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In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

politico.com

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Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#71

This may be the best article on immigration I have read in a long time. Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding, but why don't we use immigration as a knob just like we use interest rates or any other government tool. Too few jobs? Lower the quota. Too many unfilled jobs? Raise the quota. It seems really simple to me.

I'd just like to point out that interest rates are really unlike any other policy instrument. Compare them with other policy instruments (regulations, taxes, social programs, public works) and you'll see that they're more easily changed and create much less hassle among voters. Plus, they have a much more obvious impact in people's pockets and welfare, at least from the viewpoint of the voters.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#72
post #12

This suggests a path to a solution - a higher minimum wage for immigrants. At the low end, this could be implemented by requiring 2x the minimum wage for anyone whose residency or citizenship hadn't been verified through E-verify. At the high end, we just need tougher enforcement of the H1-B visa pay rules. To make this work, if you've been underpaid as a non-US person, you can file a complaint, and even if you're il…

One thing, this would discourage immigrants to become citizens, as they most likely will take a pay cut once they become citizens. This might create a permanent class of non-citizen residents.

On the other hand, they will be unable to vote and everyone will see it as a privilege you pay for.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#73
a fantastic article and wonderful to have a calm conversation on the topic.

I can not fault anything in the article but I would add that immigrants also bring dynamism and new ideas to the country. Not necessarily of economic value but certainly of value. For example the relative greater openness and tolerance levels of the cities with larger immigrant populations might have become that way because of their arrival.

Obviously I may have confused cause and effect, obviously this may or may not be worth the economic consequences but I think it is worth thinking about.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#74
Hm, but no word about humanity. If it might be worth the loss for the benefit of the immigrants coming from even poorer circumstances. This however would still not justify the income shift to the employers, but that could be handled separately.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#75

a fantastic article and wonderful to have a calm conversation on the topic. I can not fault anything in the article but I would add that immigrants also bring dynamism and new ideas to the country. Not necessarily of economic value but certainly of value. For example the relative greater openness and tolerance levels of the cities with larger immigrant populations might have become that way because of their arrival.…

> For example the relative greater openness and tolerance levels of the cities with larger immigrant populations might have become that way because of their arrival.

Looking at European cities with larger immigrant populations, "greater openness and tolerance" isn't exactly what comes to mind to describe the situation.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#76
post #12

This suggests a path to a solution - a higher minimum wage for immigrants. At the low end, this could be implemented by requiring 2x the minimum wage for anyone whose residency or citizenship hadn't been verified through E-verify. At the high end, we just need tougher enforcement of the H1-B visa pay rules. To make this work, if you've been underpaid as a non-US person, you can file a complaint, and even if you're il…

One thing, this would discourage immigrants to become citizens, as they most likely will take a pay cut once they become citizens. This might create a permanent class of non-citizen residents.

That doesn't make much sense to me. If the employer could hire someone for cheaper than the immigrant minimum wage, they wouldn't hire the immigrant in the first place. Or they would fire the immigrant, if he was already hired.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#77
I'm going to state a belief that may not be very popular, but it is that technology is responsible for Americans losing jobs. Americans believe immigrants are the reason for jobs not paying as much as they did before, but I believe technology is reducing the need for all kinds of jobs. Think about autonomous vehicles--when all cars are autonomous, will there really be a need for truck drivers?

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#78
post #6

There is also third side in this story; people who jump through hoops to get legal option to work in US. We had to fill mountains of paper work, spend thousands of dollars, wait for years... But every illegal immigrant seems to have more rights than us.

Ask you self, why don't I just become an illegal alien? Because it wouldn't offer you job security? Because you wouldn't be able to easily start your own company? Because you could be uprooted whenever you want?

Jumping through all the hoops is what gives you the security that illegals don't have.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#79

I think this is the key quote to all of this: "Instead, it has changed how the pie is split, with the losers—the workers who compete with immigrants, many of those being low-skilled Americans—sending a roughly $500 billion check annually to the winners. Those winners are primarily their employers. And the immigrants themselves come out ahead, too. Put bluntly, immigration turns out to be just another income redistrib…

I'm not sure I get his solution. "...massive new government programs to supervise a massive wealth redistribution totaling tens of billions of dollars" How? Is he thinking that high school dropouts will all of a sudden go back to school? Or just longer unemployment and more welfare, which are unhealthy for people to be on for extended periods.

Probably he is. Retraining is the classical economics answer to the question of a skills mismatch in the population.

Re: In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture

#80
post #46

The article quantifies the major cost of increased immigration as "the earnings of [high school dropouts] dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year." It describes the benefits to immigrants as "Immigrants, too, gain substantially; their total earnings far exceed what their income would have been had they not migrated." To take a specific example, maids in India make about $3 a day. If they had the opportunity to m…

Borjas does not make ethical arguments or attempt to tell people what they should do, he only lays out the choices and some possible answers.

If you start from the assumption that everyone in the world is born equal and all deserve equal opportunities then the correct solution is to drop your nation's borders entirely. No borders at all, anyone can come. Germany basically tried that and lasted less than a year before the native population started to revolt. It's now stuck in a kind of ethical limboland where theoretically Germany still welcomes any "refugees" but is spared from actually doing so by other countries. I put refugees in quotes because there's no way to reliably distinguish refugees from people who just want a better life by the time they make it to Germany: they arrive without papers or proofs of any kind.

The reason the native population of Germans were unhappy about this policy is fairly simple: there's a perception that some countries are objectively poorer and worse than others because the people living there collectively made bad choices and built bad cultures. Thus importing them risks importing the problems of their homeland and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

For instance, India and South Korea both started out the 20th century being extremely poor and dominated by foreign invaders. They achieved full independence around the same time. By the end of the 20th century South Korea was an extremely sophisticated first world nation (this is the "miracle on the han river") but India was still very poor. Would letting all of India into western nations make everyone as rich as Americans? Or would it just flood native culture and decision making with caste politics and other rather non-American value systems?

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