REVISED 11/18/16

I haven’t written about intelligence since April 18, 2015 (here, third item). What’s on my mind now? This:

1. Immigrants to the U.S. are overwhelmingly poor and possibly (but not necessarily) below-average in intelligence.

2. The availability of immigrants seeking employment is a boon to entrepreneurs. Investments in capital (often modest ones such as lawn mowers and chain saws) can be turned into gainful employment for immigrants and profits for entrepreneurs.

3. The employment of immigrants is also a boon to American consumers, who are able to obtain some things more cheaply and some things that they might otherwise not be able to afford (e.g., fresh fruit, maid services, yard work).

4. Consumers should be indifferent about the origin of the labor that benefits them.

5. Taxpayers should care about the origin of labor only to the extent that immigration drives up the taxes because of state support for immigrants (e.g., schooling, medical care, welfare programs where citizenship isn’t a prerequisite).

6. Each taxpayer is also a consumer, and each taxpayer is therefore in a different position with respect to the net benefits (or costs) of immigration. But every consumer-citizen is likely to benefit to some degree because of immigration, though the benefit may not offset the rise in every consumer-citizen’s taxes.

7. Low-skilled Americans who have opted for the dole have no stake in the matter of immigration. If some low-skilled Americans lose jobs that they might otherwise have held, they aren’t “losers” any more than the wagon-makers who lost their jobs when automobiles come along. Voluntary economic change doesn’t have winners and losers — it takes arbitrary government interventions (e.g., minimum-wage laws) to create them.

8. Yes, government allows immigration, but the original intervention that created winners and losers is the one that restrained immigration. If it’s all right for a piece of fruit to move from Mexico to Texas, why isn’t it all right for a worker to move from Mexico to Texas? If it’s all right for a Californian to move to Texas, it is definitely all right for a Mexican to move to Texas.

9. So the only question is whether immigration imposes net costs on some consumers who are also taxpayers. And it’s an issue only because of government programs that allow immigrants to impose costs on taxpayers.

10. The real issue, for me, isn’t immigration, it’s government interventions that may encourage immigration (at a rate higher than the “natural” one) and subsidize immigrants. As usual, government is the problem, not the solution.

What does this have to do with intelligence? This post was spurred by a recent one at West Hunter by Gregory Cochran, “Our Dumb World.” Cochran’s post, combined with another one of his to which he links, can be read as follows:

• There’s a strong link between the average IQ of a nation and its economic success. (True.)

• Some things have skewed the relationship (e.g., the imposition of Communism), but the link is there nonetheless.

• Mass migration from low-IQ countries (presumably Mexico and other Central American nations) to a country with a higher average IQ (e.g., the United States) will reduce the average IQ of the receiving country and therefore harm it economically.

I don’t buy it. For one thing, immigration — even immigration by low-skilled workers with (perhaps) below-average intelligence — can be a boon to the residents of the receiving country, as discussed above. For another thing:

Low-IQ immigrants do not reduce the productivity of high-IQ natives – any more than short immigrants reduce the height of tall natives. (See here for further discussion).

To repeat myself, the real issue is whether government action causes immigrants to impose burdens on natives that wouldn’t be imposed in the absence of government action. And to be clear, government action is any action that results in a rate of immigration which is higher or lower than would occur in the absence of that action (e.g., immigration quotas, implicit or explicit promises of government aid to indigent immigrants).

What about the political and cultural effects of massive immigration from south of the border? I am at the point of declaring that it doesn’t matter. The welfare state is so firmly entrenched in America that I really don’t expect it to be uprooted, except by non-electoral means. Mass culture is already so degenerate that it’s hard to see what could make it worse. And I have no reason to believe that, in general, Hispanics are more vulgar than American Anglos. (Just look at the prime-time TV lineup.) Those of us who prefer high culture can enjoy it without mingling with the hoi polloi.

I have been for years an opponent of illegal immigration. I was on the verge of changing my mind — something of which I am capable. But I’m not ready to do that. My main reservation now has to do with the effect of mass immigration on crime, which argues strongly against immigration from south of the border.