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Press Release
January 9, 2005
Liberty Institute presents
The
Julian L Simon Memorial Lecture
‘Courage, fear and
immigration:
The significance of welcoming newcomer’s in a free economy.’
A lecture by Ken Schoolland
Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat
Centre, New Delhi
10 January, 2005
If America is wealthier
today, it is due in large part to the creativity and efforts of immigrants,
including Indians.
Facts like these make nonsense of the
opposition to open and free immigration of people.
Some more facts:
- Immigrants
leave behind everything that is familiar to chance the hostility of a
completely alien culture only in order to find freedom, opportunity and
a better life.
- They
are generally known to be more hard working than their native
counterparts, they are healthier, often more highly motivated.
- Enterprising
immigrants create employment and wealth wherever they settle.
- Those
with little education take on work that is considered too difficult, too
dangerous, too dirty, too dark for most American workers.
- Not
only do immigrants contribute more in taxes than they draw out from
government welfare services (when
not constrained by anti-labour laws), their earnings in the long
run tend to exceed the earnings of comparable native groups.
The native-born citizen who opposes the immigrant’s entry only reveals his
own prejudices and fears: the biggest being fear of competition.
The Julian L Simon Memorial Lecture at India Habitat Centre on
January 10 provides hard-hitting facts and interesting insights into the
lies that are perpetuated by anti-immigrationists to prevent free people
from their right to seek better opportunities and a better life.
Traditionally these lectures celebrate human potential and achievement,
which form the core of much of the late Professor Julian Simon’s research
and work. The memorial lectures have been instituted by Liberty Institute, a
Delhi-based independent think tank, to keep alive economist and demographer
Julian Simon’s spirit of freedom and his questioning of conventional
wisdom in order to bring to light
the facts on a variety of environmental and development issues. Liberty
Institute seeks to build understanding and appreciation of the four
institutional pillars of a free society: individual rights, rule of law,
limited government and free markets.
This year’s lecture is by Ken Schoolland –
economist, award-winning teacher, professor of economics and
political science, author. And the theme is ‘Courage, fear and
immigration: the significance of welcoming newcomer’s in a free
economy’. Schoolland teaches at the Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu.
On this occasion, Dr Vijay Kelkar, will release the
Indian edition of Schoolland’s book The Adventures of Jonathan
Gullible: A free market odyssey. This is a very innovative and
interesting way to introduce basic ideas of economics, market and individual
liberty to the readers. The young will find the Jonathan’s trials and
tribulations very exciting. Others will discover new insights in to meaning
of economics. The book has been translated in to over 30 languages so far.
Courage, insists Schoolland, is what many immigrants demonstrate when they
flee oppressive governments and risk their lives for freedom and better
opportunities. Yet they are treated no better than the runaway American
slaves, of an earlier shameful era, who were captured and forcibly returned
to plantation masters. If an American today tries to rescue a refugee at sea
he is fined 3000 dollars for his ‘crime’. Such ‘crimes’ persist
because immigration laws collaborate with tyranny. They should be condemned,
just as the Fugitive Slave Law of the 1850s was condemned by abolitionists
150 years ago in America.
How does the repression of liberty cause problems when
people move around the planet? What role do governments play in contributing
to these problems? How do the politics of protectionism contribute to the
economic troubles of poorer nations? Since politics and economics are so
intertwined, why are immigrants separated into two categories: political
immigrants and economic immigrants?
People who want to immigrate should know why they are
denied this right. Everybody else deserves to know the truth.
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