George Mason University libertarian economist Don Boudreaux pens this clever reply...:

C. Paul Mendez wants to protect American workers from competition with a moratorium on immigration (Letters, Jan. 28). Why stop there? Why not also impose moratoria on worker training and on technological advances? After all, improved worker skills and more highly developed production techniques increase worker productivity. The result is that any given amount of output is produced using fewer workers. So worker training and technological advances, no less than immigrants, also compete with many existing workers.

In truth, any such moratoria are moratoria on sources of economic growth - never wise moves at any time, but especially not during times such as these when investors are especially leery of committing funds to long-term projects.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

... To this letter...:

Jay Hancock's disregard for the plight of unemployed Americans is shocking ("Immigrants can come to economy's rescue again," Jan. 21).

More than 11 million people are now looking for a job. Millions more are involuntarily working part-time or have grown so discouraged they have stopped looking for work altogether.

The best way to help the economy is to get these people back to work.

We need an immediate moratorium on immigration and guest-work visas, not more competition for Americans who can't find work.
C. Paul Mendez
Silver Spring

... Which was a response to this column:

So President Barack Obama, presiding over what will surely be the biggest budget deficits in history, doesn't want the country to go bankrupt.

"If we do nothing, then we will continue to see red ink as far as the eye can see," he said at a news conference two weeks ago. He'll summon a "fiscal responsibility summit," he told The Washington Post last week. America, he said, must make "hard decisions" about Medicare, Social Security and other expensive programs.

Hard decisions, of course, will include cutting costs and benefits, which will anger Democrats. We'll also need to raise taxes, which will anger Republicans.

But the hardest decision of all may be about increasing immigration, which even Obama doesn't seem to want to talk about. The retreat from trillion-dollar deficits must include recruiting millions of new Americans to share in this country's bounty as well as the cost of running it.

Boudreaux's retort is of a piece with the famous story about the Chinese dam, attributed by the Cato Institute to Jerry Jordan:

I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”