L. Gordon Crovitz
L. Gordon Crovitz, former executive vice president of Dow Jones and past publisher of the Wall Street Journal, opines in the newspaper he once published,
At the dawn of the Industrial Age, in 1719, the British Parliament passed a law banning craftsmen from emigrating to France or other rival countries…. “At that time the chief concern was the loss of iron founders and watchmakers,” Gavin Weightman writes…. Spies from around the world tried to uncover the secrets of British engineering…. This attempted protectionism of ideas was doomed by easier travel and communication.
It is a curious phrase, is it not? “this attempted protectionism of ideas.” Mr. Crovitz appears to mean “the maintenance of industrial secrets” which, desirable though it might have been, probably indeed “was doomed by easier travel and communication.”
So much for the British phase of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Crovitz then extrapolates,
Which brings us to our own era, and the debate on immigration reform beginning this week with congressional hearings….
Such a nonsequitur is even curiouser than the phraseology just cited. What, exactly, is Mr. Crovitz up to here?
It usually pays to be skeptical about immigration reform, …
Indeed.
… given the alliance between nativists and labor unions for tighter borders.
Does Mr. Crovitz then prefer looser borders?
Still, an economic downturn is the right time to move on immigration, one of the few policy tools that could clearly boost growth.
Yes, it would seem that Mr. Crovitz did.
The pace of lower-skilled migration has slowed due to higher unemployment. This could make it less contentious to ease the path to legalization …
Actually, no. Had the pace of lower-skilled migration slowed due to tighter borders, this could make it less contentious to ease the path to legalization …
… for the 12 million undocumented workers and their families in the U.S.
For the 12 million what? Illegal aliens, it seems that he means. What is it about the word undocumented that immigration enthusiasts think might fool us? Political Correctness used to talk a better game.
One eagerly awaits Mr. Crovitz’s next column, which presumably will turn on the topic of undocumented pharmacists (not to mention gangster drug dealers)! and the one after that, on undocumented hosts (not to mention kidnappers); and the one after that, on undocumented visitors and undocumented borrowers (not to mention burglars and thieves). If I carry my shotgun out to the Arizona desert next week and take aim at some undocumented workers crossing the border, why, can I be an undocumented border-control agent? One suspects that Mr. Crovitz’s answer would be that, no, I cannot be, and of course he would be right; but how he would square such an answer with his other rhetoric is less than clear to this writer.
It’s also a good time to ask why we turn away skilled workers, including the ones earning 60% of the advanced degrees in engineering at U.S. universities.
If we actually had control of our borders then this could be a partly valid point.
It is worth pointing out the demographic shortfall: Immigrants are a smaller proportion of the U.S. population than in periods such as the late 1890s and 1910s, when immigrants gave the economy a jolt of growth.
It is impossible to make sense of such obfuscation. Would Mr. Crovitz like to argue the proposition that the Panic of 1857, or the Panic of 1873, or the Panic of 1893, or even the Panic of 1907, had arisen from such a “demographic shortfall”? To characterize Mr. Crovitz’s economic-history recital as merely selective would be to afford him the benefit of the doubt; and what does he mean by “demographic shortfall,” anyway? Apparently he means fewer immigrants than he would prefer.
Immigrants have had a disproportionate role in innovation and technology. Companies founded by immigrants include Yahoo, eBay and Google. Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from 25% a decade ago.
May one assume that Mr. Crovitz refers here to undocumented Silicon Valley start-ups?
Some 40% of patents in the U.S. are awarded to immigrants.
No, apparently one may not assume it.
The immediate effect of a U.S. patent granted to an immigrant, by the way, is to forbid real Americans the use some invention or other. Of course this is not what Mr. Crovitz means; he means rather that many of the world’s brightest technical minds prefer to do their inventing here, undoubtedly a true observation. Still, one ought not to forget that there is another side to it. Americans love innovation, but it is not immediately obvious that U.S. patents granted to foreigners are, as a rule, actually good for the U.S. A U.S. patent after all constitutes a direct restraint against Americans only, and the more so when one considers that an immigrant scientist or engineer is, realistically, assumedly, far more likely than a native to be collaborating with foreigners rather than Americans in design and manufacture.
A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation found that immigrants are 50% likelier to start businesses than natives. Immigrant-founded technology firms employ 450,000 workers in the U.S. And according to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started one quarter of all U.S. venture-backed firms.
One wonders how many such firms are backed by foreign venture capital, especially Chinese venture capital, unavailable to real Americans. One further wonders how much U.S. (rather than Chinese) manufacturing such venture-backed firms have directly given rise to. (The adverb directly is used here advisedly, to pre-empt attempts to foist on us theoretical economic multiplier effects which do not actually exist. We want real, tangible, coal-and-steel manufacturing, not airy extrapolations of imaginary manufacturing.)
Banks getting federal bailouts are saddled with new hurdles to get visas for skilled workers.
Here we go again. Mr. Crovitz “saddles” the reader with a pejorative verb to evade the need to present his thesis squarely. Does Mr. Crovitz seriously mean that banks taking federal (that is, American taxpayer) bailout money should not be asked to hire Americans rather than foreigners with that money?
The wait for H-1B visas for skilled people from countries such as China and India is now more than five years, with only 65,000 visas granted annually among 600,000 applications. But countries such as Canada and Singapore actively recruit technologists and scientists.
Evidently, they still prefer to come here.
As Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has suggested, instead of sending the half million higher-education students from overseas home when they graduate, we should “staple a green card to their diplomas.”
Mr. Barrett is a good man and a giant of American industry, and in some limited ways he actually makes a pertinent point, or would make if the United States controlled her borders did not suffer from increasingly severe immigrational indigestion today. Mr. Barrett is also trying to make the best of a bad situation he did not create, in which his company’s U.S.-made products face foreign competition at a structural disadvantage imposed by a vain U.S. Congress. However, Mr. Barrett’s point is not the point Mr. Crovitz is trying to make. Mr. Crovitz’s point seems to amount to an insistence that the United States not be allowed to continue into the future as an actual, blood-and-soil nation.
Economic recovery and immigration are closely linked, as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg also understands.
That should be, “… also contends.”
Mr. Crovitz proceeds a while longer in the same vein, as interested readers can themselves discover by following the hyperlink. Eventually, however, Mr. Crovitz gets to the point.
There are costs to immigration, …
Sí, señor.
… especially in border states with generous welfare programs, …
As opposed to states formerly populated by actual Americans?
… but the overall benefit is akin to the advantages of free trade in goods and services.
That should probably be, “… the overall detriment is akin to the disadvantages of free trade …,” as the Economic Nationalist has argued these past years. However, it is worse than that, because what is a nation, really, essentially, if not a great, extended family, a thing not exclusively but largely of kinship and a shared history? Though Mr. Crovitz is fundamentally mistaken on the trade question the national question, which Mr. Crovitz appears to find uninteresting, matters even more.
If Mr. Crovitz considers himself a patriot, then he ought to ask himself whether his patriotism does not, well, “saddle” him with a burden of organic loyalty to the living, blood-and-soil nation that created the great market his great newspaper is privileged to cover.
He might reconsider his stance.
HJH
May 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Howard, you asked early on, “What, exactly, is Mr. Crovitz up to here?”
The answer, in very few words, is HE LIES!!!
Everything he has to say is deception and deceit. He clearly has an ax to grind, and an appearance of objectivity is simply a sham. It would be hard to imagine that he really considers himself to be a patriot; I doubt that he understands what the word really means.