Restrictive immigration rules subsidize bad government.
Many people in government that push for restrictive immigration policies argue that instead of focusing on taking in immigrants, the government should focus on making those countries better so that people don’t want to leave.
But the restrictive immigration laws that they push for (or maintain) immediately incentivize immigrants to enter illegally and in the long-term allow shitty governments to stay shitty.
Take Mexico for example, if the US opened its borders to Mexican citizens, you would expect a reasonably large group of people to move north for economic opportunities. That large group of people leaving the country would take away from the Mexican government’s tax collection and put pressure on the government to compete for the tax dollars of Mexican citizens. The competition would hold the government accountable.
But in the current situation, where it is hard–and getting harder–for Mexicans to move to the US gives the Mexican government more leeway in squeezing Mexican citizens. There is nowhere for them to go, so they are free to charge high taxes and impose burdensome regulation.
Just like a company will charge higher prices when they don’t have to compete with other companies, so too will a government extract more value from citizens when they don’t have to compete with other countries.
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