Bryan, your open borders stance is probably the most reckless and evil belief you have, and nothing else is a close second. It's easily the most evil mainstream idea I can think of today.
Your assertion that Borjas remains unaware or willfully ignorant of the political and cultural effects of immigration is unconvincing.
I think it's obvious at this point that mass immigration of low IQ third worlders tends to make the first world more like the third world. If you ever succeeded in your vision of Open Borders, it would per Borjas calculation destroy rather than create trillions of dollars in value, as the stability and productivity of the first world collapsed to third world levels. In fact it might well be worse than that, as even third world productivity levels rely intensely on being able to leach off the first worlds productivity and technological progress.
What is most ironic of all is that the real problem with the third world is the genetics of third worlders. Per Hive Mind, the IQ of those around you matters more than your own. If genetic engineering ever fixes the third worlds IQ problem, they can just stay in place and get rich. The most likely place to invent such genetic engineering is the first world. Probably the most likely thing to destroy the first worlds advancement towards that outcome is flooding it with so many third worlders that its society collapses before it gets there.
---
I would view the "productivity gain" of a third worlders moving to the first world as "capital consumption". Imagine a car with a full gas tank. Somebody is walking along the sidewalk and hijacks the car. They are now getting to their destination faster, but eventually the car runs out of gas. They leave it on the side of the road to rot. They were never any faster, they just used up someone else's capital, capital they failed to build or maintain. After all, if they were capable of building a maintaining capital, they would already have it in their host country.
I can't help but think that Bryan is unwilling to fully engage this problem in a not-superficial manner.
I would suggest to at least consider this as an instance of Pascal's wager. If you are right and we close the borders, we will be getting richer at a somewhat slower rate. If Emil is right and we open the borders, the western civilization will be over. Wanna bet on these stakes?
Everyone obsesses over the economics of immigration, but this debate is really about much more than economics.
In a recent post, Emil writes:
*****
I think ethnic groups should be governed by those they want to. I support decentralization and regionalism, and thus also separatist movements. For me it is not about whether these movements are left-wing or conservative. I am equally happy to support Catalan independence, Basque independence, North Italian independence, Scottish independence, and so on.
In this sense, I am in favor of universal ethno-nationalism, in the same way that Dalai Lama described it. The Lama sees it well because China is currently taking over his homeland by settling it with Chinese people (I support Tibetan separatism, of course). This kind of settler slow-invasion strategy is of course well known in history (e.g. German version).
*****
Bryan has a very different view. He lays it out most bluntly here:
If you’re afraid of every group, though, shouldn’t you support whatever group has the minimum chance of doing terrible things once it’s firmly in charge? Not at all. There’s another path: Try to prevent any group from being firmly in charge. In the long-run, the best way to do this is to make every group a small minority – to split society into such small pieces that everyone abandons hope of running society and refocuses their energy on building beautiful Bubbles....
When people lament the political externalities of open borders, they’re usually picturing an influx of a group with a bad track record of being in charge. In a sense, these critics understate their case; numerical superiority can turn even the nicest groups into a mortal danger. But critics also overlook the open borders remedy: Diaspora dynamics notwithstanding, welcoming everyone is a great way to turn everyone into a minority. And while that hardly guarantees safety, it’s less menacing than the status quo.
*****
So, to the commenters pointing out that Bryan's Open Borders would hurt social cohesion: Yes! That's the point!! Bryan WANTS you to have less in common with your neighbors than you do now.
Now, living within a relatively cohesive culture, whether of a tribe, region, or nation, has been the modal situation for humans since time immemorial. There are other social strategies, though. One way to think of Caplan's immigration advocacy is as a demand that majorities around the world reorganize themselves for the psychological and financial benefit of middleman minorities.
Let's consider a specific example. Consider a hair stylist from Honduras, who moves to Dallas. She made $3/hour in Honduras, and now she makes $12/hour in Dallas. By your argument, her productivity should have grown around 4-fold. How exactly does that work? Can she now serve 4 times as many customers as before? Do the tools of the trade in Dallas are so much more effective than the ones in Honduras? The answer is, of course, no, she isn't any more productive than native-born American stylist (in fact, most likely less, as a large number of customers will prefer hair stylist who speaks fluent, conversational English, and shares enough of a culture to create a conversation). This is simply Baumol's cost disease amplifying hair stylist wages in America, nothing to do with actual productivity as measured by actual output.
Since your first and strongest economic argument for immigration rests on the effects Baumol's cost disease, which is that highly productive sectors of economy pull the wages of the less productive sectors up without any changes in actual productivity in the low productivity sector, wouldn't increasing the low-productivity sectors in size (as overwhelming majority of immigration in US is ending up in low productivity sectors, and H1Bs constituting only a small fraction) result in "washing out" the effects of Baumol's cost disease? Baumol only lifts the low productivity sectors because the high productivity sectors are relatively large, and provide plenty of opportunity for low productivity sector workers. If high productivity sectors become a smaller fraction of the entire economy, won't it result in slashing wages in low productivity sectors across the board?
You are, of course, right about this argument. But I still struggle with "open borders" in a way that, perhaps, you touch upon in your scalability comments.
Most libertarians believe, and I think that you fall into this camp also, that "culture" and "institutions" are extremely important for economic and social progress. Most libertarians also believe that, although not immutable, the impact of culture on an individual is fairly strong and durable. Putting these things together, I don't see how you can be in favor of "open borders" where the potential influx of people from radically different and potentially inimical cultures is very possible. This isn't the 19th century when the barriers to entry were large; entry into an "open borders" country is just the price of an airline ticket these days.
I think that these libertarian beliefs are completely compatible with a robust level of immigration, certainly higher and easier than the system we currently have, but only within the limits of the "melting pot" to absorb and inculcate. They are not compatible with "open borders" which could easily overrun these limits. I think that we are currently seeing precisely this effect in places like Scandinavia and Germany, where the sudden influx of immigrants is producing social issues and ghettoization. These countries are fundamentally less good at including immigrants so this is happening at a lower level of immigration than it would happen in the USA, but even the USA's capacity is not unlimited and it is likely much lower than the results that "open borders" would produce.
There is another argument for caution in this respect, which is namely that the results of an "open borders" policy are irreversible, assuming that no one is going to approve mass deportations if it proves to be excessive. So, although the limits of the USA to absorb immigrants succcessfully is unknowable, the irreversibility of the process argues for stepwise progress and not a radical change to "open borders."
Have northern whites of The White Flight fame benefited from The Great northern migration? Just look at the size of the white population of New York, observe the revealed preferences. Their haircuts and car washes might have been cheaper. Until they found it unbearable to live in the city anymore.
The argument is off. I don't know if ultimately open borders impoverish or enrich a country, but the welfare enhancing mechanism described in this essay doesn't work for the simple reason that overall productivity is unaffected; immigrants simply converge to the prevailing level of factor productivity of the receiving nation and add to its overall stock of workers (unless we are talking about Indian or Korean PhDs or whatever, but that has clearly never been the focus of this debate, especially in countries like Germany or Italy who overwhelmingly receive low human capital immigrants).
It is tautological to say that they add to GDP (indeed, they could not work a single day of their lives and they would still enhance GDP because of increased welfare state spending), so that should be kept strictly separate from questions of incidence.
The really intellectually thorny question is whether these massive per-migrant gains are scalable. Can we reasonably hope to move billions of people to the First World without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?
If the move happened overnight, then even I would say, “No.” Over the course of a century, however, I say, “No problem.”
/Quote
Bryan, this seems like a tacit retreat from your longstanding radical open borders position. Short of migration controls, what's the mechanism by which this change will be stretched out over a hundred years?
We've entered a world that's massively different than it was in 1980, let alone 1840. Even poor third-world people now have phones with internet connections and WhatsApp accounts. It's much easier for them to see what rich countries are like and much easier to figure out how to get into them. Transcontinental airplane and ship travel are within the financial reach of vastly larger numbers of people than they once were. Open borders in 2022 or 2030 would look more like a tsunami than like nineteenth-century Europeans coming to America on sailing ships.
I think you are strawmanning the position against immigration a bit. Not that there aren't people who believe any given thing on immigration, mind, but I don't think people, for the most part, are saying that incomes going up for one section of the country don't benefit others in some kind of weird absolute sense. (Though, I definitely think if you articulated this argument people would sneer at you for believing in 'trickle down' economics.)
Imagine John, an Indian worker who lives in India. He gets paid an amount X. He moves to America, now he gets paid 10x what he used to. Bosses be weird, but that's how it works.
You are saying, 'this is good for America, John is making 10x what he used to'. You are representing your opponents as saying 'this is nothing for America, John keeps those gains to himself'. Some may say that, but the thing to draw attention to here is that America is not multiplying the wages of a worker it had previously by 10x, it is gaining a new worker who works for this price. That might be good, it might be bad, but it is fundamentally different than the uncomplicated 'guy got a raise' case. Is having a new worker/inhabitant good overall? Well, depends on the person, yeah?
When you talk about John's income rising as 'gains', it's a bit deceptive. Previously an American boss paid 10% the salary overseas, kept the 90%. Now 100% is paid to an Indian worker living in America. Is it better, in the kind of trickling sideways incidence you are talking about, to be in the one state or the other? Certainly it is better for John, but it isn't immediately obvious that the rest of the economy benefits more from a worker with that money vs a company with 90% of that money. Again, it is going to depend on the worker.
Beyond that, there is the case of a worker who wasn't previously employed by an American country. He shows up, gets a job. Is that good or bad? Well, it might be either, but however we figure that out, it won't be measured that his salary has risen 90%. America has another laborer. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't, but what is not the case is that the labor market has gotten a 10x raise.
Lastly, please forgive us our skepticism. You folks on the left are open about the fact that you are consequentialists, who will lie for what you consider good causes. That is totally reasonable from your POV. If you are saving the earth, what is your honor as a price? Imagine you told a few lies and got anti global warming stuff passed. Net gain, yeah? But from our perspective, you can see how we get into a 'once burned, twice shy' when faced with a conversational partner who lies shamelessly to take power, and sleeps easily that night. You get one freebie per generation, as each new set of right wingers learn this lesson. You are currently still in the 'burned' phase from legalizing weed, got to wait a decade or so for us to fall for your smooth talk again.
You may or may not be insane; that's not a term I bandy about. I don't know either of you. But I am an economist and understand how the labour market works. Immigration does benefit the migrant tremendously, but that is not the full extent of the impact. Even the full macroeconomic and microeconomic impacts do not tell the whole story.
I very much appreciate that Caplan is openly willing address a critic like Emil without resorting to personal attacks.
But I wish Caplan would have also considered the potential damage to American culture and social capital (and their long term economic effects) that can happen when immigrants bring with them too much of the behaviors that have made their native countries poor and illiberal.
I'm like Emil. massive admirer of all your work, but consider your immigration views to miss a lot.
1. do you disagree with the "China effect" recent argument? where a huge number of people went unemployed and lost their quality of life immediately due to imports from China?
displacement can be very real.
2. you assume that immigrants will not have negative effects on the culture (social capital) despite sociologists finding that areas with more immigrants have lower social trust etc.
3. you assume that immigrants will not participate enough in elections to turn the US into a Turkey, Russia, it Pakistan. the data of current immigrants election tendencies can't be used to extrapolate about when lots of immigrants will arrive.
4. it's very difficult for you to consider things from a purely self interested current US citizen. you agree to talk about it with gritted teeth, while for you liberty and the interests of migrants are still on top. very hard to steelman the opposite argument when you yourself feel so alienated by it
Also don't we think that we should have not set on a course where many countries will have their native populations outnumbered by immigrants within our lifetimes (thus making it almost impossible to revert) until after we finish this debate, that has barely even began?
I would amend Emil's Twitter statement to include "employers" as the other group that benefits from low-skill immigration disproportionately.
The costs of course are distributed across a vast number of people in the form of tax burdens generated by the presence of that migrant worker and (typically) their family. They emerge in the form of crowding in public schools, more traffic, and higher prices for rivalrous goods like Healthcare and housing.
But I would take issue with the notion that immigrants magically become "more productive" because they're on our magic dirt. They may _earn_ more, but that doesn't make them more productive in an absolute sense. A cab driver in Port Au Prince moving to NY is still a cab driver. Prices are just higher in NY.
Being in America is much nicer than being in Haiti. That's because Americans built America and there's something special about the set of rules we used to construct this country and its institutions. To arbitrarily move every Haitian to America would simply recreate Haiti here in America. Our dirt isn't so magical that it could overwrite the negative cultural memes that created Haiti simply by placing a couple million Hatians here.
The principle that “increased productivity enriches not just producers, but consumers” is an instance of what might be called “trickle sideways economics.”
Bryan, your open borders stance is probably the most reckless and evil belief you have, and nothing else is a close second. It's easily the most evil mainstream idea I can think of today.
This has already been covered before.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/07/open_borders_an_3.html
Your assertion that Borjas remains unaware or willfully ignorant of the political and cultural effects of immigration is unconvincing.
I think it's obvious at this point that mass immigration of low IQ third worlders tends to make the first world more like the third world. If you ever succeeded in your vision of Open Borders, it would per Borjas calculation destroy rather than create trillions of dollars in value, as the stability and productivity of the first world collapsed to third world levels. In fact it might well be worse than that, as even third world productivity levels rely intensely on being able to leach off the first worlds productivity and technological progress.
What is most ironic of all is that the real problem with the third world is the genetics of third worlders. Per Hive Mind, the IQ of those around you matters more than your own. If genetic engineering ever fixes the third worlds IQ problem, they can just stay in place and get rich. The most likely place to invent such genetic engineering is the first world. Probably the most likely thing to destroy the first worlds advancement towards that outcome is flooding it with so many third worlders that its society collapses before it gets there.
---
I would view the "productivity gain" of a third worlders moving to the first world as "capital consumption". Imagine a car with a full gas tank. Somebody is walking along the sidewalk and hijacks the car. They are now getting to their destination faster, but eventually the car runs out of gas. They leave it on the side of the road to rot. They were never any faster, they just used up someone else's capital, capital they failed to build or maintain. After all, if they were capable of building a maintaining capital, they would already have it in their host country.
I can't help but think that Bryan is unwilling to fully engage this problem in a not-superficial manner.
I would suggest to at least consider this as an instance of Pascal's wager. If you are right and we close the borders, we will be getting richer at a somewhat slower rate. If Emil is right and we open the borders, the western civilization will be over. Wanna bet on these stakes?
Everyone obsesses over the economics of immigration, but this debate is really about much more than economics.
In a recent post, Emil writes:
*****
I think ethnic groups should be governed by those they want to. I support decentralization and regionalism, and thus also separatist movements. For me it is not about whether these movements are left-wing or conservative. I am equally happy to support Catalan independence, Basque independence, North Italian independence, Scottish independence, and so on.
In this sense, I am in favor of universal ethno-nationalism, in the same way that Dalai Lama described it. The Lama sees it well because China is currently taking over his homeland by settling it with Chinese people (I support Tibetan separatism, of course). This kind of settler slow-invasion strategy is of course well known in history (e.g. German version).
*****
Bryan has a very different view. He lays it out most bluntly here:
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/10/they_scare_me.html
*****
If you’re afraid of every group, though, shouldn’t you support whatever group has the minimum chance of doing terrible things once it’s firmly in charge? Not at all. There’s another path: Try to prevent any group from being firmly in charge. In the long-run, the best way to do this is to make every group a small minority – to split society into such small pieces that everyone abandons hope of running society and refocuses their energy on building beautiful Bubbles....
When people lament the political externalities of open borders, they’re usually picturing an influx of a group with a bad track record of being in charge. In a sense, these critics understate their case; numerical superiority can turn even the nicest groups into a mortal danger. But critics also overlook the open borders remedy: Diaspora dynamics notwithstanding, welcoming everyone is a great way to turn everyone into a minority. And while that hardly guarantees safety, it’s less menacing than the status quo.
*****
So, to the commenters pointing out that Bryan's Open Borders would hurt social cohesion: Yes! That's the point!! Bryan WANTS you to have less in common with your neighbors than you do now.
Now, living within a relatively cohesive culture, whether of a tribe, region, or nation, has been the modal situation for humans since time immemorial. There are other social strategies, though. One way to think of Caplan's immigration advocacy is as a demand that majorities around the world reorganize themselves for the psychological and financial benefit of middleman minorities.
Let's consider a specific example. Consider a hair stylist from Honduras, who moves to Dallas. She made $3/hour in Honduras, and now she makes $12/hour in Dallas. By your argument, her productivity should have grown around 4-fold. How exactly does that work? Can she now serve 4 times as many customers as before? Do the tools of the trade in Dallas are so much more effective than the ones in Honduras? The answer is, of course, no, she isn't any more productive than native-born American stylist (in fact, most likely less, as a large number of customers will prefer hair stylist who speaks fluent, conversational English, and shares enough of a culture to create a conversation). This is simply Baumol's cost disease amplifying hair stylist wages in America, nothing to do with actual productivity as measured by actual output.
Since your first and strongest economic argument for immigration rests on the effects Baumol's cost disease, which is that highly productive sectors of economy pull the wages of the less productive sectors up without any changes in actual productivity in the low productivity sector, wouldn't increasing the low-productivity sectors in size (as overwhelming majority of immigration in US is ending up in low productivity sectors, and H1Bs constituting only a small fraction) result in "washing out" the effects of Baumol's cost disease? Baumol only lifts the low productivity sectors because the high productivity sectors are relatively large, and provide plenty of opportunity for low productivity sector workers. If high productivity sectors become a smaller fraction of the entire economy, won't it result in slashing wages in low productivity sectors across the board?
You are, of course, right about this argument. But I still struggle with "open borders" in a way that, perhaps, you touch upon in your scalability comments.
Most libertarians believe, and I think that you fall into this camp also, that "culture" and "institutions" are extremely important for economic and social progress. Most libertarians also believe that, although not immutable, the impact of culture on an individual is fairly strong and durable. Putting these things together, I don't see how you can be in favor of "open borders" where the potential influx of people from radically different and potentially inimical cultures is very possible. This isn't the 19th century when the barriers to entry were large; entry into an "open borders" country is just the price of an airline ticket these days.
I think that these libertarian beliefs are completely compatible with a robust level of immigration, certainly higher and easier than the system we currently have, but only within the limits of the "melting pot" to absorb and inculcate. They are not compatible with "open borders" which could easily overrun these limits. I think that we are currently seeing precisely this effect in places like Scandinavia and Germany, where the sudden influx of immigrants is producing social issues and ghettoization. These countries are fundamentally less good at including immigrants so this is happening at a lower level of immigration than it would happen in the USA, but even the USA's capacity is not unlimited and it is likely much lower than the results that "open borders" would produce.
There is another argument for caution in this respect, which is namely that the results of an "open borders" policy are irreversible, assuming that no one is going to approve mass deportations if it proves to be excessive. So, although the limits of the USA to absorb immigrants succcessfully is unknowable, the irreversibility of the process argues for stepwise progress and not a radical change to "open borders."
Have northern whites of The White Flight fame benefited from The Great northern migration? Just look at the size of the white population of New York, observe the revealed preferences. Their haircuts and car washes might have been cheaper. Until they found it unbearable to live in the city anymore.
The argument is off. I don't know if ultimately open borders impoverish or enrich a country, but the welfare enhancing mechanism described in this essay doesn't work for the simple reason that overall productivity is unaffected; immigrants simply converge to the prevailing level of factor productivity of the receiving nation and add to its overall stock of workers (unless we are talking about Indian or Korean PhDs or whatever, but that has clearly never been the focus of this debate, especially in countries like Germany or Italy who overwhelmingly receive low human capital immigrants).
It is tautological to say that they add to GDP (indeed, they could not work a single day of their lives and they would still enhance GDP because of increased welfare state spending), so that should be kept strictly separate from questions of incidence.
Quote:
The really intellectually thorny question is whether these massive per-migrant gains are scalable. Can we reasonably hope to move billions of people to the First World without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?
If the move happened overnight, then even I would say, “No.” Over the course of a century, however, I say, “No problem.”
/Quote
Bryan, this seems like a tacit retreat from your longstanding radical open borders position. Short of migration controls, what's the mechanism by which this change will be stretched out over a hundred years?
We've entered a world that's massively different than it was in 1980, let alone 1840. Even poor third-world people now have phones with internet connections and WhatsApp accounts. It's much easier for them to see what rich countries are like and much easier to figure out how to get into them. Transcontinental airplane and ship travel are within the financial reach of vastly larger numbers of people than they once were. Open borders in 2022 or 2030 would look more like a tsunami than like nineteenth-century Europeans coming to America on sailing ships.
I think you are strawmanning the position against immigration a bit. Not that there aren't people who believe any given thing on immigration, mind, but I don't think people, for the most part, are saying that incomes going up for one section of the country don't benefit others in some kind of weird absolute sense. (Though, I definitely think if you articulated this argument people would sneer at you for believing in 'trickle down' economics.)
Imagine John, an Indian worker who lives in India. He gets paid an amount X. He moves to America, now he gets paid 10x what he used to. Bosses be weird, but that's how it works.
You are saying, 'this is good for America, John is making 10x what he used to'. You are representing your opponents as saying 'this is nothing for America, John keeps those gains to himself'. Some may say that, but the thing to draw attention to here is that America is not multiplying the wages of a worker it had previously by 10x, it is gaining a new worker who works for this price. That might be good, it might be bad, but it is fundamentally different than the uncomplicated 'guy got a raise' case. Is having a new worker/inhabitant good overall? Well, depends on the person, yeah?
When you talk about John's income rising as 'gains', it's a bit deceptive. Previously an American boss paid 10% the salary overseas, kept the 90%. Now 100% is paid to an Indian worker living in America. Is it better, in the kind of trickling sideways incidence you are talking about, to be in the one state or the other? Certainly it is better for John, but it isn't immediately obvious that the rest of the economy benefits more from a worker with that money vs a company with 90% of that money. Again, it is going to depend on the worker.
Beyond that, there is the case of a worker who wasn't previously employed by an American country. He shows up, gets a job. Is that good or bad? Well, it might be either, but however we figure that out, it won't be measured that his salary has risen 90%. America has another laborer. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't, but what is not the case is that the labor market has gotten a 10x raise.
Lastly, please forgive us our skepticism. You folks on the left are open about the fact that you are consequentialists, who will lie for what you consider good causes. That is totally reasonable from your POV. If you are saving the earth, what is your honor as a price? Imagine you told a few lies and got anti global warming stuff passed. Net gain, yeah? But from our perspective, you can see how we get into a 'once burned, twice shy' when faced with a conversational partner who lies shamelessly to take power, and sleeps easily that night. You get one freebie per generation, as each new set of right wingers learn this lesson. You are currently still in the 'burned' phase from legalizing weed, got to wait a decade or so for us to fall for your smooth talk again.
You may or may not be insane; that's not a term I bandy about. I don't know either of you. But I am an economist and understand how the labour market works. Immigration does benefit the migrant tremendously, but that is not the full extent of the impact. Even the full macroeconomic and microeconomic impacts do not tell the whole story.
I consider support for thin borders treason: it undermines our health and safety. http://rationalismisericordia.xyz/2017/07/13/a-case-for-open-borders/
I very much appreciate that Caplan is openly willing address a critic like Emil without resorting to personal attacks.
But I wish Caplan would have also considered the potential damage to American culture and social capital (and their long term economic effects) that can happen when immigrants bring with them too much of the behaviors that have made their native countries poor and illiberal.
I'm like Emil. massive admirer of all your work, but consider your immigration views to miss a lot.
1. do you disagree with the "China effect" recent argument? where a huge number of people went unemployed and lost their quality of life immediately due to imports from China?
displacement can be very real.
2. you assume that immigrants will not have negative effects on the culture (social capital) despite sociologists finding that areas with more immigrants have lower social trust etc.
3. you assume that immigrants will not participate enough in elections to turn the US into a Turkey, Russia, it Pakistan. the data of current immigrants election tendencies can't be used to extrapolate about when lots of immigrants will arrive.
4. it's very difficult for you to consider things from a purely self interested current US citizen. you agree to talk about it with gritted teeth, while for you liberty and the interests of migrants are still on top. very hard to steelman the opposite argument when you yourself feel so alienated by it
with great respect
Also don't we think that we should have not set on a course where many countries will have their native populations outnumbered by immigrants within our lifetimes (thus making it almost impossible to revert) until after we finish this debate, that has barely even began?
I would amend Emil's Twitter statement to include "employers" as the other group that benefits from low-skill immigration disproportionately.
The costs of course are distributed across a vast number of people in the form of tax burdens generated by the presence of that migrant worker and (typically) their family. They emerge in the form of crowding in public schools, more traffic, and higher prices for rivalrous goods like Healthcare and housing.
But I would take issue with the notion that immigrants magically become "more productive" because they're on our magic dirt. They may _earn_ more, but that doesn't make them more productive in an absolute sense. A cab driver in Port Au Prince moving to NY is still a cab driver. Prices are just higher in NY.
Being in America is much nicer than being in Haiti. That's because Americans built America and there's something special about the set of rules we used to construct this country and its institutions. To arbitrarily move every Haitian to America would simply recreate Haiti here in America. Our dirt isn't so magical that it could overwrite the negative cultural memes that created Haiti simply by placing a couple million Hatians here.
The principle that “increased productivity enriches not just producers, but consumers” is an instance of what might be called “trickle sideways economics.”