Resolved: The United States Should Adopt an Open Border Policy

The US cannot sustain a flood of unskilled immigrantsPro does not dispute that there are 60 million refugees in desperate circumstances whose would benefit if they traveled to the US. He does not dispute that with open borders there would be no significant obstacle to their relocating to the US, or that there are amply resources to move them all to the US. The US will get 60 million predominantly poor, unskilled, poorly educated, and non-English-speaking refugees overnight. Pro says this will increase housing prices, of benefit to those selling houses. How will the refugees get the money to buy housing? Their only significant source is welfare paid for by taxes. Welfare paid by high taxes adds no value to society. It takes money that would otherwise be invested and uses it to boost prices with adding value. Consumption is increased for the immigrants, but all the money for increasing it is taken from people who can neither invest nor consume with that money taken by taxes. It's not remotely plausible that adding 60 million refugees would boost the economy.Pro claims 165 million would move to the US permanently. Those who would would like to move temporarily at least twice that. "More than one in four adults worldwide (26%) say they would like to go to another country for temporary work, according to Gallup surveys in 119 countries in 2009 and 2010. This figure is nearly twice the 14% worldwide who say they would like to migrate permanently to another country if they could and translates into roughly 1.1 billion adults." [15. http://www.gallup.com...] Some would prefer countries, but the premise for this debate is that only the US adopts open borders, so they would have no option than to travel to the US. Some would stay, put it's likely that many more than would travel to the US given it was the only option. Pro did not question my claim that air fare was an insignificant obstacle, so they'll just travel. Once everyone understands that there is immediate free education and emergency room health care, and a median $28,500 welfare package available within a few years, the numbers would likely increase.The resolution forces immediate open borders by the definition of open borders. Limiting immigration by setting up quotas for groups to prevent too many from coming is not an open borders policy; it is a policy of immigration quotas.Mostly unskilled jobs would come from to support 60 million plus hundreds of millions of others. Pro argued that immigration of unskilled workers (mainly from Mexico) has not been a problem because the immigration has reached equilibrium with the financial opportunities in the United States. That equilibrium is lower because the hazards of illegal immigration and the pain of separation from family work against immigration; both factors removed by open borders. Pro's economic argument is then that immigration from Africa, the Middle East, and the rest of the world into the US will slow when the economic opportunities in the US are as poor as those in very poor countries. So immigrants will stop arriving from Palestine when economic opportunity in the US reaches the income level of about $330 per year. Since the policy of providing a $28,500 welfare package after the few years needed for citizenship, that ensures that at least the 390 million immigrants on the low end of the estimates will arrive. Pro argues they would be self supporting by selling to each other. That's exactly what they were doing in their homeland, earning the very low levels of income that would bring them to the US.The results of legal immigration is not evidence for open borders Pro's case and the studies he cites to support it are built on false assumptions. The worst of the bad assumptions is that past immigration into the US is a good model for projecting what open borders immigration would produce. Past immigration includes screened and highly skilled immigrants legally admitted under H1B visa programs and other qualified immigrant carefully screened to be sure that they are self-sufficient or have good means of financial support. Another segment comprises illegal unskilled immigrants who seek low-skilled jobs that are available. The low-skilled illegal component is largely from Mexico and Central America, and tends to fluctuate as opportunities increase in Mexico or decrease in the US. The low-skilled workers the US gets are surely among the most enterprising, as they risk a dangerous border crossing and deportation in order to achieve greater prosperity. The studies, including the Cato studies Pro cites, claim there is a slight net positive economic effect from this mix, in which the high-skilled legal immigrants offset the costs of the low skilled ones. So why is it good policy to offset the gains of screened immigrants with the losses of unskilled workers?Pro presents a graph that shows, through 2007, that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment. Every country used in the graph had policies to select and screen immigrants, so there is not a single example of open borders in the lot. The foreign population of the US is shown, for example, as about 13%, comprising about 3% from low-skilled illegal immigrants and 10% highly productive legal immigrants. I have never doubted that legal immigrant of screened applicants is beneficial. Another of Pro's graphs shows that wealth correlates with economic freedom. Since no advanced country has an open borders policy, the graph is drawn under the condition that there are no open borders, and is not evidence that open borders are beneficial.Pro argues that open borders would save a great deal on border security. That assumes that the money spent on border security is mostly spent on preventing immigration of job seekers and their families. That's not true. We are not x-raying luggage to look for job seekers. Pro said that we would still try to keep out criminals and terrorists, and that all the laws controlling imports and exports would remain in place. Costs could be expected to rise substantially, because now the government would have to check hundreds of millions of people for terrorist and criminal associations rather than the small number entering under visa restrictions.Pro points to the high rate of business formation by Latinos. That's due to only the most enterprising willing to risk illegal immigration and the motivation supplied by a lack of enough low-skilled jobs. They also have only limited access to welfare benefits, so they are forced to take entrepreneurial risks they could otherwise avoid. If it were true that people in the lower half of the economic strata more than paid for their costs, then there would be no need for an income tax on the upper half of incomes to pay for the government services provided to the lower half. That's clearly not the case. The lower half only pays about 2% of income taxes. If we have a choice to only admit people who can pay for themselves, why exactly would we choose to admit a large volume of dependent unskilled workers?The Example of EuropeEurope does not have open borders. They require that potential immigrants apply as either workers, students, or the families of those admitted to immigrate. For example, “The war in and around Syria has displaced 9 million people, with a third of those people seeking food and shelter outside of Syria. Since the war began in March 2011, only 150,000 have actually been allowed inside Europe.” Now a flood of illegal immigration is just started; 250,000 have crossed the Mediterranean this year. [16. http://www.japantoday.com...]Europe has had a poor experience with immigration, with Muslim enclaves and the Hebdo shootings in Paris, but they are still on the leading edge of the problem. With US open borders, the path to the US will be easier than to Europe. “... most Latin American countries are relatively stable. Several have reasonably vibrant economies. They are all predominantly populated by Christians, the majority of whom speak a language that was historically dominant in the part of the United States ... The fact is, Latin American immigrants can blend fairly quickly with U.S. culture because they have long been part of it. ..Europe ... hovers just above the great mass of Africa, a continent with a population of 1.2 billion — a number that is rising fast. The majority of African countries are poorly governed economic basket cases. Several, from Libya to the Central African Republic, are in the throes of anarchy and civil war. Add to civil strife and extreme poverty ... and it is hard to imagine African migration to Europe will not dramatically increase in the years ahead. Throw in the perpetual upheaval in the Middle East and it is clear Europe faces a crisis exponentially bigger than the immigration problem in the U.S." [17. http://www.latimes.com...] Immigration policies vary by country in Europe and the UK has more strict controls than the EU in general. “It found that migrants from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) made a negative contribution to the public purse of £117.9 billion because they consumed more in public expenditure – including NHS costs, welfare hand-outs and education – than they contributed in taxes." [18. http://www.telegraph.co.uk...] However, skilled immigrants entering the UK, mostly from Eastern Europe, made a net positive contribution.Controlled legal immigration works, not open borders Pro claims that controlling immigration is central planning. The premise of the debate, however, is that we are stuck with present welfare and benefits policies and with other nations keeping closed borders. Under those circumstances, open borders cannot be sustained.