Manuel Suárez Mier*
In my decades of teaching economics, I always try to persuade my students that incentives have consequences as they are a mechanism that alters the prices of goods and services to which consumers react either by increasing or decreasing their demand, as the case may be.
The best example of the vigor of the incentives is seen in the renewed migrant crisis that today is piling up on the southern border of the United States as word spread that Biden would relax Trump’s immigration policy, and the “polleros,” whose business depends on the migratory flow, were in charge of spreading it.
Despite the vocal opposition of Trumpians to immigration, especially people of color, a recent study by the Cato Institute shows that 77% of respondents approve of increased immigration in recent years. In comparison, opponents of it are only 28% when in 2009 they were 50%.
The “migra” as border agents are colloquially known, said that 100,441 people, including 9,500 children, tried to cross into the US in February, 28% more than in January and 2.7 times higher than in February of last year, and the authorities do what they can to protect children.
With population growth in the US that is not enough to compensate those who die, and 10,000 people retiring every day, increasing immigration is essential to sustain more growth in the economy and have new workers who finance the retirees’ welfare payments.
The migration debate, revived by Biden’s proposal to find a path to legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, poses a major challenge as Republicans who used to support more immigration, such as Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush, have disappeared.
History has important lessons: the decade 1845-55 was the one in which there have been more migrants, 3 million when the population was 23 million, which means in comparable numbers immigration of 45 million in the decade 2000-10 when they entered only 14 million in that period.
Their participation was crucial for the Union’s victory in the civil war as 25% of its soldiers, and 40% of its sailors were foreigners. This was decisive in dismantling the long-held idea that the US was exclusively an Anglo-Saxon and Protestant country.
That is the challenge facing Biden now, to dismantle the idea that the United States is still a white and Christian nation when it comes to a melting pot of races and knowledge that have come to him from all over the world to enrich his culture, his vision of the world, your kitchen and your quality of life.
Many Republicans rejected Trump’s insulting primitivism, as did the majority of the population. Still, sadly they have failed to pull their party out of its clutches and offer a sensible alternative for those who reject nosy and insatiable governments.
Will it be possible to reform that party, or will another option emerge that incorporates the classic liberal principles he used to defend before Trump?
*Consultant in economics and strategy in Washington DC and professor at universities in Mexico and the US. Email: aquelarre.economico@gmail.com
This column is also published in Spanish on March 18, 2021, in the Excélsior newspaper, based in México City.