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"Let Their People Come"
Worth Magazine
January/February 2003

by Jim Rogers

It seems like every time I open a newspaper or watch the news I see another tragic story about Haitians trying to sail to the United States in a leaky boat or Mexicans who died in a closed rail car while crossing the border. Getting into our country, after all, is the dream of so many people who want to start their lives anew. The immigration issue is a topic of great debate among politicians and lobbyists, media pundits and scholars, conservatives and liberals-a controversy that strikes at the heart of this country's identity as a melting pot. It is also a particularly sticky issue, as visions of planes crashing into buildings continue to loom in our minds and prompt us to seek as much security as possible.

Here's my solution: Let them all in. Get rid of visas and passports. Do away with customs agents and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Those people who are ambitious and brave enough to uproot themselves are exactly the kind of people we want in this country. Closing the doors to outsiders is not going to make the United States any safer. No country in history has lost a war because it issued too many visas. In fact, opening the borders to the free movement of labor may be the only way the United States is going to remain competitive in the coming century.

I know, I know, such an idea is anathema to many people these days. A distinct odor of protectionism and isolationism is in the air. Those who believe that closing our borders will serve our best interests, however, are ignoring some fundamental facts about immigration and the history of this country.

Immigration, after all, is one of the founding principles of the United States. My guess is that the forebears of just about everyone reading this magazine took a great risk once upon a time, coming across a dangerous ocean or a rugged border to get to America. Even today, about 33 million immigrants live in the United States, or one out of every nine people. About 70 percent of them are legal. Every year, millions of people from all over the world enter the State Department's Green Card Lottery. Just 50,000 applicants get in and only after undergoing interviews, clearing a screening process, and proving that they have graduated from high school or have worked for at least two years.

The common conception is that immigrants are uneducated laborers who want to steal U.S. jobs. Many immigrants, however, are highly skilled workers who bring their talents (and their capital) where they can best be put to use. Of the legal immigrants living in the United States, 21 percent have at least 17 years of education, which often includes graduate or professional schools, according to the federally funded New Immigrant Survey. Among people born in the United States, only 8 percent can boast such expertise.

I'm not sure Silicon Valley would even exist if it weren't for all the computer programmers and engineers from places such as India. For a time, the lack of employees with technical expertise threatened U.S. productivity. Before the economy went south, corporations lobbied the government to raise the number of skilled laborers allowed into the country. In 2000, Congress increased the number of H-1B temporary work visas from 115,000 to 195,000, in part to meet this demand. At the moment, the technology industry is hurting, but when the economy recovers, the demand for the kind of brainpower that's found in other countries will certainly increase.

This country needs unskilled immigrants as well. Go to any farm or construction site or orchard or day care center and you will see the HELP WANTED signs. U.S. citizens don't want these types of jobs and I am not talking only about jobs paying less than minimum wage. Nearly a quarter of employees in nonmanagerial and nonprofessional fields come from abroad, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies. Sadly, few avenues exist for these people to enter the United States legally. That is sadder still considering some of our best entrepreneurs had few skills and little education when they first arrived. Andrew Carnegie and John Jacob Astor are two immigrants whose drive and ambition more than made up for their humble, and foreign, origins.

" But Jim," the isolationists cry, "we don't want to lose our jobs to Mexicans and Canadians. We've got to keep immigrants out. We have to protect our economy."

Wrong.

Immigration is not about foreigners stealing U.S. jobs; it's about finding vibrant, willing workers to create competition in our labor force. These new residents will, in turn, stimulate the economy through their demand for consumer products. One of the reasons the United States has been so successful is that it has always had complete mobility of labor. If you don't like living in New York, you can move to Texas to start a new life and get a new job. In other words, you can move where your talents best serve the marketplace.

Now the European Union is copying the very model we created, opening its borders for the free movement of goods and people. Computer programmers from Portugal can take their skills to France and find jobs. If they're better than French programmers, the Portuguese will raise their new employers' productivity and improve the products. If they're just as good, they will create competition for jobs and keep wages in check. In either case, the new workers will create better, lower-priced goods for consumers.

There's a proven link between prosperity and immigration: A good economy attracts talent, and an influx of labor helps an economy grow. Take Ireland, a country that for most of the 20th
century saw more people leave than enter. Its economy suffered, but when the technology boom hit in the 1990s, Ireland became an economic tiger and skilled laborers moved there in droves-including many Irish who had left years earlier. The new professional class led the country into an era of unprecedented wealth.

Those people who are opposed to a liberal immigration policy often object on the grounds of national security. After all, the man who shot and killed two people at the Los Angeles airport on July 4, 2002, had a green card. John Lee Malvo, arrested for the sniper shootings in Washington, D.C., is an illegal immigrant. Like everyone else, I certainly want to live in a safe environment. Security, though, is often a ruse used by isolationists to promote dubious causes. Protectionists limit imports of foreign mohair in the name of national defense. And Oklahoma City proved that native-born Americans can be terrorists too.

In the end, fear should not be used as an excuse to keep us from pursuing economic progress. In 1962, Myanmar (at the time called Burma) had the highest literacy rate and one of the highest per capita incomes in Southeast Asia. A military junta there had established an isolationist trade policy even before other countries discovered human rights abuses and imposed embargoes. Today Myanmar ranks among the 10 poorest countries in the world. The same happened in Ghana after it won independence from Britain, in 1957. It does not take long to ruin a society once you've closed it off.

Instead of shutting our doors to immigrants, we need better ways to ensure freedom and prosperity here. Immigrants, legal or illegal, are here to stay. I'm no expert, but I imagine that we would have better luck rooting out the bad seeds if we embraced those who want to come to our country rather than having so many people try to slip in surreptitiously.

New visa restrictions imposed since the 9/11 attacks are already affecting key economic sectors. U.S. schools and universities used to attract tens of thousands of foreigners annually, but enrollment by students from many countries has fallen. Many international tourists are receiving permission for shorter stays than before, and foreigners seeking medical help in the United States are facing stricter entry requirements.

Before 9/11, President Bush was considering an initiative that would have allowed more people to come into our country temporarily as guest workers. Mexican president Vicente Fox was advocating an arrangement that would have given the millions of Mexicans who are in the United States illegally a chance to earn permanent legal status. These were great plans, which have since stalled in this fearful environment. It's a shame too. The United States will continue to thrive only by embracing the outside world, not by shutting its doors on those who are different.

Jim Rogers is a Worth senior contributing editor and author of the forthcoming Adventure Capitalist, which will be published in May by Random House

This file was updated on November 8, 2003