Posted on 12/24/2005 12:10:28 PM PST by Cyropaedia
Immigration economics vs. emotion By Jim Spencer Denver Post Columnist
Roberto Suro boils the immigration debate in Colorado and the U.S. down to a single word: "Visceral."
Even at an oh-so-civilized immigration forum at the state Capitol on Monday, you could see it.
The National Conference of State Legislatures invited Suro to speak to the bipartisan session. Legislators from several Western states attended. Suro's inclusion was a no-brainer. He directs the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center. His organization conducts scientific surveys and compiles scholarly research on immigration. Most experts agree that Suro knows his stuff.
Not Colorado state Rep. Jim Welker. Welker, you may recall, recently toured the Arizona border, searching for illegal Mexican immigrants with the civilian vigilante Minuteman Project. Welker and his ilk claim 3 million Mexicans enter the country illegally each year. They base their estimates on numbers published in Time magazine.
When Suro's data showed only 700,000 unauthorized Mexican migrants coming each year, Welker called Suro out.
"The Border Patrol in Tuscon arrests 438,000 illegal aliens a year," Welker said. "And they say they're only getting one in four. That's 1.6 million (illegals) in Arizona alone. I think the number in Time is not far off."
Among demographers, Suro replied, "you find few people who give credibility to that number. I wouldn't recommend it as a basis for public policy."
"If there are that many," Suro continued, "you're welcome to tell me where they are. There's no evidence."
The exchange captured perfectly what keeps America from having the right immigration debate. Whether 700,000 or 3 million Mexicans cross the border illegally each year, there is a huge problem.
"We're not talking about what the purpose of immigration is," Suro said after his presentation. "You can ask almost anyone about national defense policy and they know what it is. There has been no national conversation on the big picture of immigration. The debate is charged with specific details."
Often those details represent viscera. Anti-illegal immigrant forces push the notion that undocumented aliens commit violent crimes. Suro looked at the murder rate in Washington, D.C. He compared it with killings attributed to the notoriously violent illegal immigrant gang MS-13.
"If they committed all the murders ascribed to them," Suro said, "it's less than 5 percent of the murders that took place. (Illegal alien murders) are very dramatic and exotic. But they are a very small part of the overall crime problem." The same holds for myths of unemployment among illegals, their alleged drain on public education, their supposed stealing of jobs from U.S. citizens and the conspiracy theory that Mexicans come here illegally to have children who automatically become U.S. citizens so they can reclaim the West and Southwest for Mexico. U.S. Reps. Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave are so worried about this that they're pushing a bill in Congress to remove the long-standing right of citizenship to babies born in this country to illegal immigrants.
In fact, Suro said, the largest number of unauthorized Mexican migrants "are young adults who are coming here to find work and are not planning to stay forever. Child-rearing does not appear to be a factor in why people come initially. It is a reason to stay."
But it is not a reason to stay if you don't have a job. At the immigration forum, Suro projected a graph that showed how illegal immigration from Mexico tracks almost perfectly with employment rates in the United States.
If the U.S. could seal the Mexican border Jan. 1 so that only legal migrants could cross, Suro said, this country would be "short 600,000 workers in the coming year."
A head of winter lettuce would also rise dramatically in price, along with the cost of a restaurant meal and a new home. That isn't a call for letting illegal aliens come freely into the United States. It is a call to focus on what matters here:
Economics, not emotions.
Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
More open-borders nonsense.
1.)Enforce the law.
2.)If need be, enlist all illegals currently in the country into a voluntary TEMPORARY guest worker program for those who want to work here.
3.)Bring in more willing workers on a temporary worker basis if necessary.
4.)Enforce the rules of any guestworker program.
5.)Reject amnesty.
We'll be fine.
Typical lies. My home was built without one illegal working on it.
ping
1. Jim Spencer must agree with Mr. Soru, since he calls him non-partisan.
2. Does Colorado non-affiliated state legislators? I didn't see a reference to the state rep's party.
3. Both sides are wrong. Only the government of the United States of America has the time, money and hubris to calculate exactly what it doesn't know. (Which makes a great tag-line - time to bring it back.)
I would bet they'll stay. One more amnesty, however it comes about, will result in massive changes in this country, economically, socially, and politically.
A head of winter lettuce would also rise dramatically in price, along with the cost of a restaurant meal and a new home.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
That don't make a lick of sense.
This Credit Union National Association, Inc. excerpt says that Pew says more than one million of the nation's 2.5 million new jobs went to Hispanics--mostly recent immigrants.
Is this one of those "depends upon the meaning of is" thingies?
The Credit Union National Association, Inc is advising members to hurry get on board -- ILLEGAL immigrants don't need no stinkin' permission to be here -- and they got money!!
"Most observers don't see the government enforcing a 1986 law forbidding employment of undocumented immigrants -- no matter how loudly groups like the Washington-based Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement complain. Nonresident immigrants already make up half the nation's farm workers, 25% of the laborers in the meat and poultry industry, 27% in the drywall and ceiling industry, says the Pew Hispanic Center. Last year, more than one million of the nation's 2.5 million new jobs went to Hispanics--mostly recent immigrants, Pew says." [End excerpt]
I just picked the first search hit -- there are several sources about how "recent immigrants" are taking jobs while established immigrants and citizens remain unemployed. Besides Pew see also the labor studies department at Northeastern University and the Center for Immigration Studies.
A head of winter lettuce would also rise dramatically in price
Agricultural economist Philip Martin of UC Davis has calculated the cost would increase by about five cents a head. Is this another one of those "depends upon the meaning of is" thingies? Is that a "dramatic increase?"
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krikorian200401070923.asp
What does "winter" lettuce have to do with it? Labor is labor. Other factors may apply.
"Agricultural economist Philip Martin has pointed out that labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce, for instance, so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers."
USA and meh-hee-coh!
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
That don't make a lick of sense.
Typically the BLS says each month that the "employment-population ratio also was little changed over the month at 62.8 percent, and the labor force participation rate held at 66.1 percent." [End]
"The employment population ratio is the ratio of employed to the working age population."
"This is the percentage of the working age population which is employed. A high employment/population ratio can mean that an economy is creating jobs and employing a large percentage of its working age population."
One definition for labor force participation rate is
"the fraction of the working-age population that is employed or seeking employment"
I bet a lot of of citizens would get crackin' when REAL economics took hold as labor became more dear -- NOT the distorted, government-promoted labor glut.
Not to worry. Perhaps businessmen will finally get it. They will stop defending the uneconomical Hispanic labor.
To wit, why hire five-dollar-an-hour Hispanic migrant labor when Red China has 800 million peasant citizens many of whom would work here unlimited hours for a dollar an hour and a clean place to sleep on the premises?
I thought businessmen understood economics.
Need 50 million? 100 million? Chinese workers. Just ask.
Technical workers too! The Chi-coms have millions of them. India millions more! Maybe ten dollars an hour tops -- all have perfect GPAs and perfect scores on the GRE. All ten feet tall just ask Silly Con Valley tech firms.
Great shot of Mexican commuter rail at work.
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