Good discussion of what it will take to come up with a useful immigration policy in the US. Not much discussion of illegal immigration, except the fact that it needs to be dealth with before any useful policy can be implemented. Probably in a library near you.
Borjas, George, Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy, Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ, 1999.
5. This book attempts to shift the terms of the immigration debate—away from arguing endlessly over the validity of the particular symptoms, and toward the fundamental questions: How many immigrants does the United States want? And which types of immigrants should the country admit?
13. Immigration, however, does more than just increase the total income accruing to natives. Immigration also induces a substantial redistribution of wealth, away from workers who compete with immigrants and toward employers and other users of immigrant services. Workers lose because immigrants drag wages down. Employers gain because immigrants drag wages down.
16. In my view, any serious discussion of immigration policy must begin with the choice of a weighting scheme that values the costs and benefits that accrue to each of the three groups—the natives, the immigrants, and the rest of the world. And any assignment of weights among those groups inevitably raises a number of moral issues.
19. The skill composition of the immigrant population—and how the skills of immigrants compare to those of natives—determine the social and economic consequences of immigration for the country.
38. So what do the data say? A large proportion of the immigrants who entered the United States in the post-1965 period are relatively unskilled; they do not perform well in the American labor market; and there is little hope that they will reach economic parity with native workers during their lifetimes.
122. Regardless of the baseline, immigration imposes a fiscal burden in the short run. Each native household in the United States pays between $166 and $226 more in annual taxes because of immigration.
175. Because many more people want to live in the United States than the country is willing to admit, immigration policy has to specify a set of rules that can help selectively pick and choose from the many applicants. These rules may stress family ties (as is currently done), or national origin (as used to be done), or socioeconomic characteristics (as is done in other countries). In the end, these rules will inevitably stress a combination of characteristics that Americans deem culturally, economically, and politically desirable, and that are consistent with the country’s values and beliefs. Because tr are only a limited number of visas, the policy has to restrict or prohibit the entry of many classes of persons. Inevitably, difficult choices have to be made.
Ultimately, every immigration policy must answer two distinct questions:
How many immigrants should the United States admit?
Which types of persons should be awarded the scarce entry visas?
205. Any serious reform of immigration policy—and any attempt to adopt a skills-based point system—is doomed to failure unless the problem of illegal immigration is also resolved. A well-designed immigration policy may not have the desired effect on the social welfare of the United States if the border is porous.
