Of course, there’s an easy way for more people to become as rich as Americans. That’s for them to, well, become Americans. . . . The same way that moving a farmer to a factory in, say, China makes them produce and earn more, so does moving a factory worker from China to the United States. Immigration, in other words, lets people make more for doing the same, or maybe worse, job that they had back home—which is another way of saying that it makes the global economy bigger. There’s an obvious problem, though. If we let everyone who wanted to come to the United States into the country, it would drive down wages for the people who already live here—maybe as much as 20 percent—in at least the short-to-medium run. That’s not the kind of thing you can just wave away. Still, a little more immigration would probably help the economy without hurting wages, not to mention the huge boost it would be for the people coming here. The Washington Post, The Secret to Being Rich Is Surprisingly Simple, Matt O’Brien, 6/1/15.
Fact Check: Unlike most immigration enthusiasts, O’Brien at least has enough sense to acknowledge that there could be some drawbacks to admitting everyone who wants to come here—but that’s about as far as his good sense goes. According to a Gallup poll a few years ago, around 150 million foreigners would like to move to the U.S. Under current immigration law they could petition to bring in their spouses, children, parents, and siblings.
Within 20 years or so, we could have a half-billion newcomers. In such a situation, we could expect severe wage depression for far longer than a “short to medium run.” In this situation the immigrants—who came for better economic opportunity—would suffer just as much or more than the native-born.
The fact of the matter is that we now have wage stagnation, even at the current level of one million legal immigrants a year, plus hundreds of thousands of guest workers and illegal aliens. This annual flow is the highest sustained level in our history—and O’Brien sees no problem with increasing it. Perhaps one reason is his professional background. He is a reporter for Wonkblog who covers economic affairs, and he worked previously as an associate editor at The Atlantic. In his up-scale line of work, which requires a mastery of American English, O’Brien probably doesn’t face much competition or wage suppression from immigrants.
Like many economic advocates of immigration, O’Brien seems to assume that human beings all over the globe are totally interchangeable in a world job market. This view ignores the cultural dimension of humanity. A basic reason America is more prosperous than many other countries is our traditional American culture, with such features as the rule of law and respect for private property. As mass immigration from less successful cultures overwhelms our powers of assimilation, those cultures will dilute our culture to the detriment of our economy.
Instead of mass immigration, a better solution for everyone’s economic success is for the United States to retain her culture, and for other countries to follow our example.