Garett Jones faults me for treating cross-country productivity differences as exogenous. I disagree. On further reflection, though, I think he’s making an analogous error. Ponder his statement:
As you know, my key disagreement is a theoretical and empirical one: the policy of Open Borders flows fairly naturally from the view that a nation’s level of productivity—total factor productivity or TFP to be pedantic—is largely exogenous to the experiences, backgrounds, and skills of a nation’s citizens.
The most natural reading here is: “Successful countries are successful because their citizens have the right experiences, backgrounds, and skills. Unsuccessful countries are unsuccessful because their citizens lack those experiences, backgrounds, and skills. If successful countries want to remain successful, they need to exclude immigration from unsuccessful countries.”
Now ask yourself: What is the underlying assumption? Answer: That experiences, backgrounds, and skills are exogenous. Some humans have them; some don’t; end of story.
On my view, however, the experiences, backgrounds, and skills of a countries’ inhabitants are thoroughly endogenous. When successful countries admit immigrants from unsuccessful countries, they transform the new arrivals’ experiences, backgrounds, and skills for the better. The first generation transforms moderately; the next generation transforms radically.
Critical point: This transformation largely goes one way. Why? Even if immigrants are more numerous than natives, immigrants typically arrive with low status. How do they raise their status? By emulating higher-status natives. They learn the language. They acquire new job skills. They bend the traditions they were raised on. They grow accustomed to (relative) freedom. Above all, they encourage their kids to succeed in their new land. Natives, in contrast, have little to gain by emulating low-status immigrants. They may eat their food or borrow their fashions – the superficial dabbling hypersensitive observers call “appropriation.” Yet very few natives actually switch teams.
One of economists’ favorite games is: “More endogenous than thou.” On reflection, it’s a silly game, because some factors really are exogenous. Still, if you want to make a virtue out of endogeneity, at least do it consistently. Yes, immigrants change countries. Yes, countries change immigrants. And the net effect is awesome.
READER COMMENTS
John Hall
Jan 14 2020 at 10:49am
You write “When successful countries admit immigrants from unsuccessful countries, they transform the new arrivals’ experiences, backgrounds, and skills for the better. The first generation transforms moderately; the next generation transforms radically.”
This reminds me of the paradox of thrift. When the pool of immigrants in the economy is small, then it is reasonable to assume they and their children will assimilate. However, the assimilation argument may no longer be reasonable under open borders if the pool of immigrants is a large percentage, or even a multiple of the “native” population.
Your argument is fundamentally empirical. You argue that first generation assimilates moderately and the next more radically. This is an empirical argument. Whether this holds up in the future with significantly larger immigration is up in the air. A reasonable argument against this would be that future generations of immigrants assimilate to the average of the culture in a region. Under this theory, more immigrants changes the average culture that they would then assimilate to. Of course, this too is an empirical claim. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not.
Radical policy recommendations should require extraordinarily evidence in their favor. They also bear the burden of proof versus the status quo.
nobody.really
Jan 14 2020 at 11:07am
Along these lines, here’s a small critique of Caplan’s thesis (as I have understood it, not having actually read the book): Caplan calculates results based on the experience of actual immigrants who have self-selected under a regime of closed borders, who have survived the journey, eluding forces that may have tried to stop them, etc. In short, they’ve passed a sorting process. In contrast, an open borders regime would eliminate (some of) this sorting—and so the conclusions we’ve drawn about the average current immigrant may not apply to the average future immigrant.
Maniel
Jan 14 2020 at 12:15pm
Are those who make it though such a “process” more likely to be families with children seeking better lives or members of drug gangs seeking closer connections to their markets?
David Manheim
Jan 14 2020 at 2:04pm
I agree that this will hit a limit at some point. I’d expect that if a country like the US were to allow in, say, a billion immigrants over a decade, so that immigrants outnumbered natives 3:1, this would change.
But it still seems like a great argument for radically increasing current immigration to levels seen in the late 1800s, as the United States was undergoing rapid economic growth that lasted decades, and when the proportion of immigrants in the states that grew most in the following century, like California and New York, were above 30%.
So the US seems very likely to be able to easily handle, say, a hundred million immigrants over the next 30 years. If you want, we can be conservative and cap it at a three million a year, just triple the current level, and see how that goes for a decade or two.
John Hall
Jan 15 2020 at 9:53am
In the late 1800s, the vast majority of the immigrants came from Europe. From [1], I calculate that it’s about 65%. Southern Europe contributed another 25%, so that totals around 85%. By contrast, according to [2], in 2016 only 13% of immigrants were born in Europe and Canada.
It is possible that in the 1800s, there were fewer cultural differences between the incoming Europeans (with Southerners probably a little more different) and Americans at the time, making it easier for them to assimilate. I would hesitate to rely on the experience of that time to inform today.
Regardless, it is not as if parts of the US were not untouched by immigration at that time, leading to some change in our culture as well. If we tripled the level of immigrants in this country, it would likely change our culture as well. They would assimilate to a new culture that is a blend of the current US culture and where the culture that these people would bring with them. One can argue whether that is a good or bad thing, but I would not argue that it would not happen.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/immigration-1870-1900/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States
Mark
Jan 15 2020 at 8:16am
There are factors going the other way too. For instance, small groups typically have more cohesion than larger groups, which reduce assimilation into the larger society. Small groups may also be more likely to face discrimination, which hinders assimilation (assimilation is a two-way street, the new group must think of themselves as fully American and be thought of by Americans as fully American). Asian and Hispanic people seem more integrated when I visit places like Texas, California, or the DC area than in the Midwest where I live and they are about 5% of the population. In those areas you will see lots of white people eating at ethnic restaurants and racially mixed groups of people or couples walking around which you don’t see as much here. It’d be interesting to see empirical evidence on this assimilation.
Terrymac
Jan 14 2020 at 2:33pm
A common objection to open borders is that the importation of a billion immigrants over the next decade would overwhelm the institutions of the United States. Arguably, this might be true.
Arguably, if the entire population of the world were to show up at the border tomorrow, this would cause great difficulty. But economic factors don’t suddenly vanish when the borders are opened. People would have to choose to come here. They would have to save up for travel and lodging and other expenses. They’d have to have a reasonable expectation that their future prospects would justify such a large investment.
Those who raise mass immigration as a horrible threat, seem to assume that potential immigrants are necessarily horrible at making such estimates. They fail to acknowledge that the demand for immigration is self-limiting; it is not infinite.
Thaomas
Jan 15 2020 at 5:24am
As usual, Bryan has taken an argument that is correct at the margin (why a small number of addition immigrants would be beneficial) and employs it as if it were an argument for open borders.
robc
Jan 15 2020 at 6:13am
Bryan also makes keyhole arguments in the book. If this only works on the margin, as David Manheim showed above, it worked on the margin at a rate 3 times todays rate. So we could triple legal immigration levels without worry.
Thaomas
Jan 16 2020 at 5:43am
Three times sounds reasonable to me. Three time is not the same as “open borders.”
Miguel Madeira
Jan 15 2020 at 9:24am
Argentine and Uruguay are good examples – they are much more similar to the typical South American country than to Italy, in spite of a big Italian immigration in the past (in Argentine, perhaps the descendants-of-Italians are the majority, and there are many descendants-of-British in some areas; of course, there is also some descendants-of-Germans, but this is a more complex story…).
Gustavo CL
Jan 17 2020 at 10:54pm
You mainly assume that if a country is doing badly it is because of its culture. There may be something in it, but it’s not about culture, it’s about skills. Speaking English or listening to hip hop or appreciatting American football has nothing to do with skills. And no, skills don’t necessarily converge. Certainly not fast enough as you seem to believe. Look at avera income of different groups. Now, Mexican Americans have much higher income than Mexicans, but you yourself have the explanation: same skills in different economies. Every time you bring those whose skills are lower than the mean skill, the mean skill drops. Simple mathematics. And more importantly, these people or their descendants will vote, and they will vote for the most left wing or populist candidate there is.
Christophe Biocca
Jan 19 2020 at 8:37pm
To borrow the example from Caplan’s book, if you let a bunch of 5 year olds onto a basketball court with NBA players, average height decreases dramatically, but no one is shrinking.
So you let in lower skilled workers, lowering average skill. That still does not decrease the skill of current workers, and due to comparative advantage, it in fact lets them focus on what they’re good at.
Gustavo CL
Jan 20 2020 at 1:21pm
I agree with you from a economic perspective. The problem is: These people or their children will eventually vote. The less the average skill level of a country is, the worst is its politics. This can be easily observed around the world.
Dark Knight
Jan 21 2020 at 9:43pm
If voting for bad policies is such a huge risk, why not create an IQ test for voting? I mean, *at least in theory,* this should work.
Also, if we’re worried about poor voting decisions by low-skilled and/or low-IQ people, why not limit voting rights to only high-skilled and/or high-IQ people?
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