Reason Versus National Review: Is Mass Immigration Good for America?

Katherine Mangu-Ward and Alex Nowrasteh squared off against Rich Lowry and Steven Camarota to debate immigration.

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Reason Versus National Review: Is Mass Immigration Good for America?

Reason and the Cato Institute go head-to-head with our friends at the National Review and the Center for Immigration Studies in a thought-provoking debate on one of America's most divisive issues: immigration.

Resolution: Mass Immigration Is Good for America

Affirmative: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward and Cato's Alex Nowrasteh

Negative: National Review's Rich Lowry and Center for Immigration Studies' Steven Camarota

Moderator: Peter Suderman

Reason Versus is a debate series where Reason journalists and policy experts face off against pundits and strategists who challenge their ideas—no talking points, no shouting, just sharp arguments and real discussion.

• Producer: Natalie Dowzicky
• Audio Production: Ian Keyser
• Camera: Cody Huff
• Camera: Justin Zuckerman
• Camera: César Báez
• Camera: Jim Epstein
• Video editor: Chris Sowick

Comments

[Chumby]

Not illegal alien rapefugees. But you already knew that.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I can read faster than I can listen, and without a transcript I can't tell what the debate covers. But if it doesn't acknowledge the difference between "open borders" and "open boarders", it's useless.

* Pre-1920 immigrants came of their own free will and knew they had to depend on themselves, family, and friends to succeed.

* Current immigrants know they get welfare, room and board, cash, health care, and waiver of all crimes past and future. Some are "refugees" who hate America, are sent to communities which have no room for them and which the refugees don't like.

They are night and day different. Refusal to acknowledge that difference is akin to fraud.

[Rick James]

I wonder if Reason took up Milton Friedman's argument?

[Rick James]

* Current immigrants know they get welfare, room and board, cash, health care, and waiver of all crimes past and future. Some are "refugees" who hate America, are sent to communities which have no room for them and which the refugees don't like.

And Reason literally celebrated that. So this is going to be a very interesting debate. I suspect that if our "friends" at National Review even are able to push that issue, KMW's position will be, "aaaand?"

[Chumby]

Kamala Mangu-Ward

[Rick James]

This pushback against wokeness (what even is that, man?) is the New McCarthyism!

[Rick James]

Moderator: Peter Suderman

Debate: Are trans people being genocided if we don't allow a dude in women's changing rooms and bathrooms!

Moderator: Nina Totenberg

[Social Justice is neither]

Alex and KMW routinely ignore the costs in the cost benefit analysis and then lie about the timing and magnitude of the benefits as they erase any distinction between legal and illegal immigration. May as well debate a parrot for all the intellectual honesty in those two.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Part of being an ignorant globalist is arguing based on non credible models by activists while ignoring actual data.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Was this before or after the melt down by Alex this weekend? The proud globalist elitist.

[MasterThief]

He had another one?

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Yeah. Posted it in the Sunday thread.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

National Review position is pro-central planning, even though their answer to that question was something like, "no this isn't cenral planning because borders."

My favorite position is that immigrants are simultaneously taking good jobs from Americans while also being deadbeats on welfare.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Both are true. The latter more than the former. Because like cato you ignore legal vs illegal as youre an ignorant person.

It still confuses you as to why basing immigration on needs instead of blindly is a better policy. Because I again point to your ignorance.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Needs of who? The Cato position is literally let the market determine the needs. If someone wants to hire a willing employee, the government has no place in that. It's literally the argument that KMW and Alex posit multiple times in the debate.

The legal vs illegal is a non sequitur. The whole point is that after passing a criminal background check and a health screening, immigration should be legal. But your side can't get it through your head that govt. bureaucrats planning who and how many can participate in the labor market is Marxist central planning. I noticed that you didn't address my point about you being pro-central planning.

[Mother's Lament]

"The Cato position is literally let the market determine the needs."

This is only true in a scenario where the market is unregulated. Right now regulations make it impossible for new competitors to enter many of the markets. Cato knows this, but wants to pretend otherwise for their corporatist paymaster.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

So your argument is if we don't have a perfectly free market then we can't have this freedom either? Which other economic freedoms should we sacrifice due to regulations?

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

His argument is the non ignorant position that a regulated market isnt free. Likewise he recognizes the current regulatory field actually makes the free market you think is there more expensive to hire domestically.

Stop being lied to. Learn how these programs actually operate. Limit movement of foreign workers. Allow foreign workers to cost less in labor. Etc.

Youre operating from blind ignorance because youre too lazy of to actually investigate. Meanwhile your policy desires increase tax costs through citizen welfare programs and such.

It is such a sophomoric view.

[damikesc]

The market supported slavery.

Weird to see people supporting slavery these days.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Slavery infringes on people's rights. Contrary to popular belief, me going to a food truck or hiring an immigrant doesn't infringe on any rights. See the difference?

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Illegal immigrants infringe on taxpayer rights. Costs of 80B a year. Preference from regulatory costs of citizen labor. Etc.

Same is true of H1B due to current unemployment. Literally citizens training up cheaper replacements despite the laws governing the visas.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

No. The government infringes on taxpayer rights by forcing us with guns to pay them. I've never had an immigrant force me to pay taxes.

Do you really think your tax rates have anything to do with immigration? How naive.

[sparkstable]

The immigrant is not free from guilt in this, though.

They are the impetus for the violation of taxpayers rights. They know their presence yields them the fruits of someone else's labor. They know the state will coddle them.

So what do they do? Abstain from the largesse to maintain moral purity on this issue? Or violate the laws of another people's land and ride the gravy train as far as they can, also inviting and facilitating even more people to come get the getting while the getting is still good?

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Trump is trying to make it harder for H1bs. He should listen to Elon more.

You've got it right though. Both sides are more interested in immigration as a wedge issue than as any kind of principle.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

While I'm sympathetic to your underlying principles the reality is that we have no idea what a domestic agriculture labor market would look like. I've been told for my entire life that without imported laborers working below market rates we'd all starve to death. But even Caesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration. Unfortunately open borders have taken us to an untenable position and we may have to move beyond the wage slave state left to us by the Koch/Cato/Reason libertarians.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

I don't want illegal immigration either. Make it simple for immigrants to come here and work legally. While I'm certainly not for taxes or minimum wage, making the work legal subjects it to the same regulations that we all are subject to.

You could actually make a good faith argument that restricting immigration and forcing it to the black market is actually suppressing wages in markets like agriculture.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

There are visas for that. You seem to not be willing to admit it. But those visas come with restrictions on employers, similar as they are to citizens.

So in reality you do want illegal immigration to exploit and preference labor.

If you argued for deregulation of labor markets with the same passion of illegal immigrants not following immigration laws, maybe you could trick a few more people.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Finally we agree. There should be lots more visas and they should be easier to get (with no exorbitant fees)! Let's Make Immigration Legal Again!

[rbike]

I would like Trump to push Congress to raise the number of allowed legal immigrants by 10% or so per year for the next 5 years conditional on the illegal rate remaining low. This might also incentivize illegals to leave voluntarily as legal odds go up.

Not gonna happen as each side only wants to use the issue to rally their supporters around.

[damikesc]

No.

We should lower the cap to 500,000 from 1,000,000 with STRICT controls on who enters based solely on how they benefit the country.

We're not the world's charity anymore.

[LIBtranslator]

Beware, Lev, of agreeing with altruist totalitarians. They can be counted upon to biblically reinterpret anything you write according to Christian National Socialist editorial guidelines.

[sparkstable]

I would wager that most people here in the Commentariat want immigration to be easier.

They want that *in a system that supports true immigration levels.*

Making it easier *while maintaining the distorted market* is just putting a legal veneer on the very issue that illegal immigrant objectors are pointing out. You are simply trying to create a scenario where all the problems that currently exist do to a warped immigration market still exist and when anyone complains you can say "Shut up, bigot! This is LEGAL immigration therefore immune to negative consequences!"

[LIBtranslator]

I move Reason let us make those bets in cash. I would gladly cost you $100 by demonstrating that most "here in the Commentariat" are masked altruist totalitarians of one or another hostile looter faction sent here to act as human skunks and alienate objectivists, libertarians and potential defectors. Nothing is more abhorrent to the Kleptocracy than having to repeal bad laws to keep from losing to leveraged libertarian spoiler votes. To thwart that they have paid any price, borne any burden, backstabbed any friend and collaborated with any enemy. Betting is upfront, half going to the Reason Foundation, with judgment rendered by the Roundtable and no appeal. All in favor?

[damikesc]

Hell, many of us will happily point out that without the insane amount of false asylum claims and the like, we would not HAVE long waits for immigration.

The illegals are fucking it up for the legals.

The pro-illegals demand excessive due process for every single person in every single step of the process.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

The Cato position is literally not the market determines it as the Cato position never mentions legality to make cost of labor the same. This is more of your intentional ignorance.

One easy example is that aca taxes do not apply to immigrants. So their cost of labor at same wages is cheaper to a business.

It is silly lies and ignorance like this that form the basis of your belief system.

Another example. Importing excess H1B into segments of high unemployment. Government makes them cheaper due to things like ACA above despite the law requiring them to pay prevailing wages, which they dont. So again, the market is being manipulated.

You support a globalist position of manipulating markets, not one of free markets. Same as Cato.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Your arguments are only supporting more legal immigration. I am all for that. Get the labor market out of the black market.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

So you have zero reading comprehension. Got it. Even the legal markets are manipulated due to regulatory differences between citizens and legal work visas dumbass.

This is the intention above I mention where you intentionally ignore reality.

[LIBtranslator]

I just finished listening to the mp3 download and was totally blown away. The best performance was my KMW (nice hair, BTW). National Socialist Review, I see, hasn't evolved since Snideley Buckley. But he at least let scientists like Edward Teller have a say, and even handed a hot mic to Oswald Mosley--mayhaps to show how tolerant some Americans are of National Socialism. Best endorsement is that 12 anuum I have muted piped up immediately--presumably to react with NSDAP plank "8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich immediately. "

[Michael Ejercito]

Ask the victims if the Cologne Sex Attacks

[damikesc]

Alex? That demented clown? Why would I waste my time watching this nonsense?

[AT]

Resolution: Mass Immigration Is Good for America

Legal immigration. Which isn't being advocated.

Not illegal immigration. Which is constantly being rationalized by dirtbags like you KMW.

Also, you lost all credibility when you dyed your hair purple. Now you're a trope and a stereotype.

OK, correction, you've always been a trope and a stereotype. But now you're openly advertising it.

[LIBtranslator]

Readers beware: Altruist totalitarian is of the same church as Adolf Hitler, whose platform reads: 8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who have entered Germany since August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich immediately. 24... The party as such subscribes to a positive Christianity without binding itself to a specific denomination.

[AT]

The party as such subscribes to a positive Christianity without binding itself to a specific denomination.

Ahh, see, now I definitely don't do that.

Hitler comparison fail.

[LIBtranslator]

The Führer was, like Altruist Totalitarian here, a Roman Catholic complete with papal infallibility, Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat reality control. So Hitler comparison exact, especially when one actually reads the few speeches translated into Yank. https://libertariantranslator.wordpress.com/2022/12/03/hitlers-christianity-from-nobeliefs-com/

[Longtobefree]

"Is Mass Immigration Good for America?"

Good old Reason:
What number constitutes "mass"
Legal immigration?
Illegal border crossing?
Never let facts get in the way of generating clicks, right?

[Mother's Lament]

KMW and Nowrasteh are being disingenuous in outlining the libertarian view on open borders.

Libertarian open borders work wonderfully when it's between two equals, two welfare states or two states with no state welfare. The Schengen Area is a great example of this that makes all the countries in it wealthier and better off. A wonderful example of libertarian principles.

But when they are between an advanced welfare state and a third-world hellhole all you do is bring the welfare state down to the level of the authoritarian third-world hellhole and beggar its taxpayers. This is not libertarian.

The correct libertarian stance would be to focus on eliminating the welfare state, and THEN, and only then, can you open the borders.

And, as usual, there's some purposefully deceitful conflation of illegal with legal immigration.

[Chumby]

Applying the NAP to borders.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

As usual, this.

These clowns never argue for the disparity of regulatory provisions in countries not the costs of welfare and benefits from illegals. And even legal immigrants.

[damikesc]

Except once a country in that zone decides to open their borders to anybody --- as Germany did --- it screws over every other country in that zone.

[Dillinger]

is Mumia free yet? asking for a friend.

[Marshal]

Another disappointing "debate". Pre-debate they claim they will accept no talking points but instead focus on reasoned argument. But then the "debate" immediately devolves into assertions anyone not for open borders is racist. Their evidence is not that opponents say or do racist things, but instead because other long-dead people said and did racist things.

Actual libertarians reject the premise that you can be proven racist because other people are. From there it's a constant battle to shake this characterization by people who favor a brand of immigration used in Canada and other European countries, but somehow when advocated by Americans this becomes racist.

There's another libertarian failure as well. Both Reasoners seem to think America is richer and more powerful if it is bigger, but "America" is a collectivist concept. We should think of all countries as pass through entities consisting of their citizens. So we shouldn't be focused on the abstract America but instead on the group of citizens. So while America would be richer if it has twice the citizen population [even a $1 increase to total GDP would prove that] would the individual citizens be richer? The median would almost certainly be lower since an official policy of mass immigration would bring in so many of the world's poor and require us to subsidize them as well.

Typical.

[AT]

It's not even racism. Saying, "I don't want any filthy awful Somalis in this country and I don't want any of them around my kids" isn't a racist sentiment. It's a condemnation of their social values; ones, I might add, that are 100% inconsistent with American social values. And it's an appropriate one, because Somali "culture" is godawful. By American standards. Which, in America, are the only ones that matter.

Racism is a hatred of people for something they can't help - in particular, their skin color. You can help being a filthy awful Somali - and if you do, America, in particular, welcomes you to a better way of living. But if you want in, then kick all that Somali garbage you grew up with to the curb before you come in the door.

There is not one iota of racism whatsoever to any of that.

[LIBtranslator]

Note to foreign readers: Altruist Totalitarian is of the Hitler faith and political platform. These practitioners of coercive racial collectivism are brainwashed in Orwellian doublespeak.

[AT]

Why would you call them foreigners? Aren't they automatically residents - treated like they've always been here - simply by virtue of suddenly being here?

Why would you other them that way. Such hateful bigotry.

[LIBtranslator]

AHA! A suicide mission where Reason is tricked into defending the anarchist Thomas Knapp "import armed totalitarian terrorists with no inspection" plank that wrecked the LP and cut vote share by half--as shown by Jo Jorgensen's vote count. I can't wait to see who draws the straw to stick up for admitting the Saudi Arabian hijackers of 11SEP2001 without inspection. The original, uninfiltrated LP platform, mind you, contained no terrorist migration plank whatsoever. So this entire debate is about communist and fascist planks planted on us ex-post-facto.

[LIBtranslator]

Absolutely stunning debate, comparable in taking on Ku-Klux Kollectivists with Leonard Peikoff and John Hospers' triumph over two similar altruist collectivists. (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqsoWxJ-qmMtvfE2oE_DuDDPSqqcmBM8L) Everybody--including Nick and Whutzisname--but especially KMW, did us multiple-decade Reason subscribers proud! The only thing missing is the fact that Republican prohibitionism--invading and bombing Latin America to ban SOME production and trade--caused crippling banking panics, recessions, hyperinflation and installed caudillo fascism to drive people to flee the way Jews and freethinkers fled Christian National Socialism in 1939!

[LIBtranslator]

Waitaminnit! Nick and Brian excelled in a *different* Roundtable discussion of Der Trumpenführer sending marines to murder Venezuelans in international waters because reefer madness and cocaine negroes. Stacking up a backlog of Reason mp3 recordings can overwhelm the casual subscriber by sheer profusion while walking the dawg. The CATO guy stood out as the first CATO entity to NOT come off as a National Socialist Review minion and brainwashee, and I'd ghawd Bless him for it if I had any blessings-distributing ghawd to work with. Jolly good show! I'll rewatch it as video next!

[LIBtranslator]

For the record, to show high correlation btwn prohibitions laws, economic collapse and refugee diasporas, here are some facts: 1729 The emperor of China, Yung Cheng, prohibits opium smoking and the sale of opium except by those licensed to do so for the use of medicine. (Taylor 1969 6)
1831: Raid on Company factories at Canton; Emperor Tao-Kuang's opium-addicted son had died, several opium brokers arrested and tortured. /China prohibition/ (Inglis 1976 85)

Among these was an act to encourage immigration, approved July 4, 1864. This act grew out of the great demand for labor caused by the absence of so many men in the army. (Sherman 1895 280)
In 1879 a bill restricting their (Chinese) immigration passed Congress, but was vetoed by President Hayes (VII, 514).
In 1892 the Geary Act was passed, providing that any Chinaman not lawfully entitled to remain in the United States should be removed to China and all Chinese laborers should be obliged to procure certificates of residence from the collector of Internal revenue, failure to do so within a year to be followed by deportation. (MESSAGES AND PAPERS OF THE PRESIDENTS 1789-1897 SUBJECT: CHINESE IMMIGRATION Volume: IX Index Page: 295)
And greater even than migrant wishes or economic theory was the desire of the Republican Party, distilled into law in 1864: the Republican Congress had passed "an act to encourage immigration," which Abraham Lincoln signed on July 4, with the express intent of settling the West swiftly with free laborers. (Rauchway 2003 121)
San Francisco is becoming thoroughly alarmed on the subject of Chinese immigration. On the 26th the Board of Supervisors adopted a strong anti-coolie resolution... The Six Chinese Companies have sent to HongKong a telegram warning their countrymen of the danger of further immigration to California. 31MAY1873: THE MODOC WAR, Eugene Register-Guard p.2
About 2000 Chinese were brought in to Hawaii between 1852 and 1874. After reciprocity the tide of immigration became a flood; 55,000 immigrant laborers came to Hawaii between 1887 and 1890, including Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese. (Adler 1966 7)
Herbert Hoover Executive Order 5621, May 13, 1931: Amendment of Article X of Consular Regulations: ... 2. That any woman who marries a citizen of the United States after the passage of this act, or any woman whose husband is naturalized after the passage of this act, shall not become a citizen of the United States by reason of such marriage or naturalization; but, if eligible... with the following exceptions: ... ... (e) Persons convicted of crime: (beer was a crime in the USA) Hoover EOs and Proclamations Vol 2 p 846. See also 11JAN1932 p 1061, EO 5869 of 30JUN1932, Documents required of Aliens Entering the United States... pp 1213 et seq. EO 5966, 09DEC1932, Establishing a Unified Border Patrol in the Coast Guard Service, Treasury Department. ... p 1366. EO 5973 15DEC1932, Amendments to the Consular Regulations: 144B, Presumtion of expatriation from residence abroad of naturalized citizens. ... it whall be presumed that he has ceased to have American nationality... pp 1379-80. EO 6028, 16FEB1933: Appointment of Special Investigators in the Immigration Service... p 1430.
There's lots more, beyond this little schmeah...

[LIBtranslator]

Dave Smif in the "recommended" Jesus Caucus list is like Adolf Eichmann as a visionary libertarian worthy of note.