Thread: Samuelson: High Immig. To Promote Income Redistribution?

Samuelson Raises Possibility That High Immigration Being Used To Promote Income Redistribution

By Roy Beck, Wednesday, June 2, 2010, 2:38 PM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA

Perhaps no opinion leader in America more defines true middle-ground, objective thinking about economic matters than nationally syndicated columnist Robert J. Samuelson. He simply does not fit in either left-wing or right-wing ideological camps, and his analysis is always based primarily on a clear-eyed view of hard data. On immigration, he also stands between the major camps. So, his latest comments on immigration are most interesting.
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-201383-samuelson.html

Samuelson is concerned about the Obama Administration's proposals to redefine poverty so that millions more people would be categorized as poor.

Most of his interesting comments do not involve the focus of this website. But he does note that most discussions and even statistics about poverty in America over the last few decades are "misleading."

He gives two big trends that create such a misleading situation. One of them is immigration.

First, it ignores immigration, which has increased reported poverty. Many immigrants are poor and low-skilled.

Samuelson tells his national audience that poverty is much worse in this country because we have imported so much of it from other countries through our immigration system:

From 1989 to 2007, about three-quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanics -- mostly immigrants, their children and grandchildren.

One would think that think tanks, universities, government experts and politicians would question whether a program that produces so much additional poverty should be continued -- at least whether it should be continued at a level that is four times higher than the country's annual average 1776-1976 and four times higher than occurred in the last part of that in the 1950s and 1960s.

Samuelson bluntly gives the reason why all those experts don't question:

Poverty 'experts' don't dwell on immigration, because it implies that more restrictive policies might reduce U.S. poverty.

For some reason, nearly all of our policy elites in think tanks, universities, government agencies and political office are so wedded to high immigration that they would rather keep adding to poverty than to acknowledge the problem and have to be confronted with the possible option of reducing immigration.

Samuelson offers the reader a reason why this might true.

He quotes Robert Rector (one of the few Washington opinion elites who actually looked at the data and decided immigration policy had to be changed). Rector suggests that all the various things that are defining and creating larger populations in poverty in the United States are also serving the interests of those who desire to see more income redistribution, to which Samuelson says:

He has a point.

For liberal backers of mass immigration, Samuelson's comments have to raise questions about why they would promote a policy that makes the United States a place of so much greater economic disparity.

For the conservative backers of mass immigration (who have control of the national Republican Party machinery), one has to ask why they would continue to promote a policy that every year creates more and more pressure for bigger and bigger government and greater and greater income redistribution.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

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The NWO requires that the standards of living for the populations of all countries eventually become equal. The only way to achieve that is to drive down the middle classes of the better off nations. Of course the upper classes of those nations will be untouched and actually profit from such redistribution.

There is another situation in our country where immigration is being used to manipulate the wage structure of professions, for the benefit of the rich class and the detriment of the middle class. This article is an oldie but a goodie and explains a lot of the "skilled worker visas" that are still being issued no matter how many of us get the axe.

Greenspan: Let more skilled immigrants in
By Bloomberg News | March 14, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said allowing more skilled immigrants to work in the United States would help keep the income gap from widening.

Inequality of incomes is the "critical area where capitalist systems are most vulnerable," Greenspan said yesterday in Washington at a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of US capital markets convened by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. "You cannot have a system that we have unless the people who participate in it believe it is just."

Allowing more skilled workers into the country would bring down the salaries of top earners in the United States, easing tensions over the mounting wage gap, Greenspan said.

"Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world," he said. "If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income."

Income inequality has risen in the past three decades.

Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said she was skeptical of Greenspan's proposal. "In theory, increased skilled immigration should help contain wage rises at higher levels, but there is little empirical evidence," she said. "If you want to reduce political concern, it would be better to deal with the problem by helping to raise the wages of the lowest earners, by helping to improve productivity and raising the minimum wage."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washi ... grants_in/