King George vs. Immigration
Bill Walker at Strike the Root - in the eighteenth century, Americans knew enough economics to realize that King George's attempts to blockade immigration and trade were a threat to their liberty. Nothing has changed. Immigration isn't the problem. The Amerikan police state and its taxes and regulations are the problem. [root]
In the time of Adam Smith, people were pretty clear about the good effects of trade and immigration. In war, you blockade the enemy to prevent trade and immigration. This is how you destroy an economy. Today economic literacy is less common . . . so our politicians try to convince us to blockade ourselves.
Adam Smith figured out this sort of thing in the 1700s. Trade is not war. You can't make yourself better off by hurting your trade partners; that just means they have less wealth to buy your products, and the prices of your goods suffer. Other people's work, in the long run, makes you richer. Everyone specializes, the overall economy becomes more efficient, and instead of a nation of 99% peasants we have a nation with thousands of occupations. Of course you can't just keep turning the same nut on the same bolt in the same factory your whole life . . . but that wasn't going to happen anyway.
Economists disagree on how much immigrants help the economy, but the effect is clearly positive. Of course it would be more positive if we made it legal for all of them to work!
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