Minor Thoughts from me to you

Madison's "Concerts on the Square" sure are expensive. I'm not referring to money -- admission is free, after all -- but to time. Patrons sit on the lawn of the State Capital. Seating is first come, first served. Anyone can reserve a spot by simply placing a blanket on the ground. There's a catch, however: no blankets are allowed on the ground until 3pm. To reserve a seat, patrons must show up before 3pm, wait, and then spread out their blankets once 3pm arrives.

All of that waiting and uncertainty is as much of a cost as an actual ticket would be. It's just a different kind of cost. Instead of spending money, patrons spend time. In my opinion, time is much harder to get than money is. Thus, these concerts are far more expensive than traditional concerts would be.

Do they cost too much? Well, that's up to each individual. There are benefits to this kind of cost: enjoying the outdoors, sitting and talking with other early-arrivals, taking advantage of a day off to enjoy some culture without sacrificing some cash. I think the entire thing sounds like fun -- provided I come equipped with enough sunscreen. (There's another non-monetary cost for you.) I just won't make the mistake of calling it a "free concert".

I see it's been a while since I last posted. There are good reasons for that. My wife and I recently decided to buy a house and have spent a lot of time looking at houses and condos all around Madison. I've also had to finish some big projects at work and have put in an average of 50 hours a week over the past two weeks.

Jenna's last entry in the Intra Madison Immigration Debate was posted on June 9. That means I'm almost a month late responding. Yikes!

Sorry, Jenna. I do have a response, but it's not written yet. I'll do my best to post a response by the end of this weekend, but no promises. Things have been crazy lately. It looks like life is finally slowing down again, but I've been mistaken before...

KTPB, the radio station of Kilgore College, is being sold to a Christian music broadcaster. The radio station plays primarily classical music. Local lovers of the arts are outraged over the sale, enough so to form a group dedicated to saving it: Save Our Arts Radio.

Amidst all of the hand-wringing over the decline of classical music radio, a few interesting facts emerge. First, Kilgore College is selling the station because it can no longer afford to run it:

The school, a junior college in this town of 11,000, has been increasingly strapped financially, and the money it was using to subsidize the station "” about $125,000 a year "” was better put toward educating students, officials said. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides about $85,000 a year, and donations amount to $80,000.

Secondly, while these citizens may be vocal in their support of the station it appears that loud voices are the only thing they have contributed:

Mr. Holda (Kilgore's president) also pointed out that the station has a meager 650 members. "People want things, but they don't want to pay for them," he said. "It's not unique to the arts."

Supporters of the station see it differently. "It's a public trust," said Otis Carroll, a prominent Tyler lawyer and a leader of the group trying to save the station.

Ah. So. Here we have a station, enjoyed by many apparently, that has been largely supported by tax dollars and subsidies from the local college. Residents are now outraged that their primary source of culture and sophistication is being sold. It seems to me that the biggest problem is that few of these residents have been putting their money where their mouths are. They sure talk big about the value of the station, but they haven't backed up those words with financial support.

Excuse me if I don't weep for their loss.

[tags]taxes[/tags]

Earlier this month, Dr. Rich Scarborough -- pastor, and founder of Vision America -- sent out an e-mail talking about the role of Christians in American government.

This past week the Republican State Convention met in San Antonio, Texas. I was invited to speak at a Values Voter Rally at 8:30 PM in the Menger Hotel, across from the Convention Center. Once again, to my great delight, hundreds gathered to hear a Gospel artist sing and a Baptist Minister speak. As I spoke about the importance of Christians being salt and light in the moral and civil arena, the crowd erupted in applause several times and at the end, they stood to applaud.

As I left, I bowed my head and thanked God that many Christians are getting it! We are the Church and in America, we are the Government. Tell me, how do you separate the two without removing all Christian influence from the public arena?

I'd like to respond to that question.

"We are the Church and in America, we are the Government." That phrase sends chills up and down my spine -- and not in a good way. True, the Church is made up of God's people. True, most of those people earnestly desire to follow after God and live lives that are pleasing to Him. That does not, however, make them saints on earth. Christians can be just as prone to hubris, arrogance, and greed as non-Christians. The fact that a person is a Christian does not, in and of itself, mean that he or she should receive my vote.

Many Christians go into government with the goal of "Cleaning up Society." The American Family Association, and the Parents Television Council, for instance, strongly dislike much of the content on prime-time television. Their preferred solution is to make it illegal to broadcast certain language, show certain images, or portray certain ideas on broadcast television. Other groups want to criminalize all homosexual behavior, criminalize certain styles of dress, certain behaviors (like smoking and drinking), or criminalize any public vulgarity.

I have a big problem with this. It is an attempt to impose Christian morality by force. It is an attempt to make the entire country live according to Christian values and display Christian behaviors. A large portion of the nation is (or claims to be) Christian. A significant percentage of the country is not. (If 70% of 300 million people are Christian, that means 90 million people are not Christian.) These laws would force everyone to exhibit Christian behavior, regardless of the whether or not they truly love God and want to please Him. I believe this is wrong, that it is nothing more than forced hypocrisy.

Rather than making Christianity appealing to non-Christians, these laws would only reinforce the impression that Christianity is about following rules and living a certain way. Rather than communicating the great Truth -- that true Christianity is a relationship with an awesome Being that wants to know me personally -- these laws would reinforce the belief that Christians are concerned only with rules and controlling people. In short, legislating morality would Christianity odious to many of the unsaved, rather than desirable.

Why should I force someone who doesn't love God, who doesn't understand God, and who doesn't want anything to do with God to live under God's rules? God Himself doesn't require that. God allows billions of people around the world to live in sin each and every day. God allows each person on earth to live their life as they will. God allows each person the freedom to accept Him or reject Him. True, God desires certain behaviors and attitudes from those who love Him. But God doesn't impose His will anyone, even Christians.

If God does not force unbelievers to live according to a certain set of rules, I don't believe I have any authority whatsoever to rule over them. If God has voluntarily relinquished control over people's lives, how dare I pick up that control and attempt to wield it myself? Such behavior is rank arrogance -- an assumption that I know the mind of God and I know exactly what penalties and punishments He wishes to impose on those who disobey Him.

God desires one thing, and one thing only, from non-Christians: that they recognize His control over the universe, submit willingly to His authority, and love Him before all others. Everything else is secondary to this. Once a person's heart is aligned with God's, right behaviors will follow. If a person's heart is not aligned with God's, no amount of laws will improve his character or bring him any closer to purity.

I believe government has a responsibility to protect its citizens against aggression and fraud. Government should be concerned with prosecuting rape, murder, theft and fraud. I do not believe government should be concerned with the behavior of its citizens -- that is rightly the role of priests, pastors, and churches.

How then should Christians behave in government? If I do not believe that they should legislate according to their moral beliefs, how should they legislate? Christians should follow the advice of Micah 6:8

He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Over and over and over and over again throughout Scripture, God's prophets and apostles urge His people to act justly -- not to accept bribes, not to treat the rich better than the poor, not to withhold from those in need. Over and over, God exhorts His people to treat everyone equally, to deal honestly, to honor contracts -- in short, to live with integrity. How many of our Congressman and Senators truly live up to these requirements? How many of our supposedly Christian legislators live up to these requirements? This how a Christian should act while in office. Christians in government should stand up for the oppressed, deal justly with everyone, and enforce the law equally on the rich and the poor.

Being a Christian legislator should not associated with enacting Christian morals but with display Christian values while in office. Christian legislators should set the standard for honesty, integrity, and humility in government. A legislator who displayed those moral values would be far more valuable than one who simply voted to fine television stations over vulgarity or who simply voted to require certain minimum standards of dress.

"How do you separate [Church and government] without removing all Christian influence from the public arena?" You separate the two by letting the church reign supreme in matters of morality and letting the government protect people's bodies and property. If Christian government officials focus their energies on ensuring that all people are protected equally and that government conducts its operations with integrity and humility, the Christian influence on the public arena will be huge.

Ultimately Christianity does not need the support of America's government in order to survive. Whether or not the Ten Commandments are displayed in America's courthouses is not nearly as important as whether or not America's people have the Ten Commandments written on their hearts. A Christian government can do nothing to write God's law on people's hearts, but it can ensure that all people are treated as God commands -- equally, with love and honesty.

My telephone service is about to get more expensive -- thanks to the FCC.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to boost the amount that cell-phone companies must pay to a fund that subsidizes phone service in rural areas, and to require Internet-based phone companies to contribute to the fund for the first time.

Under the FCC's proposal, cell-phone and other wireless providers would have to contribute as much as 3.9 percent of revenue from customers for the third quarter, while providers of Internet-based phone service would have to contribute as much as 6.8 percent of revenue.

We use Vonage for our telephone service. As an "Internet-based phone service", I expect they'll have to jack rates by a couple of percentage points in the next month or so. I'm close to getting another cell phone. Looks like that'll be getting more expensive as well.

How long has it been since rural phone service has truly needed a subsidizing? All that's happening now is that people who choose to live in the sticks get artificially cheaper telephone service -- at my expense. Hope they're enjoying it.

The Wisconsin State Journal has a decent article on the pitfalls of regulation. The article correctly points out that many regulatory investigations are simple abuses of power and that regulation targets anyone with innovative, new, or disruptive ideas.

I do have one comment, however. The article points out that the state legislature makes decisions about what to regulate.

"What often happens is that constituents contact their local legislators and talk to them about the need," Martin said. "Often the professions themselves approach the legislator, asking to be regulated."

True enough. But there is a good reason why professions ask to be regulated -- and it's not for the good of the consumer. Professions can face competition from new businesses, new practitioners, or new ways of doing something. By regulating a profession, the members of that profession can ensure oversee who enters the profession. They can ensure that no new methods of doing business are introduced without their approval. They can limit the number of new practitioners that enter the profession. In short, they can limit competition and better insure their own business success. This is not aimed at protecting the consumer, but at protecting the existing businesses or practitioners.

After all, are you really at risk from unlicensed barbers or interior designers? In Wisconsin, these privileged workers are protected from undue competition. I seriously doubt that Wisconsin consumers were ever really at risk from either profession.

The United Automobile Workers Union recently held its annual convention. While in Las Vegas, they discussed what steps were necessary to grow union membership.

Mr. Bailey [president of Local 2865] told fellow members that organizing could often take a long time, saying that it took nearly two decades to change California law to allow academic student workers to organize.

"We all know that the industrial sector is flying away to right-to-work states, where it's going to take time and big-time financial resources to win campaigns," he said, referring to states with laws that do not favor unions.

This is why the unions need to spend big money on recruitment:

The union is about to lose thousands more members in manufacturing. Ford Motor and General Motors want to reduce their hourly work forces by 60,000, and suppliers represented by the U.A.W. also are cutting jobs. Delphi, G.M.'s largest supplier, plans to close 21 of its 29 United States plants by 2008 and cut its hourly work force by thousands

So. High costs of labor is forcing many employers to lay off union workers and move to non-union states. The solution: follow them to non-union states and force them to keep paying ever higher wages. Sounds like a winner to me.

A look at day care in Quebec.

Starting in 1997, the Quebec Family Policy subsidized day care for 4-year-olds at government-approved centers around the province. By 2000, the program had expanded to cover any child not old enough for kindergarten, all the way down to infants. This is universal day care, an audacious idea that recognizes the revolution in women's work over the last 30 years.

Because everyone knows that giving your children to anonymous workers for 8 (or more) hours a day is a great way to make sure that they're raised with your values, attitudes, and ideas. They'll know that you love them enough to earn only the very best.

The results show that parents who leave their children in daycare, aren't doing their children any favors:

Almost a decade after the family policy started, however, there was still a big mystery about it. Nobody had done the work to find out how it had affected children. The province was spending $1.4 billion a year on a grand social experiment, yet no one had bothered to look at the results.

So three economists took up the challenge a few years ago, realizing that the program offered an excellent way to examine a much-debated topic. The three "” Michael Baker and Kevin Milligan, who are Canadian, and Jonathan Gruber, an American "” collected data, looked at various measures of well-being since the program started and compared Quebec with the rest of Canada over the same period.

When they finished last year, the answer seemed clear. "Across almost everything we looked at," said Mr. Gruber, an M.I.T., professor, "the policy led to much worse outcomes for kids."

Read the article to find out how much worse.

It's true, children require economic sacrifice. My parents experienced it. My wife's parents experienced it. I expect to experience it when I have children. But, so what? Children are worth it. Start planning your budget now. Learn to live on one income and save the second. When children come, you'll already be used to living on one income and quitting one job won't be as much of a hardship as it could be.

Your kids will thank you, one day.

What a schmuck:

At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of his illness and recovery. Hezekiah received the envoys gladly and showed them what was in his storehouses"”the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine olive oil"”his entire armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.

Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, "What did those men say, and where did they come from?" "From a distant land," Hezekiah replied. "They came to me from Babylon." The prophet asked, "What did they see in your palace?" "They saw everything in my palace," Hezekiah said. "There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them."

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the LORD Almighty: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."

"The word of the LORD you have spoken is good," Hezekiah replied. For he thought, "There will be peace and security in my lifetime."

Today's New International Version International Bible Society (C) Copyright 2001, 2005

If that last statement doesn't qualify him as one of the world's all-time schmucks, I don't know what would.

Please don't tell me that I actually have to explain why this is a bad idea:

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.

Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."

The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.

RFID tags have long been used to identify animals in a variety of settings; livestock, laboratory animals and pets have been "chipped" for decades. Privacy advocates have long expressed concerns about this technology being used in human beings.

(Hat tip to Southern Appeal.)

Captain Ed joins the ranks of conservatives that sound like socialists, when discussing immigration.

We never argued for shutting out all immigration, but what we wanted was controlled and sensible immigration that would benefit us and the world.

... We still need to know how this nation will assimilate two million people every year, both economically and culturally.

... Where will they all go, and what will we do to house and educate them?

It sounds like Captain Ed wants the Senate to have a plan for housing and educating immigrants. It sounds like Captain Ed wants to control and direct the labor market, planning it for the maximum amount of good.

How is this attitude different from socialism? All the big government socialists want is a planned and directed economy. And, yet, a planned economy never works out well. Why should immigration be a special case?

Having open borders and unlimited immigration creates a free market in labor. Immigrants will continue to enter the country as long as jobs are available and will leave (or stop coming) when jobs are no longer available. As long as immigrants keep coming, home builders and construction workers will continue to provide housing for them; Nike and Reebok will continue to provide shoes for them; local barbers will continue to provide hair cuts for them; and grocery stores will continue stocking food for them.

Whether in labor or housing, the free market will send the right signals and ensure that everything keeps working -- whether or not the Senate actually knows what its doing.

Now I don't to pick on Captain Ed too much. He does have legitimate concerns, that I share.

By 2026, over ten percent of our population will have emigrated here within the past generation. What kind of impact will that have on our economy, our culture, our politics? Has the Senate even bothered to find out?

I think the effect on our economy will be positive. But the effect on our culture and politics is harder to predict. It's a question worth considering, I don't think it should be mixed in with socialist concerns about how "we" will provide for everyone that comes in.

Oh. One final thing. Ed asked where they would all go given that "that level of immigration would be the equivalent of adding eight Minnesotas to the nation within a generation without adding any more territory." Well, 97 percent of the United States is empty space, so I think we can find somewhere for them to go.

That's certainly what this retroactive tax hike sounds like. Because 2006 taxes aren't officially due until April 2007, this isn't an ex post facto law. But I bet it certainly feels like one to the people paying the taxes.

This is exactly what I don't trust government with the authority to tax. Chief Justice John Marhsall said: "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." I think Congress may have destroyed a few jobs this month.

(Part of the Intra-Madison Immigration Debate.)

(Welcome, Carnival of the Badger readers. Thanks for visiting. Feel free to look around and explore the rest of the site, while you're here.)

Update: Jenna responds to this post.

In my last post, I talked about America's ability to absorb immigrants. I believe that not only are we capable of absorbing vast numbers of immigrants, but that we need immigrants to keep our economy running. I don't mean we need immigrants to "do jobs that Americans won't do". I mean that we need immigrants to do jobs that Americans will be unable to do.

The Great Retirement is growing ever closer. In 2011 -- just five years from now -- the Baby Boomers will start retiring. Over the following 18 years, 79 million Americans will retire. Every American household owes the Baby Boomers more than $500,000 in promised retirement and medical benefits. But the problem extends far beyond promised retirement benefits. Over the next 23 years, 79 million jobs will be left empty. During that time span, businesses will need to hire a vast number of new employees.

These are not jobs that Americans can fill. There simply aren't enough young Americans entering the workforce to compensate for all of the older Americans that will be leaving the workforce. Immigration is the only conceivable means of filling those 79 million open jobs.

It's not just the future that is worrying. It's the present as well. Consider the story of Marshalltown, Iowa.

I grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa. I'll tell you, they're not running out of space in Marshalltown. From the historic courthouse at the center of town, a ten to fifteen minute drive in any direction will put you in a cornfield. Over the past decade or so, Marshalltown has seen an influx of Mexicans "” many from a single village, Villachuato "” who came to work at the Swift meatpacking plant, or in the fields in the summer. This has caused a bit of friction in a middle-class town with a largely German and Scandinavian heritage "” but just a bit. In fact, many small Midwestern towns like Marshalltown have been fighting for decades to hold on to a dwindling population. This is a real problem. Marshalltown businesses, for example, receive less than one application for each new job opening.

[Villachuatans] account for about half of the 1,900 employees at the largest employer in Marshalltown, a Swift & Co. meatpacking plant that also generates 1,200 additional jobs at related companies. Mexicans also have opened several new businesses in town, and their children have propped up sagging enrollment in Marshalltown schools. Not surprisingly, Mayor Harthun was eager to learn more about them "” in part, because he wanted them to stay. "I was being self-serving," he admits. "We need people."

Nor is Marshalltown the only place in the nation with these problems. Consider North Carolina:

In North Carolina, the immigrant population has nearly tripled since 1990, the biggest increase of any state in the nation, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group in Washington. By far the biggest group of new immigrants in the state is illegal Mexicans.

Stephen P. Gennett, president of the Carolinas chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, which represents commercial builders, said Mexican immigrants filled an important gap in the labor market.

"We have a problem here: a people shortage," Mr. Gennett said. "In the 90's, we began to feel the stress of an inadequate work force," he said. "The Hispanics have been filling those jobs."

As I've been reading about immigration the last several weeks, I have seen this statement echoed in many articles. All around the nation are cities and towns that have a shortage of workers. Often, Mexicans are filling that shortage. If we try to hold down the number of immigrants moving across the border, we will do real economic harm to many communities across the United States. (As well as physical harm. Cracking down on illegal immigrants in the Northwest would leave many areas vulnerable to forest fires during the coming year.)

These are facts that our current immigration laws do not recognize. Indeed, the more that I think about our immigration laws, the more socialist they seem. The theory behind socialism and fascism was that the government could do a better job of planning the nation's economy than the free market could.

Our immigration laws reflect that theory. We have a complicated system of visas and quotas. Congress has established limits on the number of immigrants that can enter in each year, along with limits on how many people from each profession will be allowed to immigrate each year. In it's infinite wisdom, Congress decides how many lawyers, doctors, programmers, engineers, teachers, and "unskilled workers" will be allowed to immigrate each year. The goal is to have a well-planned immigration system that will give us highly skilled (highly taxable) workers that will not need to use our social services.

Unfortunately, Congress's infinite wisdom is usually anything but. Instead of a well-planned economy, we have a system where many businesses wage a constant battle to hire new employees and keep the employees that they already have. If their needs exceed what the government quotas allow for, the business is simply out of luck and will have to struggle along the best that they can.

The current treatment of Mexican immigrants typifies this insanity.

The United States offers 5,000 permanent visas worldwide each year for unskilled laborers. Last year, two of them went to Mexicans. In the same year, about 500,000 unskilled Mexican workers crossed the border illegally, researchers estimate, and most of them found jobs.

"We have a neighboring country with a population of 105 million that is our third-largest trading partner, and it has the same visa allocation as Botswana or Nepal," said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton.

As Mexican immigration has accelerated, the United States has cut back on the permanent-resident visas available to unskilled Mexicans and shifted the system progressively away from an emphasis on labor, to favor immigrants with family ties to American citizens or legal residents, or who have highly specialized job skills.

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement unleashed a surge of cross-border trade and travel, but at the same time the United States initiated the first in a series of measures to reinforce the border with Mexico to block the passage of illegal workers.

Businesses and workers are both sending clear signals that Mexican labor is in great demand. Rather than accomodating this demand and supplying the needs of the American economy, the government has been working in opposition to the demand. In fact, the greater the demand for foreign labor, the more the Federal government works to restrict that labor. This is centralized planning on a grand and unsustainable scale.

Earlier, Jenna asked how I would change our immigration laws. My answer is simple. I would make our laws better reflect the law of supply and demand. No limits, no quotas, and no complicated immigration categories. People would be free to move the United States (as long as they passed a criminal background check), regardless of socio-economic status, job skills, or education.

We need not worry that the supply of immigrants would outpace the supply of jobs. As the U.S. labor market became saturated, potential immigrants would hear from existing immigrants that work was becoming scarce. Once that happens, the flow of immigration will slow down. All of this will occur without government intervention or direciton. Indeed, this is how everything else in our economy from the supply of shoes to the suppy of medical equipment already works. The government is not involved in determining the "correct" levels of production for consumer goods and need not be involved in determining the "correct" amount of labor for the economy.

That leaves only the question of how to handle the 11-20 million people that have already immigrated illegally. I'm going to throw the question back to Jenna. How would you handle the illegals already here? Are you opposed to amnesty? If so, how do you define amnesty? Do you advocate mass deportations or do you have another plan?

Finally, I know I've put forward a lot of economic arguments and statistics. Feel free to postpone the amnesty question for a few days if you have followup questions or comments about the economic side of immigration.

(Part of the Intra-Madison Immigration Debate)

Update: Jenna's response to this post.

When I last wrote about immigration, I was talking about the gross disparity between the number of green cards issued and the number of people wishing to immigrate. I advocated lifting the green card limits and giving residency to anyone who wishes to immigrate -- regardless of skill levels, country of orgin, or anything else.

Can We Absorb Them?

Jenna challenged that idea, quoting Jib. Both Jenna and Jib argued that large-scale immigration is unsustainable in the long term. Jib argued that large-scale immigration would cause a crisis at the lower economic rungs of society. He reasons that the influx will create a huge demand for low-paying jobs. This demand will drive down the wages in these jobs, causing a strain on the social safety net (as more and more low-income people use Medicaid / Badger Care). Jib ends his argument by stating:

Bringing in that many legal immigrants is anything but compassionate for poor legal immigrants looking for a better life. If anything, it is going to keep them buried at the bottom of society. I'm all in favor of robust legal immigration at the skilled and unskilled ends, but let's do it at sustainable numbers, shall we?

I'd like to begin my counter-argument with the idea of "sustainable numbers". Our nation has absorbed several waves of immigration during its history. I think it would be useful to compare immigration then with immigration now.

The nation's first immigration quotas were established in 1921. Prior to that time, Congress only limited the types of people that could immigrate (the insane, criminals, anarchists, etc), not the numbers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau:

As a percentage of total population, the foreign-born population rose from 9.7 percent in 1850 and fluctuated in the 13 percent to 15 percent range from 1860 to 1920 before dropping to 11.6 percent in 1930.

Today the foreign-born population is estimated at 9.7 percent of the total population. (That estimate is from 1997. The percentage may be slightly higher today.) Although the modern immigration numbers seem high, they're actually right in line with historical standards. Right now we have fewer immigrants, as a percentage of our population, than we did during the 60 year period from 1860 to 1920.

Not only is our foreign-born population lower than in the past, our ability to absorb immigrants is dramatically greater. Our per capita resources are greater now than they were in the early 1900's:

Consider that in 1915 the typical dwelling in America housed 5.63 persons; today it houses fewer than half that number -- 2.37 persons. Combined with the fact that today's typical dwelling has about 25 percent more square footage than its counterpart had back then, our ability to absorb immigrants into residential living spaces is today more than twice what it was a century ago.

In many other ways America today can better absorb immigrants. For example, compared to 1920, per person, today we:

• have 10 times more miles of paved roads
• have more than twice as many physicians
• have three times as many teachers
• have 540 percent more police officers
• have twice as many firefighters
• produce 2.4 times more oil -- as known reserves of oil grow
• produce 2.67 times more cubic feet of lumber -- as America's supply of lumber stands grows
• have conquered most of the infectious diseases that were major killers in the past.

Our current situation is far from critical. During the late 1800's we absorbed a proportionally greater number of immigrants, while benefitting from far fewer resources. I think the evidence shows that America can not only absorb the immigrants we already have, but that we are capable of absorbing far more than we ever have before.

A Drain on the Economy?

The second half of the "sustainable numbers" argument is that immigrants are creating a pile-up on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Jib worries that a continuing inflow of immigrants will drive down wages. He linked to a column by Robert Samuelson that expanded upon this theme. Mr. Samuelson fears we will create a drag on our economy by gaining immigrants who consume social services without generating sufficient tax revenue to pay for those services. JoeFriday left a comment on my previous article claiming that:

the real incentive to come here illegally is to bypass the tax system and be absorbed into our government as a citizen.. they know that would take a chunk of the change they send back home to their families in Mexico (an amount that surpasses the national foreign aid we give Mexico).. meanwhile, they use our schools and health care benefits, while staying "off the books" intentionally

Is it true? Does immigration drive down wages? Are immigrants stealing from the American people by using social services but not paying taxes? Are immigrants creating a drag on our social services? No. I think the evidence demonstrates otherwise.

Wages

Let's look at the first claim: immigration drives down wages. At first glance, this argument seems logical: a greater supply of labor will lead to a lower cost of labor. The economic theory is sound, but the assumptions underlying the claim are bad. Claiming that immigration drives down wages is to claim that the number of jobs (the demand for labor) is fixed. But the demand for labor is not fixed. There is not a limited supply of jobs that must be carefully parcelled out. There never has been. Rather as the price of labor falls, the demand for labor generally rises (new jobs are created, using the cheaper labor), thus pushing the price of labor back up.

This has been true throughout American history, whether discussing the wages of native-born or foreign-born workers:

Would New York City (or any other city) be richer today if it had held its population to what it was in 1850? 1900? 1950? 1980? Does the inflow of people into New York lower the wages of the people already there? Does it make them poorer? Does it matter whether rich or poor people, high-skilled or low-skilled people are the ones moving into New York?

This is not just idle speculation. Recent research has indicated that once job creation is taken into effect, overall wages are unaffected by immigration and wages for high-school drop-outs are pushed down by -- at most -- 0.4%. Over the long run, immigration does not appear to pose a threat to the high wages that Americans currently enjoy.

Taxes

Are immigrants coming here illegally because they can work "off of the books" and avoid paying taxes? No, they're not. They're coming here illegally because they have no other way to come here. Last year, the U.S. offered 5,000 visas for unskilled workers. Last year, the U.S. gave two of those visas to Mexican immigrants.

Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants do pay their taxes.

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrant workers pay taxes. But according to specialists, most of them do. Since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, most such workers have been forced to buy fake ID's to get a job.

Currently available for about $150 on street corners in just about any immigrant neighborhood in California, a typical fake ID package includes a green card and a Social Security card. It provides cover for employers, who, if asked, can plausibly assert that they believe all their workers are legal. It also means that workers must be paid by the book - with payroll tax deductions.

Our assumption is that about three-quarters of other-than-legal immigrants pay payroll taxes," said Stephen C. Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, using the agency's term for illegal immigration.

Because these taxes are paid with fake Social Security Numbers, it is "free money" for the IRS and the SSA. During the 1990's, the SSA's "earnings suspense file" increased by $189 billion.

Far from getting off tax-free, the vast majority of illegal immigrants do pay taxes and may, in fact, be responsible for keeping Social Security solvent.

Economic Drag?

Finally, do poor immigrants (legal or illegal) create a drag on our social services? Undoubtedly, they do. But I think it's fair to say that it's a short-term drag, not a long term one. Once in the United States, immigrants move rapidly up the socio-economic ladder. True, first generation immigrants are often poor and uneducated compared to native-born Americans. But by the third generation, they are on nearly level ground with native-born citizens both in education and in income.

Claiming that immigrants create a drag on social services is to misunderstand the type of people that choose to immigrate:

America is an amazing natural experiment -- a continent populated largely by self-selected immigrants. All these people had the get-up-and-go to pull up stakes and come here, a temperament that made them different from their friends and relatives who stayed home. Immigrants are the original venture capitalists, risking their human capital -- their lives -- on a dangerous and arduous voyage into the unknown.

Not surprisingly, given this entrepreneurial spirit, immigrants are self-employed at much higher rates than native-born people, regardless of what nation they emigrate to or from. And the rate of entrepreneurial activity in a nation is correlated with the number of immigrants it absorbs. According to a cross-national study, "The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor," conducted jointly by Babson College and the London School of Economics, the four nations with the highest per capita creation of new companies are the United States, Canada, Israel and Australia -- all nations of immigrants. New company creation per capita is a strong predictor of gross domestic product, and so the conclusion is simple: Immigrants equal national wealth.

Immigrants may create a short-term drain on social services. However, their children and grandchildren will be most likely be valued, successful members of America's middle class. Moreover, today's immigrants will be creating jobs and business that will employ tomorrow's workers.

Limiting immigration will prevent a short-term drain on social services, but will cost America many valuable entrepreneurs and future middle class workers and investors. I think the trade-off is a worthwhile one.

In conclusion, high levels of immigration cause little to no long-term economic harm for the United States. The United States is much more likely to be harmed by preventing high-levels of immigration than by allowing it. I think I've demonstrated that America is more than capable of absorbing and assimilating immigrants. Next I'll tell you why I think that the U.S. must encourage higher levels of immigration.

That's not the title of this New York Times article but perhaps it should be.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, opened for business in a former cow pasture not far from downtown just 40 years ago. Still in its infancy as universities go, U.M.B.C. is less well known than Maryland's venerable flagship campus at College Park or the blue-blooded giant Johns Hopkins. But the upstart campus in the pasture is rocking the house when it comes to the increasingly critical mission of turning American college students into scientists.

The students are encouraged to study in groups and taught to solve complex problems collectively, as teams of scientists do. Most important, they are quickly exposed to cutting-edge science in laboratory settings, which demystifies the profession and gives them early access to work that often leads to early publication in scientific journals. At the same time, however, the students are pushed to perform at the highest level. Those who earn C's, for example, are encouraged to repeat those courses so they can master basic concepts before moving on.

The laboratory approach keeps the students excited and prevents them from drifting off into less challenging disciplines. Indeed, according to Science, 86 percent of the Meyerhoff participants have graduated with science or engineering degrees. Nearly 9 in 10 of those graduates went on to graduate or professional programs, with a significant number earning M.D.'s or Ph.D's, or both.

This is quite different from the approach of most universities. A significant number of professors in my undergraduate classes treated the undergrads as though they were nothing more than a distraction from the real business of research and teaching graduate classes. I heard from many graduate students that the graduate classes were both far more interesting and far more competently taught.

U.M.B.C. is taking an entirely different approach: treat undergraduates as though they actually have the capability to learn and succeed. Not surprisingly, it's working. Fully 77% of their students end up in a graduate program. Maybe if America's colleges expected (and demanded) more of America's undergraduates we wouldn't have such a tough time turning out scientists and engineers.

The U.S. Treasury department laid to rest a long-cherished friend today. The federal excise tax on long-distance phone calls was officially declared dead by Treasury Secretary John Snow. The tax was first enacted in 1898 as a temporary measure designed to "soak the rich". Along the way it has managed to soak the middle-class, the poor, the indigent, and the homeless.

This tax, sadly, outlived my grandfather. He saw long-distance service go from an expensive luxury to something that cellular companies gave away as a free benefit. Nevertheless, the federal government continued to tax everyone who used long-distance service as part of "the rich".

Keep that in mind the next time someone wants to tax "the rich". In another generation or two, we might all be "the rich".

Jenna responded to my last essay. At this point, we agree that immigration, when legal, is a good thing. We agree that immigrants should be able to immigrate just because they want to be Americans, whether or not an employer is "sponsoring" them.

Jenna and I still disagree on one small point. I was planning to overlook it, until I realized that it was the perfect segue into the next stage of the debate. Here's what Jenna had to say:

The number of people breaking a law does not necessary invalidate the purpose of the law. Millions of people speed, don't where their seat belt, smoke marijuana, engage in public drunkennesss, remove the tags from their mattresses (I'm kidding), and engage in other types of illegal behavior.

Does their pure disobedience warrant the abolishment of those laws? Not necessarily.

I agree. Pure disobedience does not necessarily warrant the abolishment of laws. However, wide spread disobedience may indicate that the law was ill-considered, may indicate that a majority of people don't actually consider the "crime" to be a crime. Does that mean we should automatically change or abolish the law? No, absolutely not. But wide spread disobedience might indicate that the law is toothless, ineffectual, ill-advised, poorly implemented, or otherwise flawed.

It's worth noting that poorly written laws (or laws that are just plain stupid) create just as much disrespect for the law as outright law breaking does. (For instance, Wisconsin's new mandatory booster seat law is causing me to lose respect for both the Wisconsin legislature and the governor. It's both poorly written and just plain stupid.)

Of course, immigration laws are a trickier subject. They are enacted by the citizens of one country in the expectation that they will be obeyed by the citizens of another country. In the case of America's immigration laws, the biggest law-breakers are Mexican citizens. The INS estimates that an average of 150,000 Mexicans have been illegally immigrating every year, over the past two decades. As I mentioned in a previous post, America only issues 10,000 green cards to Mexican immigrants each year.

Jenna says:

I believe Joe makes a good point when he says that the number of those wishing to enter our country far surpasses those we allow in. That may play a small role in why some choose to enter illegally: increasing the number allowed in may alleviate a tiny percentage of illegal immigration violations.

I think this understates the truth quite a bit. When we give out 10,000 green cards and 150,000 people enter illegally, I tend to think that those 150,000 people entered illegally because it simply wasn't possible for them to obtain a green card. If all 150,000 people waited for a green card, they people at the end of the line would have to wait 15 years for their chance to immigrate. And that's just for the people who illegally entered in one year. If everyone that has entered illegally, during the past two decades, had waited to immigrate legally, the people at the end of the line would have to wait over 1,000 years for their chance to get in.

When a person is faced with the desparate poverty of their home nation combined with a 15 year wait to legally improve their status, I can well understand the decision to risk illegal immigration. After all, their family's very survival may be on the line. Rather than alleviating a tiny percentage of the illegal immigration problem, I believe increasing the green card numbers would alleviate the vast majority of the illegal immigration problem.

I'll stop here. I think this post nicely sets up my response to Jenna's questions, but I'll have to wait until later in the day to post it.

While I have issues with the current state of our immigration laws, the Senate's attempt to fix those laws is looking uglier by the day. Thanks to an ACU alert which lead me to a Bob Novak column, I found a Heritage report detailing a few of the flaws in this immigration bill. Simply put, the Senate is attempting to mandate wages and working conditions for the new legal immigrants. As if that wasn't bad enough, the mandated wages and working conditions will be better than what American workers receive:

The Senate has devised a guest worker program that would extend bureaucratic control over some 5 percent of the labor force, via wage controls on the private sector. Rather than establish a simple cap on the number of temporary visas issued each month (which could be distributed fairly in a simple monthly auction), the Senate bill would create of a new Department of Labor bureaucracy that would be nothing less than a central planning agency for the U.S. labor market.

This new bureaucracy would include:

• "a 'Temporary Worker Task Force' with ten members (all political appointees from the federal government, none from states). More explicitly, the Secretary of Labor would determine which occupational categories in the U.S. have unmet demands for labor."

• "Dramatically Expanding Prevailing Wage Rules. Centrally controlling wages for every possible occupation is a breathtakingly ambitious project but would be mandatory for guest workers under the S. 2611."

The "prevailing wage rules" are the Davis-Bacon Acts requirements. This law requires that workers on Federal job sites receive whatever the "prevailing wage" is for their job. While it sounds like a harmless requirement, "prevailing wages" are often far higher than a worker's normal wages. This can lead to definite problems in the free market.

My dad worked quite a few jobs, in Norfolk, as an electrician. Every now and then, his employer would send him to job sites on the Norfolk Naval Base. While he worked those sites, his salary would increase dramatically. We all enjoyed the extra income, but it came with a price: reduced profits for his employer. He knew, and we knew, that his employer simply couldn't afford to pay him that wage on a regular basis. Had they been forced to pay that salary to my dad all of the time, he wouldn't have had a larger income; he would have been laid off.

I have to wonder who inserted the original provision into Section 404 of the Senate Immigration Bill. It's quite possible that it was an attempt not to make immigrants better off, but to make sure that immigrants couldn't find any work. After all, immigrant workers often work for lower wages than American workers. If employers were forced to pay immigrants far higher wages, they might never employ them at all.

Whatever the reasoning, this bill is a turkey. In its current form, I cannot support. Several of its provisions are worthwhile and desperately needed. However, I cannot tolerate its interference with free market wages.

I may have Southern roots, but my speech doesn't show it. I suppose this is the result of growing up surrounded by Navy folks, with a Yankee mother and (now) a Yankee wife. I'd say that, generally speaking, it must be impossible to tell where I'm from just by listening to me talk.

Your Linguistic Profile::

70% General American English

10% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

(Hat tip to Dean.)

Update: Jenna responds to this post here and here.

Jenna has already responded to my earlier post about immigration. In her response, she makes two arguments for why we should have border laws and immigration laws. The first is that American citizenship is valuable -- too valuable to simply be handed to anyone and everyone:

The first is that my citizenship of the United States of America means something to me. We truly are the greatest nation of the world, however cheesy that line is, and I am proud to be part of it. I believe that there is some valuation to that citizenship, not necessarily monetary, but on some level, it is worth something, and should not be automatically granted to all.

The second is that before becoming an American citizen one should show respect for our laws by immigrating legally:

Our laws are intrinsic to our nation and the opportunities available. For this reason, for someone to come and take advantage of our great nation, they must respect our laws and our country. To sneak across the border, to break our laws, to subvert our system as one's first act in our country shows great disrespect for the very thing which makes our nation great.

I agree with Jenna that American citizenship is a wonderful and valuable thing. I love my American citizenship and would not trade it in for any other country's citizenship. We are one of the few countries in the world that says that all authority passes from the people to the government. We are one of the few countries in the world that has a written constitution which only gives the government specific, limited powers. American citizenship requires that someone be willing to defend that Constitution and uphold those principles. In fact, our oath of citizenship requires it:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same

So, no. Our citizenship isn't free. It shouldn't be given away to anyone. Rather, it should be purchased (through the Oath of Allegiance) by anyone willing to uphold its meaning. And I do mean anyone. I think U.S. citizenship is the best thing going and I'd love to grow "our team" as rapidly as possible. As we attract more of the world's talent, creativity, ingenuity, labor, and dedication we can make this country even better than it already is.

As Jenna says, historically speaking we have grown our team by leaps and bounds.

Our nation understands that others will want to become a part of our country, and we have created legal methods for them to do so. Millions of people have taken advantage of those venues over the years, my ancestors from Germany being some of them in the late 19th century.

Prior to 1918, immigrants had to pass two qualifications only: prove their identity and find someone to vouch for them. Ninety-eight percent of the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were passed through. The Mexican border was unguarded and people freely crossed in both directions. It would be more accurate to say that prior to 1918, there was no such thing as illegal immigration. I doubt Jenna's ancestors had to put up with the mess that is legal immigration these days.

And it is a mess. I share Jenna's desire for immigrants to move her legally. I share a desire for orderly, law-abiding conduct. But when 11 million people are law breakers, I begin to question whether is the people or the law which is in the wrong. (It's worth noting that most of our current immigration laws were enacted during times of national crisis: The Great Depression, the post World War II era, and the Civil Rights era.) Rather than the free-wheeling, open-acceptance immigration laws of our past, we have a Byzantine system of regulations, requirements, fees, tables, and preferences.

The National Foundation for American Policy published a report today about the waiting period that would-be legal immigrants face. When it comes to obtaining green cards, the restrictions are severe. The current annual limit is 140,000 total green cards per year. Most would-be Mexican immigrants fall into the "Other Workers" category for green card applications. This category is statutorially limited to 10,000 green cards per year. Waiting times for siblings average 11-12 years and waiting times for spouses and children of green card holders averages 7 years. Just obtaining a visitor's visa can take anywhere from a month to half a year.

Even for those who do, finally, obtain green cards (after an average 5-year waiting period), citizenship is a far from easy road to travel. Russian-born attorney Ilya Shapiro has little hope of ever becoming a U.S. citizen:

The problem for high-level professional workers is that our visas don't work that way.

Under provisions that won't change, we can work for a particular employer for six years. After that, unless the employer agrees to the root canal surgery that is green card sponsorship, and can prove that no American possesses the minimal qualifications for that job, we have to leave the country.

There is no so-called "path to citizenship" "” and thus, for me, no way to fulfill my dream: to serve my adopted country.

Despite living here my entire adult life, my fancy degrees, despite having worked for a senator, a federal judge, and a presidential campaign, I can't apply for the legal and policy making jobs for which this country has trained me.

Given these laws, restrictions, and delays I'd be tempted to cross the border illegally as well.

One final point. Current immigration law is heavily biased towards only letting people into the country after they've obtained a job and their employer can demonstrate that no American worker can fill that job. In what way is that a just immigration policy? Both Jenna and I agree that the United States is a land of opportunity. I think we should allow in anyone who wants to create a better life for themselves. If they want to move in with a family member and then look for a job, we should let them. If they want to immigrate in the hopes of starting a business or creating jobs, we should let them. Once they've learned English, learned our laws, and are ready to swear allegience to the Constitution, we should grant them citizenship.

Here's my questions: Why put numerical caps on immigration, especially when those caps are set far, far below the number of people who wish to immigrate? Why is it just to punish illegal immigrants for breaking the law when those laws are written in such a way as to practically invite law-breaking? Finally (if you agree with the rest of this essay), what is more honorable: to strictly enforce our own bad laws or to admit that our laws are bad and then find a way to clean up our mess?

(Hat tips to Cafe Hayek and Poliblog.)