Here, and on another topic don’t forget wunderkind Ben Casnocha’s new book.
Dani Rodrik on guest workers
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A good reason to support a guest worker program is that open inmigration is not politically feasible. The NYT does not like the guest worker program but fails to support open inmigration. Rodrik supports a guest worker program but fails to address the issue of open inmigration. As Gordon Tullock has argued, national borders are the main source of world-wide inequality.
Another good reason to support a guest worker program today is that it may be the only way to solve the “flow” problem of inmigration as a prerequisite to solve the “stock” problem posed by (at least) 12 million illegal inmigrants. As anyone familiar with solving financial crisis knows, you cannot solve a “stock” problem, if you don’t solve first the “flow” problem. Given the large gaps in opportunities between most of LA+Caribbean and USA, it may requiere a large, generous (few restrictions), and easy to enforce guest worker program to solve the “flow” problem.
–national borders are the main source of world-wide inequality. –
Has nothing to do w/their laws, regs and who’s running the joint?
So, what’s wrong w/the former breadbasket of Africa? And North Korea? Ever look at a map of that country at night?
Mexico enshrined PEMEX in their constitution and it’s falling apart, to do anything they’d have to change their constitution and admit they were wrong and maybe even ask us for help. Don’t we and the Brits build the best refineries?
How many people live in countries with lower average per capita GDP’s than Mexico’s?
Five billion.
Anmerican immigration policy can’t possibly have more than a negligible effect on the average standard of living of those five billion people. What can make them better off is fundamental reform in their own country, as in China after 1978 and India after 1991. However, countries that export a large proportion of their discontented to America, such as Mexico, Philippines, and El Salvador, are notoriously resistant to fundamental reforms at home, in part because America provides a safety valve for the ruling class to bleed off discontent.
The notion that bringing young people in from around the world to show them how rich us American are is the way to get them to love America and the American way is naive, to say the least. It sure worked with Sayid Qutb in the 1940s and Mohammed Atta in the 2000s!
To understand the psychology of how this can backfire, see John Updike’s brilliant 1978 novel The Coup about a hyperintellectual young African whose four years at a Midwestern liberal arts college make him anti-American for life.
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