Questions on Global Economy - Paper Example

2&3 Alden: For the past two decades the United States, a country with a strong tradition of limited government, has been pursuing a widely popular initiative that requires one of the most ambitious expansions of government power in modern history: securing the nations borders against illegal immigration. Congress and successive administrations both Democratic and Republicanhave increased the size of the Border Patrol from fewer than 3,000 agents to more than 21,000, built nearly 700 miles of fencing along the southern border with Mexico, and deployed pilotless drones, sensor cameras, and other expensive technologies aimed at preventing illegal crossings at the land borders. The government has overhauled the visa system to require interviews for all new visa applicants and instituted extensive background checks for many of those wishing to come to the United States to study, travel, visit family, or do business (page 107).

4. Alde: Second, more people still wish to come to the United States even in a weak economy with high unemploymentthan are permitted by current legal immigration and work visa quotas. One consequence is expanding organized crime problems in which increasingly sophisticated criminal networks earn high returns for helping illegal immigrants enter the United States. This has contributed to a growing sense of insecurity along the borders even as illegal entry has become more difficult. The only way to remedy this is through legal programs that hew more closely to labor market demand, page 108.

5. De Brauw: Different methodologies produce different elasticities. The skillcell approach generates large estimates of the wage elasticity of immigration (Borjas 2003, Borjas and Katz 2007, Borjas 2014). Meanwhile, the pure spatial approach leads to estimates that vary substantially (Card 1990, 2009; Boustan, Fishback, and Kantor 2010)., page 474.

6. De Brauw: Moreover, new immigration restrictions would likely have negative impacts on the economies of source countries. Personal remittances are 2.3 percent of Mexicos GDP, 10.3 percent in Guatemala, 16.6 percent in El Salvador, and 18 percent in Honduras. Poverty in those countries would increase substantially without those remittances and American exports to that region would also decline. Further restricted immigration is more likely to increase poverty in Latin America and diminish U.S. exports than increase native wages, page478.

7. Hanson: The existence of wellestablished migration networks enables U.S. employers to communicate changes in their demand for labor to prospective migrants in Mexico. Migrants use these same networks to find jobs and housing in the United States. Shocks to either the Mexican or U.S. economies may be transmitted into changes in cross-border labor flows with relatively short time lags, making illegal migration potentially quite responsive to changes in binational business-cycle conditions, pg 872.

8. De Brauw, Restricting immigration will not have a substantial positive impact on native wages, at least in real terms. The question then is: What types of alternative impacts might occur if migration was further restricted? There are at least two further potential impacts of further restricted immigration. First, some occupations like tomato harvesters could be automated such as they were in the late 1960s after the end of the bracero guest worker visa program (Schmitz and 478 Cato Journal Seckler 1970; Clemens, Lewis, and Postel 2017). Automation would have a significant knock-on effect, but it would not raise the wages of low-skilled native workers who are substitutable with low-skilled immigrant workers. Second, certain types of laborers might drop out of the labor market altogether. Using spatial variation, Cortes and Tessada (2011) show that low-skilled immigration increases the labor market participation of high-skilled women by allowing families more freedom to hire child care or pay for other domestic tasks. An immigration decline could induce high-skilled women to leave. Page 477-8.

9. De Brauw, Moreover, new immigration restrictions would likely have negative impacts on the economies of source countries. Personal remittances are 2.3 percent of Mexicos GDP, 10.3 percent in Guatemala, 16.6 percent in El Salvador, and 18 percent in Honduras. Poverty in those countries would increase substantially without those remittances and American exports to that region would also decline. Further restricted immigration is more likely to increase poverty in Latin America and diminish U.S. pg. 478.

10. Hanson: unprecedented.3 In both countries, the cross-border flow of labor appears to have affected the structure of wages, the intranational distribution of population, and the pattern of industrial specialization. Beyond its scale, the distinguishing feature of Mexican immigration is that most new arrivals enter the United States illegally. In 2004, there were an estimated 5.9 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants in the United States, among a total unauthorized population of 10.3 million (Jeffrey S. Passel 2005). Thus, 56 percent of Mexican immigrants appear to lack permission to be in the country, compared to 17 percent of all other immigrants. Large-scale illegal, pg 870.11. Gallegos: This Comment criticizes the trade-immigration separation and catalogues the resulting border conditions. It argues that the separation of trade and immigration likely stems not simply from economic rationales, but from an understanding of the national interest grounded in nativistic racism and a conception of the nation that excludes border peoples. This Comment offers nativistic racism as an underlying, but dominant, national value that undercuts effective U.S. border policy and maintains the unrealistic separation of trade and immigration policies. Finally, this Comment assesses the likelihood of curing the ills described through traditional legal or policymaking approaches, ultimately calling for a redefinition of the national interest, pg1730.

12. Gallegos: of national interest. This persistent outcome suggests that economic welfare, termed the national interest, disregards those who are the most immediately and obviously affected by border-dependent policies. Pg. 1733.13. Gallegos: For border residents, an interdependent economy, transborder commuting,5 binational families,6 and shared regional histories characterize the borderland culture. The border and the policies that define it distinguish border residents' daily struggles from those of persons living elsewhere in the United States. Every day, all along the southern U.S. border, international crossings with traffic lanes dedicated to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 7 trucks facilitate the movement of tariff-free goods from Mexico to the United States and Canada. At the same time and along the same border, 9,150 Border Patrol agents in white sports utility vehicles with telling green stripes stand guard along the banks of the Rio Grande to prevent the illegal entry of immigrants. Pg. 1732.14. Gallegos: This persistent outcome suggests that economic welfare, termed the national interest, disregards those who are the most immediately and obviously affected by border-dependent policies. International trade policy and immigration policy operate under different sociopolitical and economic frameworks; however, both claim to maximize wealth in accordance with the national interest." The conception of the national interest focuses on economic well-being but does not account for the impact on border communities. If these policies do follow a consideration of such border-based harms, the harms are not adequately weighed within the scope of domestic welfare. The national interest, as defined by the terms of trade and immigration policies, reveals a conception of the border and its peoples based on nativistic racism. Nativistic racism describes the convergence of nativism and racism that underpins the reigning conceptions of American and nation that reinforces racial hierarchy and rejects the interests of border peoples as foreign and undesirable. 2 This reigning conception fails to recognize border peoples as full participants in the United States. A nativistic racisminformed conception of the nation and the border creates a "false dichotomy" with the "trade/migration separation" found throughout domestic and international laws dealing with the border. 3 The national interest, then, excludes the histories, current conditions, and concerns of border peoples." Pg, 1733

15. Carter: People living near the wall, some with the wall dissecting their property see the wall as a barrier that separates us from them; keeping them out of our country and keeping us in. (Newman 2006, Martin 2007, Sharp 2011). Them meaning the people who are not legally allowed in the United States; illegals, terrorists, and other border crossers. Some people describe the infirmity of law in the vicinity of the border by driving across their property to show the government fence at the border, which in some spots is an aged livestock fence, cut and torn wire, falling down in some places. (Fan 2008), pg. 13

16. James: For many, to participate in the global economy meant moving from subsistence labor in rural states like Chiapas, Zacatecas, and elsewhere to minimum wage assembly line work on the Mexican side of the U.S. border. The living standards in Mexico have improved in some places, but the social dislocation costs associated with urbanization, internal migration, and assimilation of entire villages and indigenous populations have been heavy. That many maquiladora workers live in improvised shantytown housing without paved roads, running water, or electricity, is also a large problem. These factories were established to take advantage of regional value content and other tax incentives provided by the Mexican Government. But this boom or bust cycle has brought about much social dislocation. The murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, many of them maquiladora workers, remain uninvestigated, never mind solved. With the introduction of terrorism and car bombs as a tactic against the police, Ciudad Juarez is becoming more dangerous than Baghdad and Kabul. Public insecurity is assured along the near 2000-mile border as renewed efforts by Mexican authorities to quell the violence come at a time of resurgence of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), judging from the July 2010 state and municipal elections. This report will detail some of the major issues concerning the U.S.-Mexico border and the interconnected nature of the problems. It first examines the violence between narcotraficantes, that which has resulted in the crackdown against them by the Mexican Government through mobilization of the military. The resulting violence and kidnappings have brought about minimal confidence in civilian authorities, the administration of justice, and democratic governance. This report discusses the resulting public insecurity that has afflicted Mexico in the last few years. 10|2010 KAS INTERNATIONAL REPORTS 39 Lots of people cross into the U.S. from Mexico: Indigenous people from Southern Mexico and Central America, Chinese indentured workers, Brazilian surfers, and Ukrainian women lured into prostitution. This has had an immeasurable impact on the border region as upper middle class and even middle class Mexicans flee north to escape the violence. The border is not just for Mexicans to cross, of course. Lots of people cross into the U.S. from Mexico: Indigenous people from Southern Mexico and Central America, Chinese inde...