Ending the Black Market in Low-skilled Labor
Alex Nowrasteh and Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute make the case for immigration reform in an especially appealing way in a fresh op-ed this week in the Detroit News.
In a commentary article titled, “Fix immigration rules to crush black market,” they dissect a well-meaning but flawed Obama administration effort to fix the dysfunctional H-2A visa program for temporary farm workers. Instead of fine tuning an unworkable law, Nowrasteh and Young advocate liberalization:
That means making H-2A visas inexpensive, easy to obtain, and keeping the related paperwork and regulations to a minimum. That means no minimum wage hike. No costly background check requirements. People rarely break laws that are reasonable and easy to obey.
When legal channels cost too much in time and money, people will turn to illegal channels every time. That’s how the world works. Getting rid of immigration’s black market begins with admitting that fact.
Hear, hear.
Terrorism and Security Systems
Terrorism presents a complex set of security problems. That’s easy to see in the welter of discussion about the recent attempted bombing on a plane flying from Amsterdam into Detroit. The media and blogs are poring over the many different security systems implicated by this story. Unfortunately, many are reviewing them all at once, which is very confusing.
Each security system aimed to protect against terror attacks and other threats involves difficult and complex balancing among many different interests and values. Each system deserves separate consideration, along with analysis of how they interact with one another.
A helpful way to unpack security is by thinking in terms of “layers.” Calling it security “layering” is a way of describing the many different practices and technologies that limit threats to the things we prize. (It’s another lens on security, compatible with the risk management framework I laid out shortly after the Fort Hood shooting.)
“Send Us Your Tired, Your Poor, But Only if They’re ‘Culturally Unique’”
That’s the title of a Wall Street Journal article detailing the latest idiocy to come out of our immigration system. It seems that if you’re a musician trying to get a visa to perform in the United States, you have to prove to some bureaucrat’s satisfaction that your music either is “culturally unique” or has “achieved international recognition and acclaim.” (Query: Does the Department of Homeland Security now require immigration caseworkers to have degrees in musicology or fine arts?)
The article chronicles the various travails of performers who are either so innovative — perish the thought! — as to not fit into an easily defined cultural category or haven’t yet reached U2-like levels of popularity.
Reads one denial: “The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music … [which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons.”
Reads another: “Being internationally acclaimed is not equivalent to performing on stages overseas.”
You can’t make this stuff up! It reminds me of my own immigration plight – which ended happily earlier this year — whereby I shot myself in the foot by, among other ridiculous things, getting my education in the United States instead of acquiring legal expertise abroad (at lesser institutions, making myself less valuable to the U.S. legal market).
I’ve heard some talk that Congress will take up immigration reform after it finishes with health care, though I can’t imagine that happening in an election year. In any event, I’ve long believed that our immigration non-policy is the worst part of the U.S. government (which should say something, coming from someone at Cato).
For more on our work on immigration policy, go here.
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