I doubt Trump’s serious. But if he managed to enact this proposal, the U.S. would move about halfway to my dream of open borders. To see why, remember the following facts:
For workers in the Third World, the gains of moving to the U.S. are immense.
Academic standards in America’s lowest-ranked schools and weakest departments are rock bottom.
Tuition at the weakest U.S. schools, though ordinarily much higher for foreign students, remains modest.
Lenders are happy to finance legal investments with enormous expected rates of return.
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True, this immigrant-laundering scheme won’t launder absolutely everyone. It won’t let immigrants bring their minor children (at least until they convert their green cards into U.S. citizenship). It won’t work for immigrants who speak no English at all. It won’t work for immigrants too economically isolated to secure a loan destined to pay for itself fifty times over. But at least half of all would-be migrants could realistically follow my plan once markets adjust to meet exploding demand. Since over a billion want to come, the Trump plan would ultimately welcome hundreds of millions of new arrivals.
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Like Posner-Weyl’s “let every American sponsor an immigrant” plan, Trump’s proposal is great because he fails to understand that his reform is a backdoor to open borders. To get the results he wants — lots of high-skilled immigrants, few extra low-skilled immigrants — Trump would have to restrict his plan to, say, STEM majors with 3.5 GPAs from top-40 schools.
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In that spirit of candor: If what Trump has said about immigration in the past is remotely true, his proposal is folly. But if what Trump has said about immigration in the past is deeply false, his proposal is stellar. Not as stellar as simply saying “Yes”; making tens of millions of foreigners endure years of college so they can legally get blue-collar jobs is a sad joke. But the social benefits of immigration definitely dwarf the social costs of education. If I believed Trump was in earnest, I’d even consider voting for him.
Keep in mind that Trump broke basically all of his campaign promises in one way or another. This goes beyond the fact that rhetoric is always outrunning practical reality when it comes to politics. He often flat out promised one thing and pursued if not delivered the opposite. Let’s hope he can do similar when it comes to his bread-and-butter positions on immigration.
Hungry for more? Scott Sumner backs into blue skies when evaluating “Trump’s worst decision”—picking JD Vance as his running mate.
Although Vance is deeply evil, he is a smart guy. I have have no doubt at all that these continue to be his private views of Trump. Vance is no “idiot”.
So here we are. Biden is surrounded by staff that privately think he’s senile, and Trump is surrounded by staff that privately think he’s an idiot[.]
Where is the optimism, you ask. JD Vance might be the most likely potential VP to participate in a 25th Amendment action against Trump. So implicitly I am saying that Vance is preferrable to Trump.2
Here is some additional and even more backdoor optimism. Noah Smith shows and discusses the evidence on how crime is way down in recent years.
So let’s take a look at the data. First, let’s talk about the FBI’s estimates. The FBI has a data set called the Uniform Crime Reports, where they try to estimate the number of crimes in the U.S. based on what the police report to them. This data shows crime falling across the board in 2023, and falling at an accelerating pace in early 2024:
This is just one of so many facts that demonstrate improvement during (despite) Biden’s presidency. As I pointed out previously, Biden’s track record is comparable if not outright better than Trump’s on many key issues Trump voters claim to care about. But of course they won’t let themselves see this.
PS: By the way, this prediction of mine from February is aging well.
Are you sure there is that high a chance for each of two elderly “gentlemen” to even be alive in about 9 months? What probability do you assign to health problems short of death? What about removal for cause (Biden from the presidency and Trump from enough ballots)?
Strange things can happen when the powers that be would rather things be different—no, I’m not talking about deep-state nefarious (murderous) activities. I am thinking power brokers in smoke-filled rooms finally reasserting themselves for the good of their party interest to cut deals that move people off the ballot.
It will be entertaining to watch as events develop to see how these probabilities will need to change. At least we can have fun watching the train wreck.
My prediction, shared by Nate Silver among others, is that the race will tighten considerably by November. This probably requires a replacement for Biden. And this doesn’t mean I’m calling for a Trump loss—at least not yet. And it would be a true shocker if any Democrat could emerge to take the expectation lead going into November.
That is unless breaking the seal on the 25th Amendment (removal) is valuable enough in its own right to overcome Vance = Trump or Trump > Vance. I do find value in a first use as it establishes the measure as a real threat to future leaders as well as gives the opportunity for the Republicans to break free of the personality cult since they would be needed to have sufficient Congressional votes for removal. Still, these benefits are just nice byproducts.
