Two Market-Based Proposals for Immigration Reform: Cap-and-Trade or Uncap-and-Grow?

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The federal government regularly auctions airwaves and drilling leases. Should it also auction humans? This is the startling question posed recently at a May 15, 2012 Hamilton Project conference in a paper, a slide presentation and the transcript of remarks offered by Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California (Davis). Prof. Peri provides an intriguing, market-based proposal ("Rationalizing U.S. Immigration Policy: Reforms for Simplicity, Fairness, and Economic Growth") -- in three phases -- to reform America’s sputtering immigration system. Surprisingly to me, a well-griddled and grizzled immigration lawyer, conference participants expressed largely enthusiastic support for his proposal,...

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