“Open immigration to America worked well during the 19th century because the government did very little for immigrants and their families. How immigrants voted after becoming citizens also mattered little because government decisions were not so important. With the growth of government during the past half century, neither of these conditions continues to hold, so the case for open immigration is fatally weakened”. –Gary Becker, Nobel laureate in Economics, writing in the Becker-Posner blog on immigration
Nov10th2006
“neither of these conditions continues to hold, so the case for open immigration is fatally weakened”
Especially the Hispanic Immigrants from the state of Guerrero!!!
LOL. No way, I think I read somewhere that there is an exception for immigrants from Guerrero.
It’s important to recognize that each generation’s nativists have found reasons to believe that the factors that caused immigration to work so well in the previous generation have now ceased to apply. And they have been consistently wrong. That Mr. Becker-Posner believes that he can find a fatal distinction between successful past immigrants and the immigrants of today is not surprising in the least. Historically, there have always been arguments of this kind made, and in hindsight they have nearly always been mistaken.
The bottom line: We all agree that immigration has worked well for the U.S. Yet, despite its obvious past successes, immigration opponents have historically always claimed that the current wave of immigrants (whoever it is) will fail. Their reasoning changes, but hardly ever pans out. This seems to be constant.
Completely agree LaurenceB!
For the record though, Becker is not against immigration, he is just giving arguments to be cautious yet still falls on the pro-immigration side.
Well said LaurenceB.
I am against illegal immigration. No ifs, ands, or buts. Come to the US legally or don’t come at all.
Megan Rodriguez-
If thats your real name, and if I was an ICE Officer, I would go to YOUR parent’s house first. Just an observation of mine and many others: that a lot of the kids with super anglo/celtic first names are the ones whose parent’s are trying to throw off the migra!