capitalism

Immigration 235
Rasmussen, David W., and Bruce L. Benson. The Economic
Anatomy of a Drug War: Criminal Justice in the Commons.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
Thornton, Mark. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1991.
Wisotsky, Steven. “A Society of Suspects: The War on Drugs and
Civil Liberties.” Cato Policy Analysis, No. 180. Washington,
DC: Cato Institute, 1992.
IMMIGRATION
Immigration is the movement of people from one country to
another where they are not native. Since the beginning of
history, men and women have been crossing political borders
to better their economic condition, reunite with their
families, and escape the dangers they faced in their country
of origin. In the late 1990s, an estimated 130 million people,
or about 2% of the world’s population, were living outside
the country in which they were born. About 10% of these
immigrants were refugees forced from their homes by war,
persecution, or natural disaster. Immigration has played an
important role in the settlement and development of the
United States and, indeed, of the whole New World. Its
defenders argue that not only does immigration enhance the
freedom and well-being of those who have moved to their
adopted country, but it also has benefited its natives by stimulating
the economy and enriching the culture. Opponents
claim that immigrants compete with native workers, thus
lowering wages, and fragment the traditional culture.
Throughout history, freedom to travel and immigrate has
been closely tied to freedom of commerce. In medieval
England, immigration was seen as a basic right. Chapter 41
of Magna Carta asserts that, “All merchants shall have safe
and secure exit from England and entry to England, with the
right to tarry there and move about as well by land as by
water, for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs.”
Throughout history, states that were the most open to
trade and new ideas, such as Venice and the Dutch Republic,
also tended to be the most open to immigrants. As trade and
economic liberalization expanded in the 19th century, so,
too, did immigration. The late 19th century, in particular,
saw mass migrations from Europe to the Americas, Oceania,
and Asia. The bulk of this immigration, however, was
directed at the United States. The increased immigration of
this era was spurred by the introduction of the steamship,
which dramatically reduced the cost and risk of ocean travel,
and by industrialization, which created new demands for
labor that were met, in part, by voluntary, large-scale immigration.
With few exceptions, governments allowed the free
movement of people across borders during most of this
period. In the century ending in 1920, 60 million people left
Europe, three-fifths of whom came to the United States. The
other major destinations of European immigration were
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and
Argentina. During this same period, millions more left
China, India, and other Asian countries, moving to East and
Southern Africa, and nations surrounding the South China
Sea, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and, to a lesser extent,
to the Americas. Economist J. Bradford DeLong of the
University of California at Berkeley estimates that, by 1870,
about 1 out of 10 people in the world lived in a country other
than the one of their birth, five times as many as today. After
the First World War, however, restrictions against immigration
became more widespread, particularly in the United
States. Motivating those restrictions were populist concerns
that immigrants harmed natives by driving down wages,
posed a national security threat, diluted native culture, and
were of “inferior” racial or ethnic stock. Today, even as a
growing number of nations are lifting barriers to international
trade and investment, immigration remains far more
tightly controlled than a century ago.
The United States is a nation founded by immigrants.
Among the long train of abuses of which the Founding
Fathers accused King George III was that he “has endeavored
to prevent the Population of these States” by “obstructing
the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” and by
“refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations
hither.” Between 1820 and 2001, 67 million immigrants
officially entered the United States. The first wave of
European immigrants to what is now the American colonies
were from Great Britain, followed by a rising number from
Germany in the later 18th century. Not all immigrants came
willingly. From the early 1600s to 1820, about 8 million
Africans were forcibly transported to the New World under
indescribably squalid conditions to be sold into slavery.
Immigration of all kinds was relatively attenuated from the
period of American independence until the 1840s. At that
point, the Irish Potato Famine of 1846–1847 was attended
by the immigration of no less than 1.7 million Irish to
the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, more than onefifth
the population of that island. Irish, German, and
Scandinavian immigrants predominated through about
1890, to be eclipsed by Italians, Austro-Hungarians, and
Russians during the Great Migration of 1900–1914.
Immigration during this period was virtually unrestricted.
Entrants were screened only for contagious diseases and
obvious mental deficiencies at such facilities as Ellis Island
in New York City. The only exception to free entry until then
had been the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a piece of
clearly racist legislation, which virtually barred the immigration
of Chinese laborers. After World War I, growing
anti-immigrant sentiment led Congress to place quotas on
immigrants based on the proportion of the population represented
in the 1910 Census. This effort excluded almost all
Asians and culminated in the Johnson–Reed Act of 1924,
which favored immigrants from Northern Europe through a