@revelette1,
revelette1 wrote:
Now apparently they believe the wall pay for itself because Trump said immigrants are bad for the economy.
According to most experts, it is not true.
Quote:One of President Donald Trump’s main arguments for his “zero tolerance” immigration policy is that immigrants are bad for the economy and cost U.S. citizens jobs.
Is he right?
Economists and other scholars have been tackling this topic for years, resulting in many studies that explore the effect immigrants of different stripes have on the economy.
All in all, scholars who have written for The Conversation have concluded immigration’s impact is actually quite positive.
read more here
There are different ways of understanding what's good for the economy and what's bad.
Some people think it's good when lots of frivolous spending on things like drugs and parties churns up money to flow in various directions. They don't care about waste and inflationary pressures long term, because what they care about is getting more money now however they can get it.
Other people think the economy is stronger when things like crime, drug commerce, and other frivolous/wasteful expenditures are cut down, even if the fiscal stimulus effects of such transactions are lost. They are willing to make do with a little less economic activity for the sake of having higher quality economic activity overall.
Does this mean that all economic value rendered by non-citizens is low quality? No, many migrants do really productive work and often at wage levels that save their customers money relative to comparable non-migrant workers.
But in terms of trafficking and crime by people who are controlled by organized crime to disrupt the economy and milk it for the cash surpluses that some people have on hand to pay for things like drugs and prostitution, that lowers the quality of the economy.
And let's be clear not to blame migrants themselves when what they are doing is in response to coercive force. This is about organized crime bosses and traffickers exploiting people to make money in bad ways, and their customers who are funding it all by buying the drugs, paying hush-money, paying for legal protection, etc. instead of saving their money for nobler purposes.