Immigration: The Economics View

Paul A. Samuelson, US economist and author who was awarded the Nobel prize for economics in 1970, makes a couple of points for the wall-builders of America.

People migrate across traditional political boundaries, mostly to gain economic well-being:

the fungus that destroyed Irish potato harvests sent migrants by the millions to the streets of Boston, New York and Chicago. Their descendants are part of our current mainstream

Noting that there is now a critical mass of permanent Spanish speakers, by legal or illegal entry, Samuelson reminds us that 50 years ago he:

predicted that freer trade could be an alternative to migration of people as a generator of higher European and Asian real wages. The economic effects of trade in goods are similar to migration of peoples, but the sociological tensions can be less from trade

That alternative of paying people properly for their work in their own country so they might not feel the need to leave it, or even because it might be the right thing, is still available.

Samuelson finishes by observing that the US is not an island nation with the insularity that affords, so immigration debates will continue for decades. Perhaps the wall could be a tourist attraction, like Hadrian's Wall, or the Maginot Line

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