Posted on 04/17/2006 11:07:47 PM PDT by Plutarch
What happens when immigrants enter the labor market?
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The results are that, in the short run -- holding all other things equal -- immigration lowered the wage of native workers, particularly of those workers with the least education. The wage fell by 3% for the average worker and by 8% for high school dropouts.
These effects imply sizable reductions in annual earnings for low-skill workers. In 2000, the typical high school dropout earned $25,000, so that immigration reduced his earnings by $1,200, even after all capital adjustments take place...We found that Mexican immigration, which is predominantly low-skill, accounts for all of the adverse impact of immigration on low-skill natives....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.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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.
Will the illegals be as attractive when they are legal? Or, as I suspect, we will have millions more legals and a new crop fo illegals to replace them.
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.
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".
Yet the average non manufacturing wage is up almost $2.00 over the last 3 years. The economic pie keeps getting bigger. It a Zero Sum Fallacy to assume one size pie so that an increase in A means b must decrease. Nope. It is possible for A and B to grow. There is no factually honest economic argument against illegals. It's all based on manufactured half truths, wild guesses and unverified assumptions. Illegals are just the scape goat being blamed for the failure of people in states like California to control their state Govt. an aging population and massive improvements in technology. World wide there is a decreasing number of low skills jobs. Technological improvements mean you can do more with fewer people.
Blaming all the costs for a changing Economy on Illegals, as this author try is intellectually dishonest. There are a number of factors. Simply hating the illegals will not cure the Anti Illegals crowds blues. You are reaping what your state Govts sowed with their spending bindges in the 1990s. Illegals are part of the problem but not the cause. You all created a Govt system that simply needed too large increase in funding every year to be substained. You can reduce pressure by reducing population growth but it will not go away.
It is a myth that unemployment stats do not account for long term unemployed who no longer collect checks. Anyway, in Florida and NY there are help wanted signs everywhere. I was recently housing a woman who had not worked in 10 years, She was hired the first place that she applied. They worked her 8 straight days into overtime the first week, because they are short on staff.
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...
miscaracterizing = mischaracterizing
Sounds like the employers could care less if they are "legal" or illegal they are a equal opportunity employer. They have found that they won't be prosecuted regardless of how they hire these people and how they pay them.
They aren't afraid of the big bad IRS because they have gotten away with not paying taxes for so long. There is obviously a underground employment going on and Americans are NOT welcome to apply!!
So it's anti business to restrict the flow of slave labor? You could then argue then that Abraham Lincoln was an "anti business bit govt socialist class warrior".
The WSJ is the the most prominent proponent of open borders. Yes, this was a contributed piece, but the WSJ has barely published any anti-illegal pieces. Are you stating the conclusions are invalid? On what basis, that you don't like them?
Um, first realize that this is a contributed editorial from George Borjas , whose academic title is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Is he insuffiently qualified to study this issue?
George J. Borjas is the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia. His teaching and research interests focus on the impact of government regulations on labor markets, with an emphasis on the economic impact of immigration. He is the author of Wage Policy in the Federal Bureaucracy; Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S. Economy; Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy; and the textbook Labor Economics. He also edited Immigration and the Work Force;Issues in the Economics of Immigration; and Poverty, International Migration and Asylum. Prior to coming to the Kennedy School, Borjas was a Professor of Economics at the University of California at San Diego. He has been a consultant to various government agencies.
Is he insuffiently qualified to study this issue?
No, did I say he was?
Is he insuffiently qualified to study this issue?
No, did I say he was?
It's interesting that the WSJ would go public and admit this. Sort of pulls the rug out from under the pro-illegal lobby.
First you state that we must realize it is from this particular Professor, and second that you nickpick aspects of his study. Sounds like Prof. Borgas sadly lacks max-rpf's unique economic analysis abilities.
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