Immigration, ctd.

So I happened to notice this article in the Times (LA, mind you, not that snooty NY Times) about Sen. Salazar slipping a rider into the immigration legislation there about English being the "common and unifying" language of this country and whatnot. But hold your horses...this isn't the federal govt. mandating English as the official language, like more than twenty-plus other states. Immigrants that don't speak English, after all, won't be unable to get their benefits. What this really does is raise the standard for immigrants to pass their residency requirements by knowing slightly more English than is currently required. So in other words, all that's going on is one little tweak which is getting a whole lot more media than it's really worth because no one can debate this issue sensibly...

Sounds a whole lot like No Child Left Behind, doesn't it? :D

Anyway. So let's get past the fact that Congress isn't doing anything new here other than making a proclamation so it looks good when they're running for re-election and get to the heart of the matter:

Should English be the official language of the United States?

I don't particularly see why it should. Either no benefits or other government programs would really be influenced by the new official primacy of English, it would be an empty proclamation (as in the case above). The other case is that the action would withhold benefits if people didn't learn English, in which case the government is discriminating against people because of their current choice of language. That's something that I bet people are just itching to do. "Let's punish people because they can't speak our language!"

By the same token, let's punish people who don't have the internet. After all, they're not working in well-paying jobs that send the government higher tax revenues. Oh, and people that wear bellbottom pants because they're so out of fashion. Or people that wear toupees because they're not supporting the nationally-vital hair regrowth industry.

Okay, those are unfair comparisons. But think of it this way - to succeed in America, to really succeed, you need to know English. It's as simple as that. There's no parallel corporate ladder in this country for people that can only speak Spanish, French, Aramaic, or Swahili. Think about a top management position. To conduct any sort of business with any other company, you would have to know English. It's not as though there's a separate "Spanish-speaking only" economy that exists inside the United States which intersects the mainstream one at no points whatsoever. Not a sizable one that could threaten the mainstream, anyway. If the benefits of learning English outweigh the costs of time, money, and effort needed to learn it, people will learn it. Those benefits rise exponentially as someone moves up the corporate ladder.

Furthermore, let's not forget that there's other avenues that immigrants and their children mesh with their english-speaking breatheren: schools. Even with English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, these are not large enough to teach children entire cirricula of schools. Sooner or later, they're going to be plopped into English-speaking classes.

The stats bear this out. Take a look at this graph from the Migration Policy Institute:

Table 1: Percent of Children Who Speak Only English by Generation and Group

Anyone notice the first column? Hispanics. The second? Mexicans. By the third generation of immigrants (grandchildren), a majority only speak English. Seeing as how natural births are outnumbering immigrants, I think we'll be okay. No need to worry that somehow there will be these self-contained Spanish-speaking ghettos where only Spanish is taught...or any other language, for that matter.

Ever been to Chinatown in any city? Sure, the FOBs (Fresh off the Boats - a term for newly arrived immigrants) may not know English, and those that do prefer to use Chinese, but most people have some grasp of the language.

When was the last time you heard someone cry about how the Chinese are going to take over our country? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So don't worry about Hispanics coming in and taking over America with their non-English-speaking ways. It's simply not going to happen. And you can take that to the bank. They still speak English there.

Galbraith

I'm going to step aside from the small war that's evolved over my immigration letter to deliver some sad news.

John Kenneth Galbraith died on April 29th, 2006. He was 97. He was also a monumental influence in the world of economics. It's because of much of his work in The New Industrial State that Industrial Organization (IO) Economics now focuses primarily on oligopolistic models instead of those of perfect competition.

Now, that probably means something close to zero for most of you, and about even less for the rest. Well, think of it this way. Before Galbraith came onto the scene, most industries were assumed to act under the aegis of perfect competition.

There is a significant difference here. Under the "rules" of perfect competition, firms can't influence prices...they're considered "price takers." They take whatever price the market offers for them. That market, of course, is composed of lots of buyers, none of whom have enough influence to single-handedly "make" the price. Everyone - in a world of perfect competition - is subject to market forces; no one can game the system.

The original example that every student of economics learns is the agriculture market. You have hundreds upon thousands of sellers (farmers) and hundreds of thousands of buyers (humanity). If someone buys a whole lot of...say...corn, the demand won't stretch supply to the brink of a shortage. By the same token, if one more member of the city folk decides to go into farming, after being inspired by the terrific game Harvest Moon, then the supply won't be so enormous that the price of corn will crash. Everyone's a price taker.

Well, think about the runs on the gold market. Or how labor unions constrict who can be hired. Or the car industry, with a dozen-odd car companies ruling the market. Or how U.S. Steel dominated the market for decades, with only a few fringe companies even hoping to compete. Or how OPEC openly conspires to raise or lower supply to directly influence the price of oil. Or...you get the idea. In all these instances, the markets were assumed to be under the guise of "perfect competition" with all players operating at similar levels of achieving "economic profits," i.e. earning the same return on their investments as everyone else.

Raise hands everyone who thinks that $200 for Microsoft Office is fair competitive market value.

Mm-hmm. Didn't think so. But some early economists would have.

Enter Galbraith. Now you have more widespread adoption of the models that restrict markets to only a few players instead of dozens or hundreds.

But he also had another contribution, too. When you look at early economic models of competition and markets, you'll notice there are two entities which are starkly devoid in those models: unions and the government. Until Keynes - and a lesser extent Galbraith - the only purpose that unions and government had were to create unemployment (by raising the cost of labor above the equilibrium wage and making firms reluctant to hire workers) in the former case and screw up markets (such as rent control, which causes demand to outstrip supply in the real estate market) in the latter. Galbraith showed that, in fact, most industries were far from perfectly competitive.

Galbraith saw something different. He saw that big business, big labor (well, labour - he was Canadian by birth) and big government could work together to dominate the economy.

His biggest contribution, though, was in the realm of infrastructure. In 1958, The Affluent Society, Galbraith said the following:

"The line which divides our area of wealth from our area of poverty is roughly that which divides privately produced and marketed goods and services from publicly rendered services. ... In the years following World War II, the papers of any major city - those of New York were an excellent example - told daily of the shortages and shortcomings in the elementary municipal and metropolitan services. The schools were old and overcrowded. The police force was under strength and underpaid. The parks and playgrounds were insufficient. Streets and empty lots were filthy, and the sanitation staff was underequipped and in need of men."

Look at the quote above and tell me that the very same statements he made in 1958 don't resonate now.

Galbraith's work on the need for massive investment of public infrastructure was one of the driving forces behind the "War on Poverty" of the 1960s, as Galbraith was a major advisor to JFK and LBJ...he also worked for the government during FDR and Truman. He was a major influence in those administrations and whether you agree with those policies or not, Galbraith was a big factor in the push to increase public investment in goods & services.

He wasn't without his detractors. The notion of the business/labour/government trifecta dominating the economy ran counter to many laissez-faire economists; he and Milton Friedman had a number of sparring matches. Galbraith's ideas were seen as pro-aristocracy, with an out-of-touch elite making decisions instead of market forces alone.

Despite his critics - many of whom had some valid points - Galbraith was a giant of economics and his passing will be sorely missed. There aren't many like him anymore and we should all mourn his death.