These are my favorite videos on the entire magical internet.
NPR’s Planet Money: Episode 436: If Economists Controlled The Borders
For the first time in a while, there’s political momentum building to change the U.S. immigration system. On today’s show, we ask three economists: What would the perfect system look like? If we could scrap the mess of a system that we currently have and replace it with anything, what would it look like?
Among the answers:
- Let in lots more doctors and engineers
- Auction off immigration slots to the highest bidders
- Open the gates, and let everyone in
People fail to realize how much value immigrants add. Not just in low-skill or low-wage positions, but also reversing the brain-drain of this country and funneling smart, innovative individuals back into our economy.
I’m personally down for the “open ‘em all up” border policy.
But if you do so, you must, MUST end or severely curtail the welfare and entitlement system*. This way you only attract individuals (or families) who are coming to work and contribute and not those who are coming here for better amenities and a free ride.
I’d personally prefer to end the welfare system, but I understand that doing so would take some time to wean off without any seriously adverse effects. Over a decade or two, we can eliminate all waste and inefficiency in the entitlement system and end the hurtful filtering of talent and labor force by the immigration system.
- Sha
Moving For Money: A look at interstate immigration.
No one’s going back to Cali, to Cali, to Cali. I don’t think so.
Compared with native-born Americans, immigrants are more likely to start a business, more likely to launch a hugely successful one, more likely to work, and less likely to commit crime. They’re also willing to take jobs many Americans refuse to do. …
Americans who resent having to compete with immigrants for jobs suffer from a double delusion. First, they assume the supply of jobs is fixed and that we would all be better off with a smaller population. That’s flatly wrong. Immigrants are not just employees; they are also employers and consumers. Second, talk of immigrants taking “our” jobs implies some people have prior claims to jobs they have not yet been hired for. The term for that is “entitlement mentality.”
But aren’t immigrants driving up crime rates? Nope. Take Arizona, the Ground Zero of anti-immigration sentiment. As a 2010 piece in The Washington Times noted, “In the past decade, as illegal immigrants were drawn in record numbers by the housing boom, the rate of violent crimes in Phoenix and the entire state fell by more than 20 percent, a steeper drop than in the overall U.S. crime rate.” As Arizona goes, so goes the nation: A 2007 study found that “for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants.” The Immigration Policy Center, which produced that report, elsewhere has said that “a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes … than the native-born.”
America was once the most successful country in history because we allowed the best of the best to immigrate into our nation and help formulate better ideas which led to better businesses and better living for all.
That’s the secret.
We import talent. We let everyone enter and those who make it, make it big and those who can’t hang eventually leave. Or at least that was our old business model.
Now we make it impossible to enter and even undesirable to enter this country. And those who are lucky to get here find it impossible and expensive to get an education and apply that to starting a successful business. Those that can’t make it here have no reason to leave since we’ve taken away the safety net and replaced it with a Tempurpedic sofa and a lifetime supply of government goodies. Why would anyone want to try hard in this country anymore and why would those that want to try even come here in the first place?
The real answer is that they don’t.
(via statehate)
Philippe Legrain (via laliberty)
This is why I take the position of allowing immigrant workers to stay so long as they want to work.
Obama on immigration
Obama just said that it’s, “important for [immigrants] to learn English… so they can potentially pay a fine.”
LOL. This guy is the greatest politician. I don’t mean that as a compliment.
Stephen Colbert (via kateoplis)
____
Not just if Romney is elected but if Obama is re-elected. Americans are leaving America in record numbers and some of them are denouncing their U.S. citizenship.
From RT News:
According to statistics from the US State Department, around 6.4 million Americans are either working or studying overseas, which Gallup says is the largest number ever for such statistic.
The polling organization came across the number after conducting surveys in 135 outside nations and the information behind the numbers reveal that this isn’t exactly a longtime coming either — numbers have skyrocketed only in recent years. In the 24 months before polling began, the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 living abroad managed to surge from barely 1 percent to over 5.1 percent. For those under the age span wishing to move overseas, the percentage has jumped in the same amount of time from 15 percent to 40.
While the United States of America was at one point (and largely still is) a magnet for foreigners in search of work, the statistics makes it clear that an opposite trend is quickly picking up steam.
No wonder Obama waved his magic wand and amnestied all those illegals. He was just happy that someone, anyone wanted to live here.

