Borders open immigration yea or nay . You will get a copy of this on leaving. I will let introduce the panelists. That would be superfluous. I want to point out is not true as some people have suggested that we hired barack obama to the advance publicity person for this conference. That is not true. He did it on his own initiative but we are delighted that he was able to bring such focus to this important issue. I think it is an important debate and there are no easy answers i think. Alex nowesteh will start things off with a crisis of his broadside and Mark Krikorian will follow. The other panelists will comment on it and we will allow alex and mark to respond and open up to the audience so perhaps you will have something you would like to say as well. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you to hudson for putting together this great event for publishing the book, for the center of the Immigration Studies, for cosponsoring it and for all of you being here today. I believe american in classically liberal notions of liberty demand a presumption in favor of the right to voluntarily migrate across borders. The burden is upon those who oppose the right to show why it to be restricted just as we would demand very good reasons to support taking away the individual rights of life, liberty and prior property in other situations. It is illegal for all but a small number of people who want to come here to come here unlawfully to the United States. The tradition of relatively free emigration we have in americas past close a long time ago and replaced by a highly complicated bureaucratic system centrally managed on political prerogatives. As the law is written the burden is on the immigrant to prove you should be able to emigrant which is backward from our western notions of guilty until innocent until proven otherwise. The verdict should be on the government to demonstrate why an individual immigration not be able to come and the reason should be pretty good. The Current System is the equivalent of presenting every immigrant is guilty, forcing them to prove their innocence. Adr ethnic traditions rightly have more. I will go through three basic reasons why i think the United States should have a much more open it emigration policy that karen does. One the consequences of immigration to the United States is positive especially from the economic perspective. 2, ethical reasons, i think our ethical western traditions of ethics support this from every prospective and 3, our principles of the individual liberty, american traditions and western civilization, tied the ethics and principal part together and very difficult to separate them. Consequences, economic. There is a lot of popular disagreement over the net effect of immigration and the u. S. Economy but very little disagreement among economists. Economists agree on basically three big things. One, price controls are bad two, freetrade is good and three, immigration is good for the economy. How good is it and exactly who is it best for . That is the big disagreement. Economists on the right side of the spectrum and on the left side of the spectrum talk about this. If you think about it, the number one issue people think about when they think about immigration and the economy is the impact on american wages. If you remember your very simple supply and demand model, big increase in supply of workers should lower wages right . That is your number one understanding of the basics of economic solidify increase the number of apples by quite a bit in the economy we expect the number of apples to fall, the price of apples to fall. Something different happens with labor because apples dont buy other apples. They dont buy the services of other apples but immigrants who are people by the services of other people in the economy increasing demand for labor. Most economic studies find the wage affect of immigration on americans are very small a lot of them actually find it is positive as well. Why is that . Because the economy is dynamic. Economy is not static. If you were to increase supply of anything in a static economy and nothing else changes we would expect the price to fall but the rest of the economy, what we see is the amount of Capital Investment increase due to population overtime, most immigrants and most americans have different skills, not directly competing with each other so there is very little competition. Because of that we have complementarity is which economists differentiate from being substitutes. If you are a substitute for somebody, you compete in the labour market, more of you would likely lower the wage but if youre complement in the labour market, you have different skills that can Work Together and increased demand for both of your jobs. One of the best examples of this is lowskilled immigration in the restaurant industry. What we see is lower skilled immigrants who on paper have similar skills to most americans, specialize in jobs that require physical labor over Communications Skills because one of the big advantages of being an american is being able to speak english because americans dont learn other languagess. I dont learn another language and have no intention of doing so and everybody in europe speaks a set of languages. Fortunately they all speak english which is the only language i speak too. What you see is a division of labor where low skilled immigrants work in professions that require manual labor and lowskilled americans get bumped up into professions that require communication skills. In a restaurant the less skilled immigrants work as busboys, dishwashers jobs the dont require much communication with customers who speak english. Lower skilled americans in restaurants, there is a waiter, waitress, hoses jobs that require communication that are more highly compensated. Of course the number one issue is demand. Immigrants buy things, they buy goods and services from other people and people produce these goods and services so immigrants increase the demand for labor in the u. S. Economy. One of the most interesting thing is wages are determined by productivity of the worker in the u. S. Economy. How much productivity do they add to the firm as they go forward . Say worker produces 20 of value for his firm that is a maximum wage he could possibly obtain, 20 because he produces that amount. The basic notion of economics if wages were to increase because of a decrease in supply of labor, that means the price of the products they produce must go up. That is the actual result of its. If it is a claim that a decrease in the supply of workers decrease wages that will be offset by a large part by an increase in the price of goods that they built. As we know, the wealth in the economy is not necessarily the dollar amount on your paycheck or bank account but what you can buy with those goods and services. Immigration is a voluntarily mutually beneficial wealth creating exchange with the cost of immigration are not fully internalized through all the people involved in that transaction but neither are all the benefits in that transaction. If we have a standard of that, immigration should only be allowed so all the costs and benefits are internalize to people involved in the transaction and white out any sort of economic transaction going on. Furthermore our presumption in favor of free markets shows us that we should pay relatively free Labor MigrationLabor Compensation is equal to 60 gdp in the United States largest portion of gdp. If you like free markets, if you like free trade, if you like competition you should be willing to open up this part of the United States, more competition and more free trade. If you think the increases in the supply of labour decrees wages of people in the United States i want you to ask yourself a question. While wages so much lower in the middle of wyoming where there are very few people and so much higher in places like manhattan where there are so many more people. There are a lot more things going on. What about welfare . I work at the Cato Institute and i am concerned about the welfare state and the size of it but all of the arguments against immigration because of welfare are arguments against the existence of the welfare state to begin with. It is a better argument go on and say we should build a wall around welfare state rather than chopping off immigration because there exists a welfare state. You can make a similar argument that there should be mandatory dietary restrictions because government has socialized parts of the Health Care Industry in the United States. I think as freemarket years, libertarian or conservatives would accept that argument as ludicrous. The problem is socialized medicine in the system not necessarily the fact the we each too much. One bad government regulation in one area like the welfare state does not justify another Government Intervention in the market economy in another area. Whether it is dietary restrictions or the Free Movement of people. In bergen, slightly to consume than for americans are and reduce the dollar value is smaller. If for americans in medicaid at the same rate poor immigrants do and the dollar value was the same, would be 42 smaller. The entitlement programs as currently stand immigrants tend to subsidize, massively overblown bankrupt programs. Nothing we can do to save these programs, like medicare and social theory. They are going bankrupt as they stand but immigrants have a positive cash flow so hopefully if and when congress decides to fix these programs will be easier to do. There are hundreds of studies about the fiscal impact of immigration. How does it affect taxpayers in the United States . I wish i could give a more interesting answer to that but all the effects are clustered around the euro. Immigrants almost entirely mostly pay for the Government Services that they consume. These are Dynamic Models down across the world and the United States. What about the political externalities . Will immigrants flood into the country . The radical Leftwing Party destroy capitalism, destroy our institution, overrun these things . As far as we can see we dont find that affect the the many United States or internationally. What is interesting to point out is if you look at the percapita expenditure of the federal government and United States by far the period of time with the most rapid increase from 1930 to 1970. Federal government expenditures for Capital Increase 17 fold during the time period. In the time since 1970 when immigration is liberalize you see a doubling percapita expenditures per person but also increase in emigration. Prior to 1930, 30 years from 19001930 you saw doubling but interestingly enough, the immigration was closed off when you saw the largest increase in size of the federal government. I am not claiming immigration is the reason why the federal government slowed post opening of the border but if you make the claim that immigrants increased the size of government you have a lot of historical explaining to do. Vernon briggs jr. An adjunct scholar at the center for Immigration Studies and labor economist support broadly immigration restrictions because it makes possible these broad increases in federal government and broad increases in social safety net. What do we do when we look at the Economic Freedom scorecard across the world and the United States . It is true of course the Economic Freedom creates more prosperity in countries and more prosperity attracts democrats so when we do with resource papers is to see if there is any effect of immigrants in 1970 and how affect Economic Freedom in every decade after that or period of years after is that in each country around the world, see if theres some kind of affect, slowing in liberalization of economy is around the world and we find a positive effect. We find a positive affect that immigrants over time are correlated with increases in Economic Freedom over time as well even on the National Level in the United States. We find different results in the state level in the United States but still if you make the claim that immigration is going to destroy free markets, move the political spectrum against free markets you still have a lot of explaining to do because the correlation does not support that explanation. Look at size and means tested Welfare Benefits over time in the United States, across states. States have very different sizes of the immigrant population, different demographics that were influenced by immigration and a lot of control over a lot of means tested Welfare Benefits. Five there is no correlation from 1970 to 2010 between the size, intensity of flows of immigrants, size of the minority populations that have been increased by population on the size of means tested worker benefits. You see no impact over time. And a similar story about support for banning handguns in the United States based on a gallup poll corporate banning handguns, this is important to me, as a gun hobbyists and enthusiast, theres a document out there that immigrants are very opposed to guns and bear going to vote for gun restrictions. Interestingly enough support for banning handguns peaked in the 1950s at period when lawful immigration to the United States was as low as ever and we are seen a decrease in support for banning handguns to the low to mid 20 , as a percentage of the population is increasing so again i am not saying immigration has caused these popular opinions or effect i am describing just like you are going to claim the opposite you have a lot of explaining to do because data does not support you. What about ethical arguments . What about the arguments from our traditions of what is right and wrong and how to treat people . Where does that impact perspectives on immigration or what immigration policy should be. We need to apply the same ethical standards to immigrants we apply to other people and people have equal moral worth. We favor same people over others. I fave for my wife for instance. I will do more to help her, more of an obligation to help her that i have to help any of the rest of you. You are all fine people but that is the moral obligation, to help my family and probably an obligation to help people who are other americans more than i do other people. Theres a hierarchy of these obligations but just because i have an obligation to help somebody doesnt mean i can do Everything Possible to help from. What matters is how i can help them. If my wife is applying for jobs i can help her write a resume, i can prove read her letter of introduction, i can do research i can help her pay for education and get her better skills. What i cannot do is, the other job applicants, to prevent them from also applying for the same job. I cant block other people using coercion to do that. We need to apply the same standards to immigrants. There just isnt much competition between americans and immigrants in the job market because the schools are different but even if there was a lot of competition between immigrants and americans such intense competition that would lower american wages, that is not an argument to oppose immigration primarily because of english commonlaw traditions. Another immigrant import by the way. Economic arms that arise through Market Competition or through competition are not a sufficient reason for protectionism. If i am not baker on one street and you open a bakery on the other street and you put me out of business because you sell a better of loaf of bread i cant sue you. Because i participated in a market economy i took those risks. In terms of the same thing goes for immigration. Freedom of contract in our system even with immigrants is more important than supporting notions of economic protectionism that build barriers of Big Government to protect certain people from competition with other immigrants. What about natural rights tradition . Individual rights, life liberty and private property precede the creation of the state, and classically liberal tradition and all these different writers receive the creation of the state and people of equal ethical and moral worth. The declaration of independence listed restrictions on immigration and naturalization as one of many reasons for seeking their independence. The classical notion of laizzezfaire has to do with free market economy. An old french phrase was a pattern and times with and often phrased with the other phrase that means let them pass, that people pass and move to economic institutions, freedom is to move is a prerequisite for a lot of other freedoms we enjoy as well as the freedom in and of itself. By immigration restrictions cumin created laws that have no basis in human rights no basis in natural rights. You cannot find a justification in natural rights theory which is the foundation for our system of government that supports immigration restriction for any of these reasons. What about utilitarianism . Another proud weston philosophical tradition . The economic argument, voluntarily mutually beneficial exchanges and the relatively free market are wealth producing and should be allowed. They produce more wealth and they destroy another aries in the same way capitalism in other areas. Under each of these ethical systems, ways of judging it, all western in origin and tradit