What should be done about illegal immigration?

@georgeob1,

Perhaps you could find just one reputable economist that would assert that we should break laws to support various industries, that those industries cannot survive without illegals, George?

Look, if industries cannot find enough legal laborers, then they should up the wages, how about that for a novel idea? And then if still not enough labor force, how about increasing legal immigration, how about that for a novel idea, George?

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McCain says immigration reform unlikely in 2010

While he remains committed to comprehensive immigration reform, Sen. John McCain doesn’t have a positive outlook on its passage this year.

Leadership on the immigration issue is required by President Barack Obama before Congress can act, McCain recently told Western Growers officials, but that’s unlikely in an election year.

McCain told Western Growers it will likely be impossible to pass AgJOBS as a stand-alone bill in 2010.

“He believes that it will take passage of comprehensive (reform) in order to get AgJOBS,” said Tom Nassif, Western Growers president, who was in the group that met McCain, R-Ariz., on Jan. 14.

McCain and his staff initiated the Phoenix meeting with Irvine, Calif.-based Western Growers to talk about issues for growers, Nassif said.

Nassif said McCain was energetic and upbeat at the meeting, which started and ended with discussion about the need for AgJOBS and immigration reform, Nassif said. Immigration, health care and climate change were the primary topics for discussion.

Nassif said Western Growers will continue to push for AgJOBS this year despite McCain’s skepticism about its changes.

“We don’t believe that comprehensive immigration reform will get done before the election either, but we want to get AgJOBS passed,” he said. “We believe it is a question of economic survival and a question of maintain a secure and stable food supply in the U.S.”

Nassif said the Western Growers provided McCain with policy papers on the group’s concerns, including health care costs for seasonal workers and undocumented workers. Western Growers would prefer that part-time seasonal workers be exempt from insurance requirements.

Currently, a majority of farm workers are not covered, he said.

“How do you impose those costs on companies where they don’t have the financial wherewithal to do so?” Nassif said.

Also, he said the health insurance arm of Western Growers needs a technical fix in the health care bill to be able to fully participate as an insurer.

“He said he would be happy to help us, but Republicans have had no say in drafting the health care legislation,” Nassif said.

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Smith: Illegal Immigrants Take Jobs from African-Americans
May 14, 2007

washington, D.C. " Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) today urged a group of African-American civil rights leaders to help stop a Senate amnesty bill because it will drastically reduce job opportunities for African-American workers.

“Illegal immigrants take jobs from American citizens and lower their wages,” stated Ranking Member Smith. “As a prominent civil rights leader recently told Congress, the hardest hit are members of the African-American community.”

In a letter, Congressman Smith urged four leaders of the African-American community to join him in speaking out against the Senate’s proposed mass amnesty for illegal immigrants. The letter was sent to Dennis Courtland Hayes, Interim President of the NAACP, Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League, Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Ron Woods, Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Smith’s letter comes after the House Immigration Subcommittee heard disturbing testimony about the harmful effect of mass immigration on the economic fate of African-Americans. Mr. T. Willard Fair, a prominent civil rights leader and the President and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Miami, testified that mass immigration contributes to low employment rates in the African-American community and is too often ignored.

As Mr. Fair put it, “…immigration isn’t the whole reason for the drop in employment of black men; it’s not even half the reason. But it is the largest single reason, and it’s something we can fix relatively easily.” Mr. Fair also called for businesses to once again recruit workers from African-American neighborhoods instead of foreign countries, fearing that unless mass immigration ends, African-Americans will continue to be “shut out of jobs.”

“Despite these compelling facts, the United States Senate stands on verge of approving a mass amnesty for illegal immigrants,” Smith warned. “If that becomes law, it will further devastate job opportunities for millions of hardworking African-Americans.”

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@Advocate,

Frankly speaking, that's not an area that I've contemplated concerning illegal immigrants taking jobs away from blacks. I would really love to see a study on this issue, because I'm skeptical about one article which makes such a claim.

I'm sure that the restaurants in our area would be happy to hire blacks if they applied for the jobs. I really don't see that many blacks in the restaurant industry, but my perceptions may be off the mark.

I'd like to hear more about this issue.

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@georgeob1,

Is Paul Krugman considered a "reputable economist" by your definition? He did get the Nobel prize for economics last year:
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Quote:

New York Times / March 27, 2006
North of the Border
By Paul Krugman

... I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants do "jobs that Americans will not do." The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays - and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.

Finally, modern America is a welfare state, even if our social safety net has more holes in it than it should - and low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel that safety net. Basic decency requires that we provide immigrants, once they're here, with essential health care, education for their children, and more. Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the benefits they receive.

Worse yet, immigration penalizes governments that act humanely. Immigrants are a much more serious fiscal problem in California than in Texas, which treats the poor and unlucky harshly, regardless of where they were born... Realistically, we'll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants. Mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration...

1 Reply

@High Seas,

P.S. this Center employs some fairly reputable demographers and economists as well:

Quote:

Some researchers argue that the drop in crossings from Mexico proves that tough law enforcement at the border and in American workplaces can reduce illegal immigration in times of rising unemployment in the United States. [....]“The latest evidence suggests that you can reverse the flow,” said Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group in Washington that calls for reduced immigration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15immig.html?_r=1

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@High Seas,

..... as does the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

Quote:

The graph, which shows border apprehensions lagged by six months against overall American job market conditions, is from Pia M. Orrenius, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. ...

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/illegal-immigration-as-a-job-market-predictor/

Final thought on that subject: I can find no reputable economist, statistician, demographer, public finance expert, accountant, etc. in favor of encouraging more illegal immigration or even of legalizing those here illegally already. Those in favor of blanket amnesty tend to be politicians or come from non-mathematical professions, like the law.

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@High Seas,

High Seas wrote:

P.S. this Center employs some fairly reputable demographers and economists as well:

Quote:
Some researchers argue that the drop in crossings from Mexico proves that tough law enforcement at the border and in American workplaces can reduce illegal immigration in times of rising unemployment in the United States. [....]“The latest evidence suggests that you can reverse the flow,” said Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group in Washington that calls for reduced immigration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15immig.html?_r=1

Don't you think that it is poor economy that has put the brakes on the influx of illegals? As for the eflux of them, which I understand is as much as 10 %, it is also because of the poor economy, and is probably temporary. The eflux will cease when our economy picks up.

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@Advocate,

Advocate, I believe your opinion is valid; I've read reports that illegal immigration into the US has slowed down, and many Mexicans who couldn't find jobs returned to Mexico on their own. I'd also like to see what has happened to the flow of money from from the US into Mexico during the past five years which will be a good indicator of illegal immigration.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Not sure about the last 5 years, but remittances fell in 2008 according to this article.

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@Irishk,

Good article; thanks for sharing. It provides us with a bigger picture of how our economy impacts our neighbors and more so on a global scale.

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@cicerone imposter,

It does. There was an article in the Miami Herald the other day about the Feds giving TPS to 200,000 Haitians here illegally. At the end of the article they pointed out that :

The latest estimate shows that Haitian immigrants in the United States send more than $1 billion in remittances to Haiti, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which closely tracks remittances to the region.

The money sent from Haitians living in the United States and other foreign countries represents more than one-third of Haiti's gross national product.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/1435825.html

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

It does. There was an article in the Miami Herald the other day about the Feds giving TPS to 200,000 Haitians here illegally. At the end of the article they pointed out that :

The latest estimate shows that Haitian immigrants in the United States send more than $1 billion in remittances to Haiti, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which closely tracks remittances to the region.

The money sent from Haitians living in the United States and other foreign countries represents more than one-third of Haiti's gross national product.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/breaking-news/story/1435825.html

Haiti is also the poorest country in the western hemisphere... a desolate place where 80% of the population suffers horrendous poverty... a land where the average guy gets by on $1,200 per year... and this includes the measly billi0n (1/100th of 1% of our GDP) sent from the United States. Join me in hoping they can afford to send more in years to come.

Ps. and send a text over to 90999 if you haven't already done so.

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@OCCOM BILL,

Thanks for the info. Cicerone and I were just discussing the remittances and their impact on other countries' economies, not making judgments on the merits of those remittances.

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@Advocate,

Advocate wrote:

Don't you think that it is poor economy that has put the brakes on the influx of illegals? As for the eflux of them, which I understand is as much as 10 %, it is also because of the poor economy, and is probably temporary. The eflux will cease when our economy picks up.

Probably true. It is also probably true that many illegals were never included in labor statistics. When their jobs went away, and they went away, I doubt they impacted the unemployment statistics.

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@roger,

Illegals will not be included in unemployment stats, because they don't collect unemployment benefits.

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illegals job's never existed in the first place, they can hardly go away. people go away.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Illegals will not be included in unemployment stats, because they don't collect unemployment benefits.

Sure they do. Just need a SS# that's not in use or that belonged to a dead person. I think the statistics are estimated since they have no way of knowing exactly how many are using the bogus SS#'s. I remember reading one gov. report that said it was 'substantial', so they were trying to figure out a way to efficiently verify SS#s.

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@Irishk,

I believe you are correct; I remember reading something about bogus SS number usage, but that was many moons ago. The real problem lies in the fact that these bogus SS numbers are used to get employment, and not many employers or the government are efficient in catching them. They're also used to register to vote, so I'm wondering when our government is going to address all these problems - if ever?

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@cicerone imposter,

You guys want to back these random charges with any sort of evidence?

I suspect the number of undocumented immigrants who are registered to vote is pretty close to the number of immigrants with leprosy.

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