Benjamin Powell - The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy

The Economics of Immigration

The Economics of Immigration

Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy

Edited by Benjamin Powell

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Contents

Benjamin Powell

Peter T. Leeson and Zachary Gochenour

Alex Nowrasteh

Jacob Vigdor

Alexandre Padilla and Nicols Cachanosky

Richard K. Vedder

Herbert London

Bryan Caplan and Vipul Naik

Benjamin Powell

I have debated immigration policy in public lectures and summer seminars, on the radio and television, and in the pages of newspapers and other popular outlets for more than a decade. Over that time I came to realize that there was a wide gap between the debates that reasonable social scientists had over the costs and benefits of immigration and the popular fallacies that plagued public discourse. The motivation for this book was inspired by, and will hopefully narrow, that gap. So, my first debt is to almost all of the people who have hosted me in public lectures or have invited me to participate in public discourse on this important topic.

I am most grateful to the contributors to this volume. Their collective expertise was invaluable, and I believe the joint product is of even greater value than a summation of the parts. I could not have hoped to author nearly as comprehensive or compelling a book on my own.

I am grateful for the environment and support that Texas Tech University has given me. This book resulted from a research project of Texas Techs Free Market Institute (FMI), which I direct. President M. Duane Nellis, Provost Lawrence Shovanec, and Vice President of Research Robert Duncan have all provided crucial support and guidance for the institute, which is an ideal entity in which to conduct research projects such as this. The chapters in this volume were presented as working papers at a one-day research conference hosted by FMI in May 2014. As editor, I benefited greatly from the feedback that the contributors and my colleagues at Texas Tech provided on each of these chapters at the conference. Special thanks goes to my colleague and the Director of the Center for the Study of Western Civilization, Stephen Balch, for making a public debate at Texas Tech possible on the evening prior to the conference. Also, a special thanks to FMIs senior administrator Charles Long, who was involved in every stage of the entire project. Thanks are also due to my research assistant Audrey Redford, who provided assistance in preparing the final manuscript and valuable research for my own chapters.

I also thank the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation for the financial support that allowed FMI to commission these chapters and host the conference. Allison Kasic and Adam Kissel, in particular, deserve credit for spearheading the collaboration between FMI and the Koch Foundation that made this project possible.

Oxford University Press was an ideal publisher to work with to bring the final product together. My thanks to three anonymous reviewers and Oxfords senior delegate, who all provided valuable revision suggestions that greatly improved this volume. My thanks to Oxfords senior editor, Scott Parris, for his support of this project and the invaluable guidance he provided in final revision stages of publication. I also thank David Theroux and Roy Carlisle for involving the Independent Institute in the final stages of publication.

Finally, I thank my family, Lisa and Raymond, for their love and support. Equally important, for projects like this, I appreciate their willingness to not just tolerate the endless stream of guests we host at FMI but to genuinely enjoy interacting with them.

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The Economics of Immigration

Benjamin Powell

Immigration policy is one of the most contentious and emotionally charged public policy issues in America today. Unfortunately, the debate surrounding immigration policyin Congress, the media, public policy think tanks, and among the general publicis often conducted in ignorance of the enormous amount of academic research in scientific journals investigating almost every aspect of immigration. An appreciation of this academic literature changes the substance of the immigration policy debate, but it does not necessarily dictate a particular policy conclusion.

Economist Henry Simons said, Economics is primarily useful, both to the student and to the political leader, as a prophylactic against popular fallacies (). That is the purpose of the first half of this book: to make research from academic economics, and other social sciences, accessible and intelligible to people concerned with immigration policy and, in doing so, to serve as a prophylactic against popular fallacies. Serious debate about what the appropriate immigration policy is for the United States, or other countries, can occur once we move beyond the popular fallacies. That is the purpose of the second half of the book.

The importance of what is at stake, in economic and human terms, is impossible to understate. Hundreds of millions of people are trapped, by accident of birth, in countries with bad governance and dismal living conditions. As reports, many of them want to move:

Gallup has conducted worldwide polls since 2010 asking adults whether they would move to another country immediately if allowed. Over 600 million adults14 percent of the world adult populationwish to permanently move to another country. Over a billion want to seek temporary work abroad. For comparison, 232 million people currently live outside their country of birth. The United States is the first-choice destination for over 100 million adults. Gallup has used these polls to estimate population gain and loss for each country if everyone migrated to their first-choice destination. The effects are huge: Haiti would lose half its population. Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand would more than double. Even the United States, the worlds third most populous country, would see population increase by 60 percent. (Caplan and Naik, of this volume)