Sarah Gabriela Amaya

PHIL 1250
Professor Drexler
December 15, 2015
Signature Assignment: Immigration Argument Analysis
The best argument about immigration itself is that it is saying that
immigration could be the potential of killing our goose that lays the golden eggs
about our free nation. This goes over why it could be terrible for our nation to
accept immigrants and that it could affect our welfare programs that we have for
our on Americans within our nation. Overall it says, why accepting the major
immigration communities for instance; Mexico, India and China that come for
impoverished countries, but it doesnt change the overall benefits and thought
process of their first generations that are born within the United States to those that
were native born, since they do not identify as Hispanic/Indian/Chinese. Yet is
leaning towards the side for immigration, he says it near the end, that not
supporting immigration would not be the smartest thing, since there really no is
supportive evidence to deny it.
Alex Nowrasteh is initially trying to say with his argument is that his general
audience are those whom is most likely old enough to vote on politics; or people will
have a general understanding of what he is trying to get across with his argument
of immigration. Luckily, he does play the devils advocate for the side of
immigration and does end his argument like that, so the reader has a choice
whether it is good to have immigration or not. Nowrasteh has a decent argument
that is plausible against immigration that accepting it would initially weaken our
economy and ruin our political institution. He does try to show how this could be
true for instance having more immigrants here in the United States, but here is
where he said, it would not increase nor decrease the states income on welfare as
many of those would say, since they do not even benefit from those political
programs.
Saying the immigrants and their descendant offsprings opinion could
potentially change policies an express those per said difference through voting, with
that it could change the public policy and the outlook on that. They are not entirely
wrong, but not everyone that is an immigrant descent thinks like that, since there is
another study that showed that descendents have the mindset of native born
Americans. Another premise is that many refuse to assimilate to the country itself
by conforming to our ways, with that goes to say that they dont bother to learn out
language, which is our nations speaking language of English. Immigrants take all
the working jobs that our country has to offer.

Diagram

Fallacies
Response
To whom

this

may
concern,

Alex
Nowrasteh, how
you on this topic

is one supposed to believe

when youre directly involved with the job.

With what you see and the statistic that could or could not be necessarily true, but
how can one really argue against you, when you have the position and authority to
shut a person down? Maybe you feel sympathy for the immigrants and wish to help
them out; perhaps you arent necessarily doing your job correctly if youre siding
with the opposite side. When you wrote this on immigration, you already knew
where you stood and from where, wouldnt that make your argument invalid?
Or possibly you are trying to please the lower half the community that is less
fortunate. The Indians, Chinese, and Hispanic descendents, by taking on their side,
it makes you seem like a better person. Why appease the wrong side of people?
When in reality you can be pleasing the better side of the community.
Not only that but maybe youre insecure that youre actually ethnic and
covering up for something else. Could it be that youre trying to cover up the ISIS
attacks? Ignoring the Muslim immigration, by looking at other ethnicities?
Perhaps, you could be trying to say that it is good for our nation, but in reality you
really wish to see it in ruins and waiting for the demise of the United States itself.

On how you are talking about this you seem to be split on what your views
are. Let me help with that, you are either with the immigrants or with us, your own
kind, and the people of the United States.
Concurring with what has been said; I assume you are saying that all
immigration is okay. You are totally wrong, there are drug dealers, people who take
our jobs while they are at it and they seriously dont even bother to learn our
language.
-Sarah G Amaya

Respond fairly
It was good to go over the arguments against immigration briefly, and then
proceeded to go for the reasons why immigration is actually good for our nation.
Nowastreh makes a valid point in saying that immigrants does not make our country
an less free than it already is and states his premises as the following: that there is
not much of a difference with states that had more immigrants than those that did
now, if anything they dont affect our policy plans either. Since descendents dont
have a different mindset that those native born in the United States of America.
Honestly, it was brilliant to post surveys as proof or the fact that someone did
the research to show that the immigrants dont affect the nation as much as people
say they do. They dont even benefit from welfare either, as much as other people
makes those claims not only that but Nowastreh upheld proof of that too. I found it
very persuasive that some immigrants already have the same way of thinking as
those who were born here; therefore they do not affect the policy of political power
and the economy. Even though this is an argumentative paper, I do not disagree
with this person . As much as I would like to change and try to see another way,
and argue, I cannot change my view point.

Reflection
In responding with fallacies, I used: ad hominem bias, appeal to pride, red
herring, false dilemma, and hasty generalization. In reality, arguing with these
fallacies were amusing and lot more interesting, it was hard to keep a straight face
just using these.
Ad hominem bias, I used it to say that Nowastreh was biased in his argument
to begin with since his mindset was already predetermined. In saying, I had said
that his argument is invalid and yet in most arguments that can be had we
already have our viewpoints set and usually already slightly biased, unless you can
truly see things in the clear.
Appeal to pride, where I placed his pride on the line
was interesting and slightly difficult to do. I basically said that why should he lower
his pride and self worth for people who are not worth his time, when he can be
pleasing people that are more worthwhile and a lot more beneficial. Red herring
was interesting, to distract from his main point, I was pulling things out of my sleeve
to drive it a different direction. False dilemma was actually hilarious, its basically
that you are either on their side or mine. Not both, but initially saying for him to get
on my side. Hasty generalization is where you say everyone or something is the
same based off a small sample that one has witnessed, in this case I used the major
stereotypes, though I do not agree with them most of the time and just flung it out

there into the fallacious arguments.

The Best Argument Against Immigration

Volumes of research and centuries of experience do not bear out claims that
immigrants take our jobs, dont learn English, and fail to assimilate. But the idea
that immigrants could vote to upend our relatively free economy has an air of
credibility. It is arguably the best argument against liberalizing immigration.
Although immigrants are a boon to our economy and their children do reliably
assimilate, immigrants could kill the goose that lays the golden eggs by
undermining our free market institutions. In other words, will they come here,
become citizens, and vote socialist, populist, or worse?
Fortunately, there is little evidence that immigrants make countries less free.
The United States has the 12th freest economy in the world, but most
immigrants are from societies that are markedly less free than ours: the top three
immigrant-sending countries in 2013 were China, India, and Mexico, ranked 115 th,
110th, and 91st, respectively. If immigrants bring the impoverishing institutions of
their homelands with them, the long-run economic impact of immigration could turn
negative.
In a recent academic paper, my coauthors and I compared economic freedom
scores with immigrant populations across 100 countries over 21 years. Some
countries were majority immigrant while some had virtually none. We found that the
larger a countrys immigrant population was in 1990, the more economic freedom
increased in the same country by 2011. The immigrants country of origin, and
whether they came from a poor nation or a rich one, didnt affect the outcome.
These results held for the United States federal government but not for state
governments. States with greater immigrant populations in 1990 had less economic
freedom in 2011 than those with fewer immigrants, but the difference was small.
The national increase in economic freedom more than outweighed the small
decrease in economic freedom in states with more immigrants.
A related worry is that immigrants and their descendants would vote to
expand welfare benefits for themselves. State governments can set the benefit and
spending levels for welfare programs in their own states, and they also have varying
levels of immigration and ethnic diversity. This provided a perfect opportunity for
economist Zac Gochenour of Western Carolina University and me to test how
immigrants affect welfare.
A states population of immigrants, illegal immigrants, Hispanics, Asians,
ethnic or racial diversity caused by immigration, or any combination of the above
did not affect the size of welfare benefits. Larger populations of immigrants or more

diversity didnt decrease welfare on the state level, but they didnt increase it either.
Immigrants and their descendants could also potentially change policies through
their opinions. If immigrants and their descendants had consistently different policy
opinions and expressed those differences through voting, they could shift public
policy.
To measure this, Sam Wilson from George Mason University and I looked at
polling of immigrants and their descendants in the General Social Survey, a huge
national survey of public opinions.
Other surveys by ethnicity are unreliable because many descendants of
Hispanic immigrants do not self-identify as Hispanic. But the GSS allowed us to track
the specific opinions of immigrants and their direct descendants so we could gain a
more accurate assessment of their opinions by generation.
The results were stunning: Immigrants have opinions barely discernible from those
of native-born Americans.
Nonetheless, there are two issues where first-generation immigrants do
reliably display different opinions: They are more likely to self-identify as political
independents, and they broadly favor government involvement in the economy.
The political independence of immigrants in a new country is not surprising,
but immigrants support for government is. However, focusing on specific policies,
immigrants generic support for more government does not translate into support
for higher taxes, or more entitlement spending, or more welfare. That bodes well for
preserving Americas free-enterprise system.
Furthermore, the children of immigrants have opinions that are identical to those of
Americans who have been here for at least four generations. There simply is not a
growing bloc of immigrants and their descendants who will vote to overturn free
markets.
There are at least five hypotheses that could explain why
immigrants dont affect economic policy in the United States. The first is
called the doctrine of first effective settlement: It is very hard to upend established
political and economic institutions through immigration. Immigrants change to fit
into the existing order rather than vice versa. possibility is immigrant self-selection:
Those who decide to come here mostly admire American The second institutions or
have opinions on policy that are very similar to those of native-born Americans. As a
result, adding more immigrants who already broadly share the opinions of most
Americans would not affect policy. The third idea is that naturalized immigrants
have opinions that are identical to American citizens, while non-naturalized
immigrants do not. Either those who decide to naturalize dont want to change

American institutions, or the process of naturalization itself changes the opinions of

immigrants. The fourth explanation is that immigrants and Americans actually have
very similar policy opinions. This hypothesis is related to those above, but it
indicates an area where Americans may be unexceptional compared to the rest of
the world. According to this theory, Americans are not more supportive of free
markets than most other peoples, were just lucky that we inherited excellent
institutions from our ancestors. (This argument does not make sense by itself,
but certain elements of it could be true.) The fifth reason is that liberal immigration
laws make native voters oppose welfare because they believe immigrants will
consume those benefits (regardless of the fact that poor immigrants actually underconsume welfare compared to poor Americans). In essence, voters hold back the
expansion of those programs based on the belief that immigrants may take
advantage of them.
As Paul Krugman aptly observed, Absent those [immigration] restrictions,
there would have been many claims, justified or not, about people flocking to
America to take advantage of [New Deal] welfare programs.
In other words, Roosevelts New Deal and Johnsons Great Society programs
could only have been created because they were passed during one of the lowest
points for immigration in US history thus removing the most
effectivepolitical argument against expanding welfare.
As the late labor historian (and immigration restrictionist) Vernon M. Briggs Jr.wrote,
This era [of immigration restrictions] witnessed the enactment of the most
progressive worker and family legislation the nation has ever adopted.
None of those programs would have been politically possible to create amidst
mass immigration. Government grows the fastest when immigration is the most
restricted, and it slows dramatically when the borders are more open. The most
plausible argument against liberalizing immigration is that immigrants will worsen
our economic and political institutions, thus slowing economic growth and killing the
goose that lays the golden eggs. Fortunately, the academic and policy literature
does not support this argument: even the best argument against immigration is still
unconvincing.

[Link: http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/the-best-argument-against-immigration/]