Thread: Late, great immigration debate

Late, great immigration debate

Does the U.S. economy need all those illegal immigrants to stay or a are they taking jobs away from Americans?

All this week, Mark Krikorian and Tamar Jacoby debate immigration.


Wanna work hunched over in a field? Knock yourself out!
By Tamar Jacoby

Mark Krikorian will respond later this morning

Of course, we need immigrant workers—and most Americans don't need an economist to explain it to them. Does anyone reading this want to spend the next several decades—because remember, this isn't just summer work, these are full-time, year-round, lifetime jobs—hunched over in the fields, or busing tables, or standing at a dirty, dangerous assembly line in a meatpacking plant? Do you know anyone raising their kids to do any of those jobs, or anything like them? I doubt it, because very few Americans do. In 1960, half of all American men dropped out of high school to look for unskilled work. Today, fewer than 10 percent do—but we still need those kinds of jobs filled.

And immigrants don't just keep the economy going, they grow it, making us all richer and more productive. You can't grow a business without new workers—and not only do most native-born workers already have jobs, but with most of us having smaller families and baby-boomers retiring en masse, the native-born workforce will soon be shrinking—shrinking dramatically. So without a robust supply of new immigrants, our economy, too, would soon be shrinking. In fact, if there'd been no immigrants in the past decade, the U.S. economy would have grown by less than half as much as it did. Think about it: half as many new houses built, half as many businesses opened, half as many new jobs created, half as much new tax revenue collected—and much less economic vitality.

And that economic growth isn't just good for employers—it's good for all Americans, whatever they do. Imagine a young couple that wants to open a restaurant. How could they if they couldn't find folks to bus the tables and wash the dishes and do the scullery work in the kitchen? But if they can find those low-skilled employees—and most likely they will be immigrants—then they can also hire waiters and managers and hostesses and a chef, and chances are, many of those jobs will be filled by native-born Americans. Not only that, but once the couple opens the restaurant, that will mean more work for local farmers, local produce truckers, the construction company they hire to build the restaurant, the people who furnish and decorate it, a bank, an insurance company, an ad agency, and lots of other businesses up- and downstream from all of these—most of which employ more relatively skilled Americans than immigrants. The moral of the story: immigrants aren't stealing American jobs. On the contrary, they're creating them—they're growing the pie for all of us.

But what's crazy is that under the current immigration system, there's no legal way for these needed workers to enter the country. Not only do we need the eight million illegal workers already here to stay on. Just imagine how many businesses would shrink or collapse if they left. (Remember, we're at what economists call "full employment"—virtually no workers to spare.) But we also need a continuing supply of new workers to keep the economy growing.

As is, that growth generates about 500,000 new unskilled jobs every year, but there are only 5,000 visas for foreigners who want to do full-time, year-round, unskilled work. No wonder people are breaking the law—there's no other way to square that circle. It's not okay that they do—no one thinks it is. But we need a better answer—a system that allows these needed workers to enter the country lawfully.

We shouldn't have to choose between immigration and legality. We need to fix our broken immigration system so that we can have prosperity and the rule of law too. And frankly, I don't understand you, Mark. Why on earth are you opposed to that? Wouldn't you rather see a system that is lawful and controlled. As is, you're just an apologist for our hypocritical, nudge-nudge-wink-wink failure—unrealistic law that we can't possibly make stick and that benefits no one but the smugglers and a few unscrupulous, bottom-feeder employers.

Tamar Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la- ... ion-center

Tamar Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

This says it all, lol.

Their DESPERATION is oozing now.

Propaganda 101

500,000 new unskilled jobs a year. We lose more than this to other countries every year. Maybe we don't want to work bend over but neither do the illegals, that is why the ag community is always short of workers. the farmers need to automate and then americans can operate and repair the machines. New jobs for americans instead of giving jobs to illegals.

Here is why you're wrong Ms. Jacoby -

1. To make your argument 'stick', you have to espouse the idea that the 1986 amnesty under Reagan was a policy 'success' - which, we all know was a complete and abysmal failure. Up to 3x as many people as were initially thought applied for and received de facto citizenship and the true degree of fraud perpetrated in achieving official 'recognition' was never really known. Many aliens that did not correctly qualify received citizenship just the same. Further, the multiplicative effect of chain migration, anchor babies, etc - has yielded a much larger than anticipated increase in the overall count. These 'residual' dynamics were not anticipated adequately and we should not repeat this past error in thinking again. And, not to mention, the effect this has on persons outside the US, seeking entry that are 'playing by the rules' - following officially declared procedures and regulations...
(etc. etc)

2. Also, to make your argument 'stick' one must also offer the notion that 'laws don't matter'. This, in it's essence, runs counter to the sensibilities of nearly every Americans (uh-hum, US Citizen) as most Americans are law-abiding people. The very notion that 2 sub-groups of people can live peaceably and harmoniously within the intellectual construct of a single nation defies common sense. Notwithstanding all of 'our' past transgressions, and imperfections.... It is UnAmerican to ask two groups of people to live side by side under 2 very different standards of behavior.
I want Ms. Jacoby to sign a contractual agreement that says I can break whatever law I please, and she will be held legally responsible for such action (the same position that illegals that break the law force on the mass of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens - we pay for it one way or another...).
In order to have rule of and by law, people cannot be allowed to choose which laws they want or want not to follow. The laws have to apply to everyone all the time!

My 0.02 cents...

Beckyal: yeah, thanks for pointing that out.
I wonder if the OBL 'throw open the borders' crowd stops and considers that the US DoL (Dept. of Labor) considers 'good' unemployment stats. something like 'less than 200,000 filed for unemployment benefits last week'. Is that REALLY something to brag about? And, further, how about the QUALITY of the jobs that went away??? They are only measuring the quantity - not quality of those jobs... (a fundamental flaw IMHO).

In 1960, half of all American men dropped out of high school to look for unskilled work.

There is less unskilled work to be had as a percentage of the total. Period. Most jobs now require at least some computer or technical savvy. Working at a sheetmetal shop now requires training to operate automated brakes and presses and the ability to read (in not create) CAD files. Pick and shovel crews no longer exist except for the smallest of earthmoving jobs, having been replaced by backhoes and other heavy equipment operators. So, Ms. Jacoby, yours is an irrelevant statistic. There is a lower percentage of jobs requiring unskilled labor. That's why later in the article you switch to hard numbers rather than percentages to indicate the growth of unskilled labor jobs, and that's a cheap tactic. You place that growth at 500,000 per year or 5 million per decade (though you provide no source for that claim). But that's only 0.17% or the total populace and less than 0.3% of the workforce. That's compared with a population growth of about 13% per decade. So for the 40 million or more citizens that will be added to the population, 5 million (by your estimates, not mine) unskilled labor jobs will be added, meaning that about 1 in 8 of those new citizens will be performing unskilled labor, assuming that the gross percentage of unskilled labor jobs remains the same. So this does not look like a growth area to me. I would say that if only 12.5% of the jobs are unskilled, that's pretty darned good for any country. Of course, the percentage is almost certainly higher, meaning that given the figures you provide, it would appear that an addition of 500,000 unskilled labor jobs per annum amounts to a NEGATIVE GROWTH in that sector.

Add to the subterfuge Ms. Jacoby engages in by playing fast and loose with the numbers (in the hopes that no one with a calculator is paying attention) that we are being told that the reason that the US is losing manufacturing jobs is that American laborers are too unskilled. (See - http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/16/ ... index.html). Now hold on a minute! On the one hand, we are being told that we are losing manufacturing jobs because we have too many unskilled laborers, while on the other hand this idiot NY pundit is trying to tell us that we need more unskilled foreigners pouring across our borders. You don't have to be a math whiz to work out that if legitimate Americans are losing jobs which are being exported because they are allegedly too unskilled to perform them and at the same time we are importing foreign labor to do the unskilled labor, we're going to end up with a helluva lot of real Americans with NO JOBS AT ALL.

The argument that 1.) /americans will not do the jobs that immigrants do, and 2.) there is no legal way for immigrants to come here for these jobs is absolutely false. US citizens working at Mohawk carpets were displaced by illegal aliens Same thing at several meat packing plants. I worked stooped over for several years in my youth. What the argument does not address is employers using illegal labor to lower wages, and then rely on the US taxpayer to subsidize the workers. And there is a visa program (in fact several) that can be used to bring unskilled immigrant workers to the US legally for jobs where there are actual labor shortfalls. But neither industry nor government verifies actual needs. They play a shell game instead. Lastly, it is not true that we need the amount of manual labor used today to maintain the economy. For decades following WW II American farmers amazed the world with significant, and consistent increases in productivity brought about thru innovation, mechanization, and automation of manual tasks. I know, because I experienced some of that first hand. Why are we still harvesting fruits and vegetables in the 21st Century the same way we did in the 1st Century? Because those industries do not want to invest the capital required. Where would be be if wheat farmers still cut the grain with scythes and hand bound it? The sad answer is not complicated. Industrie want cheap labor, and our government has been aiding and abetting them, at the expense of both the skilled and unskilled American worker, and all subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Thanks Crocket, good job on the analysis (I especially liked the quip about the calculator... )

Let me offer an Orwell quote to Ms. Jacoby:

For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.

Originally Posted by PhredE

Thanks Crocket, good job on the analysis (I especially liked the quip about the calculator... )

Let me offer an Orwell quote to Ms. Jacoby:

For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.

When "analysts" start freely jumping between hard numbers and percentages it's usually time to check the math. New York pundits in particular seem to think that rest of us are such rubes that they can fling horse dung at us and tell us it's snowing. Add to that the fact that Tamar Jacoby is usually full of crap and this nonsensical and mathematically incomprehnsible rant of hers is about as transparent as they come.