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Should the U.S. Restrict Immigration?

Posted by Jeffrey A. Miron

Recent debates about Arizona’s new immigration law have taken as self-evident that immigration restrictions are good policy, with the only question being which level of government should enforce the law, and how. Yet the case for immigration restrictions is far from convincing.

Advocates of these restrictions rely on four possible arguments. First, that immigration dilutes existing languages, religions, family values, cultural norms, and so on. Second, that immigrants flock to countries with generous social welfare programs, leading to urban slums and inundated social networks. Third, that immigration can harm the sending country if the departing immigrants are high-skilled labor. Fourth, that immigration lowers the income of native, low-skill workers.

All of these arguments are wrong, overstated, or misguided. Immigration may change cultural values or norms, but nothing suggests this is a negative. Many societies flourish because they have incorporated new businesses, cultures, foods, and so on. More important, immigrants normally assimilate to the pre-existing culture provided government policy does not segregate them from the rest of society. In the past rich countries have incorporated large immigration flows with modest adjustment costs. Many of these immigrants lived in difficult conditions at first, but within a generation they achieved middle class status or better.

The possibility that immigration puts pressure on the welfare state is a reasonable concern, although existing evidence does not suggest this is a major problem. In any case, the possibility that a generous social safety net might encourage immigration is a reason to moderate this safety net, rather than a reason to restrict immigration. Indeed, expanded immigration might create pressure to keep the welfare state modest.

The risk that immigration drains high-skilled labor from poor countries is real, but this kind of immigration has positive impacts on the sending country that mitigate against any negatives. The possibility of migration to a high-wage country generates an incentive to acquire education, and only some of those educated actually leave. The threat of a brain drain nudges poor countries away from bad policies-such as excessive tax rates-that generate the brain drain in the first place. Many immigrants send remittances to friends or relatives in their country of origin. Plus, if borders were really open, many immigrants would seek education abroad but return to their home country, knowing they could leave if economic factors so dictated. Similarly, with open borders many immigrants would pursue temporary stays in higher wage countries. Temporary migration is common in many countries now, and was common in the U.S. before the tightening of immigration rules in the 1910s and 1920s. Temporary migration raises fewer of the standard concerns than permanent migration, while still helping many people in low-wage countries.

Concern for the poor, assuming this includes the poor in other countries, argues for vastly expanded immigration since many potential immigrants are much poorer than the natives whose wages they might depress. Only a bizarre view of equity favors people earning the minimum wage in rich countries over people near starvation in developing countries.

The conclusion that open borders is the best immigration policy is all the stronger because attempts to restrict immigration have their own negatives. These include the direct costs of border controls, the creation of a violent black market for immigration, and incentives for corruption. Further, immigration may have beneficial effects on productivity by fostering competition and introducing new ideas, approaches, business models, products, and so on. At the same time, many people in receiving countries enjoy the influence of new cultures. Immigrants also work at jobs for which the native supply is small.

Reasonable people can argue that immigration should increase gradually to moderate the transition costs. But any reasonable balancing implies vastly expanded immigration relative to current levels. This would improve the welfare of poor people in other countries far more than foreign aid.

C/P at psychologytoday.com

Jeffrey A. Miron • July 13, 2010 @ 12:05 pm
Filed under: Law and Civil Liberties; Trade and Immigration
Tags: family values, immigrants, immigration flows, immigration restrictions, new immigration law, safety net, skilled labor, social welfare programs, welfare state

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Short answer? No.

This doesn’t matter, though, right? I mean who actually eats fruits and vegetables anymore?

The mirid bugs appear to spread out from GM cotton fields.

Flickr\Brian Hathcock

[BEIJING] Scientists are calling for more thorough risk assessments for genetically modified crops after they discovered a surge in pests in a region planted with Bt cotton.

Their fifteen-year study surveyed a region of northern China where ten million small-scale farmers grow nearly three million hectares of Bt cotton, and 26 million hectares of other crops. It revealed widespread infestation with mirid bug (Heteroptera Miridae), which is destroying fruit, vegetable, cotton and cereal crops. And the rise of this pest correlated directly with Bt cotton planting.

Bt cotton is a genetically engineered strain, produced by the biotechnology company Monsanto. It makes its own insecticide which kills bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), a common cotton pest that eats the crop’s product — the bolls.

Planting Bt cotton slashes farmers’ pesticide requirements and increases cotton yield. It has been adopted worldwide, with about 16 million hectares — about 50 per cent of world cotton cultivation — now Bt cotton.

In northern China 95 per cent of cotton is the Bt variety. 

The scientists, from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the China National Agro-Technical Extension and Service Center, monitored insecticide use on cotton farms for 15 years. After the first five years, they also monitored mirid bug numbers at 38 locations.

They watched the farms gradually become a source of mirid bug infestations, in parallel with the rise of Bt cotton. The bugs, initially regarded as occasional or minor pests, spread out to surrounding areas, “acquiring pest status” and infesting Chinese date, grape, apple peach and pear crops.

Before Bt cotton, the pesticides used to kill bollworm also controlled mirid bugs. Now, farmers are using more sprays to fight mirid bugs, said the scientists.

“Our work shows that a drop in insecticide use in Bt cotton fields leads to a reversal of the ecological role of cotton; from being a sink for mirid bugs in conventional systems to an actual source for these pests in Bt cotton growing systems,” the authors wrote in their paper, published yesterday in the journal Science (13 May).

Although Bt cotton is well-researched, few studies examine the knock-on effect on other pests, said the scientists.

“This study is the first report of a landscape-level emergence of non-target pests,” said co-author, Kongming Wu, adding that the study highlights a “critical need” to explore the complex ecological impacts of Bt crops.

 ”Crops are the first level in the food chain,” he told SciDev.Net. “When people make it uneatable to certain insects, we need to understand how it might affect the whole ecosystem.”

The team concluded that more comprehensive risk management “may be crucial to help advance integrated pest management and ensure sustainability of transgenic technologies”.

Link to full article in Science [980kB]

New research, published in the journal Political Behavior last month, suggests that once those facts — or “facts” — are internalized, they are very difficult to budge. In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.

20 Websites With Carefully Crafted and Convincing Copy

3465 ? Retweet

Written by Joshua Johnson, On 2nd July 2010.
Filed in Inspiration.

Last week we discussed the importance of copywriting in web design and today we’re showcasing twenty sites that got it right.

Below you’ll find a number of tricks that you can use to create convincing copy for your website. We’ll discuss how to use everything from hyperbole to sarcasm to snag users and score more conversions.

Like the article? Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter to stay up on recent content.

Start with a Question

Creating a headline that’s a question is a great way to grab a user’s attention. Suddenly the statement is no longer passive but reaches out and demands interaction (if only internally) on the part of the reader.

This is most effective if the question is short and straightforward: “Are you listening to your customers?” is a solid example of a question that will immediately make business owners think about what you mean and whether they are missing out. Questions like this often bring realization to a reader and can cause them to doubt any reasons for not exploring your site more or trying your product. “Maybe I’m not listening to my customers. But how would I do that anyway?” If their brains take them this far, you’ve got ‘em hooked.

NiceReply

Quote: “How nice are your emails? Let your customers decide.”

Steven Little Design

Quote: “I Make Websites, Want One?”

Idea Scale

Quote: “Are you listening to your customers?”

Use a Metaphor

Metaphors can be a great way to make your copy more relatable to the person reading it. Rather than discussing web forms in cold technological terms, the site below calls them “fresh baked” and encourages users to “cut serve and enjoy” them.

This metaphor is carried out not just through copy but also in the visuals on the page via the chef character. This makes the site much more friendly and causes the product to feel more approachable.

Formee

Quote: “Fresh baked forms for your websites! We cooked a compliant webstandard form for you. xHTML and CSS are the secret ingredients! Cut, serve and enjoy!”

Assisted Serendipity

Quote: “Get notified when the scales of love tip in your favor at your favorite local hangouts.”

Tell Them It’s Easy

There are very few statements that website users want to hear more than “it’s easy.” This is especially true among productivity and team management apps which have been traditionally over-complicated. One of the key elements that prevents users from signing up for a service is that they simply don’t want to take the time to learn it. By assuring them that the learning curve is low or non-existant, you’re directly addressing one of their primary reservations.

Just make sure your website is in fact easy to use before making this claim. There’s no quicker way to make a customer mad than providing them with a complex system while promising a simple one!

Clientr

Quote: “Crazy simple client tracking for small teams.”

Paprika

Quote: “Productivity isn’t about drop-downs, or rating systems. It’s about quickly recording the things that need done, capturing what you don’t want to forget, and charting your way to the finish line.”

Shoply

Quote: “Shoply is the easiest way to sell online. We’re not joking, seriously!”

Nirvana

Quote: “Spend less time managing your projects & tasks
and more time doing them.”

Tell Them Who It’s For

This one is extremely simple and extremely effective: state who the site is for in the headline. If you’ve built an app or blog specifically for a select group, let them know! When browsing various email campaign options, I was most impressed with Campaign Monitor simply because they stated that it was “for designers” in their headline copy.

This single statement told me that they had built this entire service with me in mind and that if I was going to like any of these services, surely this would be the one.

Campaign Monitor

Quote: “Email Marketing Software for Designers and Their Clients”

Be Confident

There’s nothing wrong with a little confidence, even to the point of near hyperbole. Notice the words used in the statements below: perfection, beautiful, stunning, etc. These companies aren’t shy about the greatness of their work.

If you’re confident in your product, don’t be afraid to use grandiose verbiage to describe it. Keep it short and simple, but do it justice.

Dubbed Creative

Quote: “Websites Mixed to Perfection”

Masswerks

Quote: “We craft beautiful and useable websites.”

Dazzle Cat

Quote: “We design, build and host stunning websites.”

The Color Cure

Quote: “We are the cure for all things ordinary.”

Ask For Help

The site below caught my attention because it was a simple and honest plea for help. This guy moved to a new city and wants a job, so he asked anyone who finds this site to help him out by sharing it. I saw humanity in the words that he wrote and genuinely felt like I was doing a good deed by sharing it.

If you want to ask a simple favor of the people stopping by your site, don’t skirt around the issue, come right out and ask. Use plain and clear language just as if you were speaking to a friend.

Chopeh

Quote: “To get there I’m going to need some help. All I’m asking is for you to share this website and somebody, somewhere in Copenhagen might just see it. You never know what that could lead to.”

Be Clever

I love the wit that went into the statements below. What better way to describe a URL shortener than “the incredible shrinking URL?” It’s a fantastic way to represent a fairly mundane service.

The second example takes the common road of using opposites to make a point. They make a “best of both worlds” claim by identifying their strengths over what you’d find in a traditional agency.

Thurly

Quote: “The incredible shrinking URL”

Rodeo Park

Quote: “A big agency’s expertise with a small agency’s flexibility and creative solutions.”

Be Funny

Finally, when all else fails, just try to be funny. I absolutely loved the “invite me to Dribbble” plea put together in the form of the site below. It’s quite hilarious and was in fact successful in scoring the designer an invite.

The other two examples follow suit by using a little tongue in cheek humor to get their message across. This can be hard to pull off effectively and should only be attempted by those who really have a gift for sarcasm.

Please Invite Me to Dribbble

Quote: “I even drew a chart! Designers love charts!”

BlackRabbit

Quote: “One score & eight years ago, BlackRabbit was born, albeit in physicality alone. After learning to walk & talk (with limited success) sitting down at a computer seemed a better idea. The rest is history.”

Three60

Quote: “It’s rocket science without rockets or science. We know what you’re thinking. Rocket Science?! Puleese! Alright, fine, it’s a bit grandiose.”

Show Us Yours!

Do you think your site has excellently crafted copy? Leave a link and a quote below and tell us about the trick you’re using to convince readers of what you’re saying.

Also tell us which of the sites above was your favorite!

July 6, 2010  |  

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“You’ve probably heard of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ — a list of produce items identified by the Environmental Working Group that reportedly contain too many pesticide residues. I thought you might like to know about this webinar that provides perspective on pesticide residues,” said an email sent by Elizabeth Pivonka, a registered dietitian who serves as the president and CEO for the Produce for Better Health Foundation.

She sent the email to a few employees of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who then forwarded it on to employees of state health departments. The webinar, which claimed to expose the “real” danger of the “Dirty Dozen” (“scaring consumers away from eating fresh fruits and vegetables” and having a “negative impact on public health at a time when we are facing an obesity epidemic”), was put on by the Alliance for Food and Farming — a self-described non-profit organization made up of agricultural groups seeking to “educate and inform consumers and the media on issues of food safety and farming.”

Sounds benign, right? In fact, it sounds downright helpful. Fortunately, after the CDC employees failed to question the webinar, an employee of the New York State Department of Health shot the webinar invitation out to a listserv asking, “Is this an industry group promoting conventional farming?” One look at the Alliance’s Web site is enough to answer that with a qualified yes! The front page of the site touts in large font that “U.S. farmers produce the safest, most abundant food supply in the world” — that’s industry codespeak for “please don’t question us — just buy and eat the food we give you no matter how we choose to produce it.” But who does the alliance represent? The Web site does not say, and when asked, the organization refuses to divulge its members — a common tactic of industry front groups.

In fact, the Alliance for Food and Farming represents a number of mostly California-based farm and pesticide groups including the California Strawberry Commission, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the California Association of Pest Control Advisers, Western Growers, Sunkist Growers, the Produce Marketing Association, the California Tomato Farmers, and the California Table Grape Commission.

You might remember the California Farm Bureau from the movie Food, Inc., in which they were caught on film arguing that foods containing clones should not be labeled. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the California Strawberry Commission’s pet cause du jour: legalizing the pesticide methyl iodide, a carcinogen so potent it is used to induce cancer in the lab. In other words, this is not the bunch that government regulators and health professionals should turn to for unbiased, factual information about the danger of pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables.

Front groups are a common vehicle industry uses to delude, confuse, and sometimes overtly defraud the public. In her book, Diet for a Hot Planet, Anna Lappé explains how the food industry learned its tactics from the tobacco industry, citing a 1969 tobacco industry internal memo: “Doubt is our product. It is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

Lappé says, “The food industry long ago saw the benefits in fomenting confusion; confusion defuses public outcry about our toxic food system. Long after the discovery of the neurotoxic, carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting effects of farm chemicals, we’re still debating the merits of organic agriculture.” In addition to front groups, she lists industry-funded pseudoscience and well-financed smear campaigns against scientists questioning industrial agriculture as other tactics often used to convince the public they are providing us with unbiased facts.

With its relatively meager budget and unfinished Web site, the Alliance for Food and Farming is just an amateur among a field of more established, well-funded front groups like the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and the Center for Consumer Freedom (each with budgets in the millions). These groups are regularly quoted in the media as if they were legitimate sources of information and not astroturf organizations for the chemical and food industries. With its authoritative-sounding name, ACSH even managed to have itself listed as a “Resource” on the official Web site for a recent CNN special called “Toxic America,” despite the fact that ACSH put out its own press release blasting the special as “bizarrely unscientific.” As part of its strategy, the Center for Consumer Freedom maintains a number of issue-specific Web sites with names sure to guarantee search engines will find them like FishScam.com and MercuryFacts.org, both to counter the notion that some fish contain dangerous levels of mercury and humans should limit consumption of them.

The organizations named above are non-profits, which means a certain amount of information about them can be uncovered by looking at the financial disclosures they file with the IRS, but industry fronts can take other forms. For example, the Web site TruthInFood.com is maintained by Food-Chain Communications, a marketing firm that clearly specializes in promoting industrial agriculture and processed foods. While a list of its clients are not easily obtained, its founder, Kevin Murphy, has connections with many large beef and dairy industry organizations, including the National Grocer’s Association and the National Council of Chain Restaurants.

Then there’s the American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT), a group founded solely to defend the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH). When AFACT was founded, Monsanto owned rbGH (it has since been sold to Elanco, a subsidiary of Eli Lilly). Conveniently, a consultant to Monsanto helped organize AFACT and the marketing firm Osborn & Barr (which includes a former Monsanto executive among its founders) gave the group money. AFACT calls itself “grassroots,” but it is about as grassroots as a smokers’ rights group organized by a tobacco company.

These front groups serve as one piece in a much larger puzzle intended to influence government, the media, health professionals and consumers. Members of Congress and their staff wake up to Capitol Hill metro stations plastered with advertisements from industries wishing to influence them, receive invitations to fancy events and educational briefings, and meet with lobbyists who provide them with industry-funded research and whitepapers. One industry group might lobby the government to allow the use of a pesticide, for example, and then turn around and claim (directly or through a front group) that the pesticide is safe because the government allows it.

Journalists, seeking to add “balance” or controversy to their stories, can always go to these organizations for quotes countering the statements of environmentalists, physicians and consumer advocates. And even when journalists — or even universities — are not seeking to feature the industry point of view, industry or its front groups are always there to insist they are given a chance to make their case. (In the case of universities, this often occurs when major donors threaten to withhold funding if certain speakers are invited to campus or professors teach courses on topics the donor finds inconvenient. And, unfortunately, the universities often side with the donors.)

With all of this misinformation, how can an average citizen discern between truth and propaganda? The most important thing to do is to consider the source of any message. One handy tool for this is Sourcewatch.org, a wiki maintained by the Center for Media and Democracy. Often, when a front group will not tell you which organizations or corporations are behind it, Sourcewatch* will. (Full disclosure: I am currently working with the Center for Media and Democracy, but I’ve used the site as my go-to on front groups for several years now.)

Another method is checking with organizations you know you can trust. In the case of the safety of pesticide residues on produce, the Produce for Better Health Foundation (whose donors include nearly every fruit and vegetable industry group and corporation imaginable) claims that pesticide residues on the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list fall within the amount EPA and FDA say is “generally regarded as safe.” I attempted to register for the Alliance for Food and Farming’s webinar (twice!) but was not permitted to participate, so I can only imagine its message is similar to this one.

So does that make pesticide residues safe? Consider a quote from the recently released President’s Cancer Panel: “We have sprayed pesticides which are inherent poisons throughout our shared environment. They are now in amniotic fluid. They are in our blood. They are in our urine. They are in our exhaled breath. They are in our mother’s milk. What is the burden of cancer that we can attribute to this use of poisons throughout our agricultural system? We won’t really know that answer until we do another experiment, which is to take the poisons out of our food chain, embrace a different kind of agriculture, a healthier agriculture, and see what happens.”

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..