Austin and Texas Crush the Anti-Immigration Right
Last week USA Today reported that an average of 150 people move to Austin, TX daily. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed a few days later, the Manhattan Institute's Jason Riley noted that the state of Texas has the U.S.'s second largest immigrant population. Both are relevant numbers to the discussion of U.S. immigration, and debates about same.
Easily the purest market signal of all - and nothing else comes close - concerns where individuals choose to live and work. That so many domestic and foreign migrants are choosing Austin, and then Texas more broadly, speaks volumes. Specifically, it speaks to abundant economic opportunity in the Lone Star state that persists despite a decline in the price of oil that occurred in concert with a resumption of dollar-price quietude from the U.S. Treasury.
What's odd is that the American right is increasingly the loud voice shouting with horror about immigration despite it being the happiest and purest of market signals. It's the American left that's normally most prone to try and bend the will of markets, all the while turning its nose up to what markets are communicating, but with immigration it's quite disturbingly many on the right shouting at the proverbial scoreboard.
Just the same, it's usually the right expressing very healthy skepticism about the size and scope of government, along with the gun-infused power of government. All with good reason. Of course, that's what's so odd about this same right calling for mass deportation of immigrants, presumably by government officials bearing arms. That the deportation of millions would require a massive increase in the armed size of the federal government doesn't seem to bother certain conservatives, nor does the cost of building and policing a wall meant to literally block out what is a positive market signal. The failure of the feds in their decades-long attempt to secure our borders against "drugs" also doesn't seem to bother many on the right who, while fully aware of the federal government's inability to keep "drugs" out of the U.S., support the empowerment of that same federal government to keep out ambitious people.
And make no mistake, these are ambitious individuals migrating to the U.S. legally and illegally. Are many new arrivals poor? Of course they are. They're frequently poor precisely because they're coming from countries where opportunity is limited thanks to too much government. Historically free in the economic and personal sense relative to most other countries, the U.S. long ago licked poverty as evidenced by the arrival of so many who have nothing. Why move to a country that offers no opportunity to improve on one's existing economic and personal condition?
To the above, some conservatives think they have an answer. They say that immigrants come to the U.S. to take advantage of generous social services. In making such an argument they ignore how foreign inflows declined after 2008 amid slow economic growth stateside, not to mention that Mexican workers who are legal to move back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico don't put much of a burden on social services simply because they leave their children and elderly relatives at home.
They also ignore the statistic cited by Riley. If handouts were truly the endgame for legal and illegal immigrants, would they really migrate to Texas in such large numbers? Texas is known for many things, but certainly not generous handouts. That legal immigrants can't go on welfare for at least five years while illegal arrivals logically can't access welfare at all doesn't seem to factor into what is sadly an argument increasingly made by conservatives. What about social services more broadly? Conservatives correctly elevate the frequent unintended consequences of government programs, but ignore the implications of a heavily policed southern border meant to keep out illegals. As the previous paragraph hopefully makes plain, those legal to come and go generally don't bring Grandma and the kids with them in the first place. They don't need to.
Of course, some conservatives argue that the arrival of immigrants (more hands as it were) drives down wages, thus the need to keep them out. This might be the silliest argument of them all, but Ann Coulter proudly clings to it. More disappointing than Coulter is that someone as wise as Glenn Harlan Reynolds furthers this narrative too, though in Reynolds' case it's fair to assume he's merely explaining the views held by immigration skeptics. As he put it in USA Today last week in an op-ed, "corporate donors want cheap labor....More immigrants means more competition for jobs, pushing wages down, whether it's at entry-level unskilled job or at higher-level tech jobs where employers abuse H1B visas to bring in cheap foreign labor." Where does one begin?
Implicit in the Coulter argument is that low wages are largely a function of excess labor supply. By that illogic we should not only "secure the borders," we should also abolish tractors, computers and ATMs since their robotic hands are similarly "competition" (Reynolds' word, not mine) for high and low end jobs on the way to shrinking pay. Except they haven't reduced American pay. If they had, as in if advanced countries ever in search of mechanized hands to take the place of humans were low wage countries, then foreigners wouldn't be rushing here in the first place. All that, plus Americans would be leaving in droves.
What about Austin, and Texas more broadly? It has the second largest immigrant population in the U.S., but has that resulted in low pay for Texans? To believe what is plainly false, we'd have to believe that this massive migration from all points in and outside the U.S. to immigrant abundant Texas has been rooted in a desire among Americans and foreigners alike to seek reduced compensation.
Some might reply that Austin is only attracting high-end tech workers to the tune of 150 new arrivals each day. But even if true let's not forget that Austin's tech community is very pro-immigration. Trilogy Software CEO Joe Liemandt is a prominent Austinite who supports the free movement of people, amd has also positively transformed Austin by virtue of attracting well over 2,000 Stanford grads eager to innovate, and whose innovations have been a magnet for even more in the way of job and pay-boosting investment. In that case, why would high-end tech workers flock to a city that is actively seeking foreigners meant to slash their pay? Can the migrants really be this stupid, and people like Coulter this smart? If the inflow of workers at the high and low end puts a damper on pay, wouldn't individuals be departing Austin and Texas at great speed to depopulated cities like Detroit? Wouldn't immigrants be racing there alongside "Texas-Exes" eager to escape Lone Stat wages hollowed out by too many high and low-skilled workers?
They would be if the Texas economy reflected the confusion inside Coulter and an increasing number of conservative heads about what drives the cost of labor. The problem for Coulter and certain conservatives is that the level of investment is what defines wages and pay, and as evidenced by the popularity of Texas among investors, those who actually create jobs love immigrants (domestic and foreign) of all skill sets. Sorry, but it's true. Investors create all the jobs.
Ultimately, it's more than a bit ironic to this writer that so many conservatives prone to embrace Texas do so despite its success in thoroughly mocking their views on immigration. How ironic just the same that this same segment of the conservative right has taken to bashing market signals in order to make what is a senseless, anti-conservative argument in the first place.
