WAGE WORRY. In such a world, an open immigration policy produces massive gains to trade, as people move to countries that can make the best use of their skills and pay them accordingly. It's unambiguously good for the overall global economy if an entrepreneurial Mexican or Chinese can move to the U.S. and start a new business. Similarly, it's good that an ambitious and smart young Russian or Indian can move to the U.S., go to business school, and become a hot-shot consultant or an investment banker, either in the U.S. or elsewhere.
Such a world of open borders would mimic, on a larger scale, the situation that already exists within the U.S. People can move long distances from one part of the country to another, chasing better jobs and higher pay. Florida and Arizona do not erect barriers saying, "No more immigrants from the Midwest." Instead, they welcome them and even boast about the number of people moving to their states as a driving force for growth.
I can see that. I suppose though, that there are people who would like to control the movements of others into their cities or neighborhoods. I mean, WASPs generally don't favor low-income housing developments in their areas for all sorts of reasons.
Another objection is that a higher number of immigrants will add to the country's fiscal burden, through higher future medical and education costs. There's more validity to this argument. It costs local governments a lot to educate immigrant children, and future Medicare and Medicaid expenses could effectively bankrupt the government, according to current projections.
But these problems are not as big as they seem. As the children of immigrants grow up, their contributions to the overall economy should exceed the costs of their education, even though that may not help the finances of the towns or cities where they grew up. And the long-term state of Medicare and Medicaid is an issue that is going to have to be dealt with regardless of whether or not there are immigrants here.
Theoretically, all of us are going to be productive enough to the economy to earn back more than was spent on us by our government (paying it back in taxes and such). The point is that this model should work whether people are born and raised in one place, or if they move and are raised in another place. In other words, looked at globally, it doesn't matter who spends money on someone because that someone will put money back into the economy no matter where they are. Of course, that's a very corporatized view of the world. In truth, if a child born in Mexico is educated here but then runs off to work in India, we will certainly have lost the value of his education. Businesses though, assume that enough trade will happen (ergo, a child born in Canada, raised in India, works in Texas) that it really won't hurt the local economy. I'm not absolutely sure about that.
A DRAINING DILEMMA. The biggest genuine obstacles to an open-borders policy are political and cultural, not economic. The first is that an excessively rapid and large influx of entrants from other countries could overwhelm the existing culture in a country or a region. This is a serious issue and not merely a reflection of cultural bias.
Second, an excessively rapid and large outflow of emigrants from a country -- particularly an outflow of especially well-educated people -- can lead to a brain drain that damages the viability of an existing society. In the extreme, if enough people leave, it could create what Lant Pritchett of the World Bank calls a "ghost country." Nevertheless, the ability to move should be a fundamental right.
I think we definitely must be concerned about turning Mexico (or parts of it) into a "ghost country". I blogged about this a little while back. The dangers of having a country that can't enforce its own border security attached to our border for more than 1,000 miles needn't be stated more than once. Mexico must remain a viable country for our safety.
You might ask why I'm rehashing this point. Basically, I think business is going to get its way one way or the other. Of course if enough people stand up and say no to immigration, well, they'll lose, but they may intimidate their lawmakers into not totally giving in to the business world's ideas on the matter. I don't know what, but we will see a compromise on this issue, and those people who are holding out for building a great wall on the border need to prepare to be disappointed.
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