Let Them In?
Promoted to the Wall Street Journal editorial board just three years ago, the young journalist Jason Riley has sought to prove his bona fides, and then some, by publishing a new book whose title reads like a parody of the standard Journal position on immigration—Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.
Like most of the immigrationists at the Journal, Riley bases his arguments not so much on principles of a natural right to migration as on promises that mass immigration will “grow the economy” and make us all rich, if we’re only big enough to get over our nativism and turn off Lou Dobbs.
Riley wants the “free market” to regulate immigration policy, and thus actually criticizes things like last summer’s “comprehensive immigration reform” proposal on the grounds that they’re too restrictive with their measures favoring immigrants of higher skill and education levels.
Needless to say, Riley and his new volume quickly caught the eye of the Cato Institute, and Wednesday it hosted a “forum” on Riley’s new book, with commentary by open-borders advocate Michael Barone and moderated by open-borders advocate Dan Griswald. In this short review, it’s worth focusing in on one of his central arguments for “letting them in.”
Open-borders advocate have always been fond of gesturing towards history, usually in some cloying reminder that “we’re all descended from immigrants” blah blah blah. But Riley does something better. He points out that during the major waves of Irish immigration in the 19th century, many restrictionists claimed that the low- to no-skilled Paddies were not only undesirable but unnecessary—the rapidly industrializing economy needed high-skill manufacturing labor not a bunch of peasants. Well, the Irish came anyway and, proving the naysayers wrong, quickly found employment.
The Paddies did the jobs average Americans wouldn’t—indeed, as Riley highlights, dangerous jobs that Ameircans wouldn’t force on their slaves (who were, of course, valuable property). At the forum, Riley quoted from a letter in which a riverboat employer talked of some particularly awful and perilous job he’d delegate to the Irishmen, who were numerous and expendable and wouldn’t be missed if they fell overboard.
Riley brings this up as a counterpoint to the oft-heard refrain “they’re taking our jobs!” leveled at immigrants by people who don’t much want to “let them in.” In some cases this is clearly true, but as Riley points out—and here he’s right—no economy has a fixed amount of jobs, that is, positions that either go to a native or an illegal. To the contrary, just as the Irish did the really terrible jobs many restricitonists didn’t think would crop up, today’s Latinos are in effect creating new forms of employment.
Twenty-five years ago, most middle-class dads would go out and mow the lawn on weekends; few would even consider hiring some fruffy landscaping company to do the work. Now many of these same guys can easily afford a team of Latinos equipped with leaf-blowers and weed-wackers. Similarly, it seems like every time I return to my hometown of Dallas, TX, I see more and more valet-parking options at Yuppie restaurants and hotspots, and invariably, the jobs are being done by Latinos.
None of these things would have existed if “they” weren’t here. But then one might ask when the labor mushrooming might actually stop: As more and more no-skilled, poor Latinos enter the country each day, will we have them not just park our cars but perhaps carry us to them, Cleopatra-style? Why not bring them into the restaurant and pay them 2 bucks an hour to feed us?
Mass immigration expands the labor supply—and this new supply creates new demand , for all kinds of things. Our economy gets bigger, sure, but then is bigger always better?
In his groundbreaking 1992 essay, ”Time to Rethink Immgraiton?,” Peter Brimelow writes,
Audiences always burst out laughing at one apparently gagless scene in the hit movie “Back to the Future”: the time-transported hero drives up to a gas station in the 1950s, and an army of uniformed attendants leaps forth to pump the gas, clean his windshield, fill his tires, polish his hubcaps, offer him maps, and so on. The joke was in the shock of self-recognition. It was only yesterday—and yet completely forgotten, so accustomed is everyone to self-service [and now credit-card swiping].
Now there’s credit-card swiping.
What’s important here is that with the current mass immigration from Latin America, the whole trend of labor-saving capital investment is in effect reversed—in agriculture, dining, house keeping, and lawn care, Latinos are not simply doing the jobs Americans won’t, they’re making possible jobs that would not otherwise exist in an advanced economy. I doubt gas stations will once again feature five full-time employees for each vehicle, but what’s important is that this is again becoming possible.
Jason Riley can talk all he wants about how the economy is “growing,” but what native citizens experience is an economy whose fundamentals have not changed and which was working just fine beforehand, but which now features 20 million newcomers doing tasks most natives aren’t exactly sure really need be done.
Riley claims that he wants the “free market to regulate the labor supply” and that those now arguing that our post-industrial economy doesn’t need low-skill Latinos will be proved just as wrong as those 19th-century know-nothings who didn’t think industrial America needed the Irish. But this is to put the cart well before the horse. With open borders, the labor supply is not regulated by some reified “free market,” nor even by the actual needs of the economy. The labor supply is regulated by those who actually come, which is, in turn, dependent upon other factors, like geography and the state of the immigrants’ home societies, that have little to nothing to do with our own economic situation.
Highly educated Indians who arrive quickly expand, and complicate, the labor market for software enigeneers; Latinos have brought on a boom in lawncare; if boatloads of Swiss refugees start landing on our shores, we’ll soon have fascinating new markets for the ultra cheap manufacturing of cuckoo clocks. (OK, with this last one, I might have indulged in a cruel national stereotype.) The point is, whether “letting them in” is desirable or not all depends on who “they” are.
Comments
It is just untrue that every American is descended from immigrants. My ancestors were colonists, settlors or pioneers. They were not immigrants. Probably most of the people I know can say the same thing. I have my doubts as to whether any even saw Ellis Island until the last generation or so. And those family members would have only seen it as a tourist.
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I think the fallacy in Riley’s thinking is not realizing the impracticality of assuming that someone would simply work in lawn care or valet parking for generation after generation. The false dichotomy if you will is that it is either open borders or no immigrant labor. Nobody is talking about closing off immigration altogether, but it should be discretionary and dependant on needs both real and perceived for additional labor.
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Lost in all the economic hubbub is something (one of the few good things) we should have learned from the Chicago School. There are social costs involved, too. While immigrants create new “markets,” there is an erosive effect on native, local traditions—which cannot be measured in the marketplace (itself an abstraction, especially in a fiat currency economy).
This, incidentally, coming from one who generally supports free (as opposed to managed) trade.
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Like their mirror image dialectic materialist Lefty counterparts, money-worshipping Neocon capitalist-extremists love the idea of permanent revolution in the constant building up and tearing down of society that parallels the boom and bust of Capitalism. For them, like the Marxists, life is all about materialism and access to material goods, and they couldn’t care less about the native cultures, customs, constitutions, or values. But with the Neocons, their own personal pampering and luxury is the primary goal. How they get rich, and what native ethical and societal devastation and havoc they wreak to do so, is of no consideration to them. The end goal of money, and lots of it, is their only consideration. Open borders? Hey, if a short-term buck can be made, it’s all good.
These people are truly warped by their fixation on money. That same fixation also goes a long way towards explaining Marx.
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An excellent article. The commentary by Mr. Moore is particularly poignant. To quote: “These people are truly warped by their fixation on money. That same fixation also goes a long way towards explaining Marx.” - I only wish to add that this “fixation” may also go a long way towards explaining the Nazis and Hitler,—as a reaction to Marxism. The childish casting of the Nazis as mere anomalies of hate with an unquenchable quest for world dominion intentionally omits the ominous threat of Communism, a fact which must be conveniently ignored in order to recast the characters and motives surrounding the last tragic world war in a fashion which serves the victors. E.g., positing the Nazis and Hitler as all evil (though evil certainly plays a role), clearly serves to obscure the current machinations of the neo-con leftist policies of multi-culturalism at home and foreign wars for the sake of Israel. (Note the works of Kevin MacDonald)
One is reminded of the Orwellian adage that those who control the Past are poised to control the Present, and those who control the Present will likely control the Future. Kudos to all those whose research of historical events leads us back to a clearer understanding of our current dilemma. The American neo-con ties to a Jewish identity; to Israel, to Marxism/Bolshevism and the events leading up to WWII may help to remind us that history really does repeat itself - and likewise that we learn so little from its repetition.
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Neocons are enchanted with the
idea of a “propositional nation.”
Many are from backgrounds that
would not allow them to advance
socially in a society dominated by
WASPs.
Therefore IF they can create a
society that is dominated by a
perceived meritocracy that
eschews a particular religion or
traditional family ties, they will
not face discrimination.
By advocating “multi-culturalism”
they can assure that no one
group develops power based
on a religion or ethnicity to
oppose them.
By advocating immigration they
undercut those who favor the
idea of “patria” based on ethnic
and religious ties as well as the
ties of geographic location and
traditions.
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“The childish casting of the Nazis as mere anomalies of hate with an unquenchable quest for world dominion intentionally omits the ominous threat of Communism, a fact which must be conveniently ignored in order to recast the characters and motives surrounding the last tragic world war in a fashion which serves the victors”
It never really made sense to me why US and Euro statist establishment conservatives always failed to point out the Bolshevik/Communist-threat context of the Nazis, and that the Bolsheviks had murdered millions of Christians well before Hitler ever started to get traction, until I realized that A) Euro-US statist establishment conservatives seek to replace Christian authority with statist secular authority; B) they didn’t really care about the millions of Christians murdered by the Soviets because they were mostly Orthodox Christians; C) their left-liberal statist establishment partners had so clearly succeeded in putting America and the US government on the neo-Marxist track that to point out that Marxists were mass murderers, too, would be to shoot their joint venture in the foot; D) Dedication to Christianity for statist establishment Republicans comes way down the list after money worship, government-veneration, self-veneration, and GOP party hackery.
In short, Christians on the one hand, and the statist-establishment GOP/Dem joint venture on the other, today serve two completely different Gods; in fact, the latter is so far gone into State and self-worship, it can now only be described as atheistic-statist-materialist. John McCain is the perfect personification of the modern GOP.
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Valet parking is an old curse of Los Angeles that appears to be spreading across the Sunbelt. Now, in crowded Chicago, valet parking actually provides a service that you wouldn’t want to—they park your car in front of a fire hydrant and pay off the cops for you. But, in LA, they just drive your car 30-40 feet and stick it in the restaurant’s parking lot. Then, when you come out of the restaurant, you have to stand around for 5 or 10 minutes waiting for your car, which is about a 15 second walk away from you.
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Riley is black, a fact I rarely see mentioned (as it is not here). So in one sense it is not entirely surprising that he doesn’t seem to mind importing more ‘people of color’ in order to further undermine the historic demographic white majority. But I guess he doesn’t read the papers much, or else doesn’t care that one of the on-the-ground effects seems to be that Blacks and Hispanics are killing each other over ‘turf’ in Los Angeles. Another one-eyed ‘diversity’ booster.
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The Wall Street Journal crowd are cultural nihilists and are as big an enemy as the Left. It could be said that they are a worse enemy since Wall Street Journal “conservatives” understand how to run an outwardly successful economy unlike the socialists on the Left.
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The childish casting of the Nazis as mere anomalies of hate with an unquenchable quest for world dominion intentionally omits the ominous threat of Communism
Obscuring that threat also makes any excesses of our own postwar “McCarthy era” seem an inexplicable eruption of Western, capitalist irrationality and evil.
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Dear Taki Mag, is it really necessary to intellectually engage even the most radical attacks from the left? Author Riley is a malign nation wrecker. Why not mock and ridicule this America-hating post-nationalist in an acid bath? Why waste words when you can use photoshop or cartoons to delegitimize cartoon ideas...as is done quite effectively on the Malkin website?
It can be counter productive to respond to goons in a serious, professor-like manner.
The problem with conservatives is they won’t fight on the streets, they won’t fight dirty, and they won’t fight ruthless. That is why prostrate Germany was fought over by two competing left wing factions between the wars: National Socialism and International Socialism.
The two leftist groups slugged it out in a battle for control of German society while the conservatives stayed on the sidelines tending to their avocations and business pursuits.
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Rep. Chris Cannon(R-Utah) just learned the hard way that adopting the Jason Riley-Wall Street Journal philosophy on immigration can make you a retired congressman. Thanks go to the citizens of the Third District of Utah for sending Cannon packing in the GOP primary yesterday by a vote of 60-40 percent.
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