A Lump of Cruelty

Observing both the US and Australian debates over immigration, it is clear that anti-immigrant sentiment (which this law is pandering to) is a function of two factors:
(1) level of unemployment
(2) how much sense ordinary citizens have that migration is “under control”.

The solution to the first is for the Fed to fix by increasing aggregate spending. (Any supply side reforms, however worthy, are unlikely to be anywhere near as effective.) Or, to put it another way, do its job as well as the Reserve Bank of Australia has.

The second is bedevilled by the fact that one side of the debate “wins” if nothing effective is done about illegal immigration while ordinary citizens can only get a sense of having a say if legal policy (the one they get to vote on) matters. In Australia, there was a notable and dramatic drop in anti-immigration sentiment when the then Howard Government ostentatiously cracked down on boat arrivals. This despite the same Government running a high immigration policy and the least “Eurocentric” policy in our history.

Of course, Australia is also the world-champion at “cherry-picking” migrants–it is helpful to be a prosperous, English-speaking island-continent.

To be consistent, if you believe that “aggregate demand” is what controls the pace of an economy (and I personally don’t believe any such thing, but there’s a rumor going round that many people do), then you would have to believe that immigrants can displace locals out of jobs, and thus working to feed your family is implicitly putting someone else’s family into poverty.

I would have thought that was a perfectly valid conclusion of Keynesian theory.

The situation in Australia is kind of complex. If you check the following document:

http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/docs/resources/Intake%20Sub%202010-11.pdf

The table on page 12 labelled “Figure 1″ shows that the highest humanitarian intake was in 2004-2005 (under the Howard government) and it dropped steeply during 2008 (under the Rudd government) then came back up again (under the Gillard government). Ask the average Australian in the street who was least generous to refugees out of Howard, Rudd and Gillard? Most of them will tell you Howard was an absolute bastard when it came to refugees, and Gillard and Rudd were pretty decent.

Also check the following document:

http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/bn/sp/boatarrivals.htm

You can see that there was a burst of boat arrivals around 2000, and then another burst recently in 2010. We are facing the highest levels of boat people in a generation. That’s a much lower figure than total immigrants, and a much lower figure than even humanitarian immigrants, but nevertheless a relatively large number of people are coming here without any invitation, and often without any documentation at all. Also note that the highest humanitarian immigration during 2004-2005 happened at the time of the lowest number of boat people. That’s because we were taking people out of refugee camps under a well organised system, rather than pulling people off rocks and rescuing them from sinking ships under a disorganized system.

That’s the weirdest thing of all, you find people who swing from the apron strings of the Nanny State but absolutely can’t abide by the idea that government gets to control who comes to this country. It’s a strange old world out there.

On a final note, has anyone looked at the Liberty and Democracy Party’s policy for solving the problem of people smuggling?

“So any pretext of being concerned about folks coming here to be a burden on the system is completely abandoned. It is now extra illegal to even try to work and feed your family. ”

I find it revealing that soliciting work is a crime. This suggests that the illegal immigrants will be jailed. And since Alabama’s short of farm labor………………………….

In the end, it’s the slavers promoting these laws.