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Unforeseen effects of actions and policies

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Paradox of Immigration

TheAsianRepublican event 1977

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"In the economic sphere, an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects unfold only subsequently; they are not seen. Between a bad and a good economist, this is the whole difference: one confines himself to the visible effect; the other takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen."

— Bastiat, Frédéric

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"That's an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it's no good. Why? Because as long as it's illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don't qualify for social security, they don't qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don't qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They're hard workers, they're good workers, and they are clearly better off."

— Friedman, Milton

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