Steve Landsburg has a great deal of fun with insulting some of the more stupid immigration restrictionists. Having long been an admirer of the good professor and read—usually with agreement, but always with pleasure and enlightenment—all of his writings online and off- that I've been able to lay my hands on, it might seem churlish of me to ask him to lay off and consider another target instead. Also, there is a certain entertainment value in watching a battle of wits between an unarmed man and a bazooka wielder.
Yet, I would ask Prof. Landsburg to turn his attention to some of the less stupid and potentially more damaging, at least with respect to an intelligent audience, objections to large-scale, low-skill immigration of the type observed by the United States over recent decades. For example:
Under standard and generally reasonable microeconomic assumptions, added supply of low-skill immigrant labor will etceteris paribus tend to lower the price of its substitutes, in this case native low-skill labor. The standard, correct response is that competition is not an externality or legal tort: Any losses to native low-skill labor will be more than made up by the gains to employers of low-skill labor and the low-skill immigrants.
But is this response likely to be acceptable the electorate (which includes many more low-skill laborers than their employers) and their political representatives? Or will they respond by other counter-productive measures such as increased income redistribution? Will those likely responses be more or less harmful, economically or ethically, than enforced immigration restrictions?
Relatedly but separately, many of these low-skill immigrants will eventually become low-skill citizens and voters. If their voting patterns are anything like that observed of other low-skill voters, the electoral and hence policy and hence economic consequences would be likely be what I (and perhaps Prof. Landsburg) would consider catastrophic. Again: Will those likely harms outweigh, economically or ethically, those of enforced immigration restrictions?
Again—not being a sea cucumber—I agree with what I perceive to be Prof. Landsburg's support for open immigration. In an ideal world, I'd do so unreservedly. In the real world, I do so reservedly for the reasons mentioned above.
Prof. Landsburg: while of course you do not owe me any response, I'd be sincerely curious to know what your responses would be.
