In Immigrants, Our Country Needs Them, Nick Schultz interviews British economist Philippe Legrain, who’s new book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, just came out:
Schulz: Lots of folks in the US say something to the effect of “I have no problem with legal immigrants, it’s illegal immigrants that are the problem.” What do you make of that argument?Legrain: I think the argument is back to front. Illegal immigrants are not the problem, they are the symptom of the real problem: immigration restrictions that are economically stupid, politically unsustainable and morally wrong. Far from protecting society, immigration controls undermine law and order, just as Prohibition did more damage to America than drinking ever has.
That immigrants are in the US illegally is a sign not of moral turpitude but of misguided government intervention in the labor market: since employers cannot obtain visas for foreigners to come work legally, immigrants have no choice but to come illegally instead. These generally hard-working and enterprising people’s only crime is wanting to work hard to earn a better life for themselves and their children – the epitome of the American Dream. Without them, America would grind to a halt. Who would do construction work, clean dishes, hospitals and hotel rooms, and look after Americans’ young kids and elderly parents?
In any case, even if you think the federal government should be banning immigration from poorer countries, it cannot enforce the law without turning the land of the free into a police state. That is something which no true American patriot would want. If only for pragmatic reasons, then, opponents of immigration should accept the case for looser controls and regularizing the status of the 12 million or so illegal immigrants.