Dispatch Symposium on Immigration and the Election

The Dispatch asked four immigration policy specialists (including myself) to write pieces on the pros and cons of the presidential candidates' immigration policies.

Yesterday, the Dispatch published a symposium on the pros and cons of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris's immigration policies. The participants were David Bier (Cato Institute), Mark Krikorian (Center for Immigration Studies), Alex Nowrasteh (Cato) and myself. Alex, David, and I are obviously strongly pro-immigration, whereas Krikorian is a pretty hard-core restrictionist.

This may be the first time three different Cato-affiliated analysts participated in the same immigration symposium. For what it's worth, I did not know ahead of time that Alex and David were also participating, and we did not coordinate our contributions in any way.

Here's an excerpt from my piece:

For people who value free markets and limited government, this presidential election is a choice of evils—but one of the evils is much greater than the other. Trump's terrible immigration policies are massive. And, unlike Kamala Harris' worst policies, they can largely be implemented through executive power alone….

Trump's mass deportation proposal would cause immense damage to both immigrants and U.S. citizens. It would create disruption, increase prices, and cause shortages. It also destroys more American jobs than it creates… Drastic cuts in legal immigration would exacerbate the economic damage. Cutting migration would also worsen the federal government's dire fiscal situation.

Harris does have some flawed immigration policies of her own, such as her endorsement of President Joe Biden's badly flawed Trump-lite asylum restrictions. She would do better to emphasize the expansion of options for legal migration. But Trump's immigration plans are vastly worse…..

In their contributions (which I largely agree with), David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh both emphasize the dangers of Trump's plans to greatly reduce legal migration. This aspect of his agenda hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves, even though - as Alex and David note - the president has vast discretion in this field.

For his part, Mark Krikorian fears that Trump might actually expand legal migration. I wish he were right. But that goes against both Trump's stated plans now, and his first-term record, when he massively cut legal migration, far more than the illegal kind.

Comments

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

If fentanyl and violent crime are “border issues” then Trump failed to secure the border because fentanyl deaths and violent crime spiked in 2020. And border crossings got worse in 2019 with the Covid recession only decreasing border crossings and so on that front at best Trump gets an incomplete because no matter what he did border crossings were going to decline because of the recession. Biden has actually reversed the trends and so he gets a passing grade on the border.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

I don't think a real human would actually say those words and mean it.

[Roger S]

And now Harris is campaigning on promises to build Trump's border wall. She blames Trump for not fulfilling his promise to get Mexico to pay for it.

Obviously the Harris campaign has figured out that border security is popular, and the Biden-Harris administration has failed miserably.

[SRG2]

Yeah, it's often the case that the Great American Public prefers economically stupid policies and politicians have to calculate how much rationality to use without risking a loss of support.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

The wall Bush and Obama built was effective which makes sense because after 9/11 we needed more wall for border security. But obviously an 1800 mile long border wall wasn’t necessary. Btw, before 9/11 you didn’t even need a passport to cross the border.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Nobody is campaigning to build Trump’s 1800 mile long border wall through Big Bend National Park—it’s asinine!! Obama and Bush built a lot more wall than Trump because Trump was an ineffective president.

[Brett Bellmore]

The WaPo's 'fact check' on Trump's promise to build a wall was, essentially, "That's a fence, not a wall! Liar!".

Somehow I doubt they'll be as picky 'fact checking' her.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

So Bush didn’t build any wall after 9/11?? And you nitwits still voted for him!?! WTF??

[Zarniwoop]

Got a link to the fact check so we can read it ourselves?

I am skeptical of the accuracy of your TL,DR.

[Magister]

There are a lot of fact checks about Trump's wall promises and claims; all that I looked at accept fence and wall as the same thing. Here's one from factcheck.org for an example of a wall fact check.

Gone, too, are the arguments over the vocabulary used — fencing or wall. It once made a difference to Trump. During the 2016 campaign, for example, Trump lambasted Republican primary opponent Jeb Bush for calling his proposal a fence. “It’s not a fence, Jeb,” he wrote. “It’s a WALL, and there’s a BIG difference!”

But during his presidency, Trump has dropped that distinction. Not coincidentally, it was dropped around the time Congress forced him to accept “operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, [May 5, 2017] such as currently deployed steel bollard designs, that prioritize agent safety.”

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

That’s the least important distinction considering every candidate supports more border barriers. Trump advocated an 1800 mile wall through Big Bend National Park. Trump says he built 500 miles of it and it was a great success…and while the wall was still standing we had record levels of illegal immigration. And one of the first days of Biden’s term Haitians found a place in Texas with wall but the wall was located inside America and so they could claim asylum even though a wall existed.

[Brett Bellmore]

The WaPo seems to think they're different.

[Sarcastr0]

Claim:
"“We proudly leave the next administration with the strongest and most robust border security measures ever put into place. This includes...more than 450 miles of powerful new wall"

WaPo:
"As of mid-January 2020, only 40 miles of Trump's border barrier had been built on land where there had been no previous barrier. The rest of the $15 billion project -- roughly 450 miles at the end of Trump's administration -- was replacement for primary or secondary fencing. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so the project evolved into the replacement of smaller, older barriers with steel bollard fencing. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Trump sometimes asserts he's completed the "wall" but his plans had called for an additional 250 miles -- which Biden said he will not build."

So not new, not powerful, not a wall.

You are, as Zarniwoop suspected, mischaracterizing the fact check.

[bernard11]

Trump's mass deportation proposal would cause immense damage to both immigrants and U.S. citizens. It would create disruption, increase prices, and cause shortages. It also destroys more American jobs than it creates… Drastic cuts in legal immigration would exacerbate the economic damage. Cutting migration would also worsen the federal government's dire fiscal situation.

קול קורא במדבר

Unfortunately.

[SRG2]

I thought that came from the NT but checked before posting, and found it was Isaiah 40.3, later used by the author of Mark "φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ". It's pithier in Hebrew 🙂

[Noscitur a sociis]

Vox clamans/clamantis has a nice ring to it.

[Don Nico]

Indeed!
Ilya is a one-trick pony.

[Stepped Reckoner]

Who the hellin’ hell is “The Dispatch”?

And whoever they are, are you seriously telling me that for a “symposium” with four count-‘em four contributors they couldn’t find more than two who were not officers of the Cato Institute??

Where’s Socrates when you need him? This gives “symposium” a bad name.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

I think the Dispatch was a Never Trumper Neocon split from National Review.

Not enough forever wars and American destruction under Trump ’45. So they joined forces with the Democrats

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Yep, Trump surrendered to the Taliban and it pissed them off. Btw, which Trump accomplishment is your favorite—-Operation Warp Speed and making Fauci a household name? $8 trillion added to the debt and 2.5% GDP growth prior to Covid recession? Or Trump’s surrender to the Taliban?

[Kleppe]

Trump didn't surrender to the Taliban. That was Biden, 7 months after he took office.

[David Nieporent]

No. Biden simply implemented the deal that Trump negotiated, which — justified or not — was an abject surrender.

[Brett Bellmore]

With some contributions from people who'd left The Weekly Standard, yes. They are absolutely a never-Trump publication.

Which is doubtless why the best they could stomach for an opposing viewpoint is somebody who is ambivalent about Trump, rather than being absolutely opposed to him.

[Moderation4ever]

The problems with immigration don't lay with the President but with Congress. Trump will do nothing to solve the problem, but will likely make it worse. Harris will do less damage but can't solve the problem either. Congress needs to act to reform immigration. This country needs the workers and people need a place to go. So, let's just make this work for all.

[MaddogEngineer]

I’ve been seeing a Kamala Harris attack ad this weekend (in Pennsylvania) (falsey) accusing Trump of wanting to cut Social Security. Just like Somin’s Krikorian fear (that Trump would expand immigration), I wish it were true that Trump wants to cut Social Security. If it were, I might actually be convinced to vote for him despite him being a horrible human being. Alas, Trump has insisted he will never do that. Any candidate brave (or stupid) enough to acknowledge the need to cut future benefits (clock is ticking) will have my support.

Truth is the biggest casualty 2 weeks from a presidential election.