the strange policy preferences of immigrants
Sep 10, 2011
Bryan Caplan runs a simple regression showing that recent immigrants are on average much more likely to favor increased immigration compared with other Americans. At the same time, current research shows that increases in immigration have greatly depressed the wages of immigrants already in the US. Bryan thinks immigrants favor policies that help people like themselves, but why don't immigrants already in the US think of themselves as a group and oppose further immigration. This is, of course, the position that many European Americans find themselves in--many have ancestors that immigrated to the United States only a generation or two ago.
The x-factor of econ strikes again.
Current immigrants may have families remained in their original country and are constrained by current immigrant policies. Also, immigrants may want their group to be larger in order to be heard by policy makers. I mean, in an ideal world which economists often consider...