Politics: American Immigration and Mars

On the talk show Here and Now right now, there's a well-educated fellow who says that we should reduce immigration of foreigners to the United States. Dan Stein is his name and he is the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He seeks to control illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration to "levels consistent with the national interest of the United States". I agree that reform is needed but what needs to be addressed is not on reducing all immigration but reducing low-skilled immigration.

Just earlier today, I was re-reading the final chapters of the book Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. Zubrin was saying that without a frontier to colonize such as Mars, America will be heading down towards stagnation. He revealed several specifics, among which dealt with immigration. In the past (from its inception until early 20th century), America welcomed immigrants since there was a limited work force. The western frontier presented a constant labor shortage. Today, however, "far from prizing each additional citizen, anti-immigrant attitudes are on the rise...thus in the late twentieth century, and increasingly in the twenty-first, each additional citizen is and will be regarded as a burden".

High-Skilled Immigration
More recently in 2012, Robert Zubrin wrote an interesting article called "Towards an Intelligent Immigration Policy" in the National Review where he dispels the pervasive but mistaken notion that increased foreign immigration destroys the prospect of Americans attaining jobs. Currently, many young foreigners who graduate from American universities or have demonstrable capabilities independent of American universities have to jump through many barriers to attain residency or citizenship despite their skills and desire to work in America. The rationality for denying these individuals the right to quickly attain citizenship is labor protectionism. Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, was archetypal of this view when she wrote,

"As for stapling the green card to the STEM diploma, this is little more than a marketing tool for U.S. universities to attract more foreign students into paying for degrees in fields that are already saturated. There is no shortage of STEM professionals in the United States; on the contrary, the census shows that there are 1.8 million American engineers who are unemployed or working in other professions."

This woman believes that the number of jobs is a fixed resource and that the American unemployment rates are caused by overpopulation. She fails to realize that jobs are created by people. Statistics show immigrants are highly entrepreneurial. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, they are 13% of the American population but yet own 18% of small businesses. and were responsible for 30% of the growth of U.S. small businesses over the last 20 years.

As Robert Zubrin also points out, foreign students typically pay much more than their American counterparts for the same education. If the incentive of a green card upon graduation is assured for foreign students, many more foreigners will apply which means the education system can be subsidized to be made much more affordable for Americans.

Low-Skilled Immigration
On the matter of lower-skilled workers, I have to strongly disagree with Robert Zubrin. He believes that low-skilled immigrants should also be allowed in. He uses the example of U.S farm workers. Currently, over half of U.S. farm workers are illegal immigrants from Mexico. These people are willing to work long hours in the hot sun so that you don't have to. If they are all deported back to Mexico, America will starve.

Yet, he fails to note that most low-skilled immigrants provides not only no benefit but cost for society. Though there are many hardworking low-skilled immigrants, there are an equal number if not more of criminals or lazy immigrants who would love to live on welfare. The National Research Council (NRC) conducted a detailed study in 1997 which shows that since most Latin Americans immigrating to America are uneducated, they are creating a negative net annual fiscal impact more than offsetting the positive impact from Asians, Canadians, and Europeans. Using Zubrin's specific case for Mexicans, for the year 2000, 67% are dropouts, 21% are high school graduates, and only 12% have some college. The NRC study of 1997 found that the fiscal effect are -$99,919 for dropouts, -$14,122 for high school education, and +$163,452 for those with some college.

Take a look at the United Kingdom which has opened its doors to mass immigration where no skills are required. Their economy is increasingly a welfare state. California is also suffering due to their immigration policy.Consider the alternative of Canada and Australia where prospective citizens must prove they have skills or are financially self-sufficient. Many of my parents's friends have chosen to go to Canada instead of America since they know acquiring a citizenship in Canada is much easier than acquiring one in America with their skilled professions.

Conclusion

Americans constitute only 4% of the world's population but are responsible for half its inventions in the last century. I will argue that this is significantly due to attracting highly qualified immigrants and giving them the opportunity to flourish. The brain drain encountered in many other countries have been a significant boon for this country. Let us continue with this.