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Consider 3 groups: L, the (prospective) Mexican immigrants; M, the American lower class; and H, the American upper-middle to upper class. Freer immigration benefits L and H, and hurts M; Douthat sees a policy that benefits H and hurts M as ipso facto bad. Hence, he says, we should find some policy with the same benefit to L, but that hurts H and helps M instead. I've never understood why inequality should be considered a particularly bad thing, as long as we stay away from third-world-hellhole levels that make the market unable to function. But if you do believe that, the argument "we should find a way to do this that screws over the rich instead" makes some sense.
Steve, I'm arguing about the moral baseline from which deviations need to be justified. I think it is fully possible to justify limitations on entry and labor market participation on the grounds that this is necessary to preserve the institutional structure immigrants are so keen to join. We have an obligation, however, to limit liberty as little as possible, and to expand the scope of cooperation as that becomes feasible. Labor market integration with Mexico is a good first step. As there is convergence in development over time, ever-widening multinational labor markets will not only be consistent with American liberty and well-being, but will enhance it.
But your support for a multi-national labor market is not actually contingent on a "convergence in development" is it? You want one NOW! don't you? Your moralistic argument for one certainly doesn't seem to require waiting for anything else to happen.
And who here really thinks "convergence in development" is so inevitable? There's plenty of reasons to believe that some nations on earth will just always be comparatively underdeveloped.
Here's a question I have about comparative advantage. The two groups are better off than they would have been by trading, correct? But not necessarily will they both be equally well off, correct?
Unless your plan is that the world becomes so mixed up and homogeneous there won't be any distinct nations left to compare?
Oh yeah that world sounds great for "American" liberty.
Will, have you looked at polls on the political opinions of Mexican immigrants? Did you know that "on the question of more taxing and spending, Hispanic Republicans are slightly more liberal than white Democrats. Indeed, Hispanic Republicans are to the left of African-Americans!". Not only do they reverse-assimilate when it comes to crime, welfare dependency and illegitimacy get stuck in a rut well below average when it comes to education, but generation after generation they get more leftist (and by that I don't mean cosmopolitan libertarian left either).
This is one of the fastest growing groups in the U.S and the Republicans have been trying for years to appeal to them with little to show for it, convinced that they are doomed if they stay a party of the white middle class. I think that far enough off in the future the parties will adjust their policies and approach so that each gets about half the vote, but the vote itself is going to be a lot more hostile to libertarianism than now (this is assuming that the United States does not get Mexicanized enough to have decades of one-party rule like what the PRI enjoyed).
Most people do not accept the liberal or Rawlsian "moral baseline" as a default. As I've noted before, I do not care for such arguments about nothing, but as Jonathan Haidt can tell you, most people view ingroup-outgroup distinctions as an essential part of morality, and the lack of it to be clear evidence of deficiency on the part of the cosmopolitan liberal "moral baseline".
A final note, Will. We are not talking about just a "labor market", we are talking about PEOPLE who have effects other than simply through the labor market. Their children are going to live here not because they have been "purchased" by anyone but because of their parents. We could have a Gulf State style guest-worker system in which they really are little more than labor. Both I and Lant Pritchett support this (I think not granting full citizenship is desirable, he sees it as an unfortunate compromise) and many people on the right who have the taboo "cultural objections" might as well. Liberals may not like this much (although the benefits to the many people who might work here stacked against their disadvantages might convince some of them), and it is such people that Ross Douthat was addressing his comments, but such people also accept the legitimacy of government redistribution and do not necessarily see market-induced distribution of wealth as legitimate. I realize that all this may not be satisfactory on a philosophical level, but since most people have wisely chosen not to waste much time over philosophy you are going to be frequently disappointed by them.
Because it's happening. Read Martin Wolf's _Why Globalization Works_.
You asked, why do I value the interests of Mexicans less than those of Americans? Why not look at the sum total of utility, and not just at the American side of the equation? I care about my fellow citizens because they've promised to fight by my side, if it comes to that. There's nothing odious about that. I expect them to do the same.
Some immigration benefits all of us. Plenty of it benefits few and hurts many of us. Maybe it helps the immigrant. So what? That's my bottom line. The burden is on the humanitarians to justify the "deviations."
That's a catch-22, and it strikes me as morally perverse.
Mind you, I think you can support some immigration restrictions without basing them on the flawed logic I spelled out above. But not protectionist immigration restrictions.
HORSESHIT. This would imply that anyone not eligable for service (for any reason) gets less weight in your moral calculus than those who are eligable. You do not behave this way in your everyday life.
As someone once said, "I hate liars".
WW's position makes no sense. It is retail selfishness and wholesale or national humanitarianism. It is incoherent.
But it's not war per se that you find odious; here you are telling us all what we should be willing to die for:
"Let me just say that I would be willing to die in a war against a state that made it policy to deny me my natural liberty to enter into voluntary, mutually benficial exchanges with every other human being who does not happen to have a social security number."
Yeah, I'm sure that's why there are 150 million babies born every year, because parents hope to pass on their ... economic ideology.
No, because the nation isn't unanimous in its choice of immigration policy. E.g., a primary reason there's conflict over this issue is that some Americans want to employ certain immigrants and other Americans don't want to allow that, each group acting in its own self-interest.
In other words, it is objectionable to force citizens to discriminate against aliens on the ground that aliens are worth less.
It’s a rather profound error to characterize voluntary trade between American employers and Mexicans workers as equivalent to ”humanitarian spending,”
True. But it is also a profound error to characterize immigration as equivalent to voluntary trade. Setting up a call center in Saudi Arabia is voluntary trade. Hiring a guy in Oaxaca to mine World-of-Warcraft gold for you is voluntary trade. Bully for voluntary trade across borders, bully, indeed, for the right to engage in voluntary trade across borders. The right to engage in voluntary trade across borders is simply not the same, however, as the right to become a resident or citizen of another country. There are all sorts of good reasons to want individuals to be able to choose their own country of citizenship and residence. I endorse this goal myself.
It is not, however, part of the ‘liberal baseline’ (if liberal here means the classical liberal tradition) to assume that anyone has a right to be the citizen or resident of the country he chooses. The classic liberal has reasonable arguments for denying this as a right, including: a) a state is a contract between its members, and they can exclude whomever they want, b) a free, liberal society has cultural preconditions that open immigration might damage. Now, as it happens, I support high levels of continued immigration into the US, but not because I think support is written into classical liberalism.
Edmund Burke might say that we simply are not built that way--we are not rootless cosmopolitans, and attempts to build societies on rootless-cosmopolitan principles will go badly wrong in horrible ways. We care first about ourselves, second about our descendants, third about our families, fourth about our neighbors, fifth about people we see on TV who we can easily identify with, sixth about people who speak our own language, seventh about people from countries we have visited or see often on TV in ways that make us identify with them, and eighth about everybody else.
Thus even if we want (for some reason) to achieve rootless cosmopolitan ends, the means we must use are to encourage the growth and development of societies that reflect this hierarchy of moral concern, because societies that don't will not long survive.