At least that’s my take, based on this summary from Politico. Republicans get what they want, ~20,000 more border police, with 700 more miles of fence.  Democrats get what they want–more democratic voters (or at least that’s what they think they’re going to get; I’m not so sure).  Do we really want more of a police state on our border and 20,000 more bureaucrats that we’ll have to pay for?  And why do we want a pathway to citizenship?  Nothing in our care for the alien and the stranger requires us to make them citizens of our country.  What we need is a pathway to legality, not citizenship.  Our current immigration problem has nothing to do with them not being citizens, but everything to do with them being illegal.  I’m not necessarily against increasing citizenship, but that doesn’t seem to be our problem.

Pathway to legality could allow us to know who is here (addressing the national security concerns), provide a way for them to legally be a part of our system (to include paying some taxes), and allow us to benefit from unskilled labor which many of our own citizens will not do.  And we should have NO limit on high skilled immigrants.  In this technologically advanced age, we need even more high skilled workers.  If F.A. Hayek taught us anything, he taught us that knowledge is embedded in individuals, and we need the best knowledge available.  Austrian capital theory stresses the heterogenity (differences) in capital–to include human capital.  Heterogeneity implies complementarity in production.  In other words, because people have specific individual skills, they need to be partnered with others individual skills to produce in a complex world.  This starts to explain why large concentrations of highly talented people embedded in a culture with free institutions create great things (think Silicon Valley).  So restricting top talent necessarily reduces this potential contributory production.  If they have skills, we should welcome their talent!

What do you think?