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WSJ is a pay website, so Bugmenot won't work.

Illegals make it only A Few Dollars Less for those poor saps, says the WSJ. But it redistributes to us elites!!! The greater poverty and unemployment of low skill Americans will be made up with transer payments from the taxpayers, who will also pay for the illegals. The employers get to keep the profit!! Sounds like a terrific plan to the WSJ.

Another factor to consider is that it gets worse with time. If there was a set number of illegals, eventually the wages of those illegals would increase ( trickle down effect) and that would determine that the citizen wages for these jobs would increase as well but the illegal employer will not need to give his illegals a raise because there is a never ending flow of new illegals to take their place and accept slave wages.

Higher profits means higher rates of taxation for the employers. Sorry but the Anti Business Big Govt Socialists class warfare rhetoric being pushed by the Anti Illegals are nonsense.

Stick to the security aspects, the morality aspect or the Cost of immigration to Govt aspect. All the Anti Illegals buy themselves with these Leftist propaganda claims is scorn from fiscal Conservatives.

Economically the claims being made about illegals are pure manufactured BS. Wages are significantly up. Unemployment is at 4.7%. Illegals slow how fast unskilled wages go up, they have not decreased them. Making these sorts of fraudulent Labor Unions paid for propganda claims HURTS the cause. The case can be made on facts, there is nothing to be gained from these manufactured data claims.

Basing the argument on phony data damages the credibility of all the people on the Anti Illegals side. Since I know the claims made here are untrue, I have to wonder how much else being presented by the Anti Illegals spokespeople like Lou Dobbs is manufactured Socialist propaganda pretending to be "fact".

1st -- realize that this is a contributed editorial from Robert Scrivner @ Harvard... Also, just because wages may not be seemingly impacted, since some legal citizen is not working at all AND the wage is lower the overall impact should be worse just by simple averages... You just have to include the Legal that isn't working at a wage of 0$/hr... Their study doesn't seem to factor this in...

Also, to be fair to the author I think you are miscaracterizing the conclusion a bit... Re-Read the last paragraph..:

National wage trends confirm the common-sense notion that immigration has labor market consequences: A larger pool of competing workers lowers relative wages. This does not imply that immigration is a net loss for the economy. After all, the wage losses suffered by workers show up as higher profits to employers and, eventually, as lower prices to consumers. Immigration policy is just another redistribution program. In the short run, it transfers wealth from one group (workers) to another (employers). Whether or not such transfers are desirable is one of the central questions in the immigration debate.

The republican failure of rhetoric in this debate up till now has been that they basically concede that illegal immigration is a victimless crime, where it's true victims are America's poor.

If the govt is going to tax/regulate the living hell out of businesses then allowing illegals to fill in the gap and undercut American workers is not fair. If companies had to deduct payroll taxes and comply with all federal regs it would 'increase the cost' of illegal labor. Paying an American citizen under the table is called evading taxes, paying an illegal under the table is considered 'rational???'...

I am almost to the point where I would like to see the govt offer to pay a bounty (say 1/2 the fine per worker) to any lawyer which uncovers a company that is guilty of fueling this fire. Take the remainder of the fine and give it to ICE. The bureaucracy would then feed itself... We should all remember that much of this is supply side driven...

I was shocked as hell to see this article in today's WSJ.

Something actually acknowledging that illegal immigration is reverse Robin Hood economics.

Are they wondering why their pro-illegal boostering is falling on deaf ears ? Are they wondering that their policies are marching the GOP over a cliff ?

After all, the Bush administration's policy is political idiocy of the highest order. Only a president with strong bipartisan support can afford to piss off his base on an issue it feels very strongly about. And Iraq has cost Bush all bipartisan support. When the other party is dizzy with hatred for you why betray and demoralize your dwindling band of defenders ?