[extoc]
Flooded with Immigrants
Wouldn’t we be flooded with immigrants and wouldn’t it strain our economy?
Well, right now that may be the case since illegal immigrants are getting the same benefits as the poor in this country; they can enter this country and live off of welfare, but if we were to work on ensuring that non citizen immigrants were not able to receive welfare then the only pressure driving the immigration rate would be the free market pressure of available jobs.
We can also invest—as individual investors, not the government—in emerging markets to help the condition of people in other nations so that they do not have as much of a need to come to America to survive and prosper. I am not discussing outsourcing, which is has negative consequences for both regions, but direct investment in native businesses.
Jobs
Will it take jobs away from American citizens?
Speaking about jobs, people often fear that immigration is taking away from jobs for American citizens, and this feels especially troublesome given our current economic condition. Well we definitely could see some jobs lost, but it’s highly unlikely since American citizens are generally employed in more skilled jobs than immigrants who generally have a lower level of education. Beyond that, the new immigrants, besides being laborers, would also be consumers; this would mean that there would be a greater number of customers for businesses. In other words, we will most likely see a net decrease in unemployment for American citizens due to free market immigration.
Beyond that, while the federal government can not seem to do a good job of tracking illegal aliens, it will be far easier for local governments to keep track of legal non citizens. In this way we will have the workers paying taxes–as well as their employers doing the same–and off the roads if they don’t have a license. On top of that it will be easier to make sure that they are not scamming the welfare system if they are properly documented.
Government Handouts
Making sure government handouts don’t go to non citizens
Now, this is going to be difficult, but it probably shouldn’t impede us from working on reforming the immigration policy to reduce government intervention. It does seem that the only way that we can make sure that welfare funds are not being used incorrectly is to either eliminate welfare completely and go back to relying on charity groups, or at least pushing the programs to the local levels.
Humanitarian Crisis
There is one final point regarding the government manipulation of the immigration market: the humanitarian crisis that it is creating. When the government tries to restrict a market, it does not work. Instead, it pushes supply underground. Anyone with sufficient knowledge of the prohibition on alcohol knows this to be true. Because only some immigrants can enter the country legally, those who cannot, but still truly want to come here, will try to find other means to do so. Those means are dangerous. Many end up being abused or even killed.