Question: What is an easy way to reduce immigration in to the US (if you want to do that)?
Answer: Buy what they have to sell. If they can make good money at home, they are less likely to want to come here.
Question: Won't we lose jobs?
Answer: What do you think people do with the dollars we send them in return for foreign goods? There is only one thing to do with dollars -- buy American goods, invest in American companies, or buy US government debt, and the government spends it.
Question: But what about those jobs moving overseas?
Answer: Some jobs do move overseas. But those dollars, flowing back, create new jobs in the US. There are losers. It is true. There are also winners. That is also undeniable. Trade restrictions basically transfer jobs from some people in the US -- new jobs in export-oriented industries or industries fueled by foreign investment demand -- to other people in the US -- old jobs. And they do so inefficiently, making Americans buy more expensive goods overall.
Question: What's another way to reduce immigration in to the US (if you want to do that)?
Answer: Help their homes to be peaceful as well as prosperous. The costs of feckless foreign policy are not just lives and countries ruined, refugees washing up on our and europe's shores, but electoral and political responses.
(Economists. Forgive me for using the misleading "create jobs" rhetoric, in the interest of connecting with non economists. You know what I mean -- create wages, opportunities, businesses, etc.)
