Kein Eier für Kinder

I first learned about Kindereier back in my high school German class. If you've never heard of them, they are chocolate eggs with little plastic toys inside. It was always a bit of a mystery why something like this never caught on in the United States, home of the Happy Meal toy.

But it turns out, there's a simple answer--toys in chocolate eggs are illegal. Here in the land of the free, our government believes we could not handle the shock of opening a chocolate egg to find a plastic toy inside. The toys are considered a "non-nutritive component," and thus are forbidden by a 1938 law.

Anyone with a lick of common sense can see that Kindereier pose no threat to anyone. Even though some of the toys have small parts, they are hidden inside the quite large plastic capsule. But common sense runs up against federal bureaucracy for people who try to bring Kindereier into the U.S. from another country. Attempting to import Kindereier comes with a $2500 fine per egg, and tens of thousands are confiscated by border agents every year. The two Seattle men in the linked story above spent two-and-a-half hours in border detention because they tried to bring six Kindereier into the country. That would've been a $15,000 mistake if the agents hadn't let them off with a warning. (Thanks be to the Border Agents, the Beneficent, the Merciful!)

So when you see reports from the bipartisan immigration reform group, or Rand Paul, or anyone else insisting on increasing funding for the border patrol before even trying to reform any of the other problems in our broken immigration system, keep in mind that this is what they're doing with the money they already have. Do they really need even more?

The Myth of Border Security

There is no such thing as border security, not in the United States. Most people who talk about border security focus on the southern border, but the northern one counts too. We could spend hundreds of billions of dollars securing the Mexican border, and the terrorists would just cross the much longer, much more open Canadian border.

Last week, Saeton Kevin Grant showed just how easy it would be. Admittedly, Grant was travelling into Canada, out of the United States. But crossing the border in either direction is easy, so long as you avoid the legal crossings, as Grant did. From The Province:

Grant, who rode a bicycle across the Manitoba-North Dakota border near Boissevain, Man., just after dark on Saturday, had been deported from Canada twice before — the last time in the summer of 2010.

A Canadian resident heading home spotted Grant on the North Dakota side of the border around 8 p.m., Saturday, [RCMP] Sgt. Line Karpish said. She said the resident saw the man again on the Manitoba side of the border, still riding his bike.

"It didn't seem right and they contacted us," Karpish said, adding a check with the Canada Border Services Agency at the Boissevain crossing revealed they hadn't cleared anyone through riding a bike.

Grant was found in Boissevain, but ran away from the mounties and ended up in Winnipeg, where local police found him several days later. No word yet on where he'll be deported to (it's not clear from the news reports whether Grant, a Jamaican, was legally in the US in the first place). But the real story here is the complete lack of border security. Border patrol only realized this man had illegally crossed the border when an eagle-eyed (get it?) citizen told them he had. Even then, he still got away, and was only found days later at his girlfriend's house in Winnipeg-- the same girlfriend who had impersonated an immigration officer in order to prevent his previous deportation. (In other words, any good movie character would dismiss her house as "the first place they'd look.")

Ultimately, this guy actually was caught, but what would he have had to do differently in order to succeed? Not much:

1. Travel in an inconspicuous car instead of on a bike so Eagle Eyes didn't notice.
2. Make the crossing in the middle of the night after Eagle Eyes had gone to bed.
3. Not cross at a highway where he could be seen. Carry the bike through a field if necessary.
4. Not leave his ID behind when he ran from the mounties.
5. Once across, figure out the first place they'd look for him, and go somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Note that had Grant done just one of these things, he would not have been caught. That he was caught at all was only the result of a fantastic chain of coincidences and stupid mistakes. Of course, his entire reason for crossing was to see his girlfriend and daughter*, so #5 was out of the question, and maybe he simply didn't own a car. But those aren't going to be problems for terrorists, at least not if they have any funding. And even if they did make all the same mistakes, if they have days in-country before being caught, that's more than enough time to carry out whatever dastardly plan they have.

The fact is, border patrol only stops two kinds of people-- the law-abiding and the unlucky idiots. Every single person who crosses legally is stopped by the border patrol, no matter who they are or their reason for crossing. Criminals are only stopped when they make stupid mistakes like Grant did. The border patrol is going to catch the rookies and the ill-prepared, but a well-funded, trained terrorist isn't going to have any problem crossing the border if they really want to.

People who say we can solve this by simply securing the border a) don't have any idea just how costly that would be and b) usually ignore the Canadian border anyway. We could spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars building the highest double fence ever conceived across the 1,969 miles of the Mexican border, and it would do jack squat to secure the 5,525-mile Canadian border. If your goal is merely to restrict trade and immigration with Mexico but not Canada, that's fine. If your goal is to stop terrorists, you're kidding yourself and wasting the taxpayer's money.

Those who want more border security need to admit that it's not going to do a thing to stop terrorists. If they want to justify a fence, they need to do so on the grounds of restricting trade and immigration with Mexico, without resorting to the specter of terrorism.

*His daughter is about a year-and-a-half old. I could write a whole separate post on the ethics of breaking up this family again, but I won't. At least not right now.

New Open Borders Website

A new website, Open Borders: The Case, started up a few weeks ago (ht Bryan Caplan). The site, run by one Vipul Naik, gathers many of the arguments for and against open borders in one place. Naik's viewpoint is clear-- he supports open borders, and much of the site is dedicated to various arguments for that position. The pages featuring arguments against open borders sometimes include counter-arguments, though not always. Despite his viewpoint, Naik seems to take a special interest in overcoming his own bias, even including a specific feedback form to let him know whether he's treating the other side fairly.

Some highlights:

• Doubling world GDP: Various studies have found that removing barriers to labor mobility would increase world GDP by at least 67% and possibly as much as 147%. [For comparison, world GDP increased about 67% from 2003-2010, and about 147% from 1993-2010. In other words, with open borders we could see an extra decade's worth of economic growth, bringing new meaning to the term "lost decade."]
• Competitive government: Free movement between US states allows Americans to "vote with their feet," putting a check on state and local government power. Open borders would do the same to national governments.
• The Gumball Video: Since I wrote my own response to Roy Beck's gumball video last year, I found it interesting to read Naik's response, which is somewhat more kind to Dr. Beck than I was.
• Interesting analogies: In making the moral case for open borders, Naik raises some interesting thought exercises, such as Starving Marvin, which asks whether it's right to use force to keep a starving man out of a grocery store; John and Julio, which asks what level of force is appropriate to keep a competitor out of a job interview; and the Drowning Child, which asks whether we can use force to prevent someone else from saving a drowning child.

On the whole, the site is still very new. Many of its pages are just short blurbs, especially in the list of objections. Bryan Caplan quotes also dominate quite a few pages; at times, you could be forgiven for thinking Caplan set up the site himself. But websites unfortunately don't spring forth fully formed from the internet ether, so hopefully both of those issues will fade away as the site matures.

The case presented is explicitly based on libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian reasons to support open borders. Those with strong objections to one or more of those philosophies might not find the site as interesting as I did. Either way, the site certainly has the potential to become a valuable resource to anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on it as it grows.

Your Papers, Please

Three Canadian women, in two separate lawsuits, are accusing US border guards of "sexual groping" during searches, specific details at the link. One of them, from Windsor, was on her way to Detroit for "a routine shopping trip" when it happened (the other two have chosen not to talk to the media about it). Their lawyer says, "the type of search they received was not a normal pat down or a normal personal search."

Now, as far as I can tell, the lawsuits have just been filed, so innocent until proven guilty and all that still applies. But it just strikes me as completely ridiculous that the system is set up to even make crimes like this possible. How ridiculous? Let me count the ways...

1) Why do we, as a society, believe it's remotely appropriate to stop and search women on a routine shopping trip? Bear in mind, when you cross the border, they don't just let everyone through and only stop the suspicious ones. Everyone is stopped and has to give the guard an account of why they want to cross, where they're going, when they're going back and any other questions the guard feels like asking. The act of trying to cross a border makes you suspicious enough by itself to warrant interrogation. If this was done in the middle of New York, or Chicago, or St. Louis, Americans would rightly consider it repugnant and even tyrannical. Yet when it's done at the border, we cheer.

2) What in the hell is "a normal pat down or a normal personal search"? Since when in this supposedly freedom-loving country are pat downs and personal searches normal? Even if I'm completely off-base with point #1 and interrogation by armed enforcement officers for the crime of wanting to go shopping is entirely appropriate, how does that lead to pat downs and personal searches being normal? Whatever happened to being secure in our persons, papers and effects? I'm sorry, but I simply don't think it's reasonable to be subject to armed searches solely for going about routine business in a free society (and I mean "reasonable" in both the modern and Fourth Amendment senses). The only suspicious thing about these women was that they happened to be in Canada before wanting to visit America.

3) Even if I'm wrong on both #1 and #2, and personal pat downs on your way to the store are reasonable, shouldn't we have protections against obvious abuses like what (allegedly) happened to these women? The whole idea of border checkpoints is to have collections of law enforcement officers in one place, then force everyone including maybe criminals through that one place so we can catch the bad guys. But when the bad guys become border guards themselves and use that position of power to sexually exploit the citizenry, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? Where were the other guards when this (allegedly) happened? Why didn't they do anything to stop it?

4) These three women are Canadian. They live and presumably work in Canada. They have filed their suits in an American court, and are represented by an American lawyer. If they plan to show up for their court dates, how are they going to get there? The only way they can even show up in court to make their case against the border guards is by going through a border checkpoint and subjecting themselves to "normal" pat downs and personal searches by the armed coworkers and friends of the people they are suing. This, in particular, illustrates the ridiculousness of our border system. I don't know if their lawyer is able to stand-in for them so that they never have to be present, but if I were one of these women, I would certainly hope so.

Sometimes I think that people who don't live near the border, or who have never lived in another country, have simply never thought about these issues. But clearly a lot of people have, and I'm sure many of them would think I'm some pot-smoking far-left hippie for having these thoughts. I guess that's really what boggles my mind-- that so many people, the clear majority it seems, think that the current border system is the right, decent, moral way to handle issues of security and law enforcement. And where they think it's wrong, it's because the system doesn't go far enough. That simply doesn't make sense to me, at least not in a society that claims to value liberty and personal freedom.

Online Polls from Sixth Debate

In the sixth Republican debate, held in Orlando, Florida, Fox News polled online viewers on a number of questions and then reported on three of the results during the debate. Those questions, the results and my own answers are below. The questions and results are based on the video of the debate here and the transcript here.

I define rich as someone having an annual income higher than:

I was surprised at the result here, with a full 44% of respondents saying someone with an annual income of $999,000 would not be rich. My answer was the lowest available, $100,000, and only 13% agreed with me. My reasoning is that US median individual income for 2010 was $26,197 (table P-7 here). Someone making $100,000 a year makes almost four times more than the median American. If that's not rich, I don't know what is.

If we're talking about households rather than individuals (as I assumed), I might have chosen $250,000, even though I think that's a bit high. For households, an income of $100,000 puts you in the second-highest quintile; the upper cut-off for the second-highest quintile is $100,065 (table H-1 here). I think being in the top-fifth of American households probably qualifies as being rich, so maybe the right answer is slightly higher than $100,000. Even so, the lower cut-off for the top 5% of American households is $180,810, so an annual income of $250,000 puts someone solidly into the top 5%. If that's not rich, once again, I don't know what is.

If you had to cut a government department, what would you cut?

This result wasn't surprising at all. The Department of Education is a huge target for both conservatives and libertarians. I think it could certainly use reform, but I'm not convinced that eliminating the Department entirely is the best way to reform education policy in this country. The same goes for the EPA. They've definitely overstepped their bounds of late, but regulating externalities like pollution is one of the core functions of government.

The Department of Labor could probably be recombined with Commerce, and I'm sure many of the regulations it enforces could be streamlined or eliminated with no ill effects. At the same time, a lot of its agencies perform necessary government functions, like the BLS and OSHA. I think at least some of the opposition to the Department of Labor comes from its name, which some see as synonymous with unions. I didn't realize this until writing this entry, but in fact, the National Labor Relations Board (which does probably deserve to be eliminated) is an independent agency, separate from the Department of Labor.

I voted to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As the Department responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, HUD has been possibly the most abject failure of any federal department over the last two decades. Even if it hadn't overseen the housing bubble, there's simply no reason that I can see that we need a federal housing policy, or a federal urban development policy. I don't know of anything the federal government does that is more local in nature than urban development. Even the name begs for the department to be localized.

What is the best way to fix immigration in the US?

The third answer read out loud during the debate was "deport all immigrants," which received 22% of the vote and was the second-place answer. I don't remember the exact wording of the options that night, but I hope that either the actual option read "deport all illegal immigrants" or that these 22% of people interpreted it that way. Conflating the illegal/legal immigration issues is something I expect from liberals, not conservatives.

My answer was to "create a path to citizenship," and 35% agreed with me, more than any other answer. However, a stronger fence and more border patrol agents go hand-in-hand, and it's hard to see someone supporting one of those while opposing the other. Combined, the "stronger border" options get 39% of the vote.

I support a path to citizenship out of practicality, although I would prefer to call it a "path to legality." Not everyone who comes to the US wants to stay permanently, and not everyone who stays permanently wants to become a citizen. Our immigration policy has to recognize that fact. But I do support some kind of path to legality for illegal immigrants already here because the other two options are simply impractical. With upwards of ten million illegals in the country, it is practically and fiscally impossible to deport them all. But leaving them alone and maintaining the status quo, where ten million people are in open disobedience of the law, is also impractical. It breeds contempt for the law and for America as a country, as evidenced by the 2006 protests. The only way forward is through some kind of path to legality.

The stronger fence and border patrol also won't work for practical reasons. The border is so porous already that sealing it would cost tens of billions of dollars at a time when we're already borrowing more than 40% of what we spend. Keeping the border sealed would cost tens of billions more. The only reason people immigrate illegally is because we've made it so difficult to immigrate legally. Get rid of the quotas and the waiting lists, and simplify the immigration process, and illegal immigration will fall dramatically overnight.