Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Who gets in and who doesn't?

by Amy Wong

When it comes to the thorny and emotion-packed issue of immigration, the answer isn't an easy one, especially for a country like the United States, seemingly cast in gold as the land of opportunity.

According to Professor George Borjas, a Cuban-born economist, although the answer isn't easy, it is long overdue. With nearly one million new immigrants a year pouring into the United States — many of whom are unskilled workers — a significant economic stress is being put on the country. Therefore, as he argues in his latest book, Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy, the United States should instead favor the entry of a much higher skilled and educated group of immigrants who earn more, pay higher taxes, and require fewer social services. By his own proposed point system, he and his mother, who boarded a plane from Havana a week before the Cuban missile crisis, would not have been granted la residencia — the coveted green card. Still, he says, immigration policy should serve the national interest, not the interest of one person or group, himself included.

Q Your interest in immigration started at a young age, when you came here from Cuba in 1962 with your mother. How has your thinking on the issue changed over the years?

I was trained in the philosophical tradition of the Chicago School of Economics, with the belief that the country would be better off with less government regulations. What changed my mind was the appreciation that what benefits immigrants might not benefit natives.

Determining immigration policy depends on who it is we choose to care the most about. Do we care most about the immigrants? Or do we care most about people who remain in the source countries? Suppose we decide to accept a lot of engineers from India. That might be great for the engineers, but is it such a good thing for India?

I say in my book that a lot of people in the immigration debate tend to care about the natives already here — not just people who are born here, but all people who are already here. And given that, what do we want the country to look like in the future? From that perspective, what benefits that population is not an open immigration policy.

Q So what kind of an impact has the current policy had?

We have many social policies — welfare, job training, education — whose main goal is to help the poor, disadvantaged people at the bottom. But our immigration policy essentially unravels that, for when we admit millions of less skilled workers, the competitive job pressures on the less skilled workers already here worsens substantially. I think we should care about that, which is why part of my policy will be to shift away from the less skilled to the more skilled immigrants.

Immigration has a pretty sizable impact on welfare expenditures. They might not come here to get welfare — that might not be the motivating force — but the fact is that they are the ones who are going to have lower earnings, tend to be on the margins in economic terms, and qualify for and use these programs. So, there is an impact on the less skilled workers and on the taxpayers.

There are benefits. Employers are going to gain, because these immigrant workers are much better off than they would be in the country of their origins and more than willing to accept a low wage. Eventually consumers benefit also, because we do get cheaper tomatoes or cheaper lettuce from the supermarket. But it is employers who are really seeing the bulk of the benefits. There is a redistribution of wealth away from the workers to those who use immigrants. That's why I think an immigration policy that favors less skilled workers is not really such a good idea.

Q Wasn't this country built on unskilled workers?

At the beginning of the 20th century, we had a huge influx of unskilled immigrants who played a tremendous role in building up our manufacturing sector. But comparing what happened then to what is happening now is like comparing apples and oranges. The economic structure of the country has changed in the last hundred years. The manufacturing sector is no longer growing. And what is needed in today's information economy is not exactly what was needed in a manufacturing economy. So from an economical point of view, there is a mismatch between the kind of immigrants that the policy currently admits and those immigrants who would be beneficial to the United States.

Q So today's immigrants aren't assimilating as well as they have in the past?

An immigrant coming in to the United States today places himself at a much lower level than previous immigrant waves in terms of the skill distribution. While we can't predict the future perfectly, we can use the past to project out, and what we tend to see is that it is extremely unlikely that a typical immigrant will ever reach parity with native workers. He might be earning 20 percent less than natives for most of his lifetime.

Q Then why has the number of immigrants risen so quickly through the 1990s to more than one million each year?

Because the current policy emphasizes family connections. The system works so that if you are a close relative of someone here, you are entitled to a visa at some point. For example, if your spouse is from another country, you could sponsor his family to come here — particularly his siblings. The siblings can then sponsor their spouses, and the spouses' siblings and parents. It's like an inverted pyramid — once you open the door to one person, it entitles many, many more to come in. The growth is explosive.

Q But don't immigrants "pay their own way" once they get here?

No. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences on immigration looked at data on expenditures and taxes collected in California and in New Jersey. The academy discovered that in California, the typical native household was paying $1,200 per year in taxes due to immigration. In New Jersey, it is far lower, at only $200, but the immigrants going to California are very different than the ones going to New Jersey.

Q Do second-generation (children born in the United States to one immigrant parent) fare better?

There is a huge disparity among immigrants in the United States. Some groups do very well, while others do very poorly. What we tend to see in the data from the 20th century is that these national origin differentials tend to persist for three generations. So, the melting pot is working, but it takes about a hundred years. Depending on which way you look at it, this is either a long time to assimilate, or a short time. Some people might say that is a drop in the bucket, but it is also half of our history.

Q Speaking of the melting pot, how do you respond to those who say this country was founded on the humanitarian ideals of "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...?"

Before deciding which kind of policy the United States should pursue, the country first has to decide what it wants to accomplish with immigration. There are many millions more people who want to come here than the United States would ever be willing to admit. Very few people in this country are willing to open up the doors completely.

The "give us your tired, your poor" myth is so entwined with what it means to be an American that it is very difficult for most people to look at this issue rationally. The moment you move away from this myth you are opened up to all kinds of attacks. The United States, they say, is a nation of immigrants. But every nation is a nation of immigrants, if you think about it.

The reality is that the United States actually raffles out — like a lottery — 50,000 visas each year. However, last year more than three million people applied for those visas. So we have to have a system to decide how to choose among the many, many applicants.

The current system stresses only one factor in selecting the lucky ones: family connections. What I am advocating is a policy that also considers the impact these people are having on the country, including the kind of economic contribution that they can make to the United States. In my book, I argue that it is worthwhile to assume that immigration policy should strive to maximize the economic wellbeing of the native population. Therefore, it should favor skilled workers who earn more, pay higher taxes, and require fewer social services than less skilled immigrants.

Q To do this you would award "points" to a potential candidate based on how he or she would benefit the country, correct?

Every country's immigration policy, including the United States, is a point system. We just don't call it that officially. In our system, if you have family members here, more or less, you get a hundred points. And if you don't, you get zero, and that's the end of the questionnaire. The system does allow for skilled workers to come in, but this a minor part of the policy.

The United States could probably increase the skill level of its immigrant population by adopting a point system that rewards certain socioeconomic traits in the admission formula, such as education, age, and a measure of English proficiency. The formula could also award points to workers who bring in specific skills for "urgently needed" occupations, as well as to applicants who have a job prior to entry, and to persons who already have relatives living in the United States.

Canada has a point system that selects immigrants who the authorities have decided are most beneficial to the country. They will ask if you have family there, but they also ask how much schooling you have, how old you are, what your job is, if you speak English or French, and many more other factors. If you pass the test you get in, if you don't, you don't get in.

I hand out Canada's test to the students in my Kennedy School class every year. I fail it. And a lot of my students fail it. They can't believe that they can't get into Canada. However, Canada has decided that in their national interest, they want a particular type of person — which doesn't happen to be me, or many of my students.

The question is, just what is the combination of factors that a country wants to choose from? Is it family? Is it family and education? Or is it education and age?

Q Wouldn't your point system discriminate against certain groups of people?

Any system we propose will discriminate in one form or another. The least discriminatory system would be to just randomly raffle every visa out. We don't do that. For the most part, we choose people on the basis of family connections.

Take a large country like the Congo in Africa, which has fewer than 500 immigrants in the United States. The people now living in the Congo will find it fairly impossible to ever enter the United States because there is no one here who can sponsor them. Is that fair? It is discriminating on the basis of national origin. The point system does the same thing. I can't defend it on that basis. It will tend to choose people who originate in countries with high levels of human capital, because those are also the same people who will qualify in terms of educational attainment and occupation. But a skill-based point system gives equal opportunity to all persons who have equal skills – regardless of race or national origin.

Q U.S. high-tech companies would be happier.

Yes. High-technology industries are asking for more immigrants who are highly qualified, saying that there is a big shortage of workers in those fields. And that may be true. But one shouldn't forget that it benefits those industries, because to let in more programmers, for example, would lower their wages. So we should be careful about giving into industry demands for immigrants of a particular type.

Q What about the problem of illegal immigration?

There are 300,000 illegal immigrants who enter and stay in this country each year. We also have a few million more flowing back and forth. Altogether, the INS now estimates that there are five million illegal immigrants living in the United States. And, that is on top of the three million who received amnesty only 14 years ago. The problem is that we do not have any serious legislation to address the issue. What then, do you say to the millions who are waiting legally? The queues for legal immigration are incredible.

Q How do the Kennedy School students react to your work on immigration policy?

I teach a class on immigration, and often some of the students know more than I would ever know about the operation of the policy, because I just analyze it from a research point of view. There have been INS inspection agents, reporters who have worked on immigration issues, and teachers who teach bilingual education. I've also had a coast guard officer who actually helps control the flow of illegal immigrants from Haiti to the United States.

There is a huge dispersion of views on the topic. There are those who come in with the "give me your tired, your poor" preconception, as well as those who think immigration is a terrible thing for the country. It is very insightful to see the reactions of people when we start digging away at the layers of emotion on the immigration issue.

Q And on the fact that the immigration policy has helped you?

I am extremely grateful to the United States for letting my family in. We were refugees in the early 1960s. But I'm not writing a book about an immigration policy that benefits me. I am writing a book about an immigration policy that benefits the country. My interest is not necessarily the national interest. What I would want to have might be very different from what the nation as a whole might want to have. My preferences shouldn't drive immigration policy, just as they shouldn't drive any policy.

Is there any pressure on the government to change the current policy soon?

The government isn't doing anything right now to change the policy. But it's very unlikely the United States can keep admitting a million immigrants per year for decades on end. I argue in the book that the longer it takes to change, the more radical and restricted the change will be. Given our economic wealth, now is the perfect time to look at this more rationally and make minor adjustments to prevent the closing of the door later on.

Amy Wong is a freelance writer living in Wilmington, MA.