"It's fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed borders"."
Most of the people who want to migrate are prevented from doing so by law. That's close to "closed borders". And he makes it pretty clear in the first paragraph that he's talking about restrictive immigration policies (including current ones), so the semantics on "open" vs. "closed" borders aren't the most relevant point.
Regarding suppression of research: Richwine didn't have tenure. Prof. George Borjas hasn't been fired (or censured), but he has numerous influential publications on immigration and he calls for more restrictive policies. There are a lot of studies on the fiscal impact of immigration, and while many are positive or near zero, some are negative. If there's strong evidence of publication bias, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it.
For what it's worth, I don't think Richwine should have been fired just for anti-PC stuff on IQ. But that's just Heritage's PR decision.
IMO a more likely explanation is that economists have a consensus in favor of immigration liberalization as a pro-market policy. There is plenty of research on the issue that does indicate positive effects of immigration:
Re favelas: Okay, it depends what you prefer, to be honest. If you care a lot about avoiding visible poverty in the First World, having open borders is a bad idea. If you care about reducing absolute global poverty, it's probably a very, very good idea. If you wanted some kind of compromise, one option would be to let them enter the country but have restrictive zoning laws to keep the slums outside of existing major cities (and just build new cities where immigrants move to).
Nothing about adding a few hundred million people to the US population (and keep in mind, they would probably trickle in at first at a slower rate) would be inherently catastrophic. Scary-looking numbers aside, it's the truth. The US has low population density by most standards, and it wouldn't be difficult to build some new cities. If anything, it would raise the values of American's homes, which could benefit people quite a lot. And if there really were an issue with some scarce resource (water, maybe), there's a price system to handle that.
" A humanitarian could only say 'These people are beneficial!" than he would immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back.' "
Faulty logic. One of the biggest reasons for supporting liberalized immigration is that it lets people move to the areas where they are most productive. People in Guatemala become massively more productive when they move to the USA, which earns them higher wages and makes them better off (along with others who benefit from more production).
What you're talking about is the more limited concept of "brain drain". IMO its practical importance is a lot more questionable than people think. It's a small factor compared to the global benefits of liberalizing migration.
"One puzzling thing I notice about debating immigration is how certain people often are that strictly restricting immigration is the right policy."
He's talking about people who support significant controls on immigration, which is the current policy and the direction which some people want to move further in.
Lee's not just addressing people who want to end immigration. The substantive argument he's making is that significant controls on immigration are bad.
Most of the people who want to migrate are prevented from doing so by law. That's close to "closed borders". And he makes it pretty clear in the first paragraph that he's talking about restrictive immigration policies (including current ones), so the semantics on "open" vs. "closed" borders aren't the most relevant point.
Regarding suppression of research: Richwine didn't have tenure. Prof. George Borjas hasn't been fired (or censured), but he has numerous influential publications on immigration and he calls for more restrictive policies. There are a lot of studies on the fiscal impact of immigration, and while many are positive or near zero, some are negative. If there's strong evidence of publication bias, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it.
For what it's worth, I don't think Richwine should have been fired just for anti-PC stuff on IQ. But that's just Heritage's PR decision.
IMO a more likely explanation is that economists have a consensus in favor of immigration liberalization as a pro-market policy. There is plenty of research on the issue that does indicate positive effects of immigration:
http://openborders.info/economist-consensus/
Re favelas: Okay, it depends what you prefer, to be honest. If you care a lot about avoiding visible poverty in the First World, having open borders is a bad idea. If you care about reducing absolute global poverty, it's probably a very, very good idea. If you wanted some kind of compromise, one option would be to let them enter the country but have restrictive zoning laws to keep the slums outside of existing major cities (and just build new cities where immigrants move to).
Nothing about adding a few hundred million people to the US population (and keep in mind, they would probably trickle in at first at a slower rate) would be inherently catastrophic. Scary-looking numbers aside, it's the truth. The US has low population density by most standards, and it wouldn't be difficult to build some new cities. If anything, it would raise the values of American's homes, which could benefit people quite a lot. And if there really were an issue with some scarce resource (water, maybe), there's a price system to handle that.