The Case for an Immigration Tariff

How to Create a Price-Based Visa Category

The current U.S. immigration system favors non-economic immigrants. About 81 percent of new immigrants are family members of American citizens or green card holders, whereas only 5 percent earn green cards for employment or investment purposes. Our rapidly changing economy requires a more dynamic immigration system that allows in types of economic immigrants who are barred under the current system. Congress should create an additional visa category that would allow foreigners to work and live legally in the United States after paying a tariff. Immigrants who pay the immigration tariff would receive a “gold card” that does not directly lead to citizenship, but allows the immigrant to live and work legally in the United States. Congress could adjust the tariff rate on the basis of the immigrant’s estimated fiscal impact, as determined by the individual’s level of education or other relevant demographic factors. Several other countries charge high fees for visas or sell the right to immigrate, which offer excellent lessons in how to design a well-functioning immigration tariff for the United States. An American immigration tariff would create a dynamic, market-based, merit-based, relatively more economically efficient, and self-regulating system that would serve the ever-changing American economy.

Conclusion

An immigration tariff would expand the economy, boost tax revenues, shrink the black market in human smuggling, and reallocate some of the gains of immigration from immigrants to natives. For the immigrants, the tariff would remove the uncertainty, danger, and criminality of human smuggling by increasing legal opportunities to immigrate. An immigration tariff is an admittedly imperfect solution to those problems, but it is one that could address many of the complaints of immigration restrictionists; it would appeal to proponents of a more liberalized system and that could convince voters and politicians that immigrants really are a net benefit for the United States. As long as economic opportunities exist here, millions of people from around the world would gladly pay a high tariff to legally work and reside in the United States without the risk of human smuggling. Congress should let them do so.

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