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 In the Declaration of
Independence, Thomas Jefferson complained that King George III "has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States;
for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising
the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
People living in a sparsely populated land easily understand that
more people mean greater prosperity. And so America was born with its doors
open to immigrants -- a policy that remained largely in place until the
1920s.
The policy worked. Americans in the 19th
century surpassed all of their European cousins to become the world's
wealthiest people. According to economists Cecil Bohanon
and T. Norman Van Cott, writing recently in The
Independent Review, America's open borders worked so well that the
immigrants who came here in the 19th century counteracted the
economic harm done in that era by Uncle Sam's protectionist tariffs.
21st-century opponents of immigration
often say "Yes. It's wonderful and true that we're a nation of
immigrants. But a century ago, when immigration was at its peak, America
could better absorb immigrants. We had more land and more natural resources
than we have today. We can no longer absorb many immigrants."
I agree that America's ability to absorb
immigrants has changed: it's higher today than at any time in
history.
Only by naively supposing that a country's
ability to absorb immigrants is determined chiefly by the availability of
unsettled land do people conclude that America today is less able to absorb
immigrants. It's true that more land was available for settlement in the 19th
century. That land, however, was never much of an attraction to immigrants.
Historically, most immigrants settled in cities -- think, for example, of
Manhattan's Little Italy and San Francisco's Chinatown.
And the resources and amenities available in
metropolitan areas today are far greater per capita than they were
just before Uncle Sam abandoned his open-immigration policy in the 1920s.
Consider that in 1915 the typical dwelling in
America housed 5.63 persons; today it houses fewer than half that number --
2.37 persons. Combined with the fact that today's typical dwelling has
about 25 percent more square footage than its counterpart had back then,
our ability to absorb immigrants into residential living spaces is today
more than twice what it was a century ago.
Also, of course, we're better able to feed
ourselves today, even though the amount of land used for growing crops and
pasturing animals is no larger now than in 1900. Higher agricultural
productivity enables farmers and ranchers to produce more output on the
same amount of land.
What about workers? A measure of ability to
absorb workers is capital invested per worker. Today, the amount of capital
invested per worker is nine times greater than it was just after World War
I. Because a worker's productivity rises when he has more capital to work
with, and because his pay is tied closely to his productivity, workers
today produce and earn more than workers did during the open-borders era.
Don't lose sight of our labor market's great
flexibility. In addition to absorbing millions of immigrants in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, it easily absorbed the 46 million
women who entered the work force during the second half of the 20th
century.
In many other ways America today can better
absorb immigrants. For example, compared to 1920, per person today
we:
- have 10 times more miles
of paved roads
- have more than twice as
many physicians
- have three times as many
teachers
- have 540 percent more
police officers
- have twice as many firefighters
- produce 2.4 times more oil
-- as known reserves of oil grow
- produce 2.67 times more
cubic feet of lumber -- as America's supply of lumber stands grows
- have conquered most of the
infectious diseases that were major killers in the past.
None of this is causing America to be
"paved over" as some people fear. The land area devoted to parks
and nature refuges is more than seven times greater today than it was in
1900. More generally, only three percent of the land area of the lower 48
states is devoted to urban and suburban uses. So not even counting the vast
wilderness of Alaska, we still have 97 percent of American land to provide
space for living, working, and recreation. America isn't close to being
crowded.
Fact is, America today is far wealthier, healthier, resource-rich,
and spacious than it was a century ago. Our ability to absorb immigrants is
greater than ever.
Donald J. Boudreaux is Chair of the Economics Department at George
Mason University.
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