THE CASE FOR ADMITTING MANY MORE IMMIGRANTS Julian L. Simon By increasing somewhat the flow of immigrants - from about 600,000 admissions per year to about 750,000 per year - the immigration legislation passed by Congress late in 1990 improves the standard of living of native-born Americans. The bill represents a sea change in public attitude toward immigration. It demonstrates that increasing immigration substantially is politically possible now. That's all good news, and we should celebrate it. The bad news is that the legislation does not greatly increase immigration. The new rate is still quite low by historical standards. A much larger increase in numbers - even to, say, only half the rate relative to population size that the United States accepted around the turn of the century - would surely increase our standard of living much more. The political problem for pro-immigration people is to avoid the let-down to be expected after the passage of this first major legal-immigration bill in a quarter century. And the new law provides for a commission to collect information with regard to the immigration situation with an eye to additional legislation. So it is important to educate the public about how immigration benefits the nation while it also benefits the immigrants. Increased immigration presents the United States with an opportunity to realize many national goals with a single stroke. It is a safe and sure path not open to any other nation to achieve all of these benefits: 1) The rate of advance in technology would sharply increase by adding top talent from all over the world. 2) Business could satisfy its demand for the labor that the baby-bust generation makes scarce. 3) The burden of retirees upon the ever-shrinking cohorts of labor-force age would be decreased - the only way in which this burden can be reduced. This would mean less burden upon individual working Americans to support the Social Security System. 4) This increase in the proportion of working persons to retired persons is the only painless way to shrink the federal deficit - and moderate rates of immigration could eliminate the deficit entirely. 5) Our competitive position vis a vis Japan, Europe, and the rest of the world would improve. 6) Our image abroad would benefit from the connections of the immigrants with relatives back home, and from the remittances that immigrants send back. 7) Not least, additional people would enjoy the blessings of life in the United States. All the U. S. need do to achieve these benefits is relax its barriers against skilled immigrants. Talented and energetic people want to come here. Yet we do not greatly avail ourselves of this golden opportunity, barring the door to many of the most economically productive workers in the world. If immigration is such an across-the-board winner, why don't we welcome skilled and hardworking foreigners with open arms? These are some of the reasons: 1) Ignorance of the facts which I'll present here. Instead of positive effects, public opinion charges immigration with increased unemployment, abuse of welfare programs, and lowered quality of our work force. 2) Various groups' concerns about their special interests rather than the welfare of the country as a whole. 3) Nativism, which may or may not be the same as racism in any particular case. THE DIMENSIONS OF PRESENT-DAY IMMIGRATION The most important issue is the total number of immigrants that will be allowed into the United States. It is important to keep our eyes fixed on this issue because it tends to get obscured in emotional discussions of family re-constitution, refugees, geographic origin and racial composition, needs of particular industries, illegality, crime, and so on. The Federation for American Immigration Regform (FAIR ) -- whose rhetoric I shall use as illustration -- says, "Immigration to the United States is at record levels." Figure 1 shows the absolute numbers of legal immigrants over the decades. The recent inflow clearly is far below the inflow around the turn of the century - even including the huge number classified as immigrants in 1989 as part of the 1986 amnesy, most of whom entered prior to the 1980's. Nor does the inclusion of illegal immigrants alter this conclusion. FIGURE 1 Economically speaking, more relevant than these absolute numbers is the volume of immigration as a proportion of the native population, as shown in Figure 2. Between 1901 and 1910 immigrants arrived at the yearly rate of 10.4 per thousand U. S.population, whereas between 1981 and 1987 the rate was only 2.5 per thousand. So the recent flow is less than a fourth as heavy as it was in that earlier period. Australia and Canada admit three times that many immigrants as a proportion of their populations. FIGURE 2 Another way to think about the matter: in 1910, 14.6 percent of the population was foreign born. In 1980 less than 6% of us were born abroad. Not only is the present stock of immigrants much smaller proportionally than it was earlier, but it also is a small proportion considered by itself. We tend to think of ourselves as a "nation of immigrants", but less than 1 person in 15 in the U. S. now was born abroad, including those who arrived many years ago. Who would guess that the U. S. has a smaller share of foreign-born persons than do many countries that we tend to think of as closed homogeneous populations -- including Great Britain, Switzerland, France, and even Sweden? We are not a nation of immigrants but rather of the descendants of immigrants. Furthermore, the absorption of immigrants is much easier now than it was in earlier and simpler times. One has only to read the history of the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony to realize the enormity of the immediate burden that each new load of immigrants represented. But it is the essence of an advanced society that it can more easily handle material problems than can technically- primitive societies. With every year it becomes easier rather than harder for us to make the material adjustments that an increase in population require. That is, immigrant assimilation becomes ever less of a problem - all the more reason that the proportion of immigrants now compared to the past seems relatively small in economic terms. The basis of our present admission policy is pure nepotism. Most visas are granted to foreigners who have family connections here. At present, the U. S. annually admits only about 50,000 people -- perhaps ten percent of total admittances -- on the basis of their job skills. Compare our ten-percent level to Australia's policy which admits almost 50% of its immigrants on the grounds of "economic" criteria, and only 30% as relatives of citizens. Many of those who are admitted via family preferences also are skilled people, of course, but it would be beneficial to us as well as fair to deserving foreigners to allow more people to come on the basis of their merit alone. Indeed, George Borjas of the University of California at Santa Barbara has presented evidence -- still controversial in the magnitude of the effect -- that the economic "quality" of immigrants with given levels of education has declined in recent decades, and the likeliest explanation is an increase in the proportion of immigrants who are admitted as relatives rather than on their merits alone. (On the other hand, Harriet Duleep of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission has recently shown that despite the different admissions policies of the U. S. and Canada - which uses a point system - the economic outcomes are much the same, probably because families carefully evaluate the economic potential of the relatives whom they select to bring in.) For years, phony inflated estimates of the stocks and flows of illegal immigrants were bandied about by opponents of immigration in order to muddy the waters. Since the Simpson- Mazzoli law's amnesty we know that the numbers are quite modest, and much less than even the `mainstream' estimates cited in the press. That scare no longer serves as an effective red herring for the anti-immigration folks. So we can leave it aside and move on. MALTHUSIAN AND OTHER OBJECTIONS Now let's consider the costs and benefits of immigrants. But before beginning, let us note that economic issues may not be the real root of the matter. Economic argument often is a smoke screen for other motives. Only thus can one explain why the the benefits of immigration do not produce the obvious policy actions. Because opponents of immigration wield economic arguments to justify their positions, however, we must consider which of the assertions are sound and which are without merit. Dilution of Capital and Diminishing Returns Malthusian objections to immigration begin with "capital dilution." The supposed "law of diminishing returns"--which every economics text explains should not be thought of as a "law" -- causes output per worker to fall. The "law" is so marvelously simple, direct, and common-sensical that it easily seduces thought -- especially among academics, for whom such abstractions are their bread and butter. The simplicity also makes the Malthusian notion excellent fare for the family newspaper. In contrast, the arguments that demonstrate the inapplicability of Malthusian capital dilution in the context of immigration are relatively complex and indirect. As a consequence, simple-- though incorrect--Malthusianism easily attracts adherents. Nowadays, however, the most important capital is human capital--people's education and skills which adults own themselves and carry with them -- rather than capitalist-supplied physical capital. The bugaboo of production capital has been laid to rest by the experience of the years since World War II, which taught economists that, aside from the shortest-run considerations, physical capital does not pose a major constraint to economic growth. It is human capital that is far more important in a country's development. And immigrants supply their own human capital. The main real cost to natives is the extra capital needed for additional schools and hospitals. But this cost turns out to be small relative to benefits, in considerable part because we finance such construction with bond issues and hence we are largely on a pay-as-you-go basis. Immigrants therefore pay much of their share. Ripping Off the Welfare System The supposed cost that most captures the public's imagination is welfare payments, and services such as schooling. No sooner do immigrants arrive than they become public charges, draining welfare money from the American taxpayers, and paying no taxes, according to popular belief. Solid evidence gives the lie to this charge. In an analysis of Census Bureau data I found that, aside from Social Security and Medicare, immigrant families average about the same level of welfare services as do citizens. When programs for the elderly are included, immigrant families use far less public services than do natives. During the first five years in the U. S., the average immigrant family receives $1,400 (in 1975 dollars) in welfare compared with $2,300 received by a native family. The receipts gradually become equal over several decades. Athur Akhbari of St. Mary's College in Canada showed that recent Canadian data produce almost identical results. And Duleep's finding that the economic results of Canadian and U. S. immigration are quite similar despite the different admission systems adds weight to the conclusion that U. S. immigrants pay much more in taxes than they use in benefits. Of course there must be some systematic abuses of the welfare system by immigrants. But our legislative system is capable of devising adequate remedies. Even now there are provisions in the Immigration and Nationalization Act (8 USC, quoted in Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General, "Number of Newly Arrived Aliens Who Receive Supplemental Security Income Needs to be Reduced", 22 February 1972, pp. 5, 125) that say that aliens are inelegible to receive visas if they are "likely to become public charges), and may be deported if the immigrant "has within five years after entry become a public charge from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen after entry". As to illegals and welfare, FAIR typically says that "Taxpayers are hurt by having to pay more for social service". Ironically, several surveys - for example, that by Sidney Weintraub and Gilberto Cardenas of the University of Texas - show that illegals are even heavier net contributors to the public coffers than are legals, because many of them are in the U. S. only temporarily and therefore without families, as well as because they are afraid to apply for services for fear of being apprehended. Some cities and states with disproportionately high immigration incur significant costs and complications when immigrants first arrive. They deserve sympathy and perhaps federal assistance, though noting that the immigrants' federal taxes will later effectively "pay back" such temporary assistance. THE NON-THREAT OF DISPLACED NATIVE WORKERS The most dramatic argument -- the bogey in the mind of organized labor, which has been the most powerful political force against admitting immigrants since the Nineteenth Century --has been that foreigners take jobs held by natives, and thereby increase native unemployment. The logic is simple: If the number of jobs is fixed, and immigrants occupy some jobs, there must be fewer available jobs for natives. In the shortest run, the demand for any particular sort of worker is indeed inflexible. Therefore, additional immigrants in a given occupation must have some negative impact on wages and/or unemployment in that occupation. For example, the large recent influx of foreign physicians increases the competition U. S. physicians face, and lowers doctors' prices and earnings. But because immigrants come with a variety of skills --- and with as much education on average as the U. S. labor force, and a much higher proportion of professional and technical training -- most occupations feel little impact. And in the longer run, most occupations are not injured at all. A good-sized body of competent recent research shows that immigration does not exacerbate unemployment, even among directly-competing groups. For example, blacks and women have not suffered increased unemployment in California due to immigration. And the research has been done from a variety of angles, using several kinds of data, by several independent scholars. For example, Stephen Moore and I made a systematic study of the effects upon over-all unemployment, by looking at the changes in unemployment in various cities in the U. S. that have experienced various levels of unemployment. We find that if there is displacement, it is too little to be observable. The explanation is that immigrants not only take jobs, they make jobs. Their purchases increase the demand for labor, leading to new hires roughly equal in number to the immigrant workers. Also, immigrants create new jobs directly with the new businesses that they open. A Canadian government survey, which should describe U.S. experience, too, found that almost five percent--9l of the l746 males plus 29l single females in their panel sample-- had started their own businesses within the first three years in Canada. Not only did they employ themselves, but they also employed others, creating a total of 606 jobs. Expressed as a proportion of the 2037 total immigrants, roughly 30% as many jobs were created from scratch as total jobs were held by immigrants. Furthermore, these numbers surely were rising rapidly after the three-year study period; after one year there were 7l self- employed immigrants creating 264 jobs, compared with the 9l and 606 respectively after three years. We can interpret this result as follows: Even if one native Canadian was pushed out of a pre-existing job by each five immigrants--an improbably high number--this effect would be more than made up by the new jobs created by the immigrants' businesses and occupied by natives. The businesses immigrants start are small at first, of course. But surprisingly, small businesses are the most important source of new jobs. Immigrants also tend to be innovative and mobile, crucial qualities for a dynamic economy. Furthermore, potential immigrants have considerable awareness of labor-market conditions in the U.S., and tend not to come if there is little demand for their skills. Even in the few industries where immigrants concentrate, such as the restaurant and hotel industries, there tends not to be a deleterious effect on natives because natives do not want these jobs. Evidence comes from experiments conducted by the INS and San Diego County. In one case, 2l54 illegal aliens were removed from jobs, but the California State Human Resources Agency had almost no success to filling the jobs with U.S. citizens. Wages are pushed downward somewhat in industries and localities where immigrants are concentrated. Barton Smith and Robert Newman of the University of Houston found that adjusted wages are 8% lower in the Texas border cities where the proportion of Mexicans is relatively high. Much of the apparent difference is accounted for by a lower cost of living in the border cities, however. Because immigrants tend to be heterogeneous in their skills, however, they therefore do not have a disproportionate impact on a few industries, and of course salaries rise in the occupations that few immigrants enter. (Indeed, if immigrants spread evenly over occupations, wages will not fall in any occupation.) At the same time, immigrants increase the demand for labor across the range of occupations, because immigrants consume a wide variety of goods and services. THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF IMMIGRATION Cutting the Deficit and Saving the Social Security System If immigrants paid relatively little in taxes they might still burden natives, even with less welfare services for immigrants than for natives. From data on family earnings we can estimate taxes paid tolerably well, and see that this is not at all the case. Immigrants pay more than their share of taxes. Within three to five years, immigrant-family earnings reach and pass those of the average American family. The tax and welfare data together indicate that, on balance, immigrants contribute to the public coffers an average of about $2500 a year in 1990 dollars during each year that the family is in the U. S. These are the amounts that each year natives are enriched through the public coffers for each additional immigrant family. Evaluating the future stream of these contributions as one would a dam or harbor, the present value of an immigrant family discounted at the riskless interest rate of 3% adds up to almost two years' average earnings for a native family head. This means that the economic activities of one average immigrant family reduce the taxes of a single native head of household enough to allow him (her) to retire two years earlier than otherwise. Curiously, contemporary welfare-state policies render immigration more beneficial to natives than it would otherwise be, or than it was in earlier times when welfare was mainly voluntary. In our tax-and-welfare-transfer system immigrants pay in more than they take out. There are two main reason why immigrants make net contributions to the public coffers. First, they tend to come when they are young, strong, and vibrant, at the start of their work lives -- just the opposite of being tired, huddled masses. For example, perhaps 46 percent of immigrants are in the prime labor-force ages of 20 to 39, compared to perhaps 26 percent of natives. And only 4 percent of immigrants are aged 60 or over while about 15 percent of natives are 60 and over. Second, a large proportion have extensive education and well-paying skills that produce hefty tax contributions. The key fact that immigrants arrive in the early prime of their work lives makes a vital contribution to two major looming threats to U. S. economic well-being. One threat, mentioned above, is the graying of the population, which means that each working native has an increasing burden of retired dependents to support. In 1900, there were 5 1/2 persons aged 25-54 for each person aged 60 and over, whereas the Census Bureau projects for the year 2000 only 2 1/2 persons aged 25-54 for each person aged 60 and over -- more than twice as heavy a burden. The youthful-adult age distribution of immigrants also mitigates our looming problem of more and more retired natives being supported by fewer and fewer working persons, increasing the burden on each of the native workers. Indeed, immigration is the only practical way to alleviate this dependency burden. In the public sphere this means that immigrants immediately lessen the Social Security burden upon native workers. (The same holds for the defense burden, of course.) And if there is any one single factor that cramps the government in its economic policies right now, it is old age payments through Social Security and other assistance to the aged. Immigration and the resulting increase in taxes paid also is the only way to reduce the federal budget deficit without making painful cuts in valued services. Boosting Productivity Most important in the long run is the boost that immigrants give to productivity. Though hard to pin down statistically, the beneficial impact of immigration upon productivity of these additional workers and con-sumers is likely to dwarf all other effects after they have been in the country a few years. Some of the productivity increase comes from immigrants working in industries and laboratories that are at the forefront of world technique. We benefit along with others from the contribution to world productivity in, say, genetic engineering that immigrants would not be able to make in their home countries. More immigrants mean more working persons who will think up productivity-enhancing ideas. As Soichiro Honda (of motorcycle and auto fame) said: "Where l00 people think, there are l00 powers; if l,000 people think, there are l,000 powers." It is well to remember that the development of the atomic bomb hinged on the participation of such immigrants as Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann and Stan Ulam, among many others. Contemporary newspaper stories continue this historical saga with the disproportionate numbers of Vietnamese and other oriental immigrant youths achieving such distinctions as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Ben Wattenberg and Karl Zinsmeister of the American Enterprise Institute counted among the forty 1988 finalists, "22 were foreign-born or children of foreign-born parents: from Taiwan, China, Korea, India, Guyana, Poland, Trinidad, Canada, Peru, Iran, Vietnam and Honduras." They also counted that "In San Diego ... one of every four valedictorians and salutatorians has recently been Vietnamese. In Boston, 13 of the 17 public high school valedictorians in the class of 1989 were foreign born." And sometimes it seems as if such names as Wang Computers and Steve Chen dominate our most vigorous industry. An economist always owes you a cost-benefit assessment for policy analysis. So I combined the most important elements pertaining to legal immigrants with a simple macro-economic model, making reasonable assumptions where necessary. The net effect is slightly negative for the early years, but four or five years later the net effect turns positive and large. And when we tote up future costs and benefits, the rate of "investment" return from immigrants to the citizen public is about 20% per annum, a relatively good investment for any portfolio. To summarize the economic facts: The number of immigrants coming to the United States now is proportionally only a fraction of the number that came in earlier years, and hence there is nothing in those numbers to suggest a difficult absorption burden. Concerning welfare payments and services, immigrants -- legal and illegal -- much more than pay for the services that they use with the taxes they pay, leaving a considerable surplus that benefits natives. Immigrants raise productivity, and do not cause an observable amount of unemployment of natives. Admitting far more immigrants than the law now allows will have positive effects upon the incomes of natives, and will be a vital shot in the arm to the continuing vitality of the United States. Do you wonder whether all this is a far-out minority view? Moore and I surveyed prominent economists -- all the ex- presidents of the American Economic Association, and then-members of the Council of Economic Advisers -- about immigration. Economists ought to have a better understanding of the economic effects of immigration than persons who practice other professions, and therefore their views are of special interest. More than four fifths of the respondents said that Twentieth Century immigration has a very favorable impact on economic growth, and none say its impact is unfavorable. Almost three fourths said that illegals have a positive economic impact. And almost all agree that recent immigrants have the same kind of impact as did immigrants in the past. THE REAL REASONS FOR OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION I began by saying that there are at least four reasons why the U. S. does not take in more immigrants despite the clear-cut benefits of doing so. The first is ignorance of the beneficial facts I just cited to you. Second is short-run special interests. This includes the desire of organized labor to restrict competition for jobs in their industry, and the desire of ethnic groups that they not diminish relative to other ethnic groups. The third reason why the rate of immigration is no larger is well-organized opposition and a total lack of organized support. Let us expand on that a bit. FAIR, for example, has a very considerable budget and staff- -$2,000,000 in revenue in 1989. It supports letter-writing campaigns to newspapers and legislators, gets its representatives onto tv and radio, and is in the rolodex of every journalist who writes on the subject. There are several other organizations that play a similar role. On the other side, until recently there was no organization speaking in favor of more immigration generally. Now there at least there is a fledgling American Immigration Institute. And the de Toqueville Institute did excellent work on immigration in 1989 and 1990, before going on to other issues. The fourth check to immigration is nativism or racism, a motive which often lies beneath the surface of the arguments offered against immigration. Rita Simon of American University studied the history of public opinion toward immigrants, and found that the arguments against immigration have remained eerily identical. In the first half of the 19th century, the Irish immigrants in New York and Boston were seen as the possessors of all bad qualities and unassimilable. One newspaper wrote: "America has become the sewer into which the pollutions of European jails are emptied." And another: "Have we not a right to protect ourselves against the ravenous dregs of anarchy and crime, the tainted swarms of pauperism and vice Europe shakes on our shores from her diseased robes?" The 1884 platform of the Democratic party stated its opposition to the "importation of foreign labor or the admission of servile races unfitted by habit, training, religion or kindred for absorption into the great body of our people or for the citizenship which our laws confer." Francis Walker, Commissioner General of the Immigration Service, wrote in 1896: The question today is ... protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe. He cautioned: The entrance into our political, social and industrial life of such vast masses of peasantry, degraded below our utmost conceptions, is a matter which no intelligent patriot can look upon without the gravest apprehension and alarm. In the 1920's sociologist E. A. Ross warned of the social dangers to our culture in the Atlantic Monthly: [T]he immigrant seldom brings in his intellectual baggage anything of use to us -- the admission into our electorate of backward men -- men whose mental, moral and physical standards are lower than our own -- must inevitably retard our social progress and thrust us behind the more uniformly civilized nations of the world. The Saturday Evening Post directed fear and hatred at the "new immigrant" from Southern and Eastern Europe. More than a third of them cannot read and write; generally speaking they have been very difficult to assimilate ... They have been hot beds of dissent, unrest, sedition and anarchy. And: Is not the enormous expense of maintaining asylums, institutions, hospitals, prisons, penitentiaries and the like due in considerable measure to the foreign born, socially inadequate aliens? Later in the 1920's came attacks in the Post against `The Mexican Invasion': We can search in vain throughout the countries of Europe for biological, economic and social conditions fraught with a fraction of the danger inherent in the immigration of peons to the United States. Nowadays such statements are not acceptable in public. But we'd be kidding ourselves to believe that many people don't think them. One can see the traces in nativist codewords such as "disturbing national homogeneity", "difficulty of assimilation", and "changing our national culture". WHICH POLICIES WILL BEST SERVE OUR INTERESTS? The most important issue is the total number of immigrants that will be allowed into the United States. We must keep our attention on this matter. As long as we do not permit the discussion of other matters from distracting us from that key issue, however, there are some other beneficial changes that we might profitably contemplate, also. Of course the United States benefits from the inflow of highly educated people with high productive potential, and especially people with technical skills. The 1990 legislation increases the flow of talented persons by increasing the proportion of the immigrant quota that is chosen on the basis of economic characteristics rather than because they are related to U. S. citizens. This is also worth doing to reduce nepotistic "family connections" admissions, and increase the fairness of immigration policy toward the meritorious applicants who have no connections. The new system does not greatly increase the flow of highly- skilled people, however. An additional 100,000 or so people will be admitted under the new provisions for economically-selected persons, and 40,000 of these will be the skilled persons (the other 60,000 being dependents). The overall increase in quota will yield perhaps another 30,000 highly-skilled people. This is still a small increment to our economy, though most valuable. The most effective way to substantially increase the number of skilled immigrants is by simply increasing the total number of immigrants admitted. The 1990 legislation contains a beneficial provision allowing entry to persons who will invest a million dollars and create employment for ten Americans. This provision would not be as profitable for natives as an outright sale of the opportunity to immigrate, as some other countries are doing. But it, too, moves in the right direction even if not far enough. Yet the new law allows in a maximum of 10,000 persons per year, a piddling number by any standard. An additional policy that the U. S. might employ is to simply give permanent-resident visas to those foreign students who come to the U. S. to study. Many foreign students already find ways to remain under the present rules -- about half among them students of engineering and science. And even more foreign graduates would remain if allowed to. This could push up our rate of progress even further. Going even further, if young people abroad knew that they would be able to remain in the United States after completing their education here, more would choose to come here to study. This would provide multiple benefits to the United States. Given assurance that they could remain, these students could afford to pay more realistic tuition rates than are now charged, which would benefit U. S. universities. And these increased rates would enable the universities to expand their programs to serve both foreign and native students better. Best of all, of course, would be the increased number of highly competent scientific and managerial workers who would be part of the American work force. Going still further, a larger number of students requires a larger number of professors. And a larger number of openings for professors, especially in such fields as engineering and science, will attract from abroad more of the world's best scientists. This will enhance the process which has brought to the United States so many foreigners who have won Nobel prizes in the U. S. to the advantage as well as honor of this country. Political power and economic well-being are intimately related. A nation's international standing is heavily influenced by its economic situation, both the standard of living of individuals and the total output of the residents taken together. And nowadays, the future of any country -- most especially the future of a major country that is in the vanguard with respect to production and living standards -- depends entirely on its progress in knowledge and skill and productivity. This is more true now than in the past because technology changes more rapidly than in earlier times. Even a single invention can speedily alter a country's economic or military future -- consider, for example, the atom bomb or the computer -- as no invention could in the past, even the invention of the gun. That's why immigration represents for the U. S. perhaps the most amazing opportunity that any country has ever had to get ahead of its political rival or rivals -- the safest, cheapest, surest policy ever. Again, however, the very best way for the U. S. to boost the rate of technological advance, and to raise the standard of living at large, is simply to take in more immigrants. I would suggest that the number of visas be increased by, say, half a million for three years. If no major problems arise with that total - and there is every reason to expect no problems, because even another million or two million immigrants a year would still be at a rate lower than we have successfully admitted in earlier times, when assimilation was more difficult - then boost the number by another half-million, and so on, until any unexpected problems arise. CONCLUSION Immigration policy presents an opportunity to the U. S. like the opportunity which faced the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, when black baseball players did not play on any white professional team. Hiring Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, at the price of antagonizing some players and club owners, put the Dodgers way ahead of the pack. In the case of immigration, unlike baseball, no other team can duplicate our feat, because immigrants mainly want to come here. All we need is the vision and guts and ambition that Branch Rickey had. (A bit of his religious-style zeal mixed in does no harm.) Can we see our national interest clearly enough to turn our back on unfounded beliefs that some groups will lose jobs to immigrants, and to surmount the racism that is part of us all? Or will we pay a heavy price in growth and efficiency for maintaining our prejudices and pandering to the supposed interests of our special groups - organized labor, environmentalists, and others - which do not even benefit them in the long run? Julian L. Simon teaches business administration at the University of Maryland, College Park, and co-founded the American Immigration Institute. His The Economic Consequences of Immigration was published last year. page 1/article9 immcaspi/June 25, 1993 FOOTNOTES Simon, Julian L., Stephen Moore, and Richard Sullivan, "The Effect of Immigration Upon Aggregate Unemployment: An Across-City Estimation," xeroxed, 1988. Simon, Rita J., Public Opinion and the Immigrant (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1985). Smith, Barton, and Robert Newman, "Depressed Wages Along the U.S.-Mexican Border: An Empirical Analysis," _E_c_o_n_o_m_i_c_ _I_n_q_u_i_r_y, XV, January, l977, pp. 56-66. Weintraub, Sidney, and Gilberto Cardenas, "The Use of Public Services by Undocumented Aliens in Texas," Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Unviersity of Texas, Austin, Policy Research Project Report, 1984. page 2/article9 immcaspi/June 25, 1993