Immigrants Keep the United States Free by Undermining Labor Unions

Alex Nowrasteh : My greatest worry about vastly liberalized immigration is that immigrants would undermine economic freedom in the United States , which would, in turn, reduce economic growth.

Immigrants overwhelmingly come from countries with less economic freedom than the US , he says.

There is little evidence that immigrants have degraded American economic institutions, some evidence that they have indirectly improved them.

In 45 years after the modest immigration liberalization of the late 1960s , federal expenditures as a percent of GDP climbed to 20.6 percent , a mere 8.7 percent increase.

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 It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States , Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Wolfe Marks explore numerous reasons why the U.S. is the only major Western country without a large labor or socialist party.

Their book presents potential explanations like the US Constitution , our electoral system, American culture, a political break between socialists and the labor movement, and other historical accidents.