Hacker News Reader

Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

While I have no quibble with the economics presented here, it is very important not to overlook the potential negative externalities immigrants create by voting. The data suggests that immigrants often enter the US and vote in ways that make the US more like their homeland:

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2012/11/what-gop-can-teach...

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2012/11/why-hispanics-are-...

Whether this particular instance is a good thing or not depends on your perspective (and is really not something to discuss here), but it is important to recognize that immigrants can do a lot of good/bad in the voting booth.

Unfortunately, political externalities are a hugely overlooked aspect of this issue.

View on HN

immigrants can do a lot of good/bad in the voting booth.

Most definitely. Since a country's attractiveness to immigrants is most directly based upon that country's perceived quality of life or value; it should be a given that the culture and political environment of that country are "successful" and worthy of protection. This article mostly ignores the enormously negative cultural and political impact that free migration would have.

While free migration would be an interesting experiment and have some benefits - swamping the target countries' political environments with people from other cultures who probably don't have the understanding of how to sustain what made those target environments successful in the first place would be detrimental.

I'm not sure why you think that cultural and political impact of free migration would be "enormously" negative. It's not like free migration is something that hasn't been tried, it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s.

And I should say that it's much better that the most successful cultural/political environments expand rather than just be preserved, at least if you are interested in them as a means of advancing the welfare of people rather than just them in and of themselves.

it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s

Before the 1920s, there was little incentive to immigrate to the US if your motivation was to be a ward of the state. Since the 1920s, our welfare state has grown by leaps and bounds. The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services. The article barely gave a nod to it, but the numbers show that the recent waves of immigrants use several times the amount of social services as natives, but they offer very little productivity-wise or intellectual capital-wise. It's a bad deal for the US, made worse by the fact that the people we're most encouraging to immigrate from our corrupt neighbor to the south are the citizens least likely to care that they're breaking the law by being here.

expand rather than just be preserved

I'm not talking about rigidly maintaining the status quo. I'm talking about managed growth through accepting immigrants using a process that is fair to incoming immigrants from ALL countries and is respectful of the society that fostered something worth immigrating to.

"The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services."

That's a bold claim. Can you support it?

Mind, the US in the 1920s had quite a few measures that kept immigrants and most actual minorities from voting if they lived in the wrong places. Even then, they faced bloc-voting problems in the form of Tammany Hall.

Couldn't the US emigrants correspondingly change the way other countries work?

Really what we're saying here is that governments would no longer have a monopoly on administration, since people who didn't like their government could move freely to another jurisdiction. Since I didn't actively choose my government -- I just happened to be born here -- I think this is a great thing.

I'm generally a proponent of exit over voice, but I don't think this would be a strong effect except in the case of tiny tax havens attracting super rich people. Unfortunately, having a bunch of people migrate to your country does not benefit politicians unless those people reliably vote for you.

> Couldn't the US emigrants correspondingly change the way other countries work?

Sure, people of European descent in general are like magic pixie dust:

> In this paper, we (1) construct a new database on the European share of the population during the early stages of colonization and (2) examine its impact on the level of economic development today. We find a remarkably strong impact of colonial European settlement on development. According to one illustrative exercise, 47 percent of average global development levels today are attributable to Europeans. One of our most surprising findings is the positive effect of even a small minority European population during the colonial period on per capita income today, contradicting traditional and recent views. There is some evidence for an institutional channel, but our findings are most consistent with human capital playing a central role in the way that colonial European settlement affects development today.[1]

but emigration from Europe/US is not really related to immigration to the Europe/US. Either could happen without the other.

[1]http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Ross_Levine/other%20files/Euro...

Traditional views my foot. Everyone always acknowledged that colonialism developed new areas. The problem was that it developed them exclusively for the benefit of the colonist.

The motivation behind colonialism might have been selfish, but according to the article, it still resulted in economic development benefiting everyone today.

tl;dr The British may have been greedy jerks, but they still got rid of the thuggees (making the roads safe) and (mostly) ended sati. Actually it's hard to find a selfish motive for that last one.

The number of people wanting to emigrate to prosperous countries probably outnumber the people in those prosperous countries; let alone the number of people that want to emigrate from a prosperous country to a less-prosperous one.

Sorry to use harsh words, but that's bullshit.

Recent immigrants are a very small minority in the United States. The only reason they can affect the election is because approximately half of non-immigrants vote Democrat. They can be "the straw that broke the camel's back", but the straw can't break the back if the camel wasn't overloaded to begin with.

And by talking about non-whites vs whites you're confusing the issue. Hispanics whose family have lived in the United States longer than the United States has existed are far more American than European immigrants who came over last year.

Also, it takes a long time to get citizenship, so it's not like they're just came off the boat.

Your argument is both irrelevant and incomplete.

The parent claimed that a greater level of immigration would likely have dramatic electoral consequences. You implied that the current level of immigration does not have dramatic electoral consequences. These claims are completely orthogonal.

Furthermore, the latter implication (which I assume you made on the basis that it is the only way the rest of your post conceivably supports the claim that the parent argument is bullshit) doesn't follow from the fact that the electoral consequences of immigration represent a continuation of an existing trend.

Doubling a really small number does not make a large number. We're still talking well under 1% annually. The only reason that recent immigrants can affect the election is because recent immigrants are voting the same way as a large portion of the current electorate. That argument applies today and it will apply in the future even if immigration levels double. If they go up an order of magnitude, it might not, but nobody is suggesting that.

I'm having trouble parsing your last paragraph. There are at least 3 different things that "latter implication" can refer to...

We're still talking well under 1% annually.

I.e., 10% over 10 years. Or 20% over 10 years if we double our immigration rate.

Note that I'm generally in favor of increased immigration, I just don't think we should ignore the possible negative consequences.

Recent immigrants are a very small minority in the United States.

The articles I linked to discuss recent and not so recent immigrants, together with their children. The group being discussed is currently the largest minority group in the US.

The only reason they can affect the election is because approximately half of non-immigrants vote Democrat.

That is true because, as you note, immigration numbers are low. If immigration numbers do not stay low, that will change.

Hispanics whose family have lived in the United States longer than the United States has existed are far more American than European immigrants who came over last year.

Very true, though "americanness" is tangential to the point I'm making. Also, European immigration to the US is extremely small, and basically irrelevant to the numbers.

Americanness is a very central argument, though. In my experience, many immigrants are much more enthusiastically "American" than are most of the rest of us. They made the huge decision to move to America of today and very enthusiastically do not want America to change. Ironically many of them are very anti-immigration.

There are at least 40 million people who either have green cards or have become citizens, who were not born in the USA.

Plus all the illegals who are not supposed to vote (but it is reasonable to assume that some small percentage of them do).

With regards to the US political balance among major parties, there are good reasons why things always stabilize around two roughly equal parties, so I wouldn't worry about immigrants giving the Democrats a permanent majority. The parties simply re-adjust their policy mixes until they appeal to about half the electorate.

In terms of long-term policy shifts caused by immigration, well, ethnic diversity is a very good predictor of having a relatively stingy social welfare system compared to other countries of a similar wealth level. People are generally less willing to see their money taxed away to be used on people they think of as less like them. As someone who's pretty liberal I regard this as a bullet I have to bite to support immigration, but I suspect that's not your viewpoint.

...ethnic diversity is a very good predictor of having a relatively stingy social welfare system compared to other countries of a similar wealth level.

Um, no.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-on-bryan-capl...

The parties simply re-adjust their policy mixes until they appeal to about half the electorate.

You say that as though the merits of various policies are equal along an infinite continuum.

Sure, the parties will readjust. Apparently, we're going to readjust after this election to debt-to-GDP ratios that collapsed Greece, immigration policies that will create a race to the bottom culturally, and a continued emphasis on government power over Liberty. We have decided as a nation to compromise with our worst influences.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com