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Losing Control: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash That Elected Trump
Follow Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jerry Kammer as he tells the story of the federal government’s failure to control illegal immigration as Congress promised in 1986, when it enacted an historic compromise reform that also provided amnesty to nearly three million unauthorized immigrants.
Kammer argues that this was one of the most consequential failures in American history because it led to the proliferation of illegal immigration, which produced a backlash that eventually led to the election of Donald Trump.
Losing Control is a vivid history of the past half century of immigration politics and policy. It is also a dramatic ground-level account of how the story took shape. Kammer describes the economic and cultural forces that both pushed millions of migrants from home communities in Latin America and pulled them northward to the US.
He shows how the backlash gradually emerged from the frustrations of American workers and communities who felt overwhelmed by the influx and betrayed by their government.
Kammer also explains the Democrats abandonment of their historic commitment to control illegal immigration. And he details how Republicans placated corporate interests by allowing workplace controls to fail. Meanwhile, both parties sought to appease the public by spending billions on border security. Finally, he suggests new reforms that would honor our dual legacy as a country of immigrants and a country of laws.
Kammer argues that this was one of the most consequential failures in American history because it led to the proliferation of illegal immigration, which produced a backlash that eventually led to the election of Donald Trump.
Losing Control is a vivid history of the past half century of immigration politics and policy. It is also a dramatic ground-level account of how the story took shape. Kammer describes the economic and cultural forces that both pushed millions of migrants from home communities in Latin America and pulled them northward to the US.
He shows how the backlash gradually emerged from the frustrations of American workers and communities who felt overwhelmed by the influx and betrayed by their government.
Kammer also explains the Democrats abandonment of their historic commitment to control illegal immigration. And he details how Republicans placated corporate interests by allowing workplace controls to fail. Meanwhile, both parties sought to appease the public by spending billions on border security. Finally, he suggests new reforms that would honor our dual legacy as a country of immigrants and a country of laws.
404 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 4, 2020
Whether you are a lefty or a righty, "Losing Control" is a must read for an understanding not only of the immigration policy issue, but of the destructive politics, special interests and money that drives decisions. Our future depends on fixing these problems with open and honest discussion about fairness, the future, and doing what is right for now and for the next generations. "Losing Control" can be the catalyst to fix not only our immigration conundrum, but the mess we are in on so many issues that emanate from our government falling into a philosophical and bureaucratic black hole.
We can escape. "Losing Control" is not just about immigration - it is about saving ourselves on virtually every issue from the virus that has infected our ability to consider and act rationally in so many ways.
We can escape. "Losing Control" is not just about immigration - it is about saving ourselves on virtually every issue from the virus that has infected our ability to consider and act rationally in so many ways.
August 7, 2020
This is a book that addresses the problem of understanding the immigration process into the USA, which has created a biased view of conflicting issues with the system, created back to when America was first settled by people coming from Europe, totally forgetting the fact that there were people already living here ( the indigenous various tribes). Whatever attitudes of those who consider themselves on the righteous path, what has been forgotten entirely is that no land can assume overwhelming population growth without controlling the number of individuals present. No one is saying that there's a clear answer solution but we need to revamp once again the process of how one gets into the country to eliminate the very obvious fraud occurring. There's a reason we have borders around the country, which common sense means you need permission to cross into the country. Sometime in the late 1900s, changes were made to the process allowing easier entry using temporary visas which relied on the person receiving the visa to renew the visa or leave, forgetting the fact that it also allows that person to "disappear" under the radar for as long as possible, which explains why people have been living here decades without really going through the process of becoming citizens. Unfortunately, to make needed changes to make the process easier requires Congress to enact laws but our current Congress wants to take the easier path of just continued letting people enter the country through our border unvetted (produce documented papers and stay here indefinitely without really planning on permanently staying).
The question for all people who are citizens is this, how much do we want to share our limited resources with those who have ignored the process of assimilating into becoming part of this country but who also don't want to help develop the same in the country they came from.
On the other hand, we have the businesses that thrive on the cheap labor and profits they get from encouraging more people to come into the country. Underneath most American civic culture is the desire to maintain an orderly existence through hard work and cooperation that brings coherence to not just our daily lives but our communities. This is why at present 2020, violent protests attack against that orderly existence that is encouraged by some political figures is extremely hard to rectify unless you also look at who profits the most for eliminating the status quo. Again do we want the USA to become another third world country or do we want to stop this? The so-called affluent "professionals" who harbor a smug contempt for whomever they deem demographically inferior--another version of a class system--We can blame the IRCA for this which will make the majority of the present population the minority very soon using social media to condemn people's tendency to identify with the likeness of others. Creating an open borders policy will drive labor wages down, a know Koch brothers technique, forgetting whom they hurt by doing this. The ideal solution is to find a controlled limitation to keep and improve the kaleidoscope culture of the United States. American nationalism is a blending of provincialism within an orderly pattern. But we also need to deal with employers who knowingly use underpaid workers to keep labor cost down, while being ignored by governmental labor law enforcement. One of the biggest abusers is seasonal workers for crop picking because to follow the labor laws meant less profit. Labor Unions are no help either because they go by what they can get from the politicians who are actual owners of some of these farms who would rather pay cheap labor. On top of this, the employer is not doing anything illegal by hiring these workers, the workers themselves are the violators.
I could go on and reflect on many other inconsistencies in the immigration process. Once again, I put the choice out--do you want to continue to live in a civilized world of an orderly life or do you prefer the status of living in a potential third world country? Remember the Legacy of IRCA was the stimulus for the spread of illegal immigration across the entire country, not just in agriculture but all businesses. And we can thank Senator Schumer for this because it encouraged fraud by "promising amnesty" by assuming the businesses would "improve wages and working conditions" to keep newly legalized workers but because there was no enforcement, this was merely an umbrella to continue unscrupulous conditions while also raising the population level numbers. Instead of requiring those who have green cards to become full citizens, it instead encouraged stays to work without needing to fully assimilate as a form of inclusiveness and diversity. We are at a standstill because our government has failed to set limits and methods to enforce them fairly, firmly, and coherently. A pause of some kind is needed across the board in all forms of immigration It is time to Acclimate those who are here before we take the next step.
The question for all people who are citizens is this, how much do we want to share our limited resources with those who have ignored the process of assimilating into becoming part of this country but who also don't want to help develop the same in the country they came from.
On the other hand, we have the businesses that thrive on the cheap labor and profits they get from encouraging more people to come into the country. Underneath most American civic culture is the desire to maintain an orderly existence through hard work and cooperation that brings coherence to not just our daily lives but our communities. This is why at present 2020, violent protests attack against that orderly existence that is encouraged by some political figures is extremely hard to rectify unless you also look at who profits the most for eliminating the status quo. Again do we want the USA to become another third world country or do we want to stop this? The so-called affluent "professionals" who harbor a smug contempt for whomever they deem demographically inferior--another version of a class system--We can blame the IRCA for this which will make the majority of the present population the minority very soon using social media to condemn people's tendency to identify with the likeness of others. Creating an open borders policy will drive labor wages down, a know Koch brothers technique, forgetting whom they hurt by doing this. The ideal solution is to find a controlled limitation to keep and improve the kaleidoscope culture of the United States. American nationalism is a blending of provincialism within an orderly pattern. But we also need to deal with employers who knowingly use underpaid workers to keep labor cost down, while being ignored by governmental labor law enforcement. One of the biggest abusers is seasonal workers for crop picking because to follow the labor laws meant less profit. Labor Unions are no help either because they go by what they can get from the politicians who are actual owners of some of these farms who would rather pay cheap labor. On top of this, the employer is not doing anything illegal by hiring these workers, the workers themselves are the violators.
I could go on and reflect on many other inconsistencies in the immigration process. Once again, I put the choice out--do you want to continue to live in a civilized world of an orderly life or do you prefer the status of living in a potential third world country? Remember the Legacy of IRCA was the stimulus for the spread of illegal immigration across the entire country, not just in agriculture but all businesses. And we can thank Senator Schumer for this because it encouraged fraud by "promising amnesty" by assuming the businesses would "improve wages and working conditions" to keep newly legalized workers but because there was no enforcement, this was merely an umbrella to continue unscrupulous conditions while also raising the population level numbers. Instead of requiring those who have green cards to become full citizens, it instead encouraged stays to work without needing to fully assimilate as a form of inclusiveness and diversity. We are at a standstill because our government has failed to set limits and methods to enforce them fairly, firmly, and coherently. A pause of some kind is needed across the board in all forms of immigration It is time to Acclimate those who are here before we take the next step.
September 5, 2023
Since this is heated topic the use of Lock Out Tag Out as a metaphor, a broken system should be emotionally discharged before working on so no one gets hurt. Furthermore, one broken piece tends to wear or bust another in a cascade making blame less important than identifying what’s not working and why.
+Carrying Capacity and the 10th Amendment
In terms of economics, one of the first major issues of uncontrolled immigration should center on the carrying capacity of municipal systems. Put another way, city and county budgets are limited and there are only school rooms, hospital beds, highway lanes, and vacant rooms. These things can change or they could be well under capacity as noted later, but there should be some mechanism to direct the flow immigration in conjunction with employment and other goals. Though it was a political statement, the tensions between DC and Texas of busing refugees highlights this point of overwhelming integration capacity, but could also highlight a solution. Since this is a wedge issue driven to some extent by psychometric averages of the parties, tensions could be defused by incorporating state governments with incentive baskets for numbers and types of visa issuance based on local constituents. Since the goals of immigration are diverse in terms of high skilled labor in shortage, wealthy migrants with capital invests, seasonal farm labor, refugees, innovators, academics, low wage labor, etc, a base line from industry lobbyists at a state level could be worked out with trade offs in certain types and capacity feedback for other types. Voters might feel less isolated on the issue as half the states will be losers every 4 years on the federal presidency but increase in state internal agency could alleviate some of it on this issue while allowing for a smart allocation of diverse labor assets (in smarmy talk).
+Types of Structural Demand and Trade Offs
- Seasonal Farm Labor - The trade off in all of this is ‘higher wages mean higher costs of goods and services’ and the food produce example is a good example of this. If farmers had to pay wages high enough for local labor to pick certain crops, it might drive them under as those costs couldn’t be passed onto the consumer at higher prices. As the book notes, having green cards for a season worked well for both parties. US citizens enjoy lower food prices than otherwise. Mexicans and later Central Americans made more than they could at home due to the strength of the dollar converted to local currencies with lower costs of living at home. Granted, northern Mexico has industrialized and developed a lot from the Eisenhower period mentioned in the book but there is still the south of Mexico and Central America and the remittance coupled with banking and local industry could accelerate the development there. Additionally there is the example of Senator Schumer’s ‘Special Agricultural Workers’ in the IRCA that may not have functioned properly for systemic reasons but could be a good vetting process for the next class of labor.
- General Labor - In a negative trade off, this can be an excuse to flood the labor market in sectors that can’t be outsourced. Basic supply and demand means an increase of supply of labor will drive down price/wage if demand doesn’t shift (which is tricky with economic multipliers). As Robert Riech states “There is no National Assembly of the Working Poor” (pp.257) and stagnant wages from outsourcing and in sourcing but has bubbled over into a populism of frustration. In terms of this problem of living costs, it boils down to the Discount Shopping and Iron Law of Wages. Consumers demand the best price (the former) and producers look to cut costs to compete which in theory will lead to finding the lowest labor costs until global wages reach an equilibrium (the latter). Automation with probably short circuit equilibrium and a focus on decreasing living costs would be easier but in the meantime, some of the problems can be bypassed. The context around is mostly related to the context of ‘boom towns.’ People are pretty familiar with mining towns that later turn into ghost towns when the mine or well is exhausted. However, economic bases (mine/well) and multipliers (construction, saloon, cooper, stable, hotel, etc) are not limited to commodity markets and programs like social security also infuse regional flows into a town. A lot of the US is suffering from similar structural changes in a municipalities economic base with simple examples being the ‘rust belt’ with loss of manufacturing to the non union south and later abroad. Farming communities have likewise been affected by the mechanization of agriculture, automobile, and internet. As outlined in Mann’s “The Wizard and the Prophet” outlines how tractors and fertilizer quadrupled yields on certain crops, and that would lead to economies of scale in consolidating 40 acre homesteads into industrial farms. At the same time, homestead farms relied not only on animal labor prior, but also a lot of kids, kids who needed goods from the local general store. But with birth control, a lack of worrying about infant mortality, the automobile, and other factors, families shrank, small towns had to compete with larger cities for rural customers, and most excess farm labor went to factories and college. What’s more, all that happened within the span of the “The Waltons” so many people and lots of those towns and cities are still around. Social security and a loose economic base kind of keep them putting along especially in the low paying jobs of the service sector. Yet if most of the youth are planning on college and an urban job with the economies of scale for specialized work, who’s going to fill those positions? Thus the shortage and a need for some system to allow visas for jobs US citizens do not want to take in moving to a small/medium town or a better interstate job/housing market (but a lot of big city amenities will be lacking or familial ties which could hold many in place). In any case, visa markets at the state level with municipal inputs could serve to smooth out a lot of the contextual complexities in these areas.
-High Skilled & Innovators - The old US immigrant spiel is something like “We got off the boat with nothing but 2 nickels to rub together’ is later followed by a success story. It may be true in terms of financial capital but is severely misleading in terms of human capital. Many of the first English settlers were highly skilled farmers from decent backgrounds but due to shirking plots on a count of inheritance to first born, could not use their human capital at home and took the chance to cross the great pond. In the ‘Great Gatsby’ the novel traces a similar US trope as in the protagonist’s backstory after losing his mentor ‘he had been left with the ability to play the gentleman, but he was once again dirt poor.’ Granted, the tale is cautionary of what social misappropriations and distortions on the American Dream with dubious means polluting the attainment of the ends, but pattern can be used in either direction. The gist, is that across the globe there are many individuals whose human capital talents are squandered due to a lack of social capital (who you know) and financial capital. These individuals have made the US great with their innovations that benefit all and the US’s meritocratic social and financial structure has reciprocated the exchange. In Liebman & Long’s “The Molecule of More” there's a section dealing with the 7R allele associated the the DRD4 dopamine receptor and early human migration as well as current relationships in dopamine transporter difference influencing migration. Although migration has many domains, in the case of innovation these features tend to be self selecting in both novelty seeking, risk taking, and dedication. The book references another text on immigration whereby the US is a powerhouse in innovation as measured by patents (40%) and a majority of those patents are filled by immigrants in the country (pp.196) with breakdowns by major corporations (60-75% in tech). Research is a major driver of growth and sound immigration institutions have been and could continue to be a way to ensure the US is a world leader. It’s a gamble and the contributions vary wildly, but imagine a world where the Nazi’s captured Einstien or where Tesla was turned never met financial backers and the US clunked along on DC power grids. Perhaps the best case study would be Stanford Ovshinsky and his wacky dream of a tv resembling a picture frame, despite coming from east europe, his ideas on LCD tech were dismissed and the Japanese fostered this innovator instead resulting in a further shift east in the electronics industry. Hopefully global immigration policy will engender this competition giving innovators more choice and allowing the US to see the cost of missed opportunities as just one of these potential wizards could change the whole game. In terms of H-1B visas, the trade off is not only with local labor but the ease of offshoring such skills with the internet. The employers will pocket the difference and it’s tough to say how it will be invested. The opportunity lost is that highly skilled individuals will remain abroad, lose out on networking and collaboration with complementary individuals, won’t be contributing to the local economy, and won’t have the opportunity to potentially start a business in the US after accruing social capital in an innovationaly supportive environment. As for case studies, the Greater India/British relation is exemplary with figures like Bose outlined in the “Secret Life of Plants” or Subrahmanyan in “Free Radicals” and near misses in innovation due academic egotism and weakening ethnic stereotypes.
+Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986
Returning to the theme of the text, despite all the benefits and needs of immigration, the US runs off of ‘rule of law.’ In addition to capacity issues and wage stability there are obvious concerns of national security within the country's borders which is a psychometric hot button for a swath of any nation in terms of being risk averse (a dimetric opposite on spectrum benefits of risk which have neurological and historical tribal roots). The author lays out major factors that were supposed to ensure the functionality of immigration and why they failed.
-Employer Sanction - Illegal immigrants are not the only players at fault and in a cynical way, many illegal employers have a vested interest in a broken system and were major lobbying influences in undermining previous legislation. Although the term ‘illegal’ has an emotional charge is indicative of lacking legal protection for violation of said laws knowingly or not. Not having legal protection reduces such individuals to serfs with no bargaining power from illegal employers who can be given lower wages, poor working conditions, or other abuses as any complaint will result in deportation. That’s not to mention the hell of dealing with some coyotes on the journey north or that some Central Americans speak Spanish as a second language to their indigenous language and are unaware of how the system works. So any policy will not only have to contextually match supply to appropriate demand but also impose high penalties on employers who break the law to change their business calculus. Perhaps allowing illegal residents to testify for amnesty and the employer paying a fine to facilitate living expenses would improve relations between ICE and migrants while shifting adequate blame to an institution with the budget for deflective political propaganda.
-Verification - employment is a kind of infrastructure and just like driver’s licenses and roads work well together, the same system could apply to the labor market. The I-9 immigration forms are easy to fake, add to HR burdens, and create a black market that could work with other shady sectors. More modern bills have advocated E-verify so ICE can easily see if someone is authorized to be in the country but to my knowledge there is no picture. Living close to Postville, IA, what tends to happen is that employers will use fraudulent documents of real or fake social security numbers so the immigrants contribute to payroll and income tax (as well as property tax through rentals while not getting all of the benefits) and this could be hindered with an photo ID matching system. This could be locus for NAFTA and CAFTA in terms of regional infrastructure integration with respect to law enforcement and migration. We have a Real Id system and with the aid of DMV/court houses these could be made in the designated location of the visa with its type label the same way a veteran label is applied or class C,A,M etc. The authorization could be tied to state legislature approval in conjecture with foreign emigration institutions to include a picture, then be mailed to said office for entry with a bus ticket if needed in the Americas, and a check in with issuer for future advocacy. A mix of improved continental bio metrics and data-bated expiration dates with automated ICE alarms without checkout for overstays could increase compliance via odds of being caught.
-Border Security - this is what most think of in terms of immigration with border agents and extensions of the Bush area Secure Fence Act of 2006 stretching about 650 miles (pp. 322-323). Yet if one looks at the immense numbers of crossings compared to the arrests and later returns, it would take a much larger investment and even then it's most likely be counterproductive to the holistic goals of US policy. The highest priority would be violent criminals and the drug trade which is its own complex socioeconomic issue. Since immigration policy has a schizophrenic problem from illegal employers there is a huge demand to incentivise crossing for no rights, low pay (but higher than at home), and poor conditions. Making the system coherent and transferring a majority of the crossings to the illegal side and increase checkpoint compliance. Border Patrol, vibrational sensors, GPS, the fence, etc would be freed up to promote national security and the complexities of the labor market would be satisfied with the right mechanisms.
-Amnesty - The book approximates about 11 million undocumented immigrants currently and that comes with several complications. Many have woven into the fabric of society and the economy, many have had children who are by law US citizens, and remedying the situation is a Gordian knot. There’s mention of DACA and DAPA for the children and parents but amnesty straddles another psychometric dichotomy. On the one hand there is procedural equity in that certain members of society did not follow the rules and should thus not get the same reward of citizenship as members who did. Furthermore, the moral hazard principle dictates that amnesty would encourage others to break the rules in hopes of more amnesty. On the other hand is distributive equity in terms of equal distribution regardless and this plays on the empathy for potentially uprooting or dividing a family who hasn’t broken any other rules aside from entry. Such divisions in individuals on a spectrum tend to aggregate into party division lines adding fuel to the flames. Hypothetically, had the previous bills been effective and not undermined, this would not be an issue. This plays on a sunk cost fallacy as every day the policy is not fixed the problem will get larger as more undocumented families form which is bad for all interests in lue of compromise. These areas are emotionally difficult and I have a personal bias seeing fathers separated from mothers and children while dependent on the catholic church in Postville after contributing to the community and rarely causing problems save for a testosterone driven teen now and then (and the authentic Latino restaurants that close… sigh). That said, there still have to be long term solutions to this issue and immigration policy alone won’t fix all of them.
+The Job’s Magnet
A large pull for immigration is simply different living standards between American nations. It took place within the US with the Homestead Act, the Dust Bowl, Goldrush, etc as people naturally seek out better opportunities when prospects aren’t great. The difficult long term solution would be to continue trying to develop southern Mexico and Central America and this would stop the ‘desperation migration’ and resemble something more akin to the EU labor market (not everyone moves to Germany or France as income isn’t everything). Rather than a top-down approach like old CIA gems such as Guatemala being controlled by a fruit corporation, we could engage in honest policy to stabilize from the bottom up as partners. Granted, the iron law of wages doesn’t work if states are anarchic, incompatible with global trade, or in constant civil war and part older policies were about regional stability and growth but less beneficent interest were at hand as well. Worst they degrade trust in the US from the rest of the Americas making the Monroe doctrine appear as domination rather than protection. To reverse this, the US could work with partners to make a continental development bank to hold remittances from Canada, the US, and Mexico from migrant laborers. As the Economist magazine stated, most of this money goes under mattresses and not in banks which is tough on capital formation. The banks would be authorized to make loans for capital goods such as solar panels, power tools, appliances, motorcycles, smart phones, and other productivity boosting capital (I had to wash laundry by hand on board in Mexico and it wastes so much time). Additionally, a stipulation could be that the goods for loans only come from Latin manufactures thus increasing local jobs of higher added value as opposed to the lower added value of commodities from CAFTA. Panama is highly developed with its canal and financial sector, Costa Rica is highly stable with a growing tech and ecotourism sector, and Northern Mexico is a growing manufacturing hub. The target areas would be those that the old Spanish Empire didn’t spend much time developing partially due to the collapsed Mayan social structure that couldn’t be co-opted and the terrain (Marshall Eakin’s “The History of Latin America” gets at just a bit of the complexity). Migrants would get human capital, interests would come from productivity boosts, goods could specialize to needs (observing a mission in Honduras revealed how the tropical humidity destroys electric motors made for temperate climates), and the program could expand to housing modules and other home sweet home amenities.
+Carrying Capacity and the 10th Amendment
In terms of economics, one of the first major issues of uncontrolled immigration should center on the carrying capacity of municipal systems. Put another way, city and county budgets are limited and there are only school rooms, hospital beds, highway lanes, and vacant rooms. These things can change or they could be well under capacity as noted later, but there should be some mechanism to direct the flow immigration in conjunction with employment and other goals. Though it was a political statement, the tensions between DC and Texas of busing refugees highlights this point of overwhelming integration capacity, but could also highlight a solution. Since this is a wedge issue driven to some extent by psychometric averages of the parties, tensions could be defused by incorporating state governments with incentive baskets for numbers and types of visa issuance based on local constituents. Since the goals of immigration are diverse in terms of high skilled labor in shortage, wealthy migrants with capital invests, seasonal farm labor, refugees, innovators, academics, low wage labor, etc, a base line from industry lobbyists at a state level could be worked out with trade offs in certain types and capacity feedback for other types. Voters might feel less isolated on the issue as half the states will be losers every 4 years on the federal presidency but increase in state internal agency could alleviate some of it on this issue while allowing for a smart allocation of diverse labor assets (in smarmy talk).
+Types of Structural Demand and Trade Offs
- Seasonal Farm Labor - The trade off in all of this is ‘higher wages mean higher costs of goods and services’ and the food produce example is a good example of this. If farmers had to pay wages high enough for local labor to pick certain crops, it might drive them under as those costs couldn’t be passed onto the consumer at higher prices. As the book notes, having green cards for a season worked well for both parties. US citizens enjoy lower food prices than otherwise. Mexicans and later Central Americans made more than they could at home due to the strength of the dollar converted to local currencies with lower costs of living at home. Granted, northern Mexico has industrialized and developed a lot from the Eisenhower period mentioned in the book but there is still the south of Mexico and Central America and the remittance coupled with banking and local industry could accelerate the development there. Additionally there is the example of Senator Schumer’s ‘Special Agricultural Workers’ in the IRCA that may not have functioned properly for systemic reasons but could be a good vetting process for the next class of labor.
- General Labor - In a negative trade off, this can be an excuse to flood the labor market in sectors that can’t be outsourced. Basic supply and demand means an increase of supply of labor will drive down price/wage if demand doesn’t shift (which is tricky with economic multipliers). As Robert Riech states “There is no National Assembly of the Working Poor” (pp.257) and stagnant wages from outsourcing and in sourcing but has bubbled over into a populism of frustration. In terms of this problem of living costs, it boils down to the Discount Shopping and Iron Law of Wages. Consumers demand the best price (the former) and producers look to cut costs to compete which in theory will lead to finding the lowest labor costs until global wages reach an equilibrium (the latter). Automation with probably short circuit equilibrium and a focus on decreasing living costs would be easier but in the meantime, some of the problems can be bypassed. The context around is mostly related to the context of ‘boom towns.’ People are pretty familiar with mining towns that later turn into ghost towns when the mine or well is exhausted. However, economic bases (mine/well) and multipliers (construction, saloon, cooper, stable, hotel, etc) are not limited to commodity markets and programs like social security also infuse regional flows into a town. A lot of the US is suffering from similar structural changes in a municipalities economic base with simple examples being the ‘rust belt’ with loss of manufacturing to the non union south and later abroad. Farming communities have likewise been affected by the mechanization of agriculture, automobile, and internet. As outlined in Mann’s “The Wizard and the Prophet” outlines how tractors and fertilizer quadrupled yields on certain crops, and that would lead to economies of scale in consolidating 40 acre homesteads into industrial farms. At the same time, homestead farms relied not only on animal labor prior, but also a lot of kids, kids who needed goods from the local general store. But with birth control, a lack of worrying about infant mortality, the automobile, and other factors, families shrank, small towns had to compete with larger cities for rural customers, and most excess farm labor went to factories and college. What’s more, all that happened within the span of the “The Waltons” so many people and lots of those towns and cities are still around. Social security and a loose economic base kind of keep them putting along especially in the low paying jobs of the service sector. Yet if most of the youth are planning on college and an urban job with the economies of scale for specialized work, who’s going to fill those positions? Thus the shortage and a need for some system to allow visas for jobs US citizens do not want to take in moving to a small/medium town or a better interstate job/housing market (but a lot of big city amenities will be lacking or familial ties which could hold many in place). In any case, visa markets at the state level with municipal inputs could serve to smooth out a lot of the contextual complexities in these areas.
-High Skilled & Innovators - The old US immigrant spiel is something like “We got off the boat with nothing but 2 nickels to rub together’ is later followed by a success story. It may be true in terms of financial capital but is severely misleading in terms of human capital. Many of the first English settlers were highly skilled farmers from decent backgrounds but due to shirking plots on a count of inheritance to first born, could not use their human capital at home and took the chance to cross the great pond. In the ‘Great Gatsby’ the novel traces a similar US trope as in the protagonist’s backstory after losing his mentor ‘he had been left with the ability to play the gentleman, but he was once again dirt poor.’ Granted, the tale is cautionary of what social misappropriations and distortions on the American Dream with dubious means polluting the attainment of the ends, but pattern can be used in either direction. The gist, is that across the globe there are many individuals whose human capital talents are squandered due to a lack of social capital (who you know) and financial capital. These individuals have made the US great with their innovations that benefit all and the US’s meritocratic social and financial structure has reciprocated the exchange. In Liebman & Long’s “The Molecule of More” there's a section dealing with the 7R allele associated the the DRD4 dopamine receptor and early human migration as well as current relationships in dopamine transporter difference influencing migration. Although migration has many domains, in the case of innovation these features tend to be self selecting in both novelty seeking, risk taking, and dedication. The book references another text on immigration whereby the US is a powerhouse in innovation as measured by patents (40%) and a majority of those patents are filled by immigrants in the country (pp.196) with breakdowns by major corporations (60-75% in tech). Research is a major driver of growth and sound immigration institutions have been and could continue to be a way to ensure the US is a world leader. It’s a gamble and the contributions vary wildly, but imagine a world where the Nazi’s captured Einstien or where Tesla was turned never met financial backers and the US clunked along on DC power grids. Perhaps the best case study would be Stanford Ovshinsky and his wacky dream of a tv resembling a picture frame, despite coming from east europe, his ideas on LCD tech were dismissed and the Japanese fostered this innovator instead resulting in a further shift east in the electronics industry. Hopefully global immigration policy will engender this competition giving innovators more choice and allowing the US to see the cost of missed opportunities as just one of these potential wizards could change the whole game. In terms of H-1B visas, the trade off is not only with local labor but the ease of offshoring such skills with the internet. The employers will pocket the difference and it’s tough to say how it will be invested. The opportunity lost is that highly skilled individuals will remain abroad, lose out on networking and collaboration with complementary individuals, won’t be contributing to the local economy, and won’t have the opportunity to potentially start a business in the US after accruing social capital in an innovationaly supportive environment. As for case studies, the Greater India/British relation is exemplary with figures like Bose outlined in the “Secret Life of Plants” or Subrahmanyan in “Free Radicals” and near misses in innovation due academic egotism and weakening ethnic stereotypes.
+Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986
Returning to the theme of the text, despite all the benefits and needs of immigration, the US runs off of ‘rule of law.’ In addition to capacity issues and wage stability there are obvious concerns of national security within the country's borders which is a psychometric hot button for a swath of any nation in terms of being risk averse (a dimetric opposite on spectrum benefits of risk which have neurological and historical tribal roots). The author lays out major factors that were supposed to ensure the functionality of immigration and why they failed.
-Employer Sanction - Illegal immigrants are not the only players at fault and in a cynical way, many illegal employers have a vested interest in a broken system and were major lobbying influences in undermining previous legislation. Although the term ‘illegal’ has an emotional charge is indicative of lacking legal protection for violation of said laws knowingly or not. Not having legal protection reduces such individuals to serfs with no bargaining power from illegal employers who can be given lower wages, poor working conditions, or other abuses as any complaint will result in deportation. That’s not to mention the hell of dealing with some coyotes on the journey north or that some Central Americans speak Spanish as a second language to their indigenous language and are unaware of how the system works. So any policy will not only have to contextually match supply to appropriate demand but also impose high penalties on employers who break the law to change their business calculus. Perhaps allowing illegal residents to testify for amnesty and the employer paying a fine to facilitate living expenses would improve relations between ICE and migrants while shifting adequate blame to an institution with the budget for deflective political propaganda.
-Verification - employment is a kind of infrastructure and just like driver’s licenses and roads work well together, the same system could apply to the labor market. The I-9 immigration forms are easy to fake, add to HR burdens, and create a black market that could work with other shady sectors. More modern bills have advocated E-verify so ICE can easily see if someone is authorized to be in the country but to my knowledge there is no picture. Living close to Postville, IA, what tends to happen is that employers will use fraudulent documents of real or fake social security numbers so the immigrants contribute to payroll and income tax (as well as property tax through rentals while not getting all of the benefits) and this could be hindered with an photo ID matching system. This could be locus for NAFTA and CAFTA in terms of regional infrastructure integration with respect to law enforcement and migration. We have a Real Id system and with the aid of DMV/court houses these could be made in the designated location of the visa with its type label the same way a veteran label is applied or class C,A,M etc. The authorization could be tied to state legislature approval in conjecture with foreign emigration institutions to include a picture, then be mailed to said office for entry with a bus ticket if needed in the Americas, and a check in with issuer for future advocacy. A mix of improved continental bio metrics and data-bated expiration dates with automated ICE alarms without checkout for overstays could increase compliance via odds of being caught.
-Border Security - this is what most think of in terms of immigration with border agents and extensions of the Bush area Secure Fence Act of 2006 stretching about 650 miles (pp. 322-323). Yet if one looks at the immense numbers of crossings compared to the arrests and later returns, it would take a much larger investment and even then it's most likely be counterproductive to the holistic goals of US policy. The highest priority would be violent criminals and the drug trade which is its own complex socioeconomic issue. Since immigration policy has a schizophrenic problem from illegal employers there is a huge demand to incentivise crossing for no rights, low pay (but higher than at home), and poor conditions. Making the system coherent and transferring a majority of the crossings to the illegal side and increase checkpoint compliance. Border Patrol, vibrational sensors, GPS, the fence, etc would be freed up to promote national security and the complexities of the labor market would be satisfied with the right mechanisms.
-Amnesty - The book approximates about 11 million undocumented immigrants currently and that comes with several complications. Many have woven into the fabric of society and the economy, many have had children who are by law US citizens, and remedying the situation is a Gordian knot. There’s mention of DACA and DAPA for the children and parents but amnesty straddles another psychometric dichotomy. On the one hand there is procedural equity in that certain members of society did not follow the rules and should thus not get the same reward of citizenship as members who did. Furthermore, the moral hazard principle dictates that amnesty would encourage others to break the rules in hopes of more amnesty. On the other hand is distributive equity in terms of equal distribution regardless and this plays on the empathy for potentially uprooting or dividing a family who hasn’t broken any other rules aside from entry. Such divisions in individuals on a spectrum tend to aggregate into party division lines adding fuel to the flames. Hypothetically, had the previous bills been effective and not undermined, this would not be an issue. This plays on a sunk cost fallacy as every day the policy is not fixed the problem will get larger as more undocumented families form which is bad for all interests in lue of compromise. These areas are emotionally difficult and I have a personal bias seeing fathers separated from mothers and children while dependent on the catholic church in Postville after contributing to the community and rarely causing problems save for a testosterone driven teen now and then (and the authentic Latino restaurants that close… sigh). That said, there still have to be long term solutions to this issue and immigration policy alone won’t fix all of them.
+The Job’s Magnet
A large pull for immigration is simply different living standards between American nations. It took place within the US with the Homestead Act, the Dust Bowl, Goldrush, etc as people naturally seek out better opportunities when prospects aren’t great. The difficult long term solution would be to continue trying to develop southern Mexico and Central America and this would stop the ‘desperation migration’ and resemble something more akin to the EU labor market (not everyone moves to Germany or France as income isn’t everything). Rather than a top-down approach like old CIA gems such as Guatemala being controlled by a fruit corporation, we could engage in honest policy to stabilize from the bottom up as partners. Granted, the iron law of wages doesn’t work if states are anarchic, incompatible with global trade, or in constant civil war and part older policies were about regional stability and growth but less beneficent interest were at hand as well. Worst they degrade trust in the US from the rest of the Americas making the Monroe doctrine appear as domination rather than protection. To reverse this, the US could work with partners to make a continental development bank to hold remittances from Canada, the US, and Mexico from migrant laborers. As the Economist magazine stated, most of this money goes under mattresses and not in banks which is tough on capital formation. The banks would be authorized to make loans for capital goods such as solar panels, power tools, appliances, motorcycles, smart phones, and other productivity boosting capital (I had to wash laundry by hand on board in Mexico and it wastes so much time). Additionally, a stipulation could be that the goods for loans only come from Latin manufactures thus increasing local jobs of higher added value as opposed to the lower added value of commodities from CAFTA. Panama is highly developed with its canal and financial sector, Costa Rica is highly stable with a growing tech and ecotourism sector, and Northern Mexico is a growing manufacturing hub. The target areas would be those that the old Spanish Empire didn’t spend much time developing partially due to the collapsed Mayan social structure that couldn’t be co-opted and the terrain (Marshall Eakin’s “The History of Latin America” gets at just a bit of the complexity). Migrants would get human capital, interests would come from productivity boosts, goods could specialize to needs (observing a mission in Honduras revealed how the tropical humidity destroys electric motors made for temperate climates), and the program could expand to housing modules and other home sweet home amenities.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2025
I have learned a lot from my brother, especially, thanks to this book, about the many complexities and countervailing values of immigration issues.
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