Bob Murphy (Partly) Misses the Mark on My Immigration Debate with Dave Smith

Bob Murphy Misses the Mark on My Immigration Debate with Dave Smith

Bob Murphy of the Mises Institute hosted a podcast in which he discussed my recent debate with Dave Smith at the Soho Forum and analyzed some of my research. Murphy agrees with Smith's immigration position and, to his credit, is upfront about how impressed he was with Smith's appearance. Other than that, it's an unusual podcast. In one way, Murphy prepared by reading some of my scholarship. In another way, he didn't even know the debate's resolution.

Here’s Murphy’s description of the debate resolution:

It was on the question of immigration, I forget the exact wording of the resolution, but it was saying that the federal government either should or should not play a role in preventing people from coming into the United States with the exception of people who are without serious communicable diseases or a violent criminal record . . . but other than that . . . to come into the country without any sort of interruption from the federal government . . . the resolution about especially in the current US given the current US circumstances something like that okay.

Here’s the actual debate resolution:

Government restrictions on the immigration of peaceful and healthy people make sense from a libertarian standpoint, especially in present-day America.

That clears things up a bit.

Murphy spent much time repeating Dave’s points and trying to defend a particularly odd criticism of free immigration I’ll call the “public property criticism” (PPC) that he describes as the “central issues that we have to figure out” in the immigration debate. The PPC is not the central issue for libertarians. The PPC argues that the government owns some property, so immigrants violate property rights because some have to use public property, and the median voter or citizen isn't happy with that. The government should act as a private property owner by somehow channeling the desires of the median voter or citizen to kick immigrants off private property and otherwise behave like a landowner. This somehow means immigration restrictions. The PPC ignores inconvenient facts like immigrants also pay gas and sales taxes, many roads are tolled, and the same PPC argument would empower the state to institute all types of anti-libertarian policies. An example would be the state barring a driver from the highways if they have a comedy routine rife with foul language. For an argument propagated by libertarians, the PPC bizarrely assumes a degree of competent democratic government that can accurately mimic the desires of the median voter or citizen to efficiently manage property.

Explaining this idea to normal people, or even most libertarians, and they say, "huh?" Libertarians cannot and should not expect the state to behave as a private property owner. Indeed, one reason libertarians oppose government ownership of the factors of production is because the state cannot manage them well. The government should own as little as possible and, when it does own property, must follow some different rules than private property owners. It's thus very unusual to see a libertarian argue that the state should have such complete and total dominion over its property as if it were a private property owner.

Proponents of the PPC framework should think on the margin. In our debate, Smith made the point that believers of free immigration must let people camp in the middle of the public roads to be logically consistent. Why? It’s a little hazy, but something about how the government must allow anybody to go on public property at any time to do anything. Well, as a supporter of free immigration, I can tell you that we do not support that, and it doesn't follow that we must. First, I already support some immigration restrictions against the sick, criminals, and national security threats, so that means I'm fine with some restrictions on public property use under the PPC framework. Second, the policy I support was essentially America’s immigration policy in 1875-1882, when people weren’t allowed to pitch tents in the middle of streets either. Nobody saw a contradiction then. Third, the government owns the roads and can manage them as roads, but it has limited powers that are less than those held by a private landowner. Thus, the government can remove people who pitch tents on the roads, but it can't tell people driving that they must give up Catholicism to continue to use the highways. Current road management is less than ideal but more consistent with limited government than the PPC theory defended by Murphy and Smith. Defenders of the PPC want the government to have total power over its property while also claiming to be libertarian. I want the state to have less-than-total power over the roads it owns.

My position is the one that results in less state power, freer markets, limited government, and more individual freedom, so it's the correct libertarian position. Murphy’s position would give the government more power over the life, liberty, and private property of Americans based on an unusual theory of property management. The PPC objection to free immigration is a confused non-sequitur.

The PPC was developed by Hans Hermann-Hoppe. Interestingly, if Hoppe’s objection to free immigration were consistently applied, he himself would not have been able to immigrate to the United States. As a foreign-born employee of a state government, he benefited from public resources more than he paid in taxes while holding views that most Americans would find deeply objectionable. By the standards set forth in Hoppe’s PPC framework, the government-channeled median voter would exclude him from the US or physically remove him if he somehow entered. While the irony in that outcome is very entertaining, the correct libertarian approach would be to allow even those with unpopular views, like Hoppe, to travel freely, even if they must use government-owned roads and our entertainment is reduced.

Lastly, Murphy looked at some of my empirical claims by focusing on a few papers I wrote. Murphy said, “It’s not that the papers contradict explicitly what he [Nowrasteh] said at the debate, but I think you’re going to be surprised that his papers do not cleanly back up the statements he was making.”

Murphy displays my research on immigrant welfare use (see the figure below) and says, “the abstract from this paper says, based on data from the Survey of Income Program Participation, we find that immigrants consume 21 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis in 2022.” Murphy noted that my figure shows that naturalized immigrants used more welfare than native-born Americans and that it was “weird” that my abstract was different.

First, the “All immigrants” category includes both “Naturalized immigrants” and “Noncitizens,” so my statement during the debate is not weird or inaccurate. There are several ways to interpret the data, and all of them are correct. I focused on all immigrants, and Murphy focused on a subset of immigrants. He could just as easily have focused on another subset to provide evidence for the opposite point. For instance, naturalized immigrants use less means-tested welfare than native-born Americans. Second, my abstract is clear and does not obfuscate as Murphy implies. Here’s the second paragraph in full:

Based on data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we find that immigrants consumed 21 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis in 2022. Immigrants were 14.3 percent of the US population and consumed just 11.9 percent of all means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits in 2022. Noncitizen immigrants—including those lawfully present in the United States on various temporary visas, lawful permanent residents, and illegal immigrants—consumed 54 percent less welfare than native-born Americans. Noncitizens were 7.3 percent of the population and consumed just 3.5 percent of all welfare. However, naturalized immigrants consumed 17 percent more welfare than native-born Americans because they are an older population—they consumed 7 times as much Social Security and 4.3 times as much Medicare as noncitizens on a per capita basis. Naturalized immigrants were 7 percent of the population and consumed 8.4 percent of welfare benefits [emphasis added].

Nothing is hidden in the abstract and my description was accurate. Murphy just needed to read a few more sentences to know that I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one.

Murphy then criticized this paper on how immigrants affect economic freedom in the states. Murphy zeroed in on this section of our abstract:

This paper uses an epidemiological model to investigate how heterogeneously distributed immigrants affected the economic institutions of American states over the 1980–2010 period under the assumption that institutions are highly responsive to changes in the immigrant population. We find that state economic institutions do not change much in response to immigrants.

Murphy didn’t like it because he would have written a different paper on public opinion. Fair enough . . . even though I’ve written that paper and included further research in a book. Some background may clear up his confusion about this paper. It is an extension of a growing literature that my coauthor Benjamin Powell, I, and other coauthors have pioneered. The paper in question assumes that state economic institutions are very susceptible to changes from immigration, so we used an epidemiological model to see whether immigrants bring in economic institutions from their home countries. We found that immigrants didn't import their home country institutions, but if they had, economic freedom scores would have improved in the United States. This paper just says, “immigrants don’t much affect economic institutions on the state level.” Murphy had a much better interview with my coauthor Benjamin Powell on this topic. Give it a listen if you're interested in how immigrants affect institutions.

Murphy is correct to point out that perhaps the effect of current levels of immigration on institutions aren’t useful for predicting what would happen under free immigration. Fair enough, but that’s why our evidence from other countries with vastly higher immigration rates that don’t suffer institutional degradation and may even improve as a result is important. Murphy is right to question the generalizability of this research to a radically different immigration policy, but he didn’t deal with the rest of the literature.

Lastly, Murphy also mentioned our research on the fiscal impact of immigration. That report has two major sections – the Updated Model section and the Cato Model section. The focus of his criticism was on Table 2 in the Updated Model section, which is an update of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) model that we criticize. The Updated Model is the point of comparison for the Cato Model, which we endorse because it incorporates several methodological improvements discussed at length in the paper. He should have looked more at Table 25 instead of Table 2. The Cato report was clear about this in the text.

Murphy also fairly raised concerns about the model's methods and treatment of public goods, interest payments on the national debt, and other fixed costs. The fiscal report mostly focuses on a specific scenario where immigrants pay the marginal cost of public goods, but we also present many findings with eight total scenarios about public goods allocation, interest, and other tax differences in Table 26. Those scenarios are designed by the NAS. That table shows that immigrants have a more positive fiscal impact than native-born Americans in every scenario.

I’d be happy to appear on Murphy's podcast to discuss these issues further.