The Fruits of Immigration

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/the-fruits-of-immigration.html

by martingordon • 15 years ago

87 88 15 years ago

civilian3• 15 years ago

Take that, xenophobes!

Many Americans take the stance that "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." Nevertheless, the US has very restrictive citizenship & green card programs, and the quotas are a fraction of the demand for them. If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes.

As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are. This is also the reason that I don't go out of my way to buy local food-- the Chileans need it more than my fellow American farmers. (The American-born farmers had all the opportunities in the world to learn other skills, but they did not excel in high school and have consistently been using protectionism and the "buy local" meme to boost their business.)

blackguardx• 15 years ago

That is a pretty hasty generalization about American farmers. I have a friend who is a farmer in upstate New York. He has a master's degree, but chooses to run a small farm because his passion is being close to the land.

jamesteow• 15 years ago

Yeah I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic when he said that.

racketeer2• 15 years ago

Your logic fails when taken to the extreme. Child labor is used to manufacture clothes in some depoliticized districts around the world. Should we sit back and say, "Hey those guys need money and should be able to get a job and work for it just like us!" Or should we change our manufacturing/distribution methods to encourage more american produced goods?

jfoutz3• 15 years ago

yes? http://nominetwork.org/

There is a large spectrum of scaryness out there. child labor making bags is better than ... the alternative.

civilian3• 15 years ago

I think child labor is better than the family starving.

For a lot of human history, we've had kids doing work. It's not great, and parents usually agree! One of the first things that families do, when they escape poverty, is to pull their kids out of jobs and put them in schools. And the money that the child earned can help a family feed themselves and be raised out of poverty. It's a negative feedback loop.

geebee5• 15 years ago

I think you've correctly identified what Americans mean when they say "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." After all, if they were just against illegal immigration, all they'd need to do is make it legal. What they're really opposed to is unlimited immigration.

The part where I disagree with you is the notion that there's something xenophopic about feeling that current levels (depending on where you get your estimates, this ranges from about 1 to 1.8 million per year) are a reasonable limit. I do find it surprising that a nation that admits well over a million immigrants a year is so frequently accused of "anti-immigrant" policies because the annual cap isn't even higher.

You say you'd increase the quota, but you didn't mention if you'd eliminate it altogether. Suppose you felt that immigration levels should be double what they are now, say about 2.5 million a year. Does that mean someone who would make it 5 million a year can call you anti-immigrant?

ori_b4• 15 years ago

I'm a Canadian currently living in the USA, so maybe I'm biased, but I would personally remove a number-based quota.

I would, however, put in a quota based on the amount of education, capital, and whatever else would provide an estimate of the benefit that this immigrant would provide to the country, penalized by the difficulty that the person would have in integrating and establishing himself.

So, for example, someone with a doctorate, a job offer from an employer, significant capital, and fluency in the language should NEVER have an issue getting into the country.

anigbrowl4• 15 years ago

The rate is not that good of a guide, because the US (as it is now) was so sparsely occupied to begin with. In terms of population density, the US is ranked #180 in the world with 32 people/km2 vs. the world (land) average of 51/km2.

lotharbot• 15 years ago

> I think you've correctly identified what Americans mean when they say "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration."

I know a lot of Americans who say exactly that, and none of them mean what you (or the parent poster) claim they mean. On the contrary, one of the most common statements I hear from them is "make it easier for people to immigrate legally".

civilian3• 15 years ago

Good question! Yes, I would remove the quotas. Borders only seek to separate people. The US is a decent country, better than many others as far as stability goes, and I think a lot of people could make a better life here. It would definitely be a burden on our government, but it's worth it.

philwelch6• 15 years ago

The US population is around 312 million people. 1-2 million people a year 1/3 to 2/3 of 1% annual population growth through immigration.

In contrast, in 1907, the US population was around 87 million and there were about 1.3 million registered immigrants for about 1.4% growth through immigration--anywhere from two to four times the level today.

gwern• 15 years ago

> If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes.

The Democrats have a standing policy of increasing the merit-based immigration. However, Republicans have always insisted that the illegal immigration be addressed as well in any such legislation...

gopi• 15 years ago

gwern, the reality is actually reverse. Obama/democrats wants a comprehensive immigration reform that includes dealing with the existing illegal immigrants in US. He dont want to deal legal immigration and illegal immigration separately. Thats the reason the recent startup visa was dead on arrival.

yardie2• 15 years ago

There is a wide gap between what republicans say to us and what they put on ballot. So far they have not been interested in immigration reform or immigration enforcement. Illegal immigration would drop overnight if they enforced real laws against the companies that hire illegal immigrants. But they focus on the, easily replaceable, migrant workers.

An example, the state of Georgia wrote their own law on legal hires. Now, they are having difficulties retaining fruit pickers for the summer harvest.

anonymous246• 15 years ago

Give your taste buds a break. You would rather buy fruit shipped halfway across the world (i.e., fruit designed for survive storage rather than taste good) rather than visit the local farmer's market? WTF.

I make it a point to not buy fruit from Chile, because I am voting with my taste buds that I want good fruit not cheap fruit.

My favorite fruit is the peach, and I wait for summer and farmer's markets so that I can get some ripe fruit (ever noticed how the supermarket peaches are usually unripe and never really ripen? they seem to go directly from unripe to rotten).

Maybe you live in North Dakota or some such remote place and Chilean fruit is all you get.

Anyway, just an excuse for me to sing the praises of California peaches. :)

andrewcooke• 15 years ago

is there really much competition? chile is in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons don't match up. i would have thought that when american peaches are in season, chilean peaches will be terrible, and vice versa.

as for transportation - america is a big country. i am not sure "local" californian peaches on the east coast will suffer much less than chilean peaches - in both cases, significant transport is necessary.

disclaimer: i live in chile.

krschultz• 15 years ago

Unfortunately most Americans don't realize these quotas exist (or how they impact from different countries differently), and assume that all illegal immigrants simply refused to abide by America's laws. I would bet that illegal immigrants here for legal jobs would gladly follow a legal process if there was one.

defen3• 15 years ago

So instead of investing in farm mechanization, or paying marginally more for produce, we should have a permanent underclass of foreign-born manual laborers? Can someone explain the logic in this?

potatolicious2• 15 years ago

If farm mechanization makes sense, sure, but until the Cucumbertron 9001 exists that will make short work of any field, manual labor is needed.

And it's evident that the domestic labor force is ill-equipped to fulfill this demand.

So you are faced with two choices:

- A shrinking, or at least plateauing of your agriculture industry because you can't find enough people who can do the job.

- Letting in tax-paying workers in a legal manner to support your growing industries.

The third option is that some company will set up shop in some other country to exploit this labor force that is unavailable in your country, then sell you cheap-ass cucumbers and further increase your trade deficit, and the US government sees neither personal nor corporate income tax benefits, nor any of the ancillary benefits (increased local economy, increased demand for services from workers, etc etc) of having the work in the country.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

Idea for Mexico: invest heavily in desalination, create whole states of hothouse farms (hothouse assuming that watering whole deserts would be bad for the ecology and an inefficient use of water), and eat American agriculture's lunch. Subsidize the hell out of the desalination, pumping and waste water recycling, until the hothouse industry can pay for it themselves. Then sell the desalination technology and services to the world.

defen3• 15 years ago

> it's evident that the domestic labor force is ill-equipped to fulfill this demand.

...at the current market price for manual farm work, which is low because there are plenty of people from other countries willing to work extremely hard for low pay. But think about the long-term effects here - eventually the current pickers are going to get old and retire. New ones will be needed. So now we need to import more uneducated manual laborers into the country. At the current rates at which 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-generation Hispanic immigrants graduate college (http://www.hispanic7.com/us_latinos_enroll_in_college_more.h...), you're literally importing an underclass that is ethnically, culturally, and linguistically different from the majority. That never ends well.

> The third option is that some company will set up shop in some other country to exploit this labor force that is unavailable in your country, then sell you cheap-ass cucumbers and further increase your trade deficit

This can be handled with tariffs, like we do with sugar.

philwelch6• 15 years ago

Judging from the nationalities of engineers in this country, we would probably need immigrants to design the Cucumbertron 9001 to begin with.

yummyfajitas4• 15 years ago

There is a third option. The US government is currently paying millions of Americans not to work. When faced with a choice between playing XBox for minimum wage or picking cucumbers for min wage, they make the rational choice - XBox.

So I propose the following: for every agricultural job that goes unfilled, we kick one American off unemployment/welfare and inform them that a job has been found for them.

If the job continues to go unfilled, we kick another American off unemployment/welfare. We repeat this process until either a) all agricultural jobs are filled or b) there are no more unemployed people. If b) occurs, we can then reopen the discussion on immigration to fill agricultural jobs.

prayag2• 15 years ago

I think its a little more than that.Nobody says that there shouldn't be farm mechanization etc. It should definitely happen. We should also do what produces highest net value for everyone in the chain. We should let the illegal immigrants work here and produce value for themselves and for the farm owners without building artificial boundaries. This we can we can help these guys out of poverty and help farm owners make more money too.

ericd3• 15 years ago

You can't ignore the social issues that arise from allowing a huge number of foreigners into a country. Not to say that it shouldn't happen in some form, but it needs to be handled with more care and management than you're implying.

jobu• 15 years ago

In the article, Jose Ranye was making about $20/hr. He may not be typical (the best picker), but his wage is certainly not underclass.

There are so many safety nets in this country that people have a viable choice of doing nothing instead of going out in the field and working hard. None of the parolees even lasted until noon.

When I was 15, I picked sweet corn for my neighbor. It was terribly hard work, but it was my only option to earn money (for a car). The next summer I was able to drive to get a better job. Its all about options and motivation.

defen3• 15 years ago

I'd argue that parolees aren't the best people to be comparing against. Farm work is also seasonal, so it's not clear what that $20/hr translates to in annual salary.

jdminhbg• 15 years ago

Nobody thinks a permanent underclass is a good idea. You should provide evidence for why you think that's the likely result rather than just asking the rhetorical equivalent of "when did you stop beating your wife?"

DjMojoRisin• 15 years ago

What I can totally not understand about the US is why are they not PRO- the Startup Visa....this seems to be a total no-brainer.

The people here on this visa, would be working for themselves, attempting to create jobs for Americans, and not taking away any jobs from them, so Congress, get your act together and pass this bill NOW!

apinstein• 15 years ago

The article uses the fact that tomato mechanization blossomed after Bocero ended as evidence that the same will happen in this case.

There are a number of problems with that.

First, tomato mechanization had been researched for what looks like a couple of decades before Bocero ended. It was a solution in search of a problem, then the problem came. So not all fruits yet have suitable mechanical harvesting mechanisms.

Secondly, in order to use mechanical harvesting (with today's equipment anyway), you have to actually plant differently! Wider, longer rows for example. Or different varieties. So farmers would need some time to prepare.

In the long run certainly it should be mechanized from an economic point of view.

From a technical point of view, someone on HN needs to hack a Kinect onto a robot and make an autonomous harvester that can work with multiple types of plants!

The Fruits of Immigration

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