An Unsensible Immigration Proposal

Jane Galt (er, Megan McArdle) tries to pull a fast one:

My preferred immigration plan would be to massively increase the number of visas, set a very minimal bar to meet--not a terrorist, not a criminal, not carrying a hideous contagious disease--and then auction off various tranches of visas, classed not by type but by length of stay. Let the visas be transferrable. Then let immigrant communities do enforcement for you, as illegal immigrants suddenly threaten to erode the price of their valuable asset: the right to stay in-country.

This sort of libertarian thinking is why I'm not a libertarian; Just because some immigrants -- those who are capable of winning visas via auction -- have a market advantage over other immigrants -- those who aren't able to obtain visas -- does not necessarily mean that they will "do law enforcement for you". In fact, there is little reason to believe that they will. People do not enjoy ratting out other people, even if they know someone else is doing something illegal, unless their own liberty or safety is at risk. Most people don't call the cops when a fellow driver is speeding, or even if they are swerving and appear to be intoxicated. Most people don't call the cops if they find that one of their friends uses illegal drugs.

Not only that, but these sorts of "markets" often beget other (illegal) markets. So if this sort of policy was enacted, I would expect an increase in markets for fake documentation, or communities which clandestinely shelter illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants will often have incentives to disguise illegal immigrants: ethnic identity, familial ties, economic incentives, etc. This sort of thinking belies the (classical) liberal fallacy w/r/t ethnic tensions (which, of course, is really what the immigration hullabaloo is mostly about): markets do not cure all ails. The current immigrant quagmire represents a political market failure, with external effects that affect hundreds of millions of people across two entire continents.

The answer, I would expect the libertarians at Overcoming Bias to say, is for citizens (esp. on the right wing) to move beyond the racial/ethnic dimension of the debate, and encourage truly open labor mobility (if they are in favor of free markets) or truly/mostly closed labor mobility (if they are nationalists). Lip-service to free markets from "conservatives" isn't enough, and neither are scare tactics from ethnic entrepreneurs (i.e. nationalists). True dedication to free markets would entail fully open borders (except to known violent criminals or those carrying contagious diseases).

Ms. Galt (er, McArdle) does have a great point about the immigration debate in another post:

I find the argument that the problem with immigrants is illegal immigration pretty uncompelling. First of all, it's almost (not always) made by people who don't want to let those people (or equivalent numbers of their more law abiding compatriots) in legally, and react against any proposal to do so with exactly the vehemence that they complain about the illegal entry of illegal immigrants. The people making that argument may not be trying to be disingenuous, but ultimately, this is a pointless distraction: their real problem is that they don't want that many immigrants here, regardless of whether they entered legally or not.

...

It is far from clear to me that being an illegal alien is a morally wrong, as opposed to legally wrong, act. It might even be a morally required act, if, say, your income is getting medical care and food for children back in Mexico who would otherwise died. But regardless of your opinion on the matter, you can't simply say "But they're illegal"; given that there is dispute about the moral status of our immigration laws, you first have to prove to your interlocutor's satisfaction that the law ought to exist. None of the people I've talked to who say that their problem is not the immigrants themselves, but their legal status, has even tried to prove that our immigration restrictions are just and right--which is strange, because those people generally want to make them even more draconian.

In other, somewhat related, news... Jane Galt/Megan McArdle has just been deleted from Wikipedia. Apparently, she isn't notable enough.