In May 2020 the economist and open borders advocate Bryan Caplan debated Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center of Immigration Studies—an anti-immigration think tank—on the topic “The current pandemic makes it all the more necessary for the [United States] federal government to tighten restrictions on immigration.” We don’t need to agree with Caplan (or with Krikorian) on all aspects of the temporary coronavirus lockdowns in order to benefit from a comparison of the economic effects of such lockdowns with those of the (much longer-lasting) immigration lockdown. Parts of Caplan’s opening statement for the debate, published in a May 2020 blog post on the Econlib website, are quoted below.
The economic lesson of the [pandemic] crisis is truly clear-cut. Since mid-March [2020], the greatest economy in human history has been in “shutdown” or “lockdown.” Our standard of living has crashed, and unemployment is near the level of the Great Depression. Why? Because we have temporarily annulled the right of free migration within the United States. Let me repeat that: Our standard of living has crashed because we have temporarily annulled the right of free migration within the United States. Americans are no longer able to work and shop where they like. The result is not a minor inconvenience, but disaster.
What would we think, however, if this economic shutdown had existed for all of living memory? We’d probably be content with the only life we’ve ever known. We only know what we’re missing because – until very recently – we had it. And we all look forward to a future where we can restore free migration within the United States and regain its immense benefits.
But what does this have to do with immigration?
In normal times, current immigration law keeps the whole world on permanent lockdown. While people can usually move freely within their countries of birth, governments strictly regulate international mobility. This regulation traps billions of people in unproductive backwaters of the global economy. Current policies don’t just needlessly impoverish all the would-be migrants eager to build better lives for themselves. They also impoverish their billions of customers.
Is the harm of ongoing immigration restriction really comparable to the harm of the coronavirus lockdown? Definitely. The highest estimates of the fall in U.S. GDP are about 50%… Estimates of the total damage of immigration restrictions, in contrast, are typically around 50% of global GDP.
(In fact US GDP fell by about 3.5% in 2020. We’ve already seen in Chapter 2: Trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk that immigration restrictions make the world about half as rich as it should be.)
Even the most ardent fans of the coronavirus lockdown do not deny how much their policies have depressed our standard of living and our quality of life. Even the fans of immigration, in contrast, rarely realize how much the immigration lockdown deprives humanity year after year.
Why does almost everyone see the costs of the coronavirus lockdown, while almost no one sees the costs of the immigration lockdown?
Because it’s much easier for human beings to miss wonderful things they used to have than it is to miss wonderful things they’ve yet to experience.
The coronavirus lockdown is only temporary and delivers a semi-plausible benefit. … The ongoing immigration lockdown, in contrast, has gone on for about a century and delivers benefits so dubious even their fans struggle to articulate or quantify them.
Our shutdown will end in the foreseeable future. The world’s shutdown will endure until we see it for needless cruelty it is.
Questions
- Why are most people aware of the costs of coronavirus lockdowns but not the worldwide immigration lockdown?
- What can we do to make people more aware of the costs of our worldwide immigration lockdown?