8 ms·

The Fruits of Immigration

87 points by martingordon 15y ago

civilian 15y ago
Take that, xenophobes! Many Americans take the stance that "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." Nevertheless, the US has very restrictive citizenship & green card programs, and the quotas are a fraction of the demand for them. If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes. As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are. This is also the reason that I don't go out of my way to buy local food-- the Chileans need it more than my fellow American farmers. (The American-born farmers had all the opportunities in the world to learn other skills, but they did not excel in high school and have consistently been using protectionism and the "buy local" meme to boost their business.)
- blackguardx 15y ago
  That is a pretty hasty generalization about American farmers. I have a friend who is a farmer in upstate New York. He has a master's degree, but chooses to run a small farm because his passion is being close to the land.
  - jamesteow 15y ago
    Yeah I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic when he said that.
- racketeer 15y ago
  Your logic fails when taken to the extreme. Child labor is used to manufacture clothes in some depoliticized districts around the world. Should we sit back and say, "Hey those guys need money and should be able to get a job and work for it just like us!" Or should we change our manufacturing/distribution methods to encourage more american produced goods?
  - jfoutz 15y ago
    yes? http://nominetwork.org/ http://nominetwork.org/ There is a large spectrum of scaryness out there. child labor making bags is better than ... the alternative.
    - racketeer 15y ago
      I'm confused.. the alternative to child labor is human trafficking?
      - jfoutz 15y ago
        you've got it the other way around. Sometimes, child labor is the alternative to human trafficking.
        btilly 15y ago
        That's like praising child porn because the alternative is sometimes raping children.
        lancewiggs 15y ago
        See how our emotions get in the way when parsing the above? That's one of the fundamental issues with the entire topic - emotions ranked are above evidence based policy. Strangely enough poor uneducated immigrants are easily net positive for society, and so are educated ones. I recommend reading "The Economic Consequences of Immigration" for a good picture of the benefits and costs.
        jfoutz 15y ago
        Two things. First, I think both of your options are horrible, and specifically selected to be offensive. I'm not aware of any aid organization that makes kids do porn instead of be raped. You can keep that link to yourself. Second, a kid having to work in a factory is way way better than having to be a slave. Keep in mind, these kids would be working back on the farm with their family, but their family can't afford to feed them, so they send them off. Their families are usually lied to about what their kids are going to do. My western sensibilities find this awful. So i'm a bit curious at this point. It seems you're advocating, since the kids can't have a perfect life, they might as well be raped?
- geebee 15y ago
  I think you've correctly identified what Americans mean when they say "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." After all, if they were just against illegal immigration, all they'd need to do is make it legal. What they're really opposed to is unlimited immigration. The part where I disagree with you is the notion that there's something xenophopic about feeling that current levels (depending on where you get your estimates, this ranges from about 1 to 1.8 million per year) are a reasonable limit. I do find it surprising that a nation that admits well over a million immigrants a year is so frequently accused of "anti-immigrant" policies because the annual cap isn't even higher. You say you'd increase the quota, but you didn't mention if you'd eliminate it altogether. Suppose you felt that immigration levels should be double what they are now, say about 2.5 million a year. Does that mean someone who would make it 5 million a year can call you anti-immigrant?
  - ori_b 15y ago
    I'm a Canadian currently living in the USA, so maybe I'm biased, but I would personally remove a number-based quota. I would, however, put in a quota based on the amount of education, capital, and whatever else would provide an estimate of the benefit that this immigrant would provide to the country, penalized by the difficulty that the person would have in integrating and establishing himself. So, for example, someone with a doctorate, a job offer from an employer, significant capital, and fluency in the language should NEVER have an issue getting into the country.
    - geebee 15y ago
      I agree with you, this change would be very beneficial to the US. I've always felt a points-based system (like Canada or Australia) would make more sense. Nobody is happy with the current system - seriously, not a single person thinks the current US immigration system makes sense. The problem is there are so many competing visions for how it should be that reform is nearly impossible. Keep in mind, if I wrote a post arguing for a cap of 1.2 million a year, some people would upmod me because it's high, others would downmod be because it's too low, others would down mod me because it's too high, others would upmod me because it sets a firm limit. The number of strong opinions on this topic is bewildering (but not at all surprising).
- gwern 15y ago
  > If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes. The Democrats have a standing policy of increasing the merit-based immigration. However, Republicans have always insisted that the illegal immigration be addressed as well in any such legislation...
  - gopi 15y ago
    gwern, the reality is actually reverse. Obama/democrats wants a comprehensive immigration reform that includes dealing with the existing illegal immigrants in US. He dont want to deal legal immigration and illegal immigration separately. Thats the reason the recent startup visa was dead on arrival.
  - yardie 15y ago
    There is a wide gap between what republicans say to us and what they put on ballot. So far they have not been interested in immigration reform or immigration enforcement. Illegal immigration would drop overnight if they enforced real laws against the companies that hire illegal immigrants. But they focus on the, easily replaceable, migrant workers. An example, the state of Georgia wrote their own law on legal hires. Now, they are having difficulties retaining fruit pickers for the summer harvest.
- anonymous246 15y ago
  Give your taste buds a break. You would rather buy fruit shipped halfway across the world (i.e., fruit designed for survive storage rather than taste good) rather than visit the local farmer's market? WTF. I make it a point to not buy fruit from Chile, because I am voting with my taste buds that I want good fruit not cheap fruit. My favorite fruit is the peach, and I wait for summer and farmer's markets so that I can get some ripe fruit (ever noticed how the supermarket peaches are usually unripe and never really ripen? they seem to go directly from unripe to rotten). Maybe you live in North Dakota or some such remote place and Chilean fruit is all you get. Anyway, just an excuse for me to sing the praises of California peaches. :)
  - andrewcooke 15y ago
    is there really much competition? chile is in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons don't match up. i would have thought that when american peaches are in season, chilean peaches will be terrible, and vice versa. as for transportation - america is a big country. i am not sure "local" californian peaches on the east coast will suffer much less than chilean peaches - in both cases, significant transport is necessary. disclaimer: i live in chile.
    - LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
      Georgia. On the East Coast you'd want peaches from Georgia.
      - pyre 15y ago
        Ontario peaches are good when they are in season too, though I can't say I've had a fresh Georgia peach in season.
- Hubbert 15y ago
  "As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are." As a ctiizen, I believe the opposite. In a representative government, the state exists for the benefit of its citizens ("ourselves and our posterity") much as a corporation exists for the benefit of its shareholders. It's called a "social contract," and society will become increasingly disordered as more people reaize that nobody is holding up the other end of it. And my "share" wasn't free: I pay taxes and was required to register for Selective Service to get my education (as have my male ancestors for many generations).
- krschultz 15y ago
  Unfortunately most Americans don't realize these quotas exist (or how they impact from different countries differently), and assume that all illegal immigrants simply refused to abide by America's laws. I would bet that illegal immigrants here for legal jobs would gladly follow a legal process if there was one.
defen 15y ago
So instead of investing in farm mechanization, or paying marginally more for produce, we should have a permanent underclass of foreign-born manual laborers? Can someone explain the logic in this?
- potatolicious 15y ago
  If farm mechanization makes sense, sure, but until the Cucumbertron 9001 exists that will make short work of any field, manual labor is needed. And it's evident that the domestic labor force is ill-equipped to fulfill this demand. So you are faced with two choices: - A shrinking, or at least plateauing of your agriculture industry because you can't find enough people who can do the job. - Letting in tax-paying workers in a legal manner to support your growing industries. The third option is that some company will set up shop in some other country to exploit this labor force that is unavailable in your country, then sell you cheap-ass cucumbers and further increase your trade deficit, and the US government sees neither personal nor corporate income tax benefits, nor any of the ancillary benefits (increased local economy, increased demand for services from workers, etc etc) of having the work in the country.
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    Idea for Mexico: invest heavily in desalination, create whole states of hothouse farms (hothouse assuming that watering whole deserts would be bad for the ecology and an inefficient use of water), and eat American agriculture's lunch. Subsidize the hell out of the desalination, pumping and waste water recycling, until the hothouse industry can pay for it themselves. Then sell the desalination technology and services to the world.
    - huherto 15y ago
      Is this really an option? I am Mexican, but don't know much about this type of technology. We have big deserts next to the sea.
      - sixtofour 15y ago
DjMojoRisin 15y ago
What I can totally not understand about the US is why are they not PRO- the Startup Visa....this seems to be a total no-brainer. The people here on this visa, would be working for themselves, attempting to create jobs for Americans, and not taking away any jobs from them, so Congress, get your act together and pass this bill NOW!
apinstein 15y ago
The article uses the fact that tomato mechanization blossomed after Bocero ended as evidence that the same will happen in this case. There are a number of problems with that. First, tomato mechanization had been researched for what looks like a couple of decades before Bocero ended. It was a solution in search of a problem, then the problem came. So not all fruits yet have suitable mechanical harvesting mechanisms. Secondly, in order to use mechanical harvesting (with today's equipment anyway), you have to actually plant differently! Wider, longer rows for example. Or different varieties. So farmers would need some time to prepare. In the long run certainly it should be mechanized from an economic point of view. From a technical point of view, someone on HN needs to hack a Kinect onto a robot and make an autonomous harvester that can work with multiple types of plants!

87 points by martingordon 15y ago

Take that, xenophobes! Many Americans take the stance that "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." Nevertheless, the US has very restrictive citizenship & green card programs, and the quotas are a fraction of the demand for them. If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes. As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are. This is also the reason that I don't go out of my way to buy local food-- the Chileans need it more than my fellow American farmers. (The American-born farmers had all the opportunities in the world to learn other skills, but they did not excel in high school and have consistently been using protectionism and the "buy local" meme to boost their business.)

blackguardx 15y ago
That is a pretty hasty generalization about American farmers. I have a friend who is a farmer in upstate New York. He has a master's degree, but chooses to run a small farm because his passion is being close to the land.
- jamesteow 15y ago
  Yeah I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic when he said that.
racketeer 15y ago
Your logic fails when taken to the extreme. Child labor is used to manufacture clothes in some depoliticized districts around the world. Should we sit back and say, "Hey those guys need money and should be able to get a job and work for it just like us!" Or should we change our manufacturing/distribution methods to encourage more american produced goods?
- jfoutz 15y ago
  yes? http://nominetwork.org/ http://nominetwork.org/ There is a large spectrum of scaryness out there. child labor making bags is better than ... the alternative.
  - racketeer 15y ago
    I'm confused.. the alternative to child labor is human trafficking?
    - jfoutz 15y ago
      you've got it the other way around. Sometimes, child labor is the alternative to human trafficking.
      - btilly 15y ago
        That's like praising child porn because the alternative is sometimes raping children.
        lancewiggs 15y ago
        See how our emotions get in the way when parsing the above? That's one of the fundamental issues with the entire topic - emotions ranked are above evidence based policy. Strangely enough poor uneducated immigrants are easily net positive for society, and so are educated ones. I recommend reading "The Economic Consequences of Immigration" for a good picture of the benefits and costs.
        jfoutz 15y ago
        Two things. First, I think both of your options are horrible, and specifically selected to be offensive. I'm not aware of any aid organization that makes kids do porn instead of be raped. You can keep that link to yourself. Second, a kid having to work in a factory is way way better than having to be a slave. Keep in mind, these kids would be working back on the farm with their family, but their family can't afford to feed them, so they send them off. Their families are usually lied to about what their kids are going to do. My western sensibilities find this awful. So i'm a bit curious at this point. It seems you're advocating, since the kids can't have a perfect life, they might as well be raped?
geebee 15y ago
I think you've correctly identified what Americans mean when they say "I'm not anti-immigration, I'm anti-illegal-immigration." After all, if they were just against illegal immigration, all they'd need to do is make it legal. What they're really opposed to is unlimited immigration. The part where I disagree with you is the notion that there's something xenophopic about feeling that current levels (depending on where you get your estimates, this ranges from about 1 to 1.8 million per year) are a reasonable limit. I do find it surprising that a nation that admits well over a million immigrants a year is so frequently accused of "anti-immigrant" policies because the annual cap isn't even higher. You say you'd increase the quota, but you didn't mention if you'd eliminate it altogether. Suppose you felt that immigration levels should be double what they are now, say about 2.5 million a year. Does that mean someone who would make it 5 million a year can call you anti-immigrant?
- ori_b 15y ago
  I'm a Canadian currently living in the USA, so maybe I'm biased, but I would personally remove a number-based quota. I would, however, put in a quota based on the amount of education, capital, and whatever else would provide an estimate of the benefit that this immigrant would provide to the country, penalized by the difficulty that the person would have in integrating and establishing himself. So, for example, someone with a doctorate, a job offer from an employer, significant capital, and fluency in the language should NEVER have an issue getting into the country.
  - geebee 15y ago
    I agree with you, this change would be very beneficial to the US. I've always felt a points-based system (like Canada or Australia) would make more sense. Nobody is happy with the current system - seriously, not a single person thinks the current US immigration system makes sense. The problem is there are so many competing visions for how it should be that reform is nearly impossible. Keep in mind, if I wrote a post arguing for a cap of 1.2 million a year, some people would upmod me because it's high, others would downmod be because it's too low, others would down mod me because it's too high, others would upmod me because it sets a firm limit. The number of strong opinions on this topic is bewildering (but not at all surprising).
gwern 15y ago
> If we were pro-immigration, we would increase these quotes. The Democrats have a standing policy of increasing the merit-based immigration. However, Republicans have always insisted that the illegal immigration be addressed as well in any such legislation...
- gopi 15y ago
  gwern, the reality is actually reverse. Obama/democrats wants a comprehensive immigration reform that includes dealing with the existing illegal immigrants in US. He dont want to deal legal immigration and illegal immigration separately. Thats the reason the recent startup visa was dead on arrival.
- yardie 15y ago
  There is a wide gap between what republicans say to us and what they put on ballot. So far they have not been interested in immigration reform or immigration enforcement. Illegal immigration would drop overnight if they enforced real laws against the companies that hire illegal immigrants. But they focus on the, easily replaceable, migrant workers. An example, the state of Georgia wrote their own law on legal hires. Now, they are having difficulties retaining fruit pickers for the summer harvest.
anonymous246 15y ago
Give your taste buds a break. You would rather buy fruit shipped halfway across the world (i.e., fruit designed for survive storage rather than taste good) rather than visit the local farmer's market? WTF. I make it a point to not buy fruit from Chile, because I am voting with my taste buds that I want good fruit not cheap fruit. My favorite fruit is the peach, and I wait for summer and farmer's markets so that I can get some ripe fruit (ever noticed how the supermarket peaches are usually unripe and never really ripen? they seem to go directly from unripe to rotten). Maybe you live in North Dakota or some such remote place and Chilean fruit is all you get. Anyway, just an excuse for me to sing the praises of California peaches. :)
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  is there really much competition? chile is in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons don't match up. i would have thought that when american peaches are in season, chilean peaches will be terrible, and vice versa. as for transportation - america is a big country. i am not sure "local" californian peaches on the east coast will suffer much less than chilean peaches - in both cases, significant transport is necessary. disclaimer: i live in chile.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 15y ago
    Georgia. On the East Coast you'd want peaches from Georgia.
    - pyre 15y ago
      Ontario peaches are good when they are in season too, though I can't say I've had a fresh Georgia peach in season.
Hubbert 15y ago
"As a globalist: the people living south of our border are just as deserving of a livelihood as we are." As a ctiizen, I believe the opposite. In a representative government, the state exists for the benefit of its citizens ("ourselves and our posterity") much as a corporation exists for the benefit of its shareholders. It's called a "social contract," and society will become increasingly disordered as more people reaize that nobody is holding up the other end of it. And my "share" wasn't free: I pay taxes and was required to register for Selective Service to get my education (as have my male ancestors for many generations).
krschultz 15y ago
Unfortunately most Americans don't realize these quotas exist (or how they impact from different countries differently), and assume that all illegal immigrants simply refused to abide by America's laws. I would bet that illegal immigrants here for legal jobs would gladly follow a legal process if there was one.

defen 15y ago

So instead of investing in farm mechanization, or paying marginally more for produce, we should have a permanent underclass of foreign-born manual laborers? Can someone explain the logic in this?

potatolicious 15y ago
If farm mechanization makes sense, sure, but until the Cucumbertron 9001 exists that will make short work of any field, manual labor is needed. And it's evident that the domestic labor force is ill-equipped to fulfill this demand. So you are faced with two choices: - A shrinking, or at least plateauing of your agriculture industry because you can't find enough people who can do the job. - Letting in tax-paying workers in a legal manner to support your growing industries. The third option is that some company will set up shop in some other country to exploit this labor force that is unavailable in your country, then sell you cheap-ass cucumbers and further increase your trade deficit, and the US government sees neither personal nor corporate income tax benefits, nor any of the ancillary benefits (increased local economy, increased demand for services from workers, etc etc) of having the work in the country.
- sixtofour 15y ago
  Idea for Mexico: invest heavily in desalination, create whole states of hothouse farms (hothouse assuming that watering whole deserts would be bad for the ecology and an inefficient use of water), and eat American agriculture's lunch. Subsidize the hell out of the desalination, pumping and waste water recycling, until the hothouse industry can pay for it themselves. Then sell the desalination technology and services to the world.
  - huherto 15y ago
    Is this really an option? I am Mexican, but don't know much about this type of technology. We have big deserts next to the sea.
    - sixtofour 15y ago

DjMojoRisin 15y ago

What I can totally not understand about the US is why are they not PRO- the Startup Visa....this seems to be a total no-brainer. The people here on this visa, would be working for themselves, attempting to create jobs for Americans, and not taking away any jobs from them, so Congress, get your act together and pass this bill NOW!

apinstein 15y ago

The article uses the fact that tomato mechanization blossomed after Bocero ended as evidence that the same will happen in this case. There are a number of problems with that. First, tomato mechanization had been researched for what looks like a couple of decades before Bocero ended. It was a solution in search of a problem, then the problem came. So not all fruits yet have suitable mechanical harvesting mechanisms. Secondly, in order to use mechanical harvesting (with today's equipment anyway), you have to actually plant differently! Wider, longer rows for example. Or different varieties. So farmers would need some time to prepare. In the long run certainly it should be mechanized from an economic point of view. From a technical point of view, someone on HN needs to hack a Kinect onto a robot and make an autonomous harvester that can work with multiple types of plants!