

The Fruits of Immigration - martingordon
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/07/the-fruits-of-immigration.html

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civilian
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.)

~~~
geebee
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_b
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.

~~~
geebee
I agree with you, this change would be very beneficial to the US. I've always
felt a points-based system (like Canada or Australia) would make more sense.
Nobody is happy with the current system - seriously, not a single person
thinks the current US immigration system makes sense. The problem is there are
so many competing visions for how it should be that reform is nearly
impossible.

Keep in mind, if I wrote a post arguing for a cap of 1.2 million a year, some
people would upmod me because it's high, others would downmod be because it's
too low, others would down mod me because it's too high, others would upmod me
because it sets a firm limit. The number of strong opinions on this topic is
bewildering (but not at all surprising).

~~~
huherto
This. I have a Master's from a top U.S. University. Both of my sisters live in
the US. I have personal resources well above the average American. But, under
the current law this is not enough to move to be close to my sisters. In a
point based system, I will get points in several categories.

~~~
BadassFractal
Same here, still years away from getting residency.

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defen
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?

~~~
potatolicious
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.

~~~
sixtofour
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.

~~~
huherto
Is this really an option? I am Mexican, but don't know much about this type of
technology. We have big deserts next to the sea.

~~~
sixtofour
Your first, second and third sentences are exactly my point.

Yes it's an option, although you and most countries are fairly far from it
yet. It takes decisions, purpose and money.

If I can use you as a proxy for Mexico, whatever is not known about this by
the larger Mexican economy, and engineering and agriculture communities, can
be learned from the smaller groups of knowledgeable people and spread. It's a
hard problem, and whatever technologies are developed can lead to exportable
products and services (both engineering and agricultural).

Yes, you have big deserts next to the sea, and you probably want to keep them
deserts, if for no other reason than human transformation of large ecologies
sometimes doesn't work out. So advanced, Mexican developed hothouse
technology, enabled by desalinated and pumped water, gives you a place for
Mexicans to migrate to in-country, without having to smuggle themselves across
the border to die in an American or Mexican desert.

All those Mexican citizens currently working for American agriculture, sending
some money home but spending money in America for daily living, could instead
be spending that money in Mexico. All that money earned would be feeding the
Mexican economy, in addition to the national income earned from exporting
agricultural products.

Imagine if the safest food that Americans (and Mexicans) eat came from
rigorously clean and high technology Mexican hothouses.

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apinstein
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!

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DjMojoRisin
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!

