“[I]t takes a special kind of brazenness to propose a reduction of the national poverty rate at the expense of ensuring that more people stay poor by denying them opportunity to set foot in the nation.” – The Economist on Heritage’s Robert Rector.

Problem:

Thousands of migrants try to enter Europe illegally each year and hundreds die on often perilous sea journeys.

Solution:

A $6bn development package for West Africa has been revealed which it is hoped will help halt the emigration of young people from the region.

Solution that might actually work:

Sadly, there is no quick-fix way to keep Africans from attempting the deadly journey to the Canary Islands and Lampedusa in unseaworthy craft, as there is no quick-fix way to keep Mexicans and Central Americans from attempting the risky crossing of America’s southwest desert. But among the highly imperfect solutions, Harvard’s Lant Pritchett has the best: give many of them a humane and dignified path to a substantial degree of economic opportunity through expanded guest worker arrangements.

Problem:

Thousands of migrants try to enter Europe illegally each year and hundreds die on often perilous sea journeys.

Solution:

A $6bn development package for West Africa has been revealed which it is hoped will help halt the emigration of young people from the region.

Solution that might actually work:

Sadly, there is no quick-fix way to keep Africans from attempting the deadly journey to the Canary Islands and Lampedusa in unseaworthy craft, as there is no quick-fix way to keep Mexicans and Central Americans from attempting the risky crossing of America’s southwest desert. But among the highly imperfect solutions, Harvard’s Lant Pritchett has the best: give many of them a humane and dignified path to a substantial degree of economic opportunity through expanded guest worker arrangements.

A new NBER paper shreds an old stereotype, reports Bryan Caplan:

Kristin Butcher and Anne Piehl shows that, despite their demographics, immigrants are drastically less criminal than native-born Americans… [G]iven their demographics, we should expect immigrants to commit crimes at double the native rate. But for some reason(s), demographics yield a massive overprediction; immigrants commit crimes at one-tenth the expected rate given their demographics. Yes, if immigrants acted like otherwise similar natives, they were be ten times as criminal as they actually are.

See Caplan’s post for more commentary and an ungated link to the working paper.

CGD’s Michael Clemens eviscerates The New Republic editors for patronizing non-Europeans migrant workers and opposing the liberalization of labor flows.

Suppose we transfer one person from Mexico to United States (illegally or otherwise). As a result his wages increase compared to what he was making in Mexico. Let us also suppose that as a result of this transfer the wages of some unskilled worker in US fall. Furthermore we will ignore the aggregate gains from immigration that occur and which all economists, including Borjas admit exist. We do this to make our job harder, not easier.

How much do you have to weight the native’s welfare relative to that of the Mexican immigrant in order to oppose moving this migrant into US?

YouNotSneaky assumes that utility is a CES function of the wage and goes from there. It’s an interesting back of the envelope calculation. His result: “Clearly one doesn’t need to be a rootless cosmopolitan to reject these kinds of weights. One only need not be a jerk.”

After checking out YouNotSneaky’s calculations, head over to Marginal Revolution to check out the hostile exchanges in the comments section.

Michael Clemens:

You might have seen a recent New York Times Magazine cover story (subscription req.) about Filipinos working overseas… The author, Jason Deparle, recognizes the comparatively enormous salaries that Emmet Comodas and all five of his children have earned abroad, but urges us to remember that “competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss.” Any good journalist lays out the pros and cons of phenomena, inviting readers to reach their own conclusions. But one straightforward fact should stare any reader directly in the eyes: The Comodas family has reached its own decision about whether the gains are worth the losses. They have decided that the losses do not even come close to paralleling the gains, and their conclusion matters infinitely more than yours or mine…

Emmet Comodas’ salary in Saudi Arabia was ten times what he could have earned at home. He and his wife Tita invested the extra pay in food, medicine, and school supplies for their children. Though neither Emmet nor Tita had finished high school, four of their five children now have college degrees. Deparle grimly notes that “Emmet, overseas paying the bills, missed every graduation”. So what? Evidently Emmet and Tita decided that it would be better for their children if Emmet were absent at their children’s college graduations than present to watch them drop out of high school only to perpetuate their family’s poverty. Who are you and I to tut-tut them for this decision?

Do read the full post.

Michael Clemens:

You might have seen a recent New York Times Magazine cover story (subscription req.) about Filipinos working overseas… The author, Jason Deparle, recognizes the comparatively enormous salaries that Emmet Comodas and all five of his children have earned abroad, but urges us to remember that “competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss.” Any good journalist lays out the pros and cons of phenomena, inviting readers to reach their own conclusions. But one straightforward fact should stare any reader directly in the eyes: The Comodas family has reached its own decision about whether the gains are worth the losses. They have decided that the losses do not even come close to paralleling the gains, and their conclusion matters infinitely more than yours or mine…

Emmet Comodas’ salary in Saudi Arabia was ten times what he could have earned at home. He and his wife Tita invested the extra pay in food, medicine, and school supplies for their children. Though neither Emmet nor Tita had finished high school, four of their five children now have college degrees. Deparle grimly notes that “Emmet, overseas paying the bills, missed every graduation”. So what? Evidently Emmet and Tita decided that it would be better for their children if Emmet were absent at their children’s college graduations than present to watch them drop out of high school only to perpetuate their family’s poverty. Who are you and I to tut-tut them for this decision?

Do read the full post.

Michael Clemens:

You might have seen a recent New York Times Magazine cover story (subscription req.) about Filipinos working overseas… The author, Jason Deparle, recognizes the comparatively enormous salaries that Emmet Comodas and all five of his children have earned abroad, but urges us to remember that “competing with the literature of gain is a parallel literature of loss.” Any good journalist lays out the pros and cons of phenomena, inviting readers to reach their own conclusions. But one straightforward fact should stare any reader directly in the eyes: The Comodas family has reached its own decision about whether the gains are worth the losses. They have decided that the losses do not even come close to paralleling the gains, and their conclusion matters infinitely more than yours or mine…

Emmet Comodas’ salary in Saudi Arabia was ten times what he could have earned at home. He and his wife Tita invested the extra pay in food, medicine, and school supplies for their children. Though neither Emmet nor Tita had finished high school, four of their five children now have college degrees. Deparle grimly notes that “Emmet, overseas paying the bills, missed every graduation”. So what? Evidently Emmet and Tita decided that it would be better for their children if Emmet were absent at their children’s college graduations than present to watch them drop out of high school only to perpetuate their family’s poverty. Who are you and I to tut-tut them for this decision?

Do read the full post.

Gordon Hanson:

…from a purely economic perspective, illegal immigration is arguably preferable to legal immigration. …the illegal route is for the moment vastly more efficient than the cumbersome legal system. Illegal immigration responds to economic signals in ways that legal immigration does not. Illegal migrants tend to arrive in larger numbers when the U.S. economy is booming and move to regions where job growth is strong. Legal immigration, in contrast, is subject to bureaucratic delays, which tend to disassociate legal inflows from U.S. labor-market conditions. The lengthy visa application process requires employers to plan their hiring far in advance. Once here, guest workers cannot easily move between jobs, limiting their benefit to the U.S. economy.