An Economic Theroy of Immigration

Bearing in mind that I am not an economist, I came up with the following.

In economics there something known as transaction costs. These are all the costs involved with any kind of economic exchange, above and beyond the actual price of the item or transaction. For example, the transaction costs associated with buying a gallon milk is not only the price of the milk itself (pushing $3.00 a gallon here) but the time spent going to and from the store, the gas spent in the trip, the wear and tear on your vehicle and so on. It's not always easy to put a dollar amount on a transaction cost, and you can get into some really pointless minutiae (in this example, you could also include the mental energy spent deciding which brand to buy and the physical energy spent lugging the milk around the store) but keeping the concept in mind can help identify why people choose to spend their resources the way they do.

How does this apply to immigration?

Well, there are really only two ways into this country: the legal way and the illegal way. Consider some of the transaction costs involved with illegal immigration.

Aliens coming from Mexico (which seems to be the biggest area of concern just now) risk scaling razor wire topped fences, swimming the Rio Grande, wandering through deserts, getting attacked by animals (rattlesnakes, coyotes) getting picked up by border patrol and sent to jail or possibly getting shot at by one of the Minutemen. Some immigrants employ the services of a smuggler or "coyote," who's fees can be more than a thousand dollars per person.

In short, an illegal crossing from Mexico can be very dangerous and expensive, and there is more than a fair chance that you could be injured or killed in the attempt. Despite these risks, thousands of people still take life in hand make the attempt.

Why?

It seems to me that there is something about the legal method for gaining entry into this country that makes risking dying of dehydration in the Arizona desert an acceptable alternative, in other words, the transaction costs for legal entry into the US are so high as to make an illegal attempt 'cheaper' by comparison.

To be honest, I didn't know a whole lot about the process for naturalization (being native born and all) so I looked up U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and this bureaucracy at it's densest. The application for naturalization alone is 10 pages long and comes with a $330.00 filing fee, plus a potential $70.00 biometrics fee. However, you can only file this form (N-400 for the curious) after you've gotten your green card (which is another round of forms, interviews and fees) and established permanent residency. All in all, the process takes years and can run nearly one thousand dollars, all on a maybe. Remember, these are applications and can be rejected at any point for a variety of reasons. On top of all this, the process is complicated and confusing, even for someone who speaks English natively; I couldn't imagine what it's like for someone working through an interpreter or who only has limited English skills.

Of all the problems nations can have, illegal immigration is actually not that dire; it shows that you're doing something right and people are willing to risk a lot to share in what you have. The immigrants will continue to come as long as America remains a good country to live in, and as long as our legal process for immigration remains convoluted, expensive and time consuming, immigrants will continue to come illegally. Along with increased border control, and cracking down on corporations who hire illegal immigrants, we need to seriously look at revising our legal immigration policies. The more people we can encourage to enter the country legally, the fewer illegal immigrants we'll to capture and process through our courts, and it will be more likely that people entering America will unsavory intentions will be caught before they slip through the cracks.

Our new apartment

has proved to be fairly quiet, which is nice, but I fear that will come to an end at noon on Friday. You see, we live in student housing now, and while our building and the ones immediately around us are family apartments, the majority of the complex consists of quad style dorms. Currently, only one dorm building is open, but rest will open up at the end of the week for the fall semester, and I fear we will be overrun.

I think that

claiming God is on your side, as opposed to someone else's, is approaching the height of hubris. God is on His own side, if anything, and all we can do is our best to stay on it.

Ethnocentric Incident

Was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and got to the point where the other Golden Ticket winners are introduced and found myself a little upset that Americans in the movie are portrayed so negatively. The kids are violent, disrespectful and a little amoral; their parents are either spineless and ineffectual or worse than their kids.

These thoughts were quickly followed by my wondering why I wasn't bothered by the fact that all the Germans in the movie are fat and gluttonous and most of the Britons are pricks.

I was a little ashamed.