THE LAST STUPID INTERFERENCE WITH LIBERTY A Speech for the Ellis Island Celebration Julian L. Simon Worldwide, barriers to freedom have been collapsing. Messages and ideas now travel at the speed of light, cheaply, by satellite, telephone, radio, and fax. And financial capital moves from country to country with dizzying quickness and mercury-like resistance to governmental control. Mobility of goods and people has increased from a walker's pace to jet speed. And political barriers to trade have diminished, despite current newspaper stories about trade hassles. All these astonishing changes - together with the increase in the level and distribution of income and education even in the poorer countries - bestow ever-greater liberty on ever-increasing numbers of persons. Yet there remain barriers to the movement of the most important of "goods" -- human beings. Against the economic and cultural welfare of individual nations, and against the interests of all civilization, countries still prevent people from going where they want to go. True, people are no longer penned up in the country in which they are born now, except for the Soviet Union, China, Albania, Viet Nam, and a few other countries. But without the freedom to enter where they want to go, freedom to leave is of diminished value. We still tell almost all people of talent and energy who wish to join our society, "You may not enter unless you have relatives in the U. S." What foolishness! An unassailable body of recent economic research proves that we are made richer by allowing people to enter freely. We also know from a body of indubitable historical and sociological research that migrants carry valuable ideas with them, and create new ideas as a result of their having lived in two cultures. Here are the key demographic and economic facts: *Immigrants do not cause native unemployment, even among low-paid and minority groups. A spate of recent studies, using a variety of methods, have shown that the bogey of "displacement" of natives does not exist. New entrants not only take jobs, they make jobs. And the jobs they create with their purchasing power, and with the new businesses which they start up, are at least as numerous as the jobs which immigrants fill. *Immigrants do not rip off natives by over-using welfare services. Immigrants typically arrive when they are young and healthy. Hence new immigrant families use less welfare services than do average native families because immigrants do not receive expensive Social Security and other aid to the aged. And immigrant families pay more taxes than do native families. Therefore, immigrants contribute more to the public coffers in taxes than they draw out in welfare services. Every year, an average immigrant family puts about $2500 into the pockets of natives from this excess of taxes over public costs. In this way, each immigrant family makes it possible for a native breadwinner to retire two years earlier than otherwise. *Immigrants bring high-tech skills that the economy needs badly.. Immigrants are not "huddled masses." (This was true even a century ago.) The proportion of new arrivals with post- graduate education is far higher than the average of the native labor force. *Immigrants possess desirable economic traits. Compared to natives, immigrants save more, apply more effort during working hours, have twice as great a propensity to be self-employed, have higher rates of participation in the labor force, and are unusually self-reliant and innovative. Immigrants contribute important new productivity-enhancing ideas to industry and science, and they win Nobel prizes. *Immigration is low rather than high now, relative to historical rates of immigration in the peak years at the turn of the century. Immigration as a proportion of population is less than a fourth of what it was earlier. Even in absolute numbers, total immigration is nowhere near its volume in those years when U. S. population was less than half of what it now is. The foreign-born population is only about 6 percent now -- less than the proportion in such countries as Great Britain, France, and Germany, and vastly lower than Australia and Canada. The U. S. is not at present a "country of immigrants", even including people who arrived long ago. Rather, it is a country of the descendants of immigrants. *Natural resources and the environment are not at risk from immigration. The long-term trends reveal that our air and water are getting cleaner rather than dirtier, and our supplies of natural resources are becoming more available rather than exhausted, contrary to common belief. Immigration increases the technical knowledge which speeds these benign trends. *Immigrants increase the flexibility of the economy. Newcomers are unusually mobile both geographically and occupationally. Hence they mitigate the tight labor markets that the U. S. is beginning to experience. *Immigration reduces the uncuttable social costs of the elderly. More and more of the U. S. population is retired, with a smaller proportion of adults in the labor force. New immigrants typically are just entering the prime of their work lives and tax-paying years. Immigration is the only feasible way to lighten the Social Security burden of the aging U. S. population. It also reduces the federal deficit, which would not exist if people still lived the short lives, and had the large number of children, that they did early in the century. High on Congress's agenda in September is the Morrison immigration bill. It could do more to advance all the goals of the United States during the next decade or two than any other pending legislation. Yet the Bush administration and organized labor -- an unlikely couple -- seek to gut the bill because of economic ignorance and racism. The main thrust of the Morrison bill is an increase in the number of persons who will be allowed to enter the United States. Keep your eyes focused upon the crucial overall number, and the attempt of the anti-immigration lobby and Senator Alan Simpson to put a "cap" on immigration. The total matters more than how the overall number will be divided up among family reconstitution, skill-based immigration, a point system, this country or that one, et cetera et cetera. What cheats us of the benefits of having more immigrants? Simply put: "Common sense," economic ignorance, and racism (or "nativism", in more polite lingo). When Congress reconvenes, we shall see whether our true national interests finally prevail to increase immigration, or whether the forces of racism and bad economic thinking will triumph once again. Julian L. Simon teaches business administration at the University of Maryland, and is the founder of the American Immigration Institute. His The Economic Consequences of Immigration was published by Basil Blackwell and the Cato Institute. 110 Primrose Street Chevy Chase, Md. 20815 301-951-0922 page 1/article0 immellis/August 22, 1990