Art Carden points to a new Hoover project on immigration reform, a periodical called Peregrine. Tim Kane explains,
Each issue of Peregrine will consider a handful of new ideas for pragmatic, incremental reform.
I also heard Tim on a late-night radio program, and he was very articulate and persuasive in support of more immigration.
My peevish thought is that it is sort of a waste of time for economists to discuss immigration policy. Immigration is first and foremost a national security issue. Why bother talking about costs and benefits of different types of immigrant workers when we don’t actually control who comes in?
I understand the case for open borders. If we had open borders, we could have lots of people coming here, trying to make lives work. Some will be happy, stay, and become citizens, and others will be unhappy and decide to go home.
When lots of people legally come to the country, that is open borders. What we have instead are lots of people illegally coming to the country, and that is something different. It’s not an outcome that anybody explicitly advocates, but it emerges as a sort of weird compromise between open borders and enforcing an immigration policy. A hypocrisy equilibrium, if you will.
Note that this story argues that the current flood of children across the border is due to an increase in criminal violence in Latin American countries that threatens children. Again, I do not think that economists have much to contribute to the discussion.
The story does not make a good case that violent activity in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are any higher than normal or inconsistent with the rates that have been typical in those countries for decades. The Dreamers Amnesty Rumor draw explanation seems much more consistent with the timing.
Anyway, ever if it were a sudden explosion in crime (which, again, it’s not), you would expect adults to be fleeing too, but these minors are unaccompanied. And you expect them to be fleeing to neighboring countries of similar culture and language where there is no evidence of any sudden change in circumstances – Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Columbia, etc.
But no, the evidence is that they are all trying to get to America, and they are doing it all of a sudden because of media reports about the current state of our policy and our political debates – especially regarding children – and the dramatic reduction in enforcement and deportations.