In a post this morning, Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux points out the contradiction in opposing immigrants because they work and opposing them because they go on welfare, that is, don’t work.
Jon Murphy, a Ph.D. student at George Mason University, where Don teaches, and a frequent commenter on this site (as well as an Econlib Feature Article author) sums it up beautifully:
Schrodinger’s Immigrant: simultaneously stealing jobs and too lazy to work.
Of course, Jon’s reference is to Schrodinger’s cat. By the way, I wouldn’t have known about Schrodinger’s cat if not for my faithfully watching The Big Bang Theory. (Here’s the link: start at 2:40.) While I was a physics minor at the University of Winnipeg in the late 1960s, I don’t recall the issue coming up, although it might have.
Anyway, back to the two points I want to make.
The first, and less-important, point is that Jon’s statement reminds me of the fact that now that I’m retired, one of the things I miss, believe it or not, is grading papers. It was always love/hate, but one of the occasional pleasures I had in doing so was seeing students showing that the light bulb went on because they stated correct answers in their terms rather than mine. Here’sone example. A sure sign that you “get it” is when you can put the concept in your own terms and get it right. That’s what Jon Murphy did, with a lot of wit added.
The second, and more-important, point is that even those who don’t favor completely unrestricted immigration and do worry about immigrants going on welfare should realize that one of the worst things the government can do is put enforcement resources into keeping immigrants from working instead of putting enforcement resources into making sure they’re not on welfare.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Nov 15 2018 at 11:20am
I appreciate the compliment, but I must say that quip is not original to me. I forget where I first heard it, but I did get it from someone else
Jacob Egner
Nov 15 2018 at 5:31pm
I didn’t know this. Neat.
Jon Murphy
Nov 17 2018 at 8:09am
Thank you
John Goodman
Nov 15 2018 at 11:26am
Schrodinger’s cat is one of many examples of quantum weirdness.
It is cover in basically any layman’s book on Quantum Mechanics and their have been a ton of them.
I’m surprised you don’t have one or two on your book shelf.
David Henderson
Nov 15 2018 at 4:05pm
Thanks, John. I’m interested in so many things that I’m actually really happy when I find something I’m not interested in. Quantum Mechanics are in that category.
Steve Brecher
Nov 15 2018 at 8:08pm
Ohmygosh, someone used a wrong verb number on the internet!
“Mechanics” in the sense of a branch of physics is used with a singular verb, which seems appropriate, as “physics” is also.
JFA
Nov 15 2018 at 11:31am
I do like that meme, but it is mainly used to just poke fun at people who feel threatened (sometimes legitimately) by an increase in immigration (even 20 years ago when I was doing construction, you could see the shift towards more Hispanic labor and less labor from whites and blacks (and it wasn’t because those whites and blacks were becoming computer programmers)). I just saw an article (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/15/18094901/trump-immigration-policy-food-stamps-snap) that suggests Trump’s actions are leading to fewer immigrants applying for SNAP (i.e. food stamps). So it seems that immigrants can come in to take “our” jobs while also receiving government welfare.
I understand the urge to make fun of political opponents (I do it every now and then), but even when they make an error about the magnitude of the problem, you won’t convince them by saying the problem (if it is considered a problem) doesn’t exist.
p.s. This is more directed to the sentiment behind Murphy’s comment (which I don’t think is original to him) than to David’s post.
Hazel Meade
Nov 15 2018 at 12:38pm
Here’s the SNAP policy on non-citizen eligibility:
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/snap-policy-non-citizen-eligibility
The biggest ones are probably refugees, asylees, and children under age 18. Legal immigrants in the largest categories: family sponsorships and employment sponsorships don’t qualify.
Refugees and a asylees likely because they need help getting on their feet. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let people fleeing war get food stamps for a time.
The main complaint is usually that if most legal immigrants get food stamps for their kids, they all eat out of the same pot, so basically the whole family is on welfare. Which is a fine point, but maybe not something easily addressed, since we don’t really want the children of legal immigrants being malnourished given that those kids are going to grow up in America and eventually hopefully become taxpayers.
JFA
Nov 15 2018 at 1:06pm
I’m not saying giving food stamps is a bad thing (I think SNAP is a great program in general). I just think it’s misguided to say immigrants can’t come to the US and “take” jobs while also getting welfare benefits. Immigrants can get SNAP, Medicaid/CHIP, etc. either with or without some waiting period (this includes more than just kids, refugees, and ayslees).
Hazel Meade
Nov 15 2018 at 4:46pm
It would be more accurate to say “some” immigrants can get welfare benefits, outside of the 5-year exclusion applied to most legal immigrants. If you look at the list, it is mostly pretty narrow carve outs like Hmong refugees that aided US troops in Vietnam. It’s not all immigrants. The main categories of family sponsorships and employment are indeed excluded for 5 years.
Mark Z
Nov 16 2018 at 12:40am
Immigrants, as a whole, either consume more than they produce (if they go on welfare more than average, work less than average) or produce more than they consume (work more, go on welfare less). If they disproportionately go on welfare rather than work, then they consume more than they produce and most likely will, in net, drive up wages, because they drive up demand for labor (necessary to produce whatever they’re buying with their welfare checks) more than they increase supply. In that scenario, they’d actually drive up wages of domestic workers – at the expense of the (disproportionately wealthy) taxpayers. So, if immigrants are welfare-mongers, their effect would likely be to redistribute wealth from Americans qua taxpayers to Americans qua workers, something in keeping with populist sentiment.
So, yes, immigrants may take jobs and increase the nation’s welfare expenses in total, but if they are working more than the average person they are also increasing tax revenues to the extent that they are taking jobs. So, they will still probably be net contributors to the welfare system.
I think the only way immigrants (or any group) can simultaneously ‘take jobs’ and deflate wages for natives, while also being net burdens to the welfare system, is if immigrants tend to work more than natives, also collect welfare, and also evade taxes more than the average american.
Thaomas
Nov 16 2018 at 5:15pm
“If they disproportionately go on welfare rather than work, then they consume more than they produce and most likely will, in net, drive up wages, because they drive up demand for labor (necessary to produce whatever they’re buying with their welfare checks) more than they increase supply.”
I’ve seldom seen better example of “vulgar Keynesianism.” 🙂
Hazel Meade
Nov 15 2018 at 12:12pm
I’ve been complaining about this exact thing for years.
The thing is that it really exposes the complaints about immigrants being welfare hogs as a red-herring. If immigration restrictionists were so worried about immigrants consuming welfare, they wouldn’t be focusing the enforcement efforts on preventing employers from giving them jobs. For most immigrants, it’s easier to get a US visa in any other category than an employment sponsorship. For an unskilled laborer, it’s probably easier get an asylum or refugee visa than it is to get a labor certification.
dennis miller
Nov 15 2018 at 3:51pm
It is completely possible for immigrants to be a problem for both working and not working. An example — If 10 million immigrants suddenly find a home in the US, the economy cannot instantly absorb them. Therefore some will find work and others will not, thereby making the double whammy that some are competing for jobs with citizens, and others are sucking dollars out of the welfare system.
I don’t know that anyone has a handle on what point the rate of immigration becomes a problem. Certainly we could absorb 10 immigrants without problem. How about 10,000? How about 10 million? There are multiple variables that need to be included in the “equation” and I don’t suspect the equation is simple or that anyone even knows what it is.
Hazel Meade
Nov 15 2018 at 4:48pm
How about we let the market decide?
If they can’t find jobs, they will stop coming and many will return home.
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 16 2018 at 7:32am
I agree with Hazel. In out area of Maryland virtually all the lawn/yard workers are Latino as are many construction workers and handymen. We have a maid service that comes periodically and the women are Latinas. I don’t know how recently they came to this country but they are gainfully employed and do pay taxes. Employment in the beef/poultry/seafood processing industries are also heavily Latino and their population has increased in states as diverse as Iowa and Kansas.
Why shouldn’t this country welcome these people who want to work?
Ann Banisher
Nov 16 2018 at 1:57pm
I see a lot of nannies, maids, handymen and laborers who are paid cash.
Do you pay them with a check and 1099 them or just give the maid $80 cash and assume it is reported?
Mark Z
Nov 16 2018 at 12:47am
What are all those immigrants collecting welfare doing with their welfare checks? Spending them. By doing so, they are increasing demand, and driving up wages for workers. If immigrants do indeed consume more than producing (as in the welfare case), they are (probably) increasing demand for labor more than they are increasing supply, and constitute and upward force for American workers’ wages.
Now, if an immigrant population is disproportionately dependent on welfare, this is a problem, but it’s a problem for taxpayers, not for the American working class; the latter most likely benefit from such a situation because they produce the things all those immigrants are buying with their welfare checks.
On the other hand, if immigrants disproportionately work and pay taxes, they contribute more to the welfare system than they receive, and their presence benefits Americans dependent on welfare. Personally, I think the latter scenario is optimal.
Hazel Meade
Nov 16 2018 at 2:40pm
This isn’t a bad point. How is selling food to an immigrant different from exporting it to a foreign country?
Since many of Trump’s supporters seem to favor “winning at trade” by exporting more than we import, how do they reconcile that with a reluctance to sell or rent to the same people when they are physically located inside the borders of the US? What’s the difference? Demand is demand, right?
Michael Sandifer
Nov 15 2018 at 3:55pm
Why not just specify that welfare is only for citizens? Then, have open borders, but restrict citizenship.
David Henderson
Nov 15 2018 at 4:06pm
Exactly.
Robert EV
Nov 15 2018 at 10:37pm
How do you get around the “no taxation without representation”-type issue?
If you limit welfare to citizens who have previously paid taxes then certain citizens wouldn’t qualify at all, which is electorally problematic.
Would you allow non-citizens an exemption from the taxes used for welfare? How would you account for this?
Mark Z
Nov 16 2018 at 12:53am
I don’t think the lack of representation is necessarily a problem. If it bothers a non-citizen immigrant, they can always go back to their country of origin. If they’re willing to stay and pay taxes without being able to vote, then it’s apparently a Pareto efficient outcome.
Another compromise might be allowing states or municipalities to decide if non-citizens can vote in local or state elections, allowing them the possibility of a measure of representation.
Chris H
Nov 15 2018 at 9:13pm
Professor Henderson, if you want to send me a quiz once a week, I’d be glad to answer it as best I can and let you correct it.
Amy Willis
Nov 17 2018 at 7:04am
What a fun idea!
SamChevre
Nov 16 2018 at 12:40pm
This statement seems to me to be pithy, but demonstrably wrong. MOST “welfare” (means-tested programs) is available to people who work, or who are part of the same household as someone who works. The Niskansen Center reports the MPI estimate that 47% of immigrants receive some form of welfare. It looks like most of those work, or have some working household member.
Charles Lindsey
Nov 16 2018 at 4:04pm
Variations on a meme (sighted elsewhere):
[A Western-style poster of a tough tabby] “WANTED: Schrodinger’s Cat, dead and alive.”
[A T-shirt] “When Schrodinger’s Cat’s away, the mice may or may not play. No one can tell.”
John Fembup
Nov 18 2018 at 12:59am
freshman physics, spring 1964. Can’t remember how, but in a class that started with a lecture on Schroedingers wave equations, we skittered off topic to The Cat. Spent a good part of the hour talking about it, too. I recall the prof told what was probably even then an old joke. Schroedinger was driving very erratically one day and was stopped by the police. The officer insisted on looking into the car’s trunk. After the officer took a look, he asked “Sir, did you know you have a dead cat in your trunk?” Schroedinger answered “Now I do”.
Thaomas
Nov 18 2018 at 6:59am
The immigration issue suffers greatly by being treated as a morality play. Do “we” have a “right” to “defend” our borders? Do “we” have “right” to deny a poor person from anywhere in the world the ability to enter a mutually beneficial contract for employment with a US resident?”
Since I am a Liberal, not a Conservative nor Libertarian, I think we rather ought to be thinking about how to attract the kind and number immigrants that improve our collective welfare, how cost effectively discourage other potential immigrants, and what level or resources and how they should be employed to remove immigrants who are not contributing to our collective welfare. (which might include how to make a net negative contributor into a net positive contributor), recognizing that the “hows” may be subject to deontological constraints.
That is I think immigration ought to be treated as an ordinary issue of economic policy.
David Henderson
Nov 19 2018 at 12:15pm
You’re not just a Liberal. You also appear to be a nationalist. Going from what you wrote above, you don’t appear to put any weight on the wellbeing of immigrants or potential immigrants.
Jon Murphy
Nov 19 2018 at 5:08pm
Hm…if only there was some institution that could help bring people together, one where sellers can sell and buyers can buy. Some place where people could market, as it were. Where a mutually beneficial transaction could be struck and non-mutually beneficial transactions could be avoided. Some institution where transactions of all kinds that improve welfare could occur.
Too bad no such institution exists.
Todd Kreider
Nov 19 2018 at 8:50am
I took Quantum Mechanics in 1988 but don’t remember if Schrodinger’s Cat was mentioned or not. Probably, since anyone majoring in physics would have known from popular books by then, so maybe discussed for a few minutes. It was years later that I read about Winger’s Friend, something that had bothered me earlier.
I wanted to ask the prof. about parallel worlds since I knew (incorrectly) that John Wheeler’s work was on that topic but thought maybe it wasn’t serious. I didn’t know about Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation until ten years ago and found out that it didn’t appear in QM texts until the early 90s. I didn’t realize it wasn’t Wheeler but his student, Everett, who wrote his dissertation on the MWI. (Check out the interesting biography: The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III, by Peter Bryne.)
Niko Davor
Nov 19 2018 at 11:45am
Henderson is highlighting rhetorical hypocrisy of his ideological opponents, and avoiding the rhetorical hypocrisies of ideological allies. That is manipulative in an of itself. Maybe it’s meta-hypocrisy? Politics is filled with dishonest, manipulative, and hypocritical rhetoric. The immigration issue is particularly heated and filled with more competitive narrative and hypocrisy than normal.
I could highlight hypocrisies on the immigration expansionist side, that you hear regularly from the political left at sites like Vox or NYT or WaPo. My suspicion, is that Henderson and Caplan would quietly agree, but draw attention away from it. They would never work on building political slogans and rhetoric like “Schrodinger’s Immigrant” to highlight hypocrisy of an ally, just of an opponent.
David Henderson
Nov 19 2018 at 12:14pm
Niko,
I can’t speak for Bryan Caplan but I’m certainly open to hearing, and possibly highlighting, hypocrisies on the immigration expansionist side.
Conscience of a Citizen
Nov 20 2018 at 11:01pm
There is no contradiction.
When an immigrant works for low wages, s/he (a) competes down wages for and takes jobs from citizen low-wage workers, and (b) becomes eligible for welfare because s/he and their family have “low income” (those low wages that he earns). Worse, when s/he competes a citizen out of a job, that <i>citizen</i> and his/her family go on welfare and commit more crime!
Anyway, only 3/5 of immigrants (legal or illegal) work (source US Census). The other 2/5 do not work but drag down “average income” for immigrant households, increasing their welfare-eligibility and demand. Effectively none of immigrants’ children works until they grow up, then when they do grow up, if they have low-income parents they tend to high unemployment and crime. The shameless claim by immigration boosters that all immigrants “come to work” is false; a large portion of them come to <i>not</i> work. The suggestion that children of high-income and low-income immigrants have equal outcomes is also false.
It is slightly misleading to speak of “welfare” because colloquially that term covers many different programs (TANF, EITC, SNAP, Obamacare subsidies, Medicaid, Social Security,* SSI, Obamaphones, Free School Lunches, and many more). “Social spending” on immigrants and their children such as public schooling and school transportation (not to mention police, courts, and prisons) add huge costs which are commonly not labelled “welfare.” (*Any immigrant who works for 10 years and the spouse of any immigrant who works for 10 years and each minor child of any immigrant who is working when s/he dies gets a Social Security cheque. Social Security is a transfer program– it pays low-wage workers more than they paid in (and pays high-wage workers less than they paid in).)
Some “welfare” programs are supposedly unavailable to illegal immigrants or legal immigrants until they have been in the US for five years,** but many programs are available to all, even illegals (just for example, Obamacare subsidies). Immigrants’ citizen children are always welfare-eligible and their subsidies are <i>paid to their parents</i>. Much worse, as has been pointed out to the bloggers here many times (with links to unimpeachable sources), the state and local officials who administer most welfare programs <i>do not check immigration status!</i> (**The five-year limit is a scam anyway. Why should citizen taxpayers ever have to support immigrants?)
Low-wage immigrants both compete down wages for and take jobs from low-skilled citizens. They also burden welfare programs and social spending programs. Claims that they cannot do both are false and should be a source of shame to those who utter them.
Mark W. Stroberg
Dec 3 2018 at 1:43am
14 Common Arguments against Immigration and Why They’re Wrong
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