Birthright citizenship is a lottery of opportunity

The other day in class, I showed a short video about two textile industry workers in two different countries.  During the discussions that followed, one of the questions I asked the class was this: How many of you would trade places with those two workers?

Not a hand went up.  Naturally.

Imagine a different scenario in which students in those two countries are shown videos about the work and lives of two working class people here in the US.  And imagine those students being asked if they would like to trade places with American workers.  I bet that quite a few hands will go up.

But, of course, we have a system that prevents eager, willing, and capable people from coming here and being productive.  Immigration is a scare word in politics and culture.  Even in a country that was founded by illegal immigrants who wiped out the original inhabitants!

More than a year ago, Farhad Manjoo--another guy like me with a funny name and a naturalized American himself--wrote that "a brave Democrat should make the case for vastly expanding immigration."  Quick, name a leading Democratic presidential wannabe who has made the case for expanding immigration.  Couldn't name one, could you?

Manjoo wrote:

There’s a witheringly obvious moral, economic, strategic and cultural case for open borders, and we have a political opportunity to push it. As Democrats jockey for the presidency, there’s room for a brave politician to oppose President Trump’s racist immigration rhetoric not just by fighting his wall and calling for the abolishment of I.C.E. but also by making a proactive and affirmative case for the vast expansion of immigration.
It would be a change from the stale politics of the modern era, in which both parties agreed on the supposed wisdom of “border security” and assumed that immigrants were to be feared.

A contrast to Manjoo's prescripton is what today's leading Democratic contender said in an interview with Ezra Klein: He said that allowing more and free immigration "is a right-wing scheme meant to flood the US with cheap labor and depress wages for native-born workers."

The confident assumption that immigration is a zero-sum game that would depress wages is bizarre.  Not even for a nanosecond does the current President and the wannabes seem to consider the accident of geography--of where we are born.  As Manjoo wrote:

When you see the immigration system up close, you’re confronted with its bottomless unfairness. The system assumes that people born outside our borders are less deserving of basic rights than those inside.

"They" are "less" than us because they were born there, which, more often than not, are "shitholes" according to the man in the Oval Office.

Even if you set aside this moral dimension of the accident of geography, and how some may have won the "ovarian lottery," is it really the case that immigration is a zero-sum game?  Not. At. All.

It is usually only libertarians who make the case for immigration.  Like Bryan Caplan in his latest venture, which is a graphic non-fiction book.

Caplan presents immigrants not as threats—to low-skilled workers, to social services, to public culture—but as generators of wealth.

We--don't forget that I am an immigrant here--are not threats.

As a libertarian, Caplan generally seeks to avoid distinguishing between citizens of different countries. Instead, he condemns the “global apartheid” that borders perpetuate. Exclusion on the basis of one’s country of birth, he maintains, is no less reprehensible than discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, or religion. We are right to value equality of opportunity—but, if it’s valued at home, then it should also be valued on a global scale, where inequality is much starker.

Ask most progressive Democrats, and they will bleed in favor of "equality of opportunity."  But, they will be quick to slam the immigration doors and deny opportunity to "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" because the "cheap labor"  will "depress wages for native-born workers."  It is an unholy alliance of the left and the right in order to screw most of the rest of the world that thirsts for opportunity!

When President Orange realizes that economic growth rate has not jumped up despite his trillion dollar give-aways to the rich, what he fails to acknowledge is that there is no labor to speed up the growth--something his chief-of-staff admitted in a closed door meeting.  Manjoo wrote:

Economically and strategically, open borders isn’t just a good plan — it’s the only chance we’ve got. America is an aging nation with a stagnant population. We have ample land to house lots more people, but we are increasingly short of workers.

But, of course, even the left will not make a case for the huddled masses yearning to break free.  If only it did!

There doesn’t have to be a tradeoff between immigration and welfare programs or workers’ rights. On the contrary, they are two sides of the same coin.
The United States needs more immigrants to maintain current levels of economic growth and welfare provision, but it also needs more economic redistribution and workers’ rights to make sure that the aggregate benefits of immigration are shared fairly within society as a whole.

In the current political climate, even to suggest that a presidential wannabe is in favor of immigration will mark the death of that wannabe's candidacy. Some day, we will see the light.  The sooner the better.

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