangelism" will change opposition to specific American policies (like support for Israel), dislike for American decadence (variously defined in various places), or a generalized envy, resentment and jealously of our freedom and prosperity.

We don't need a flood of immigrants coming here in the name of "brand evangelism". They already know the brand thanks to modern communications, and even back in the 18th and 19 century they knew the brand from word of mouth, and slow-boat snail mail letters. That is why they curse America on one hand, but in the next breath risk life and limb to immigrate illegally. This argument is the equivalent of saying we need to open our borders more so people will "like us" more. Naive at best.

In Garvin's article on Reason_com, he makes his entire case on the claim that illegals take jobs no other Americans want, and that hiring Americans is too expensive. This view ignores the fact that before mass illegal immigration, said "unfillable" jobs were being done by Americans. It is true that Americans would require higher pay levels than illegals, especially when welfare can offer a more lucrative supplement, but would this necessarily cause catastrophe in the agricultural or other industries long termy? A dubious assunmption.

If the price of agricultural commodities becomes too high for suppliers, suppliers will switch to cheaper alternatives like imports. Consumers will also react by reducing the amount they buy. The imported competition and/or reduced demand would force prices down, and in response employers would have no option but to cut costs- including wages.

In other words, Garvin makes the false assumption that there would be no adjustment in the market, and that employers would continue paying super high wage levels. No they won't. Economics 101 means that when prices drop due to more competition, or drop due to decreased consumer demand, employers will have to hold wages down to continue in business. They would not keep paying "excessive" wages to Americans. So claims of "ruin" and "catastrophe" because American workers are "too expensive" are dubious in the long run. As illegal immigration is reduced, the market will adjust itself.

Economist Thomas Sowell had this to say:
Illegal aliens living in California can go to the state universities and pay only the in-state tuition, while native-born American citizens who live in neighboring Oregon or Nevada have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition to attend California's state universities. Apparently Mexico is not out of state. ..it is a bogus argument that illegal immigrants do work that most Americans refuse to do. The fallacy would become obvious, even to the media, if Mexican reporters came over here illegally and worked for half of what American reporters were getting. Would the media still buy the argument that these reporters from Mexico were just doing work that you cannot get Americans to do? Or would they finally wake up to the fact that the pay level has a lot to do with whether Americans will accept certain jobs? http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell103003.asp

So you’re saying farming with higher-paid native labor would neither raise prices nor lose jobs, because we would just import the food that prices were rising on - without noticing that this too would cost American jobs?

Regardless, Dev’s post was operating under the assumption that economically immigration is of course a good idea, and he was just asking what other aspects we should pay attention to you. I think his choice of article was a bad one (ack, Reason, gag me with a stick), but it’s pretty late in the day to argue against the idea that immigration isn’t a good economic idea.