Immigration Policy Factors

Categories: Immigration Immigration Issues Immigration Reform

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Most media today cover news relating to stories about celebrities, so often that it may be easy to think of a couple examples as soon as a question or statement is said about that subject. There may be underlying methods on how the brain works to quickly answers questions from information stored in memory and factors that could play a role in the judgment of those subjects. Throughout this writing, there will discussion about discovering possible theories of studies that suggest the brain uses mental shortcuts when evaluating specific topics.

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Followed by an analysis of two authors opposing articles of immigration and border policies and how those concepts might have been used to write their articles. Finally, an exploration of the economic aspect of immigration and how those ideas might be helpful to develop immigration policy factors as well as how credible the sources appear to be. As we begin to reflect on Daniel Kahneman's theories of “availability heuristics,” in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” he suggests that there are distinct concepts that factor how people use a mental shortcut when evaluating their thoughts on topics and decisions.

One concept of this theory could be considered the 'frequency' of an event and how quickly a subject comes to mind because of how often it has occurred. In other words, an experience or event that happens regularly, whether it may be in the news or in own life experiences.

Kahneman claims that the reflection of how many times an event is stored in your memory, it comes to the mind because there are many occurrences to reflect on.

He describes the theory of frequency in an experiment using two columns of letters, and how many words each row that could be made with the given letters. The first row contains units of the alphabet that are less likely used in average words and with fewer vowels. Such as 'X, Z' The author explains that the letters in the second row are more familiar because they are in theory, used more regularly, such as 'A, E.' In his argument for this example, a person does not have to think in depth of exact stories to understand how often events related to that subject occur. The letters are more familiar at first glance, because they appear more frequently in certain situations, so debating which column may create more words comes from memory more easily. Now that we discussed “frequency,” this next section will reflect on circumstances that may interest the brain more so than how often an event happens. Kahneman suggests that one factor might be an impactful incident that could easily be brought to the awareness from memory. Other factors could be a sudden instance that heightens the mental shortcut of that specific topic, for the time being. Another factor may be individual examples of an event that happened to them, physical memorabilia such as pictures of a time that something personally happened to someone. This allows information to be obtained from the brain more than it would from someone else's firsthand experiences.

Now that those factors are considered, Kahneman’s transition of theories is the reflection that humans urge to think of examples that come to mind easier. These examples are more representative in that perspective than what the situation may actually be, or as the author refers to this concept as 'availability bias.' The author suggests that avoiding the urge to use a variety of possible examples that may be judged to be something more than they actually are, in one perspective, is doable but could take too long or be too boring. According to Kahneman, a person should attempt to review their perspective and knowledge of a subject without logic by asking questions that reflect examples of how often something has happened and if that is causing their diligence of certain actions. After discussing the two concepts above, now the focus is on the third concept. According to Kahneman, how easily a person can think of examples of specific topics or methods plays a role in heuristics. It is not what the subject might be, but how easily someone can think of examples of that topic. According to Kahneman, people are more likely to measure how easy examples come to thought, rather than how often something happens in a 'category.' For example, people may be more likely to easily and effortlessly think of their answers relating to a subject, such as 'how many car accidents occur during the 5 o'clock rush hour on the CA-91 freeway?', rather than how frequently that event actually occurs. Kahneman’s next concept to consider suggests that a factor that could contribute to a mental shortcut is how prompt and assertive a person is when retrieving information without hesitation. Kahneman suggests this concept to be the 'fluency.'

The experiment that Kahneman may relate a better a example of ease versus fluency might be people were asked to think of twelve times they have shown confidence and self-assurance without being too aggressive, as he describes of acting 'assertively.' To expand the experiment, the subjects were asked to explain how assertive they were in those situations. The experimenters measured this in two separate ways; how many examples of that subject they could think of, and how easily those thoughts came to mind. After the first few answers, the ability to describe their assertiveness decreased from when they first began to answer. This theory suggests the reason for this is because of the rate that the experimenters could think of examples. Kahneman’s theory of thinking without hesitation, implies that if a person has “high-fluency,” they may be able to answer with more situations of time where they acted a certain way, rather than someone who can think of a few examples at first, and then start to struggle to think of examples, or someone with “low-fluency.” Lastly, the theory of how smooth the examples come to mind show Kahneman’s concept of ease. After considering some concepts of Kahneman’s theories of “availability heuristics,” this section explores examples of how two opposing articles on immigration and border policies relate to his theories. This will focus on how the authors might have used these concepts to write their articles.

The first article is 'The Case for Getting Rid of Borders--Completely' by Alex Tabarrok. In this article, Tabarrok is arguing that all people should be able to move spontaneously throughout the world without any limitation. He also mentions that borders force people into a life of poverty in their countries, and when they do escape their country, they are forced into detention centers fighting for a chance to unrestricted and “breathe freely.” Tabarrok might have a friend or family that has gone through this or has known of someone and that may change how easily detention centers come to mind because it may be a factor of frequency. Kahneman’s theory of judging a topic on danger and advantage without worrying about the possible severity of potential repercussions, plays factor in this authors argument. In this case, the author is focused on the benefit, rather than potential risks that may come from opening the borders. In contrast of this article, is the discussion of how Brian Lonergan’s article, “Borders are Cruel—Not Compassionate” may also relate to Kahneman’s theories. This author is arguing that borders should remain closed at all costs because of the potential threat of elevated crime. The author uses examples of how sanctuary cities have While it was mentioned above that the author argues the benefit rather than the risk, this author does the opposite. Instead of the benefit, he argues his views of the risks that may come to be an issue. This author might use Kahneman’s concept that suggests there might be exaggeration that something worse could happen than what actually will happen.

He refers to this concept as a “probability neglect.” Lonergan appears to think about all that could go wrong, when the chances of that may be more unlikely than likely. Lonergan might live or know family that lives in sanctuary cities and uses that to let examples of how dangerous they might be, come to mind. In both arguments, the authors might have used what the media has portrayed in the news in various news stories over a certain period, when coming up with their argument. This may be due to how often a situation happens that forces their judgement to be moved more so by emotion and the urge to think of examples about those topics in a more judgmental way. Kahneman refers to this as an “availability cascade.” In Tabarrok’s case, he may have watched the news stories on immigrants being sent to detention centers often and this will cause the author to have thoughts of detention centers come to mind and form an opinion based on those stories. Instead of seeing the stories of Lonergan may be influenced by the media’s stories about terrorism and crime, this likely alters the authors perspective on immigration because it's in their mind more often. The global factors of immigration, considering all factors of an area, such as the opinion on how immigrants may be 'stealing' native-born jobs. According to a thirteen-year study done at the Economic Policy Institute, Heidi Shierholz suggests that immigration supports US-born citizens to increase their wages, by “0.4%.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics credibility provided a study that showing the study between foreign and native-born men and women ages 16 and higher and how the percentage of how likely an immigrant is in that current occupation versus a native born. For all the jobs, such as, service, construction, maintenance, and transportation, the study implies that the immigrants are “more likely” to have jobs in these fields. Now we will discuss what factors may need to be considered in using this global factor to make judgments on immigration and jobs. In the article 'Open Borders are Cruel, Not Compassionate,' the author argues that sanctuary cities are to blame for the crime rate but could some of these cities have a better economy than a regular city? Is it possible that immigrants may improve cultural growth in job fields because of the diversity? Could someone that witnessed more immigrants in a job field, be more likely to think that immigrants are taking jobs versus someone who may not witness as many immigrants in their state? If a company has had a job opening for the better half of six months, and the immigrant is qualified for the job duty, could they still be taking that job away from a native-born citizen? Is it possible that a job that a company fires a native-born citizen for, then hires an immigrant to replace them be considered as taking their jobs away from them? If a company is American based, could this affect immigrants from getting that job? Would it still be considered as an outsider taking jobs if it is a field like a computer science if the foreign citizen may be likely to be qualified in than a native?

Are specialized immigrant doctors and immigrants that work in construction viewed equally as immigrants that may be stealing jobs? In a field like construction or landscaping where immigrant employees may be more prominent, are Americans having a challenging time getting a job in that field and that is why there might not be as many native-born citizens? Is it possible that if an immigrant potentially suggests a referral in a company for another immigrant they know could this cause people to think immigrants may be stealing jobs because an immigrant is bringing their friends into that company? If an immigrant dominates a specific job field more than a native-born, does that impact the opinion of immigrants stealing jobs? These may be considered when making an opinion on the global factor of whether immigrants are “stealing” jobs or not. The reflection of “global factors” and the examples of evidence bring this to the credibility of the sources mentioned. From the first article 'Immigration and Wages,' the author Heidi Shierholz shows many qualities that support her research to appear credible. She currently works as the chief economist for the United States Department of Labor. She also has worked as a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. She is known for other notable publications, such as the 'ongoing research analysis' called 'The State of Working America' at Cornell University Press in New York.

Another notable publication from Shierholz has been featured in the Washington and Huffington posts, and her research and publications have been cited on many news and media platforms, such as ABC, CNN, NBC, and CBS. She originally was born in Oklahoma, but she moved to Iowa to obtain a bachelor’s in mathematics at Grinnell College and a Masters of statistics at Iowa State University. Shierholz received a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Shierholz appears to use well-known credible sources such as the Current Population Survey Census over the course of thirteen years to develop credible studies. The second source is statistics directly from the United States government, The Bureau of Labor Statistics. This source appears to be credible because the only information on the website is the statistics of each study done, there is no additional information, other than strictly statistics. This appears credible because there are no potentially biased opinions. The United Stated Department of Labor, Bureau Labor Statistics claim they have been researching job statistics for over 130 years and have over 2,000 employees focused on researching the labor statistics. The credibility expands because they used other studies, combined with other government statistics from The United States Census Bureau “Current Population Survey.” This combined research of may be helpful in assessing credible information about immigration and native-born workers because the two Bureau’s could take the experiments and combine information for the best result.