GUEST BLOGGER | Bryan Caplan

Every blogger I know tells me the same story: The fastest way to provoke angry comments is to post a kind word about immigration. In the blogosphere, as in real life, complaints about immigrants abound. The funny thing, though, is that the complaints are diverse, but the cure is almost always the same: Cut immigration quotas, reinforce the border, and deport the illegals.



What would happen, though, if we actually wrote down specific complaints about immigrants and tried to figure out specific solutions? While we’re at it, why not focus on specific solutions that are cheap and relatively humane?

Suppose, for example, that the complaint about immigrants is that “They take advantage of the welfare state.” If that’s the problem, the simplest solution is not the get rid of immigrants, but to make them ineligible for benefits. Make them pay the usual taxes, but make it clear that welfare, unemployment benefits, Medicare, Social Security, and the like are only for native-born citizens.

What if the complaint is that immigrants endanger our political culture – in short, that they vote the wrong way? I’m sympathetic to this concern, but it’s easy to tailor a solution: Don’t let immigrants vote. Admit them as guest workers who can participate in the economy but not the polity.

Which takes us to the biggest complaint of all: Immigrants depress the wages of low-skilled Americans (or in South Park parlance, “They take our jobs!”) Admittedly, even pessimistic estimates of this effect are small, but that’s off-topic. The important fact is that there is a cheaper and more humane way to transfer income from foreigners to low-skilled Americans: Instead of excluding immigrants from the labor market, impose a surtax on immigrants’ earnings, and use the proceeds to compensate the natives who compete with them.

If you find these proposals harsh, perhaps you’re right. But they’re soft as silk compared to the popular approach of keeping immigrants out and deporting those who are already here. So why not?