Friedman Contra Open Borders Round-Up
Why Friedman said "You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state" and why he was deeply wrong.
I get anti-immigration emails from every conceivable perspective. They’re all over the place, but one highly specific message has come over and over: minor variations on the theme: “You apparently don’t realize that Milton Friedman said, ‘You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.’”
I realize it. I’ve realized it for decades. Only recently, though, did I read and critique every word Friedman spoke on immigration and the welfare state in two separate talks. Here’s the full bibliography.
“Milton Friedman Opposed a Pareto Improvement.” June 7, 2008.
“Friedman’s Ode to Open Borders.” August 1, 2024.
“Friedman Contra Open Borders (1999).” August 12, 2024.
“Friedman Contra Open Borders (1999): A Line-by-Line Critique.” August 13, 2024.
“Friedman Contra Open Borders (1978, part 1).” August 28, 2024.
“Friedman Contra Open Borders (1978, part 2).” August 29, 2024.
“Friedman Contra Open Borders (1978): A Line-by-Line Critique.” August 30, 2024.
Persuasively, none of the preceding essays tops my cartoon debate with Milton in Open Borders. But I’m almost sure that emails quoting Friedman at his worst will keep coming, so overkill is in order.
If he could respond, Dr Friedman would presumably point out that you're ignoring the selection effect. Babies are a cross-section of the existing population and presumably inherit their traits more-or-less proportionally; you cannot reason from them to immigrants. Likewise, current immigrants are Really Quite Strongly Selected for all the traits we want: They have to either convince an immigration officer that they'll be good citizens, or else have the resourcefulness and guts to work through literally deadly obstacles. Neither population can support any argument about what immigrants we might get if the borders were fully open and we kept welfare as-is, or even more so if we kept it as it was in 1978. It's at least possible that those immigrants would instead self-select for living off welfare payments.
My belief is that with immigration we are dealing with a matter of scale and cultural impact on the citizens who are in place. There is an acceptable absorption pace a population can and wants to deal with and that level should be a by-partisan decision not policies decided by utopian seeking elites who happen to have political power at the moment. The economics are sound for positive impact on the country and the mental model of the USA being an accepting place for immigrants is in place, but these choices ought to be agreed to by the population, not bureaucrats on a mission.