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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...

1st -- realize that this is a contributed editorial from Robert Scrivner @ Harvard.

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.