Tag Archives: immigration

Another Musing on Immigration

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Juliana Gruenwald, in a National Journal piece, reports that Senators Mark Warner (D, VA), Chris Coons (D, DE), Jerry Moran (R, KS) and Marco Rubio (R, FL) are proposing an immigration bill—Start-up Act 2.0—that would create two new visas.

One visa would make it easier for foreign students who’ve gained American schools’ post-graduate STEM degrees to remain in the US after graduation.  These folks also would be eligible for permanent residency if they then remained employed in a STEM field for the next five years (and presumably eligible for citizenship, but this visa is separate from that).

The other visa would be for the roughly 75,000 skilled legal immigrants per year who start a business in the US, employ Americans, and invest or raise capital in the US.  This entrepreneur visa would provide another pathway to permanent residence and eventually to citizenship.

This is a step in the right direction; however, it isn’t enough by itself, and it’s muddled by inclusions that, while important in their own right, have nothing to do with immigration.

It isn’t enough because it only addresses one narrow aspect of one part of a three-part immigration problem.  I wrote earlier about those three parts; some of that is quoted here for convenience:

Most modern Conservatives agree that our borders need to be secured, including against illegal immigration.  This need is based on…the right of any nation—the right of any society in their social compact—to determine for themselves who they will allow into their nation: no foreign entity has an inherent right to enter another nation without that nation’s permission….

There are two additional aspects to immigration, and if these are not also solved, the immigration matter will continue to be a serious risk to our national security.  These two aspects are what to do about the population of illegal aliens currently present in the United States, and what to do about legal entry for immigrants into our country.

[W]e need to remove the impediments to legal immigration, we need to eliminate the quotas that put an upper bound on the number of talented who want to work here, on the number of foreign-born who are educated in our Universities and want to stay past their college days. … It simply shouldn’t be that hard to enter the United States legally.  There should be border crossing stations every mile along our border….

These visas are, as I said, a step in the right direction, but the idea falls short on two fronts: it adds to the breadth and complexity of the visa bureaucracy without addressing the overall problem of legal entry for all immigrants, and it doesn’t address at all the other two aspects of our immigration problem.

The muddle consists of tax and regulation clauses that the Senators consider politically necessary to get the bill passed—or at least publicly debated in Senator Harry Reid’s (D, NV) Senate.  Among these extraneous items are:

  • a tax credit intended to encourage start-ups to engage in R&D,
  • a tax exemption that would eliminate capital gains taxes on investments in start-ups held for at least five years, and
  • a requirement that any new regulation with an impact of $100 million or more be subject to a cost-benefit analysis prior to approval.

These are important in their own right, and the need to include these things, which are irrelevant to an immigration bill, in an immigration bill is a testament to the partisan, obstructionist nature of the Democrats’ hold on the Senate.

The tax questions are better handled in a tax reform bill that moves to a flat tax and maintains that flatness by eliminating subsidies of all types.  The isolated regulation item is better handled in a separate regulatory reform bill that eliminates most of the existing regulations (much of which are mutually conflicting, much more of which are obsolete) and that returns regulation generation to the Congress as the most direct means of forcing that body actively to satisfy in its regulatory oversight responsibility.

The Senators’ immigration bill is well worth supporting, but only if it’s made clear that this is only an opening salvo in the struggle seriously to reform our immigration process.

Immigration Promises

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President Obama said Saturday he would seek to tackle immigration policy in the first year of a second term.  He told Univision

This is something I care deeply about.  It’s personal to me.

On the other hand, Candidate Obama promised to tackle immigration policy in his first year in office.  In a September 2008 speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, he promised

This election is about the 12 million people living in the shadows, the communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hand. They are counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves, and rise above the fear, and rise above the demagoguery, and finally enact comprehensive immigration reform.

He then went on to spend the first year and a half of his term fighting exclusively for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Speaking of which, Obama secured passage of PPACA through his purchase of Congressman Luis Gutierrez’ (D, IL) vote and the votes of his Congressional Hispanic Caucus with a promise of immigration reform.  Congressman Gutierrez:

I’ve spent the past week speaking at length with the President and his staff.  …  I believe we have a commitment to move forward on a comprehensive immigration reform package as soon as possible.

Having welched on these two commitments, why should we believe him a third time?

Or is this another case of “Once I’m reelected, I’m no longer accountable, and I can do anything I want?”

Government and Innovation

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Government’s role is to create an environment within which men can prosper in accordance with their own efforts and the degree of those efforts.  Thus, legitimate government sets laws that prevent one from cheating another and laws that require each to honor the contracts to which they agreed.  Legitimate governments do very little more than that.  Government does not have, for instance, a legitimate role in determining what those contracts must accomplish, or how they must be structured.  Nor does government have a legitimate role in inuring any of us from the failure of our efforts: it is, in fact, from those failures that our enterprises grow stronger for the next effort.  It is in the fermentation vats of competition, unconstrained by government, that innovation occurs.

Why, then, is what used to be a uniquely American skill of innovation moving apace overseas and no longer occurring here?  Here’s an example of this failure, and it illustrates an answer.  Despite our need to become energy independent, for a range of reasons I’ll not go into here, and despite our Progressives’ push to move away from coal, oil, and gas as the primary source of our energy, nuclear power innovation is moving to the People’s Republic of China, at the behest of American innovators.  In this illustration, I’ll leave aside the question of helping the PRC obtain technological superiority over us (which is troubling in itself).

The Washington Post reports that a startup called TerraPower has developed a nuclear power breakthrough that involves traveling wave reactor technology and this technology’s ability to use depleted uranium to power a nuclear plant for decades without need of refueling or waste removal.  However, instead of looking to deploy this technology in the US, TerraPower, heavily backed by Bill Gates of Microsoft fame, is talking to the PRC government about selling its technology there.  How does this work?

For one thing—for the driving thing—innovators still are human, and humans still can go anywhere they like.  And humans, being humans, are going to go where it’s easiest to follow their dream, easiest to satisfy their own drives and imperatives.  With business, and especially high-tech business, those places are where the conditions conducive to development and growth are most available.

The US’ rules for permitting and environmental studies, especially for nuclear power, and the US’ litigation environment that encourages lawsuits over any perceived slight, whether environmental, social, or something else all serve to drive the costs of bringing innovation from the laboratory into the market to astronomical heights.  Although, in TerraPower’s case, this might be irrelevant: “Current U.S. rules don’t even cover the type of technology TerraPower hopes to use.”

Additionally, the US’ visa rules are outright stupid.  We educate highly talented and motivated engineers and scientists, and then, because they’re aliens, we send them back to their home countries, even if they want to stay—the quotas are too low and for the few allowed, it takes too long for the converted visas to be issued.  Then, getting talented, motivated, already educated—and experienced—foreign engineers and scientists (back) into the US also is a Herculean task, made worse by not having allowed those freshly trained to stay: the quotas are set too low, and the few authorized visas are slow to be issued.  In either case, why should we have quotas at all?  We should welcome these people with open arms, as we did with the German scientists after WWII, who built our space program.

On the other hand, the PRC has programs like “Thousand Foreign Talents” to attract the world’s best and brightest into China.  And they have an active, empirically visible interest in tech and in having an environment conducive to development—and deployment.  While the US is shrinking its satellite and exploration programs and withdrawing from manned space efforts, while hoping for small change from companies like SpaceX (which NASA is in the process of stiffing due to budgetary problems), China is accelerating its programs, including intending to put a man on the moon by 2020—a feat we’ve been too timid to think about trying for 40 years.

As the WaPo concludes

The lesson is clear: The U.S. government needs to be just as aggressive as the Chinese in creating incentives for entrepreneurs and technology start-ups to grow and mature. At a time when the U.S. is downplaying efforts to attract and retain foreign entrepreneurs and flirting with legislation that could slow the pace of digital innovation, it is strangely China that is proving to be more proactive in creating the conditions for innovators to thrive. Bill Gates is one of America’s great entrepreneurial legends. Something feels wrong about seeing him launch a new chapter in his tech career in China and not the U.S.

Hmm….

Some More Thoughts on Immigration

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DoJ’s decision to sue yet another State, this time Utah, over a State-level effort to enforce immigration law, and thereby protect its people, gives rise to this post.  Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department, with this suit, is once again trotting out its tired beef that ” [T]he law mandates enforcement measures that can disrupt immigration practices by the federal government in the area.”  Holder claims, with a straight face, that

…a patchwork of immigration laws is not the answer and will only create further problems in our immigration system.

Holder further insists without a trace of irony that under the law, individuals could potentially be harassed and wrongfully detained.  This, though, is nothing but prior restraint, which is not allowed in other legal contexts.  Holder needs to show the harassment and wrongful detention that’s actually occurred, not just speculate about an uncertain and unlikely future.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insists that

This kind of legislation diverts critical law enforcement resources from the most serious threats to public safety and undermines the vital trust between local jurisdictions and the communities they serve.

Napolitano, however, is being wholly disingenuous on a number of grounds.  Illegal immigration by serious criminals—drug runners and “ordinary”  criminals, for instance—is a serious threat, and the Utah law requires proof of citizenship explicitly only on arrests for serious crimes; the police are only authorized, not required, to ask for proof of citizenship on lesser arrests.  Further, illegals aren’t part of the community; the “vital trust” meme is wholly irrelevant.  Finally, if such legislation “diverts critical law enforcement resources” from doing their jobs, then what is it, exactly, these “resources” are doing instead?

Others suggest that rather than harassing the States that are trying to protect their citizens with immigration enforcement measures, DoJ should go after the sanctuary counties and cities, which actively and illegally shelter illegal aliens.  Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL), for instance, suggested that

the Attorney General take a little timeout from his lawsuit against Arizona or Alabama or other states, and focus a little bit of his attention on a major jurisdiction such as Cook County that is willfully and deliberately acting to undermine federal law enforcement.

Even more egregious is that the administration has refused to take any action against states and localities that affirmatively, proactively and intentionally impede the immigration enforcement in the United States.  These jurisdictions include San Francisco County, Santa Clara County, Washington, D.C…..

Additionally, Senator Sessions noted that Napolitano had told the Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of October that she had not looked into the Cook County immigration policies.

What is, then, Holder’s and this administration’s federal government Immigration System?  It’s Open Borders, anyone can come in, no matter who they are, from terrorists to drug runners to general criminals to farm workers to factory workers.  There are some exceptions, though, that we do keep out.  If a potential immigrant, or a legal alien wannabe, has highly valuable technical skills, or is well-versed in IT or science or research, then join our lottery.  We’ll take the top 5; the rest can stay home and try again next year.  If a foreign student has graduated from one of our universities, and now wants to convert his student visa into a more permanent one so he can stay and work in the US, well, good for that student.  He should put a star on his calendar for his success.  But he needs to get out and go home.  We don’t have room for him.  That’s our federal government Immigration System, and that’s unacceptable.

In the meantime, all those drug runners and terrorists and run-of-the-mill criminals are left to the individual States to deal with—but without a State law to help them.

Thoughts on Immigration

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Most modern Conservatives agree that our borders need to be secured, including against illegal immigration.  This need is based on national security imperatives, recognition of the need to preserve the integrity of our being a nation of laws, and not a nation of personal convenience, and our need to foster an environment of respect for law.  This also is based on the right of any nation—the right of any society in their social compact—to determine for themselves who they will allow into their nation: no foreign entity has an inherent right to enter another nation without that nation’s permission.  I won’t pursue the matter of secure borders further.  However, this is only part of the immigration problem that any nation faces.

There are two additional aspects to immigration, and if these are not also solved, the immigration matter will continue to be a serious risk to our national security.  These two aspects are what to do about the population of illegal aliens currently present in the United States, and what to do about legal entry for immigrants into our country.  On the matter of the illegal aliens present, I frankly don’t have any good answers to offer.  We tried a general, one-time amnesty in the ’80s, and that was a dismal failure.  Rep Luis Gutierriz (Dem, IL) has suggested something along the lines of requiring current illegal aliens to register, pass a background check, and pay a fine, as well as undergo certain education training.  This seems inadequate by itself, but combined with a requirement to leave the United States and then come back (paying the fine on the way out or as a condition of being allowed back in) this might form the seed of a proper, effective treatment of our illegal aliens—the very great majority of whom are decent and honorable people who have committed the single crime of entering our country illegally—their only crime, but a serious crime, nonetheless.

But a successful solution for our present population of illegal aliens, together with a successful solution to our border control problem, still are a complete failure to successfully address our immigration problem until we also (mind that: also, not in isolation from the other two) solve the problem of entry into our exceptional country.  For the fact is, the United States needs immigration to survive as a free and prosperous nation that fosters individual liberties and individual responsibilities.

We benefit from immigration from a national security perspective.  We get significant numbers of immigrants who have left nations who are our enemies and nations who would like to see harm come to us even if they aren’t overt enemies.  These immigrants aren’t the dregs of those nations’ societies; they are as brain- and talent- and work ethic-laden as any of the other immigrants we receive.  And our gain from these men and women is our enemies’ direct loss.

We need immigration because immigrants bring with them dedication and work ethic.  They’re here because they want to be, sometimes at great personal cost and risk.  None of them is forced to be here, and no one has been for nearly 150 years.  Immigrants bring with them new ways of looking at old problems, including the seemingly intractable ones that we face.  Immigrants bring with them good ideas and a great deal of individual talent.  Even when their ideas are bad, the discussions and debates over ideas only serve to sharpen our thinking concerning our own ideas and solutions.

Finally, we need immigration for our survival as a nation.  Like most national populations of the world, ours is an aging population, and we would face a dramatic implosion from this simple demographic fact were it not for immigration.  (If you doubt the power of demography consider Social Security: a program conceived in the 1930s when post-retirement life expectancy was about 6 years, and there were roughly 7 workers paying for each retiree, now must cover the retirement costs of a population whose post-retirement life expectancy is some 16 years and do so with only 3 workers per retiree, and with that number falling to 2 over the next couple of decades.)  Immigration is, literally, our country’s life’s blood; it keeps our population younger and refreshed.

Against a replacement birthrate of, roughly, 2.1 babies per woman to maintain a stable population that is neither growing nor shrinking, the United States’ birthrate is around 1.8.  We’re not alone in this.  China is an aging population, with a birthrate of around 1.5 children per woman (1.8 if you believe Chinese government figures), and the Chinese failing demographic situation is exacerbated by its one-child policy and its cultural preference for boy babies to the extent that girl fetuses are routinely aborted, and girl babies all too frequently are simply abandoned soon after birth.  France (birthrate of around 1.9 in 2009) and Germany (birthrate of 1.37 in 2007, perhaps rising some since then) are aging populations.  They have significant immigration, but they’ve also made, to their current chagrin, the deliberate decision not to assimilate those immigrants—these live apart from the “native” French and Germans.  Russia’s birthrate is around 1.3, and its population already is demonstrating the effects of this: its 1990s population of 148 million has fallen to 143 million today, and it’s projected to be in the neighborhood of 110 million by 2050—just two generations from now, in our grandchildren’s time.  Iran is an aging population, with birthrates collapsing from 6.6 babies per woman as recently as the ’80s to its present 1.9.  These nations are not producing babies from “native” families at a replacement rate, and with the apparent exception of France and Germany, they’re not gaining from immigration (arguably, France and Germany are not gaining in any meaningful way); their populations will continue to shrink and to age.

We don’t need this implosion, or even “mere” shrinkage or aging; we need immigration.  This means we need to remove the impediments to legal immigration, we need to eliminate the quotas that put an upper bound on the number of talented who want to work here, on the number of foreign-born who are educated in our Universities and want to stay past their college days.  As I wrote earlier, it can take a couple of months to get a non-immigrant visa; B-1 visas can take a month, H-1B visas as long as six months, and the H-1Bs have very low annual quotas. It simply shouldn’t be that hard to enter the United States legally.  There should be border crossing stations every mile along our border—yes, a practical exaggeration, but my point is clear, and just incidentally, easier to reach and more frequent border crossing stations would put the human traffickers—the mules, and worse—immediately out of business (and could serve as staging locations for more effective border patrols).  Visa approval should occur in days, not months (in today’s computerized world, it shouldn’t take months to run a background check), and there should be no quotas.