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I’m pretty sure that I linked to this excellent essay by Shikha Dalmia when it first appeared back in July. But whether I did so or not, I link to it again here, for it’s filled with important context on Milton Friedman’s (in)famous expression of skepticism about open immigration into a country with a welfare state. And it is in this essay by Shikha that we find this especially relevant passage:

Now, if he [Friedman] had stopped at that, it would have been one thing. But he did not. He went on to declare that despite the welfare state, Mexican immigration was a “good thing” for America, particularly when it was of the illegal variety. Why? “Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for Social Security, they don’t qualify for all the other myriads of benefits,” he pointed out. “They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take, they provide employers with workers of a kind they cannot get.”

In other words, as far as Friedman was concerned, free illegal immigration was perfectly compatible with the welfare state and slamming the door on it would be utter stupidity.

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Here’s a letter to Mr. Alex Leventis, who majored in economics back in the 1990s at the University of Texas:

Mr. Leventis:

Thanks for your kind e-mail in which you express your support for more open immigration of high-skilled immigrants but not of low-skilled immigrants. I support more open immigration of both, for both sorts of immigrants make net contributions to the economy.

It’s true that each high-skilled immigrant typically makes a larger net contribution to the economy than does each low-skilled immigrant. This fact is true if only because the excess of the amount that each high-skilled immigrant produces over the amount that he or she consumes is greater than is the excess of each low-skilled immigrant’s production over his or her consumption. But as long as there is such an ‘excess’ – as there always is for every person who earns income in the market through mutually voluntary work and trade – why should we not avail ourselves of the net benefits of low-skilled immigrants? After all, the total net contribution of some number of low-skilled immigrants – say, perhaps, six of them – equals the net contribution of one high-skilled immigrant.

Put differently, just as a pound of feathers is as weighty as is a pound of lead, each $1 worth of net economic contribution by a group of low-skilled immigrants is as valuable as is each $1 worth of net economic contribution by one high-skilled immigrant.

Let me close by asking you to recall your microeconomics. There you learned that each producer expands her output as long as the revenue available from the sale of that additional output is greater than the cost of making that output available for sale. The analogy to immigration isn’t exact, but it’s close enough to be useful: just as a producer would be foolish not to make available for sale, say, a tenth unit of output simply because the profit she will earn by selling that tenth unit is, while positive, less than is the profit she earned by selling the ninth unit, we are foolish to turn away low-skilled immigrants just because the net contribution each makes to our economy is less than is the net contribution made by each high-skilled immigrant.

Here, if you’re interested, is a short essay that I wrote a few years ago on this topic.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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Lots of people are angry with me for not distinguishing “illegal” from “legal” immigrants. Although angering people is not my purpose – and I truly do not like doing it – I will continue to anger these people because for most of the purposes for which I write about immigration, this distinction is irrelevant both economically and ethically.

I myself couldn’t care less if someone has his or her official government papers. The unethical actions in our current regime are not those of peaceful people who come to the United States without the official permission of the U.S. government; the unethical actions are those of the U.S. government in restricting the migration of peaceful people simply because some arbitrary quota of immigrants ‘must’ not be exceeded.

We Americans rightly are appalled when we reflect on the practice from the past in Nazi-occupied and Soviet-occupied lands of government officials who demanded to see the papers of people who were guilty of nothing other than being suspected of following the wrong faith or of being in a part of the city or country to which their access was forbidden. We understand that this practice was both a seed and a fruit of intolerable totalitarianism.

And we celebrate when we encounter tales of – or imagine – those who were asked for their papers managing to dupe the government officials who demanded to see papers. None of us think “Oh my, that Jew is a dangerous criminal! He broke the law not only by being in a part of town to which his access is legally forbidden, but he also lied to the nice government man who is only enforcing the law!”

Yet most Americans today think it to be perfectly acceptable – even sweet and desirable – that government officials here demand to see the papers of people who are guilty of nothing other than being suspected of being in some location, or of working at some job, without the U.S. government’s express permission. It is the playing out of totalitarianism in our midst. But because “we” do it – and because our officials don’t speak in sinister German or Russian accents when they ask to see papers – we applaud, or at least play along with, our government’s obstruction of the movement, association, and work of peaceful people.

…..

But for those readers who demand that I recognize the distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants, here’s your opportunity to witness me doing so: “Illegal” immigrants, being largely ineligible for welfare-state handouts, are an even better economic bargain for American citizens than are “legal” immigrants and native-born Americans.

So I urge all of you who are bothered by the prospect of immigrants free-riding on the U.S. welfare state to celebrate those immigrants who come here “illegally.” Celebrate because most of these immigrants do manage to find employment here (“illegally,” of course, because they don’t have “zher papez”) – and, hence, are productive, even tax-paying, members of society – yet consume far fewer taxpayer resources than do “legal” immigrants who, in turn, consume fewer taxpayer resources than do native-born Americans.

(Request to readers: Somewhere Milton Friedman made this very point about “illegal” immigrants. Can anyone direct me to the source?)

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My latest AIER piece was mentioned on air yesterday by Rush Limbaugh – a happy fact that nevertheless filled my e-mailbox this morning with several hostile missives from anti-immigrationists. This gentleman was one of several who discovered Cafe Hayek and blew a fuse when reading some of my posts on immigration. Here’s my letter to him:

Mr. Nick Poage

Mr. Poage:

You write to object to this blog post of mine. After expressing your support for government-imposed work restrictions that, in your words “stop immigrants from stealing American jobs,” you call “insane” my argument that much hostility to immigration is fueled by the (false) belief that immigrants produce too much and consume too little. You further write that “plenty of us Americans who want big reductions in immigration are pissed off because these people are parasites on our welfare system [which means that] they consume too much.”

First, the data don’t support the belief that immigrants are welfare-state “parasites.”

Second, the fact that the data don’t support this belief is especially telling given the many restrictions that Uncle Sam places on immigrants’ abilities to work. By obstructing immigrants’ access to jobs in the formal economy, these restrictions artificially boost immigrants’ incentives to seek government welfare. Ending these restrictions would result in immigrants using even less such welfare. Yet you not only want to keep these restrictions, you wish to tighten them.

I’m sorry, but because you wish to prevent immigrants from working in America I have no sympathy for your complaint that immigrants allegedly free-ride on the American welfare state. You cannot, in justice, with one breath summon the state to prevent people from earning their livelihoods and then, with the next breath, self-righteously call those whom you prevent from earning their livelihoods “parasites.”

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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