Foreign Policy In Focus

A study by the Heritage Foundation maintained that Hispanic immigrants are deficient in I.Q. and thus disposed to rely on "government handouts."

In 2007 the Heritage Foundation played a major role in derailing immigration reform. This year it tried to replicate its success by publishing a study claiming that unlawful immigration and amnesty would cost U.S. tax payers approximately $6.3 trillion dollars. However, their ploy to sabotage immigration reform failed in dramatic fashion. Not only were their exaggerated estimates on the cost of amnesty resoundingly refuted by both conservative and liberal groups, but their entire report appeared to hinge on a premise that reeked of racism.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s study, one of the primary reasons immigration reform would cost so much is that a typical undocumented immigrant lacks adequate education. And poorly educated individuals, according to the study, “are net tax consumers: the benefits they receive exceed the taxes they pay.”

This notion of the undocumented being “poorly educated” comes directly from Jason Richwine, one of the coauthors of the study. Richwine got his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University, where he wrote a dissertation titled IQ and Immigration Policy. In it he claims that Hispanics have on average lower IQs than their Caucasian counterparts. Moreover, he writes, “[n]o one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” In other words, Hispanics will probably never be as smart as white people.

Richwine goes on to say that the IQ disparity between the two races explains why Hispanics have never been able to fully assimilate into American culture and why they are more likely to accept government handouts: “When given the choice between a paycheck from a low-paying job and a welfare check, most intelligent people would realize that the welfare check offers them no potential for advancement. Low-IQ people do not internalize that fact nearly as well.”

There you have it: Hispanics are dumb. Dumb people rely more on government handouts. Therefore, Hispanics will use more government handouts than the average citizen and as a result they will drain the government of its resources. Keep them out!

To the Heritage Foundation’s credit, it is a straightforward argument.

Nevertheless, the argument is horribly flawed. This year Hispanic high school graduates enrolled in college at higher rates than whites. There is a substantial income gap between whites and Hispanics, but each successive generation of Hispanics continues to narrow this gap. No to mention the fact that Hispanics have served in almost every U.S. war and have received 44 Medals of Honor, the third most for any ethnic group. Not bad for a people who failed to “assimilate.”

Despite the fact that the Heritage Foundation’s study is faulty at best and racist at worst, it’s still hugely informative. The study offers a genuine glimpse of what many, especially on the right, think about Hispanics. Many Hispanics, including this writer, have generally felt that opposition to immigration reform does not stem from some intellectual argument, but from visceral emotions driven by xenophobia. The study produced by the Heritage Foundation has proven this point to be correct.

Luckily, the Heritage Foundation is in the minority. According to a CNN/ORC international survey, 84% percent of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. 

America is known as the melting pot of the world. Immigrants from across the globe call this place their home. The notion pushed by the Heritage Foundation that Hispanic immigrants need to assimilate is not only paradoxical but also deeply offensive. America is a country that embraces immigrants and all the diversity that comes with them; it doesn’t assimilate them into a homogenous stew. E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one. Most Americans seem to understand this, even if the Heritage Foundation does not.

Javier Rojo is the New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Migration is one of the best mechanisms for reducing poverty.

There has been much discussion very recently about the rapid and deep fall of global fertility rates. The conversation is not new, but has become more intense recently as more evidence has emerged of the depth and scope of the worldwide trend. One factor remains consistent: commentators nearly always assume that this is largely a problem, even a crisis, due to aging populations, shrinking labor forces, and unsustainable government initiatives. At times, increased global migration is mentioned as a coping mechanism, but is usually dismissed as inadequate for various reasons.

In contrast, it looks very likely that a massive increase in global migration, mostly temporary but often permanent, will emerge as the only method of compensating for this situation. Capitalists will not tolerate labor shortages if they can help it, in fact they are willing to bend and break the law in order to get around them, and thus they will inevitably and increasingly push for greater access to the world's available workers. Government after government will likely bow to the pressure, because, faced with the power of business lobbies and the prospect of companies shutting down due to lack of workers, they will not have a choice. This state of affairs might just save the world.   

From 1948 until 1962, it was possible for roughly one-quarter of the world's population to migrate freely to the United Kingdom. In response to labor shortages resulting from high levels of death and disability inflicted upon two generations by two world wars, along with some geopolitical maneuvering in the face of strong anti-colonial movements, the British Nationality Act of 1948 enabled all residents of the British Commonwealth (consisting mostly of the then-current and former nations of the British Empire) to migrate to the UK without legal restrictions. In practice, this meant that British companies were free to seek out workers from throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, the relatively tiny numbers of upwardly-mobile Commonwealth residents who were aware of this new opportunity and had the wherewithal to pursue it began migrating on their own to the UK.

Such were the beginnings of the modern, diverse, multicultural UK. Though immigration restrictions began in 1962 and have been refined over the years, the United Kingdom remains a destination for migrants from around the world. In contrast to the perennial worries of nativists and restrictionists, nowhere close to one-quarter of the world's population migrated to the UK as long as they had the opportunity. It is an empirical fact, routinely stated and re-stated by economists across the spectrum, that immigrants by and large only bother to travel when jobs are available, and the net effect is largely positive for both sides. This can be observed within free-migration zones such as the United States and European Union. Massive hordes of people did not arrive to leech off of the National Health Service; in contrast, the British economy got the workers it needed to shake off its deep post-war doldrums and rebound strongly.

It cannot be stated conclusively (and may be unlikely) that a continued open immigration policy would have prevented subsequent economic troubles, but the ensuing restrictions cannot have helped. In any case, taking the long view, the economic results have been good for the UK and good for the world. Besides the stimulus to to the United Kingdom (whose citizens were able to buy more of the world's products and invest more heavily elsewhere), immigrants took pressure off of the markets for jobs and public goods in their home countries, and, much more importantly, sent (and continue to send) home financial remittances. More recently, immigrants commonly invest in businesses and other ventures in their countries of origin. All of this activity alleviates poverty and increases access to education, among other factors which contribute to the ongoing decline in fertility in most of the poorer countries of the world. Such is the immigrant experience around the world, and it only looks likely to replicate itself in more and more countries.

One important caveat must be made here, in that it is entirely possible for a country to have low fertility and high rates of unemployment -underemployment-poverty-etc. At the moment, this is true on both sides of the Mediterranean. Forgetting this would be succumbing to the “lump of labor” fallacy, in this case the mirror-image of complaining that immigrants “take” jobs from locals. The upshot of this is that, as labor shortages do inevitably develop in certain sectors of many economies, this will create more opportunities for people from areas with fertility above the job-creation capacity of the local market, and from areas that are simply stagnant for other reasons.   

To reiterate, as long as one solution exists, business leaders are going to do all they can to pursue it, and their governments are almost certain to oblige them. Singapore, long a nation of immigrants, seems to be ahead of the curve. The prosperous island nation's government has been filling its labor shortages with large numbers of migrants for years, and they may have recently learned the hard way that there might not be anything else they can do. This cannot have gone unnoticed in another island nation on the other end of East Asia: Japan. Xenophobic stereotypes (and realities) notwithstanding, Japanese business leaders have been agitating for increased access to foreign workers for years, and a bloc of legislators agrees with them.

Speaking of xenophobia, nativist backlashes are a guaranteed sure thing, and the results can be ghastly. In any case, those who would prevent the movement of labor to fill vacancies are transparently on the wrong side of history. With prevention of cultural conflict in mind, look for governments to rush to broker bilateral deals with nations with cultural similarities (however tenuous), or, failing that, with societies that lack any particular seemingly irreconcilable differences. Specifically, look for European countries to look first towards the Philippines and parts of Latin America, before eventually turning elsewhere. Look for Bangladesh's leaders to promote their population's secularism, relatively tolerant atmosphere, and common use of English to lure recruiters. Look for China's government to encourage its millions of surplus men to emigrate to nations with longstanding Chinese communities, even as China paradoxically is already suffering from labor shortages of its own.

Migration is one of the best mechanisms for reducing poverty, and the inexorable decline of global fertility rates will just as inexorably lead to more migration of the world's people. As the pool of available labor gradually becomes dry, a world becoming gradually much wealthier (and producing less carbon!) will be in a far better position to deal with aging, shrinking populations, along with all the other problems feared by today's chroniclers of falling fertility. 

Scott Ryan Charney received an M.A. in U.S. Foreign Policy from American University.

I’ve long argued that one of China’s most important exports to the rest of the world is people.  The numbers are staggering: hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of rural, often poor Chinese have left their homes in search of new opportunities.  And that’s just accounting for those headed to Africa. As Chinese state-owned firms more heavily engage across the continent to exploit Africa’s abundance of natural resources, poor Chinese follow. Often, they find work building the highways, railroad, and electrical systems needed to move resources from their point of origin to port. And what’s more, the Chinese government is eager to see them leave, and never come home. According to Telegraph article from 2008, Beijing “officials want more of China's surplus rural population of tens of millions of people to follow them, saying they will earn money and help the continent to develop.”

But just like power, population flows stream both ways. While numbers are difficult to come by, it has become clear that levels of immigration—legal and illegal—to China are on the rise. The heaviest flows at current seem to originate from points dotted around the region as laborers from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma increasingly look to China for new economic opportunities. But traders from Africa have also flocked there to exploit emerging markets for designer jeans, knock-off luxury items, and sports merchandise to feed China’s appetite for all things LeBron James. Needless to say, however, the transition has not been easy even as it grows larger.

The Christian Science Monitor looks at the experience of Africans, mostly Nigerians, who have migrated to China in search of work. For African migrants, life is predictably difficult. 

Though the Chinese trade with the African immigrants, not everybody embraces them as neighbors. Some Chinese cite a language barrier with the English-speaking Africans. Some Africans in China on work visas said they feel they are perceived by the Chinese as violence-prone troublemakers. Still, because most Africans don't speak much Mandarin or Cantonese they do not seem a threat to take jobs, and are just in China to buy goods to take back to their home country and sell.

Recently, however, social antagonism against African immigrants in China has provoked government action designed to coercively crack down on illegal residents in the country.

But since 2009, local police have begun to regularly raid buildings teeming with Africans as they look for those who have overstayed their visa. Those who are caught face stiff fines and interminable jail time. In July 2009, two Nigerians jumped to their deaths from a five-story building to evade police pursuit. Though such standoffs are rare, enraged Africans rallied outside the police station to protest the strong-arm tactics leading to the casualties.

These recent flashpoints hint at the larger troubles China currently experiences as it looks to integrate into the global economy. ‘“I wonder, if China wants to open up the market, why they don't allow people to come?’ asks Stephen Kelvin, a polo shirts trader from Nigeria.” Good question. 

In fact, the government in Beijing does allow migrant workers to enter the country, albeit on highly restrictive visas. A major policy initiative was launched in 2005 to allow workers into the country with a view to stimulating business both at home and abroad. But as the Monitor reports, the 2005 program has proved suboptimal in its results, and opened new opportunities for exploitation and grift.

Many Nigerians say few of them can get work visas renewed for longer than three months; some can only get a 30-day extension each time they seek to stay longer. Some African traders allege that they have become vulnerable to dishonest Chinese suppliers who would delay delivery beyond the Africans’ visa extension, forcing them to choose between losing business and becoming illegal. To remain legal, the only option is to submit their papers and keep their fingers crossed, many say.

As a result, policymakers in Beijing are mulling next steps forward, considering drafting “the country's first immigration law, according to Zhuang Jijao, a researcher with the China Academy of Social Sciences.” 

What that law might look like remains unclear. But what is certain is that Beijing needs to address what will undoubtedly be an intensifying surge of immigrant labor pouring into the country as China’s economic growth continues to swell. As Zhuang told channelnewsasia.com last May, “judging from the history of Western developed countries, inward migration flows often reveal the appeal of a nation. But to have a stronger appeal and competitiveness in the global arena, a nation must properly resolve social and economic issues arising from immigration.”

In this sense, the immigration issue mirrors other aspects of the new reality facing rising China.  Up until now, Beijing has enjoyed the luxuries of exploiting the international marketplace at little cost to itself, essentially having its cake and eating it too. Yet as China seems to be discovering perhaps sooner than it would have liked, with hegemony comes responsibility and new challenges. The realization, then, of Chinese ambitions will likely hinge on Beijing’s ability to negotiate the slippery slope of reconciling its realist priorities with the principles of the liberal world it ultimately seeks to lead.    

Michael Busch, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, teaches international relations at the City College of New York and serves as research associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is currently working on a doctorate in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

This post is an auxiliary to the author's September 16 Foreign Policy in Focus piece Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri. It was first posted at the Dissent Magazine blog Arguing the World.

The emergence of vast inequalities between the wealthy and the rest of us may be the biggest change in American society over the last fifty years. And it’s hardly a change that we should welcome. 

Such is the argument that Timothy Noah makes in a well-timed series of articles over at Slate. In his series, Noah explores what he calls the “Great Divergence,” and he looks at possible reasons for skyrocketing inequality. 

In the third article in the series, the author asks whether the post-1965 surge of immigrants to the United States from south of the border is a leading factor in creating the gap between rich and poor. His conclusion is that it’s not. If anything, immigration is only a small contributor. “[I]t isn’t the star of the show,” he writes.

This conclusion is the right one. But in making his case, Noah ends up reinforcing some popular misconceptions about the role of immigrants in the economy. Namely, he seems to validate the idea that immigrants drive down wages, particularly for the least educated Americans in the workforce. Noah comes to this conclusion by relying heavily on a single economist, Harvard’s George Borjas, who happens to be one of the most conservative voices on this issue in the field. 

Doug Henwood’s Left Business Observer did a good job taking on Borjas’s flawed approach a few years ago: 

Though definitive evidence is hard to come by, because of less-than-perfect data, most studies of the effects of immigration on wages and employment for the native-born find little or no effect…

But the Harvard economist George Borjas—himself a Cuban immigrant who now acts like he wants to shut the door behind him—argues that comparing local labor markets is wrong, since people and capital are mobile.... Instead, argues Borjas (writing with Lawrence Katz and others), the national labor market is the proper unit of analysis. Borjas & Co., working with heroic models with heroic assumptions about the mobility and substitutability of capital and labor—statistical systems that are always highly susceptible to assumptions—find that high-school dropouts have taken a 4-8% wage hit because of immigration between 1980 and 2000. The rest of the educational distribution took smaller hits. Missing from this analysis are the words ‘union’ and ‘minimum wage,’ making it incomplete and tendentious, since it’s likely that union-busting and the eroding value of the minimum [wage] have had more effects than immigration ever could. And there appears to be no evidence that natives actually migrate in the ways that would be required by Borjas’ assumptions. 

In a recent review of the field, the excellent economist David Card notes that studies like Borjas’ are based on ‘the belief that labor market competition posed by immigration has to affect native opportunities, so if we don’t find an impact, the research design must be flawed.’ Card is very familiar with these convenient assumptions; back in the 1990s, he showed, contrary to the deepest faith of most economists, that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t destroy jobs; economists resisted his evidence because it just couldn’t be true. But it was.

Others who are intimately familiar with Borjas’s work have also challenged his assumptions and come up with very different findings about immigration economics. In a late-August summary paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, economist Giovanni Peri concluded that “immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers."

I spoke to Peri recently, and he emphasized that there is some academic debate about whether new immigrants might have a small negative effect on the wages of those in the lowest-paid 10 percent of the economy. But there is broad consensus that, for the economy as a whole, immigration has had a positive impact on productivity, wages, and employment.

This echoes the sentiment of economist Albert Saiz, quoted a while back in the Washington Post: “‘Immigration provides overall economic gains to a country,’ [Saiz] wrote, summarizing the literature in a 2003 article for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. ‘Indeed, the U.S. experience as an immigrants’ country is one of phenomenal economic growth. However, there are winners and losers in the short run.’” 

In his recent paper, Peri highlights the overall benefits in the past twenty years: 

[T]otal immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6% to 9.9% increase in real income per worker. That equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars. Such a gain equals 20% to 25% of the total real increase in average yearly income per worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007. 

This brings us back to the question of inequality. While immigrants overall have helped to build the U.S. economy, the lowest-paid American workers are not seeing the benefits. The highest-paid, on the other hand, are taking far more than their fair share of the gains.

We can see a parallel here to the economics of trade. There is little debate that trade overall can help the economy. I have no problem with that idea—even speaking as a long-time globalization activist who has participated in many protests against the World Trade Organization and other international financial institutions. The real question has always been: what kind of trade will we have—and who will receive its benefits?

A lot of what gets labeled as “free trade” (such as patent protections for big pharmaceutical companies) is actually the opposite of what economists are taking about. Moreover, trade that is structured by and for multinational corporations has a way of enriching their coffers—surprise, surprise—while making working people and the environment bear the costs. Thus, the activist demand for “fair trade” is a call both to combat corporate power and to manage trade in a way that is sustainable and beneficial for the less-privileged sectors of our global society.

Something similar can be said about immigration. Right now, immigration to the United States is being managed in a way that primarily benefits the wealthy. There’s no point in blaming immigrants for that. Reactionary anti-immigrant measures only create an ever-more-exploitable pool of labor for employers to take advantage of. The real solution is to pass living wage laws and to build unions that advocate for both immigrant and native-born employees, making sure that all workers are paid fairly and treated with respect. 

Of course, fighting inequality in a serious way is much more difficult than finding a scapegoat. So, whatever the economic studies, don’t expect anti-immigrant arguments to go away anytime soon.  

Mark Engler can be reached via his website, Democracy Uprising.