美國移民政策之爭中暗暗發光的"孤星"
Does America have too many immigrants? That is a question which sparks heated political debate in Washington. Little wonder. Earlier this year Barack Obama pledged to make immigration reform a central plank of his second term as president.
美國的移民是不是太多了？這個問題在華盛頓引發了激烈的政治辯論。這一點都不奇怪。今年早些時候，巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)承諾稱，要將移民改革作爲其第二個總統任期的一項核心任務。But while that won him support among Hispanic voters, it infuriated many Republicans, particularly in the South. And with the unemployment rate remaining stubbornly high, the issue is doubly controversial due to a perception - or fear - that immigrants are stealing American jobs.
雖然這爲他贏得了西班牙裔選民的支持，卻激怒了許多共和黨人，特別是南方的共和黨人。在失業率高企不下的情況下，這個問題更具爭議性，因爲人們認爲（或擔憂）移民眼下正搶走美國人的飯碗。Last week a curious new salvo was fired into this fiery debate from none other than the Dallas Federal Reserve. In recent years, this institution has earned a reputation for being one of the more independent-minded parts of the Fed: its president, Richard Fisher, has demanded policies to slash the size of banks, and its officials take a free-market, conservative view. (Indeed, as a sign of this Wild West heritage, it is the only western central bank I have ever seen where an official notice tells customers to put their guns aside before entering.)
近年來，達拉斯聯邦儲備銀行(Dallas Federal Reserve)因在美聯儲內比較特立獨行而出了名：該行行長理查德•費舍爾(Richard Fisher)要求採取政策削減各銀行規模，該行官員普遍持有自由市場和保守派觀點。（事實上，該行還有官方通知，讓客戶進門之前把槍放到一邊，以突顯那種西部文化傳統——它是我見過的唯一這樣做的西部聯儲銀行。）不久前，正是達拉斯聯邦儲備銀行，給這場火藥味十足的辯論帶來了新奇的觀點。
But when it comes to immigration - of the legal and illegal kind - the Lone Star Fed is not sitting with the Tea Party core. On the contrary, it has just published a paper - under the provocative title “Gone to Texas” - arguing that immigration is good for the local economy. And it rebuffs the idea that immigrants are stealing jobs from native-born Americans. On the contrary, it insists, they tend to boost growth in a win-win way.
但在移民方面，無論是合法移民還是非法移民，這顆“美聯儲內的孤星”並沒有與茶黨(Tea Party)中堅派站在同一立場上。與此相反，它剛剛發表了一篇文章，標題富有煽動性，名爲《去德克薩斯》(Gone to Texas)。文章認爲，移民對地方經濟有好處，並對移民偷走了美國本地人飯碗的說法做出了反駁。文章堅稱，情況恰恰相反，移民往往能以一種雙贏的方式提振經濟增長。Now, if this conclusion had emerged in a state with few immigrants and plenty of unfilled jobs (think North Dakota), that might be unsurprising. But the picture that Fed researchers paint of Texas is eye-popping. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born people living there has jumped from 1.5 million to 4.3 million, they say, noting that “Texas [now] has more immigrants than Oklahoma and New Mexico have people”, and that “among large states, none has experienced a surge like Texas has, with immigrants rising from 9 per cent of the population in 1990 to 16.4 per cent in 2012”.
假如說，這個結論出現在一個移民很少並且有很多工作空缺的州（比如北達科他州），可能就沒有什麼好奇怪的了。但達拉斯聯儲研究者們描繪的德克薩斯州呈現出一副令人目瞪口呆的景象。他們說，自1990年以來，德克薩斯州居民中出生於外國的人數已從150萬增加至430萬，並指出“（現在）德克薩斯州的移民人數比俄克拉荷馬州和新墨西哥州兩個州的人口加起來還要多”，此外，“在美國較大的州中，沒有任何一個州的移民人數增長有德克薩斯州那麼快，1990年，這個州的移民比例爲9%，到2012年，這個數字已增至16.4%”。Some immigrants are highly skilled, lured by the fast-growing energy sector, for example.
有寫掌握高技能的移民，是被一些特殊的行業吸引而來的，比如快速增長的能源行業。But most are not: two-thirds do not have a high-school diploma, two-thirds come from Mexico, and almost half - or 1.8 million people - are illegal, according to the Fed's number crunchers. If you want to find a poster child for the vision of Mexicans flooding illegally across the border to work in American fields and factories, Texas is perfect.
但大多數移民卻不是這樣：達拉斯聯儲的研究者分析數據後指出，三分之二的移民沒有高中文憑，三分之二來自墨西哥，且有近一半（180萬人）是非法移民。如果要找一個地方來代表墨西哥人非法涌入美國農業和工廠工作的情況，那麼德克薩斯就是個很好的典型。But that has not hurt native-born Americans, the Fed insists. “When immigrants flow into the labor force, it is not just a matter of adding more workers. As long as immigrants differ from natives - which they do to varying degrees - specialization occurs,” the report observes. Furthermore, “Less-educated US natives have a comparative advantage in communications-intensive jobs, and less-educated immigrants in manual-labor jobs.” Or to put it another way, Mexican tomato pickers do not compete with American receptionists (not least because almost half of the immigrants in the study apparently have few or no English-language skills).
但達拉斯聯儲堅持認爲，這並沒有損害美國本地人的利益。報告認爲：“移民加入勞動力大軍，並不僅是意味着出現了更多的工人。只要移民與本地人仍然存在差別（儘管差別程度不同，但差別確實仍然存在），移民的加入就會產生專業化效應。”此外，報告還指出，“在需要大量跟人溝通的工作中，教育程度較低的美國本地人比較有優勢，而在體力勞動中，教育程度較低的移民比較有優勢”。換句話說就是，來自墨西哥的西紅柿採摘工不會與美國接待員競爭。特別是有研究顯示，近一半的移民英語水平很差，或根本就不會說英語。What immigration does do is lower the price of “immigrant-produced goods and services”, which equates to an income gain of $3.4bn-$6.6bn a year, the study suggests. And while this needs to be offset against the rising strain on public infrastructure and services, this is not such a big issue in bare-bones Texas, which has “a skimpy safety net and lower levels of publicly provided services than other large states”.
研究指出，移民所做的就是降低“移民製造產品和服務”的價格，相當於每年34億到66億美元的收入。雖然這種好處必然會被公共基礎設施和服務面臨不斷增加的壓力部分抵消，但在吝嗇的德克薩斯州，這並不是一個大問題。因爲德克薩斯州“社會保障安全網非常單薄，公共服務水平也比其他大州低”。I daresay such conclusions will horrify many observers on both sides of the political divide. To Tea Party supporters, it seems hard to believe that illegal immigrants do not displace American jobs; to leftwing economists, it seems even more abhorrent to think that businesses could be booming on the back of unprotected cheap labour. In any case, as both left and rightwing economists might point out, Texas is something of an exceptional case: its economy has been unusually fast growing in recent years, partly because of the energy boom, which has created plenty of new jobs - for immigrants and non-immigrants alike.
我敢說，這樣的結論將讓很多在政治上存在分歧的觀察人士都感到恐懼。對於茶黨支持者而言，非法移民沒有搶美國人飯碗的說法看上去令人難以置信；對於左翼經濟學家而言，可以靠不受保護的廉價勞動力實現商業繁榮的說法似乎更不可思議。無論如何，雙方的經濟學家都可能會說，德克薩斯是一個例外。該州經濟近幾年來增長異常迅速的部分原因是能源繁榮，這創造了許多新的工作崗位，無論是移民和美國本地人都受益於此。When it comes to immigration, the state is also unusual in political terms in that the influx of newcomers has occurred under governors of both the Democrat (Ann Richards) and Republican persuasions (George W Bush and Rick Perry). As president, Bush was also a strong advocate for immigration reform.
就移民問題而言，德克薩斯州的情況在政治上也不同尋常。因爲無論是在民主黨州長安•理查茲(Ann Richards)還是在共和黨州長小布什(George W Bush和裏克•佩裏Rick Perry)主政下，移民都同樣在涌入德克薩斯州。而在擔任總統時，小布什也十分提倡移民改革。If nothing else, the results of the study are intriguing, particularly given that immigration reform will almost certainly rear its head in Congress soon, as Obama tries to define his legacy. The only pity is that the Dallas Fed paper did not look at another curious and counter-intuitive recent development: namely, that in the past year it seems that the flow of those unskilled Mexicans north has slowed, if not stalled. And if that continues, it could twist the immigration debate yet again - not just in the Lone Star state but in Washington too.
如果不考慮其他因素，這項研究的結果非常有趣，特別是鑑於移民改革似乎很快就會被提上國會議事日程，因爲奧巴馬試圖留下任期“遺產”。唯一的遺憾就是，達拉斯聯儲的那份報告沒有談及最近另外一個奇怪的、違反常理的動向，即，過去一年來，那些低技能墨西哥人涌入美國的勢頭看上去有所放緩，甚至出現了停滯。如果這一趨勢繼續的話，可能會再次改變這場移民大辯論的局勢，不僅是在“孤星”州德克薩斯，華盛頓亦然。
