Well it has entered the immigration debate, just as 9-11 did. So far, the ties made by guys like Grassley seem to me to be both vague and stupid.
Which is not to say that there isn't a more precise and more intelligent lesson for immigration policy in all this.
I think there is, but it's a lesson for a much narrower group of open border advocates. Some people who advocate openness oppose the visa process itself and think that no one should have to seek permission to come here. The government has no business keeping anyone out. This group quite literally wants open borders. No visas obviously also means no border security. Cases like this demonstrate why that might be a bad idea. Even if you support an open United States, it's probably still of value to check people out, identify a family or employer sponsor, and keep records.
I'll take a second to anticipate a red herring: of course this isn't going to prevent every incident. It obviously didn't prevent this incident, or 9-11 for that matter.
That misses the point. Good policy analysis thinks about these things on the margin and it considers the counterfactual. On the margin having some order to a policy of open immigration will improve security. The counterfactual case with no formal immigration process would make it far easier for terrorists, cartels, or anyone with bad intent to enter the country.
So that's not the sort of message that I suspect Grassley was trying to send, but it is a worthwhile point for literal open border types to consider.
Friday, April 19, 2013
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Well said, sir! There needs to balance. There's always the chance that someone dangerous might infiltrate the country but some people want to overdo that process excessively.
ReplyDeleteSo far, it appears those guys became radicalized after they entered the United States. I'm not sure how you might go about predicting during the visa application process that somebody is likely to become radicalized years later...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure we know much of anything about that yet, do we?
DeleteWe don't know much of course. But you said: "No visas obviously also means no border security. Cases like this demonstrate why that might be a bad idea." I assume you based your conclusion on the current information, so I think it's fair for me to formulate a response also based upon the current information.
DeleteI understand the interest behind wanting to control immigration for the sake of at least trying to turn back malintentioned migrants. I get that a lot of people think "trade off" considerations come secondary to human life, and I can see why. But, it's still worth bringing up the point. How much does a visa system cost us? These costs include administrative costs, the costs of migrants turned back that shouldn't be, et cetera. Where would these resources go otherwise? Say that completely open borders costs us x human lives. What if someone made the case that better allocated resources could save >x lives in other ways (better living conditions, better medicine, et cetera)? The claim would be hard to verify, but it's equally as hard verify that open borders would lead to the loss of x human lives (especially given what PrometheeFeu writes above). This point is somewhat insensitive, but I think it has merit.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's insensitive for anyone that understands how trade-offs work. Obviously I'm making a somewhat fuzzy, only slightly closed border case. So clearly I think there's a trade-off somewhere, just like everybody does. No problem with that.
DeleteI always say that economists should be suspicious of corner solutions. A completely unregulated border is just such a corner solution. That gives me pause.
I think corner solutions are much-maligned. I would say that for most optimization problems, the global optima is a corner solution. To take a silly example, there is probably a non-corner answer to how much wheat I should eat to maximize my lifespan, but scissors, computer mice and keyboard (to use the three silliest items in front of me) probably call for corner solutions. I think in this case, the fact that borders have always been somewhat closed and that humanity has survived this long makes a non-corner solution at least plausible. But then again, we also spent a long time with leeches, mercury and blood loss as healing practices. So I'm not sure we should dismiss the corner solution out of a principled suspicion of corner solutions.
DeleteI don't agree that they're "much maligned". I would say we know very well where to expect corner solutions. The two that obviously come to mind are linear or otherwise additive objective functions and cases where things enter the objective function negatively (you offer the latter example here).
DeleteBut immigration policy?
No, I reserve the right to be suspicious of corner solutions in that case, because the benefits of openness and the benefits of security are both positive and I see no reason for them to enter the objective function additively.
Now if I'm not thinking of an example where we often see legitimate corner solutions, let me know. But I think this case calls for an interior solutions.
One question is whether a Federal "open border" policy is really a corner solution. I wonder what kind of "immigration market" would pop up in its place. That is, whether we'd see market solutions to whatever costs open borders brings with it. (I'm not saying that there are market solutions -- I have no idea if there would be.)
DeleteDaniel:
DeleteI don't think immigration policy obviously calls for a corner solution. While I believe the benefits of open borders vastly outweigh their inconveniences, I also recognize that this is largely a product of my utility function and that while the rest of you obviously have wrong utility functions, it's hard for you to tell.
Here, I merely was responding to your argument which is that one should generally be suspicious of corner solutions. I think to the contrary, corner solutions are the common case and that the fact that open borders is a corner solution, while not an argument in favor of open borders, is also not a good argument against.
Jonathan Finegold:
First that comes to mind: gated communities.
And I'm just saying that among the utility functions we normally consider they are suspicious, and that's the whole point. You have to specify a special class of utility functions that usually don't come up for real consideration to make it "common", which is why I stand by my initial baseline suspicion.
Delete