aside from a couple of brief allusions, donald trump and hil lary clinton have skimmed over immigration reform in the presidential debates so far. mr. trump hasn<u+2019>t mentioned his great wall of the rio grande. hillary hasn<u+2019>t repeated her earlier promises to defy congress if need be and grant unilateral amnesty to large numbers of illegals. we<u+2019>ll see what surprises tonight<u+2019>s debate brings. the omissions, though, have not been unwelcome. the position of neither candidate reflects a thought-out approach to this rankling issue. anyone looking for more substance could do worse than to pick up <u+201c>we wanted workers,<u+201d> a readable and detailed historical tour of america<u+2019>s immigration debates and policies by harvard economist george j. borjas. agree or disagree with his conclusions, the reader will encounter a level of seriousness that has been lacking in this campaign year. mr. borjas is himself an immigrant, having at age 12 fled from cuba to miami with his widowed mother in 1962, just before the cuban missile crisis shut down legal exits. as a labor economist, he has spent much of his academic career studying the effects of immigration on the american jobs market, often arguing that immigration depresses wages, or job opportunities, at the lower end of the scale. here he notes that, on balance, the added production supplied by immigrants makes a modest contribution to u.s. economic growth. he generously provides readers with arguments on all sides, including milton friedman<u+2019>s wry observation that illegal immigrants are of more net benefit to the american economy than legals because they make less use of welfare-state services. by george j. borjas norton, 238 pages, $26.95 mr. borjas takes a gentle dig at this newspaper<u+2019>s editorials urging more liberal immigration laws, saying that such arguments don<u+2019>t take sufficient account of social costs. he offers a fanciful economic model of the borderless world envisioned in the john lennon song <u+201c>imagine.<u+201d> with all barriers down, he estimates, global gdp would soar 60%, or $40 trillion. but the net gain would be only $28.1 billion because to take full advantage of a borderless world would include the considerable expense of moving 5.6 trillion people from the unproductive <u+201c>south<u+201d> to the productive <u+201c>north.<u+201d> this tongue-in-cheek fantasy is meant as a put-down of the theoretical view of immigrants as merely productive robots, not actual human beings who make decisions, use public services and sometimes create social conflicts. the economic benefits from their production, in short, come with costs. the author observes that the wave of immigrants to the u.s. that began in 1980 consisted of more low-skill workers than previous waves. economic and social assimilation has been slower, particularly when newcomers settle in immigrant enclaves, where they feel little pressure to adapt to a new culture. citing another, real-life economic model, mr. borjas asserts that low-skill immigrants put downward pressure on the wages of low-skill natives: <u+201c>a 10% increase in the number of workers in a particular skill group probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent.<u+201d> that claim is plausible, but the predicated 10% rise implies a concentration of immigrants that may exist in only a few localities. it seems a rather simplistic model from which to draw the generalization, as mr. borjas does, that the wage effects of immigration bring about a half-trillion-dollar wealth transfer from low-skill workers to their employers, who profit from the lower labor costs. a study released in september by the national academies of sciences, engineering and medicine could find little impact of immigration on the wages and employment opportunities of non-immigrant americans. after totting up the pluses and minuses, mr. borjas concludes that immigration has very little effect on the lives of most americans. he does worry, however, that some future wave might bring along with it the <u+201c>institutional, cultural and political baggage that may have hampered development in the poor countries<u+201d> from which immigrants often come, and he sees a need for reforms. indeed, but what kind? the last major reform, the 1986 simpson-mazzoli act, attempted to transfer enforcement of immigration laws to private employers by imposing fines on businesses that failed to confirm that their new hires were legal residents. as the author notes, the law gave rise to a black market in counterfeit birth certificates, green cards and passports. employers had little inclination to try to find out if the credentials of would-be dishwashers or field workers were valid. mr. borjas<u+2019>s proposal to crack down harder on employers sounds like trying still more of a policy that didn<u+2019>t work. <u+201c>we wanted workers<u+201d> acknowledges in its title that the post-1980 wave came about because of the rising demand for labor in a flourishing economy. but mr. borjas could have given greater attention to why simpson-mazzoli<u+2019>s rigidities limited the supply, opening the door, so to speak, to illegals. farmers since 1986 have often been short on workers to harvest seasonal crops. mr. borjas argues that native labor is available to employers willing to pay more, but he doesn<u+2019>t make a convincing case. the reader may well conclude that there should be a greater provision for guest-worker programs and other measures that allow workers to come and go legally as the market demands. mr. borjas ends his tour with a refreshing remark seldom heard from an economist. <u+201c>amazingly enough, sometimes inaction is the best action. and benign neglect of this sensitive issue is probably best as long as we take concurrent steps to ensure that we need not revisit this problem in the future with an even larger undocumented population.<u+201d> many studies show that the illegal population has been steady at about 11 million for the past seven years and that mexicans, on balance, are going home. so, really, what<u+2019>s all the fuss about? mr. melloan, a former columnist and deputy editor of the journal editorial page, has written a book on the great depression to be published next month by threshold editions, an imprint of simon & schuster. write to george melloan at george.melloan@wsj.com
the immigration debate we need - wsj
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