Gregory Clark - professor of economics at UC Davis -
offers "Illegal immigration: our best foreign aid":
About 160 million people with incomes a fifth or less than the average U.S. income now reside less than 1,500 miles from our southern border. Given this huge income gap, more border agents and more miles of fence cannot prevent substantial illegal migration. But such migration is actually the United States' most effective foreign aid program, helping some of the poorest people in the world. Some believe such migration should be tolerated, not fought to the death. [...globalism - sold by people like Clark - increased the wealth gap between countries...] ...Across such a long border, more agents and better technology can slow the inward march of migrants, but it cannot halt it... ...In such a situation, recognizing that there will be some flow of labor across this wealth divide, and periodically legalizing those who manage to find their way to the U.S. labor market, is not a bad option...
Of course, Clark forgot to mention one of the other ways that, if we did it, would greatly reduce illegal immigration: conducting stings against crooked employers and imprisoning them.
And, he goes on to promote
remittances, without mentioning their huge downsides. Is he unable to figure those out, or don't the costs of massive political corruption and propping up corrupt foreign governments figure into this "economist's" calculations?
There's yet another way to reduce illegal immigration: discredit hacks like Gregory Clark by pointing out the things they forgot to mention.
Immigration2007a · Tue, 07/31/2007 - 13:59 ·
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