From the L.A. Times:
Immigration bill would spark surge of legal arrivals
The immigration debate often focuses on people in the U.S. illegally, but a reform bill's biggest initial effect could be a sharp rise in legal immigration.
By Brian Bennett and Lisa Mascaro, Washington Bureau
April 13, 2013, 8:13 p.m.
WASHINGTON — While much of the debate over immigration has focused on the fate of the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization, one of the biggest immediate impacts of the reform bill being prepared in the Senate would be a sudden, large surge in legal migration.
The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.
The immigration package includes at least four major provisions that would increase the number of legal immigrants, according to people familiar with it. Some of the parts could generate as much controversy as the provisions dealing with those who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, according to those with long experience of the politics of immigration.
Supporters say that higher levels of legal immigration would meet the U.S. need for certain kinds of workers. Increased legal migration also would reduce most of the incentive for illegal border crossings, backers of the plan say, and would allow border agents to focus on smugglers and people with violent criminal records.
Opponents such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has long opposed measures to increase immigration levels, say new workers would depress wages and crowd out Americans looking for work during a time of persistently high unemployment.
"The masters of the universe in glass towers and suites, they may not be impacted by this, but millions of struggling American families will," Sessions said in an interview Friday. "We do need to be sure we aren't exacerbating unemployment and wage erosion in America."
Good first sentence, Jeff. Work on the second one.
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S. The 11 million now in the country without legal authorization would be eligible for citizenship only after that backlog was resolved. Reunification efforts would require boosting the number of visas issued each year.
You know, if they really want to reunite, they can always go home.
To keep the additional inflow under control, the bill would stop allowing adult siblings of immigrants to qualify, but children and parents would continue to be eligible.
In addition to family unification, which allows people into the country permanently, the bill also aims to increase temporary visas for both high-wage and low-wage workers. The number of visas for high-tech workers could nearly double to more than 120,000 per year.
Because Mark Zuckerberg isn't rich enough.
At the other end of the wage scale, a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers.
Because nothing says well-paid like janitor, housekeeper, or meatpacker. Because nothing says high test scores like the children of janitors, housekeepers, and meatpackers.
The numbers would start small, but as the unemployment rate declined, it could reach 200,000 a year by the end of the decade. And growers could bring a total of about 330,000 new farmworkers into the country during the decade. At least some of those low-wage temporary workers eventually would be allowed to seek permanent residency.
The bill's authors expect that legal immigration eventually would decline again, but only 10 years after the bill passed, once the backlog of residency applications shrank.
Just keep repeating to yourself: "But it's good for The Economy. Who am I to stand in the way of The Economy? The Economy doesn't exist for me, I exist for The Economy."
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68 comments:
This is all just crying out for evidence-based data analysis.
The sexiest job of the 21st century.
"Ask not what the 'conomy can do for you, ask what you can do for the 'conomy!"
a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers.
How have these jobs all of a sudden gained such political power that we must throw the rest of the country overboard?
We're closing meatpacking plants in this country; our per capita consumption of meat is at record lows, cattle especially. Maybe the next marketing campaign will be to "eat more beef to help the immigrants now being born in country near you." But, alas, meat consumption tracks largely with middle class disposable income, so as the high-low wins over the middle, some things go away.
"Because nothing says high test scores like the children of janitors, housekeepers, and meatpackers."
To be fair, that is unfair to those occupations(pun intended).
It's more to do of what background those janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers have. Are we talking Ashkenazi Jews? Are we talking mestizos/amerindians or blacks?
Make a huge difference. Because as many readers here may know. Whites in the bottom 20% of the econonmic income ladder(sons/daughters of janitors etc) perform better at the SAT than blacks at the top 20%, despite being the black children being offspring of doctors, lawyers and engineers.
So do yourself a favour and don't get too mixed up in occupations of the parents. What's the demographic of those parents? That's what matters.
"Just keep repeating to yourself: "But it's good for The Economy. Who am I to stand in the way of The Economy? The Economy doesn't exist for me, I exist for The Economy.""
The sad part is, its not even good for the economy. Sessions had it right- its only good for the elites and of course the illegals.
Its obscene that we are even pondering such nonsense. They are aiding and abetting a crime. These people are here illegally. Its like saying,"well, Joe here robbed a bank, so lets reward him. Not only should he not go to prison, but let's hand him additional privileges and try to preferentially admit his kids to college instead of other kids on grounds that they must have suffered over it all." And then they insanely pretend that such a measure would not cause even more Joes to go out and do the same thing.
Good first sentence, Jeff. Work on the second one.
Steve,
What do you find lacking about the second sentence?
In actual fact it is NOT good for the economy.
As I never tire of mentioning, it is analytically impossible that immigration of low productivity workers is able to increase per capita GDP, the one, true real measure of economic success.
On the otherhand, low quality immigration will almost certainly increase taxation because the low skilled take out more from the public purse than they pay.
By the way, the hoo-haa is over 1 million immigrants per annum to the USA. Britain a nation having less than 1/50th of the USA's landmass takes in 500,000 immigrants per annum. The Labour Party sneaked it in simply by lying about it - no need to pass pesky laws.
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S.
"Backlog" implies that people listed on it should be served.
Wow, read the comments on that article. Are the commenters at the L.A. Times always so completely illiterate?
If Los Angeles is our future, we're seriously in trouble.
> Supporters say that higher levels of legal immigration would meet the U.S. need for certain kinds of workers.
I'm inspired by the eagerness of supporters to sacrifice other Americans' economic futures on the altar of their self-regard.
I understand the callousness and indifference of the Masters of the Universe to janitors and meatpackers. It's a bit more surprising that the Masters are breezily undermining the futures of the offspring of the upper middle class, who would seem to qualify as PLU.
Let's hope that supporters' own kids aren't aspiring to careers in, say, STEM fields. Which are plenty tough enough as it is, without adding further downward pressures on wages and prospects.
Don't forget the environment! We already have well over 300 million people in this country and they want to pack in even more. That will require a lot more water, fossil fuel, food, roads, homes etc. I doubt they will each bring those items with them.
I'm heartened to see more writers adopt the proper noun treatment for The Economy. He should be doing very well indeed, given how many now labor for his benefit.
We must not ask what The Economy can do for us, but what we can do for The Economy.
I'm 100% on not importing "low skill workers". We have tons of them already, mostly not working.
Where I become less clear is on the question of high skill immigration. It seems that at least some of these classes of people would be a net benefit to the common good, even if it does hurt some individuals whom they compete with for jobs:
(1) Foreign nationals who earn graduate degrees in US universities. These folks are pretty smart and would raise the mean IQ.
(2) Skilled workers in information technology (i.e. who only work from a keyboard). These folks are smart too. But moreover they can work from a laptop anywhere in the world, so if they are going to be hired by US companies one way or another, they might as well do it locally so we reap the taxes.
(3) Anyone who can get enough points in a Canada-like scoring system with appropriate weights for skills and ease-of-assimilation. For example, Canadians PhDs, Australian doctors, British engineers.
The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade
This was always the fated resolution of illegal immigration: end the concept, not the activity.
For years my conscientious conservative friends, ever faithful to the rules of engagement drafted by the left, would say "We lovelovelove immigration, it's just illegal immigration that we oppose."
"So when they are all made legal, will your brow unfurrow then?"
And so now with the left ascendant on the back of its manufactured Uruk-Hai electoral army, they will burn down the gates and program the teleprompter to intone:
I am pleased to report that not a single immigrant came to America illegally last year. We may finally lay this divisive issue to rest.
A sane policy, I think, would be a point-based system. Points given or taken for nationality, skills, education, net worth, etc. The idea would be that being a legitimate genius (I mean like a Tesla kind of guy, not a guy with a doctorate from UoP) could come from anywhere but the no-skill slots would be filled by people from other Anglo countries.
While our betters and our holier-than-thous erupt and high-five one another in personally profitable rapturous rave, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna erupts in laughter in his grave.
>It seems that at least some of these [high-skill illegal invaders] would be a net benefit to the common good, even if it does hurt some individuals whom they compete with for jobs<
The common good of Americans would be served by displacing Americans with foreigners? Whose common good again?
Do you even read what you write?
Why don't the foreigners you favor above Americans serve "the common good" of those with whom they have something in common: their own countrymen, in their own countries?
Or did these supermen leave their own countries in such a mess that they must flee to America, to do for America what they allowed to happen in their homelands?
Maybe your high-skilled foreigners aren't really any good to anyone. That possibility has occurred to a great number of us. You are behind the curve.
Obama has:
1) Legalized hundreds of thousands of illegals via his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
2) Is refusing to deport all but the worst criminal illegals, or those caught just crossing the border.
3) Has ended the 287(g) program that worked as a force multiplier by working with local law enforcmeent officers to apprehend illegals (think: how often do you come into contact with local law enforcement vs. federal law enforcement).
4) Continued to extend the non-implementation of REAL ID, a law passed in 2005 that was designed, among other things, to take state ID's out of the hands of illegals.
5) Ended workplace immigration raids completely.
All of this and much, much more. They aren't even enforcing the immigration laws we have now. So they hold a gun to our heads and tell us that if we want to get even more immigration laws they won't enforce we must legalize all of those here illegally, PLUS add a massive increase in legal immigration.
Should we take that deal? They can go hang themselves.
Steve,
What do you find lacking about the second sentence?
I'm not Steve, but it's wishy washy and weak. It lacks a good verb "Need"? AYKM? And the subject is totally wrong. It's not actually the passive voice, but the subject needs to be the outrageous legislation or its despicable sponsors, not "we" (unless it were something like "We need to stop these people who profit from the unemployment and suffering of Americans."
Keeping it as close as possible to Sessions's words, an improvement would be something like "This legislation will exacerbate unemployment and erode wages".
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151516856222622&set=a.431813242621.208314.513537621&type=1&theater
A liberal public intellectual.
Let's face it. It's the mainstream media, and the wealthy families who control it, that shape the immigration debate. Can anyone name the top ten culprits?
The bill's authors expect that legal immigration eventually would decline again
And if there's one thing we have learned from the history of immigration bills in America, it's that the bills authors can always be trusted to describe the results of their bill accurately!
Where I become less clear is on the question of high skill immigration. It seems that at least some of these classes of people would be a net benefit to the common good, even if it does hurt some individuals whom they compete with for jobs:
(1) Foreign nationals who earn graduate degrees in US universities. These folks are pretty smart and would raise the mean IQ.
(2) Skilled workers in information technology (i.e. who only work from a keyboard). These folks are smart too. But moreover they can work from a laptop anywhere in the world, so if they are going to be hired by US companies one way or another, they might as well do it locally so we reap the taxes.
That's a pretty blinkered view of the "common good".
"Anonymous said...
Where I become less clear is on the question of high skill immigration. It seems that at least some of these classes of people would be a net benefit to the common good, even if it does hurt some individuals whom they compete with for jobs:"
David replied to your post as well as, or better than, I could of. I will merely note that your conception of "the common good" seems to be "what might be good for me, and screw all the rest of you". If you have a job now, I hope you lose it to an Indian.
Perhaps we could erect a temple to The Economy, and offer up human sacrifices to it. Might not The Economy then smile upon us, and favor us with it's good fortune?
> That's a pretty blinkered view of the "common good".
Then to expand on the idea: look at the middle class values index from the bell curve, or the various stats from Murray's analysis in falling behind. Importing upper middle class foreign nationals improves those metrics.
It's easy to be a critic, but hard to create. Do you have a better suggestion?
OT but SNL's thatcher skit was very interesting. Basically they transposed Joey Ramone's affinity for Reagan onto a fictional punk rocker's affinity for Thatcher, but it genuinely seemed quite respectful and was expertly produced.
Why isn't anyone organizing a patriots' march on Washington?
There are many jobs that blacks used to do that are now in the hands of Mexicans and wages have been driven down. Black leaders don't seem to object to immigration though despite its impact on blacks. I guess they like the idea of reducing the white percentage of the population.
Part of this legislation needs to stipulate that all 11 million illegals should have to live with Lindsey Graham for a decade.
I didn't say Tiger should have been disqualified, I said Tiger should have withdrawn. In golf, that matters.
I wonder how long it will be before America reaches political and economic collapse?
IMMIGRATION MORATORIUM
An across-the-board immigration moratorium is the only answer -- until we can assimilate and integrate the ones we already have.
It's simple, non-discriminatory, and sensible.
Opponents would have to argue that we cannot live without immigrants -- that Americans don't have what it takes. That is an argument the American people can win.
Incidentally, at the top of the list of wealthy families shaping media framing of this issue would have to be Sulzberger. Some of them have been good friends of my family but that doesn't change the fact.
If these future immigrants are so valuable, we are guilty of theft for letting them settle here.
Also, apparently Miami isn't foreign enough as it is... A simple majority of foreigners is obviously grossly inadequate.
It isn't the legality or illegality but the sheer numbers.
It isn't race or ethnicity but the sheer numbers.
An immigration moratorium, pause, or temporary time-out until we can assimilate and integrate the 40-to-50 million foreign-born residents we already have: isn't this a perfectly reasonable request?
The minute you allow exceptions you open a can of worms. Keep it simple, stupid.
"Anonymous said...
Then to expand on the idea: look at the middle class values index from the bell curve, or the various stats from Murray's analysis in falling behind."
Your parents might well have improved your family if they had abandoned you on a doorstep and replaced you with a smarter, harder-working foreign child. Of course, it wouldn't really be "your family" anymore, but you could take satisfaction in the knowledge that the family was now stronger having replaced you with more promising heirs.
Luke Lea -- its more than the media. As (inadvertently) Charles Murray shows in "Coming Apart" -- the people in the media, government, NGOs, quasi governmental bodies like the Fed, Wall Street, Sandhill Road, and the Fortune 500 are all intermarried, inter-communal, living in a few "SuperZips" where everyone went to HYPS, earns millions, and is ultra liberal.
There is and will be no March, because White women generally welcome the mass of third worlders. It makes "spot the White Alpha" far more easier, in a tidal wave of immigrants the White guys doing well are by nature born Alphas, and that's about 90% of what women do: try and spot the Alpha, particularly given late or no marriage. Plus, lots of people to be glorified minders/nannies to, and household help on the cheap.
Since women make the mate market, guys go along with whatever nonsense is thrown up from that corner. That would not matter if most people got married at age 22 or so, but age of first marriage is skyrocketing, most people are not married now, and casual cohabitation, breakups, and single motherhood is the future.
So no, there is no effective groundswell, nor can there be. Bush was blocked by his base, that's a different thing you have President Obama.
> Your parents might well have improved your family if they had abandoned you on a doorstep and replaced you with a smarter, harder-working foreign child. Of course, it wouldn't really be "your family" anymore, but you could take satisfaction in the knowledge that the family was now stronger having replaced you with more promising heirs.
The analogy doesn't hold. We're not giving away some of our citizens AND importing new ones. We're just importing new ones. It would be like a family who adopts a gifted exchange student. Obviously a lot less noxious.
> An immigration moratorium
Well that's a reasonable counter point. But why n=0 vs n=1? Will we stop letting people from Canada immigrate? It doesn't seem politically feasible.
It's OVER for America outside of literally radical change. There is no way it will go in any other direction. And once Texas goes blue it is over for the Republicans as well. The Republican morons have been catering to the big business thugs for ages.. On the other end, the democrats are laughing knowing full well most of these new "immigrants" will surge democrat voting rolls on the march to communism. What we need to do NOW is end all illegal immigration, lower legal immigration and increase the long discriminated against white immigrant.. I don't give a damn how a guy like Rand paul sounds.. He will get NO votes in a various areas in the country.. They will see his white face and see YA.. demographics IS destiny..
@luke - "It isn't the legality or illegality but the sheer numbers.
It isn't race or ethnicity but the sheer numbers."
i agree with you -- a moratorium is what we need. now! there are too many immigrants.
but it is also the legality/ethnicity of the immigrants.
immigrants arriving legally indicate that they are probably not lawbreakers (that's a good thing). and ethnicity? if 40 million english people immigrated to the states, we'd have little or no problems integrating them (although they would have to be taught to turn the heating up in their homes (~_^) ).
Spark surge of legal arrivals?!
More like, piss off immigrants who came here legally, had to pay thousands in fees, wait for years, travel to interviews at the consulate, apply for petitions and adjustments and whatnot over and over again and proved that they are good citizens in their home country and got all those stupid vaccines etc...
In a just system, native-born Americans would come before legal immigrants, and foreign criminals would be at the bottom. Period.
Always popping up are these people who argue that low-skilled immigrants of course shouldn't be allowed into the country; but gosh couldn't we let in some high-skilled immigrants - like maybe millions of them?
The reason given is "it's good for The Economy." If the person is savvy, he also mentions The Right Half of The Bell Curve. These racists are suckers for that, he must think.
But beware the reifiers of concepts. To reify is "to convert into or regard as a concrete thing" (dictionary.com). So we've got The Economy...The Right Half of The Bell Curve...The Nation of Immigrants, etc. To these molochs we're supposed to sacrifice ourselves and our posterity.
Those concepts are useful tools for understanding the world. They aren't concrete idols. Whereas you and your children (actual or potential) are real beings.
Whites are suckers for concept-worship. We get tricked by the reification of concepts, every time.
When you replace an American with a Nigerian - at work, in a town, or on a hospital or school waiting list - you sacrifice the interests of the former to those of the latter. (Any given goodie is finite, so real life is a series of zero-sum games. The goal is to come out ahead.)
Who benefits from the replacement? The Nigerian, sure, but the ultimate beneficiaries are a tiny number of Wizards of Oz who sit behind the curtain of the idol known as The Economy: hedge fund managers, major shareholders of large corporations, et al. These wizards will benefit from smarter and cheaper workers - or so the hope is - and then these benefits will trickle down to the millions who were replaced...who will be second-class citizens living on largesse, on crumbs from a pie baked in the kitchen they built, crumbs which never actually manage to fall off the masters' table and reach them (here).
Ditto mutatis mutandis for the other reified concepts shaken at us like a shaman's stick. How often have we heard about The Nation of Immigrants? That one, picked apart by smarties in recent years, is almost as worn out as The Common Good (meaning "good" for a few apparatchiks). So now the pushers of invasion use The Economy or The Right Half of The Bell Curve. If you run a reified concept up a flagpole, some white will salute.
The pushers should know, and probably do know, that high-skilled invasion not only is, simply, invasion, but also is the thin edge of low-skilled invasion (by chain migration).
I agree that after an immigration moratorium - lasting say 20 years - Americans should have a national referendum to decide whether to allow a small number of skilled European workers to immigrate here by quota. Which is not really agreeing, is it?
Then to expand on the idea: look at the middle class values index from the bell curve, or the various stats from Murray's analysis in falling behind. Importing upper middle class foreign nationals improves those metrics.
It's easy to be a critic, but hard to create. Do you have a better suggestion?
Assuming we had the power to influence the laws on immigration, they I would assume we'd have the power to influence the laws on welfare, unemployment, disability and other social safety net programs too. With control of those issues, it would be a matter of time before working class whites could be brought back into the fold on so-called middle class values. There was a time not so long ago when working class people had pride, and though poor, still attempted to ape middle class norms.
What has never made sense about the immigration debate is that the open borders folks have never tried to fix the problems they claim we have with our native population, and have opted for immigration as a soluition to our ills.
For example, they cite our low birth rates and the fact we need more people to pay for social security. So wouldn't it be easier to enact laws and tax policies that facility stable families having more kids than trying to bring in and assimilate foreigners?
They say our work ethic his crap. So wouldn't it be easier to wean people off welfare and instill 1950's work values than trying to bring in and assimilate foreigners?
They say we don't produce enough high tech workers. But wouldn't it be easier to help our brightest kids enter the fields their fathers' did when they put us on the moon than trying to bring in and assimilate foreigners?
Obviously the open border folks have alterior motives.
Luke Lea for president in 2016.
-The Judean People's Front
@Steve Sailer
"Just keep repeating to yourself: "But it's good for The Economy. Who am I to stand in the way of The Economy? The Economy doesn't exist for me, I exist for The Economy."
What you don't understand is that what you envision only benefits a tiny fraction of the populus.
We have been over this. Immigration is good FOR MOST AMERICANS. It is bad for the bottom 20% of Americans in the earning bracket, but is very, very good indeed for the other 80% of the poplation.
Suppose you stop immigration. Now all those low-level obs will have to be filled by American workers, and because their numbers are paultry compared to the demands for these jobs so their wages will rise dramatically. Supply and demand. Adam Smith. So far so good, right? Well, except that someone will have to pay for it. You are DELUSIONAL if you think that the added cost won't be repassed to the consumer. You think that crops picked by the expensive American worker won't cost more? You think clothes stores where the customer personnel is composed of nothing but American workers won't charge more for their products? What about the factories that make the clothes? Think again.
You CAN practice economic "citizenism" but there is a price to pay, and in this case the price is increasing the living standards of part of your citizenry at the cost of decreasing it for the remainder of your citizens. You choose. Artificially raising wages of people who's labor is not worth that means taking money from others to pay for it.
"Citizenism" is just another term for populism. It was tried in Latin América under Peron in Argentina and Golart in Brazil, as well as in Italy in the 1940s and 1950s and most of South Asia in the 1970s and 1980s. In every society it was tried, irrespective of cultural background, it was a failure.
You may be willing to pay 5 times more for the same goods and services than other Americans to help the bottom 20% of Americans, Steve, but most of the other 80% of Americans are not. This includes most of the conservatives who read your blog, who praise citizenism and claim to be in favor of paying the American worker more, but if they had to actally fit the bill, they would instantly give up on the idea.
This is why economic citizenism and the concomitant limitation of immigration necessary to enforce it are doomed to failure: because human beings think of themselves first, and MOST Americans benefit from it, inclding the conservatives who read you, Steve.
Nick Diaz said:
"You may be willing to pay 5 times more for the same goods and services than other Americans to help the bottom 20% of Americans, Steve, but most of the other 80% of Americans are not. This includes most of the conservatives who read your blog, who praise citizenism and claim to be in favor of paying the American worker more, but if they had to actally fit the bill, they would instantly give up on the idea."
You've got a rational argument on this, but you are pulling numbers out of your ass.
I might add that while this actually is an argument, a lot of things can used as counterarguments.
Now as regards your numbers. Five times? That is hyperbole. Did food cost 5 times as much in the 1950's and early 1960's?
Don't get me wrong, food I think is cheaper in general now than then (food prices went down a long time, then started rising with the oil price shock around 2006 or 2007), but the decline was mostly due to changes in the way agriculture is conducted.
Not all of these changes have been for the better as far as food is concerned, but we do grow an assload more calories and corn than we did.
While immigrants have had some impact on these lowered food prices, the effect has been minimal compared to changes in technology and the conduct of agriculture.
If we kicked every illegal out of the country, food prices would rise, but not by a factor of 5.
And savings would be realized in other areas, my guess being a net benefit to American society.
This argument can be extended to areas besides agriculture such as manufacturing and nannying, and the argument is still valid.
"Anonymous Nick Diaz said...
We have been over this. Immigration is good FOR MOST AMERICANS."
A completely baseless assertion. Who has been "over it"? When? Something does not become true because you type it in caps, you stupid horse's ass.
And the rise in food prices would be temporary, as the long-postponed automation of agriculture would come online.
While immigrants have had some impact on these lowered food prices, the effect has been minimal compared to changes in technology and the conduct of agriculture.
Salow already figured this out and won a Nobel for it: capital investment increases productivity, not more people. Pro-immigrant fanatics are like the old Southern planters decreeing ruin without teams of darkies to do backbraking labor. Drive by a cotton field today and you'll see a harvester and a pickup truck.
The labor costs for harvesting food crops are only about five percent of the production costs. We could double what we pay, hiring only citizens and existing LPR's and see almost no increase in food costs.
Joe H.
Yes, Nick is just being an idiot as usual. The price increase on most items would be closer to 5% than "5 times." On most food it would be even less than that. I'll use dairy as an example, since it has one of the highest percentages paid to the farmer of any food:
Right now, of the $3-4 you pay for a gallon of milk, the farmer gets about $1. (That may not seem like much, but it's far higher than the percentage of retail that a meat or vegetable farmer gets.) So even if the farmer got twice as much, your milk would only go up the additional $1 to $4-5.
But we're not talking about the farmer's whole $1; we're only talking about the amount of that he pays to his immigrant laborers. He will have about 100 cows per employee, and a cow produces over 2000 gallons of milk per year. So doing the math, each employee produces 200,000 gallons of milk per year.
Let's say you've got some really desperate immigrants who work for $5/hour and no benefits whatsoever, and to get a fat, lazy American to take the same job, you have to pay $30/hour in salary and benefits. That's six times the labor cost, even higher than Nick's wild-ass guess. But look at how it breaks down: an additional $25/hour is $50,000/year, divided across 200,000 gallons of milk, adds 25 cents to each gallon.
So, using conservative estimates, we could pay unskilled dairy laborers as well as many entry-level jobs requiring a college degree, and it'd raise your gallon of milk $0.25. The horror!
My mother worked at Armour, when I was a child in the 50s. I've picked fruit as an adult and my husband worked for awhile as a janitor. Please explain to me again why we need to bring in people from another country to do these jobs. We have a lot of unemployed people, especially people out of work for more than 6 months. Secure the borders, deport people in this country illegally, and stop extending unemployment benefits. The jjob market will start to work again.
Let me so. At 1M a year plus their offspring, in about 500 years we will have a population the size of China, but they won't be as smart.
Nick Diaz: You CAN practice economic "citizenism" but there is a price to pay, and in this case the price is increasing the living standards of part of your citizenry at the cost of decreasing it for the remainder of your citizens. You choose. Artificially raising wages of people who's labor is not worth that means taking money from others to pay for it.
I see you've changed your schtick, Nick. What happened to the teary-eyed Compassionate Democrat drama queen berating everyone else here for their bigotry and lack of concern for their fellow man? Now you're a noble steely-eyed Randian, ready to reduce the 20% to the degraded living standards that reflect the real value of their labor.
So I assume a born-again libertarian like yourself, who's agin' "taking money from others" to pay for "artificial"* wage increases, is also going to be against any public programs that aim to provide some minimum decent level of housing, medical care, diet, education, etc. for these people who, let's face it, just aren't worth their keep? Because they sure as hell can't afford any of that stuff on what they make, unless their employers' labor costs are heavily subsidized by "other people's money", as they are now.
*Is there some new school of economics in which rates set by supply and demand are conceptualized as "artificial"?
Well, except that someone will have to pay for it. You are DELUSIONAL if you think that the added cost won't be repassed to the consumer. You think that crops picked by the expensive American worker won't cost more? You think clothes stores where the customer personnel is composed of nothing but American workers won't charge more for their products? What about the factories that make the clothes? Think again.
The difference being that the actual cost of those things would now be transparent to the consumer. As they were back in pre-Mexodus days, when, astonishingly, Americans of modest means were not wandering the streets hungry and naked. I distinctly recall abundant food on the table and quite sufficient and rather better-quality clothing in my closet.
You can pay for your lettuce at the check-out counter, or you can pay a great deal more for it through all the opaque blood-sucking channels of the current open-borders welfare state.
Comprehensive immigration reform:
Complete amnesty if and only if:
1. Immigration moratorium
2. National ID
Nick Diaz,
Labor only accounts for a minute fraction of the price of food. I for one wouldn't mind paying an extra 3 cents a pound for tomatoes in exchange for less crowding, less traffic congestion, lower rent, less crime, better schools, higher wages, and waking up in a country that I can recognize.
I eat more tomatoes than the average American, so a moratorium may cost me the ungodly sum of 25 cents a month. It's a major sacrifice.
- The Judean People's Front
Will the Boston explosions cause the obtuse political class to secure the borders and deport everyone who should not be in the country?
Wow, Nikki D is giving an actual argument now. Too bad it's terrible.
"Suppose we were to have a 40-percent wage increase [in farm work]. What would happen? Well, if those wages were totally passed through -- that is, if there were no labor-saving changes -- then that roughly 6-cent cost of a pound of apples would rise to about 7.5 cents.[...F]or the average family, you would spend about $10 a year more on all fresh fruits and vegetables.
"So the bottom line is, [...] the increase in the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables for an average family would be about $10 a year, or about the price of a movie ticket."
The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country.
Sure that is true, and I'm surprised that even that made it in the story.
But your average reader thinks, well the U.S. is a big country, so naturally we have lotsa immigrants. We also probably eat more big macs than any other country in the world.
However, how about this truth, which puts the situation in a somewhat different light:
The U.S. already admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than all the other countries of the world combined.
From the NY Times, here is an OP-Ed by Philip Martin, a labor economist at UC-Davis.
Consumers who pay $1 for a pound of apples are giving 30 cents to the farmer and 10 cents to the farm worker; those spending $2 for a head of lettuce are giving 50 cents to the farmer and 16 cents to the farm worker.
If the influx of immigrant workers were slowed or stopped and farm wages rose, what would happen to expenditures on fresh fruits and vegetables? A case study from 1966 could give us some idea.
That year, the United Farm Workers union won a 40 percent wage increase for some table grape harvesters, largely because the end of the Bracero program had cut off a supply of Mexican workers. The average earnings of U.S. field workers were $10.07 an hour in 2009, according to a U.S.D.A. survey of farm employers. If pressure to verify employees’ legal status resulted in a labor crisis similar to the one in 1966 and a similar 40 percent wage increase, average hourly earnings would rise to $14.10. If this were passed on to consumers, the 10 cent farm labor cost of a pound of apples would rise to 14 cents, and the $1 retail price would rise to $1.04.
"Complete amnesty if and only if:"
No way.
Complete amnesty if and only if:
1. Immigration moratorium
2. National ID
How could you leave out: No affirmative action or preferences for any amnestied illegal or for Hispanics or Asians of any stripe?
Would still not be good enough, but that would have to be a condition.
Surely newspapers would welcome low wage immigrants to do their reporting chores. I keep hearing that they don't have enough money to pay their current employees. And everyone working their likes more immigration.
I understand the callousness and indifference of the Masters of the Universe to janitors and meatpackers. It's a bit more surprising that the "Masters are breezily undermining the futures of the offspring of the upper middle class, who would seem to qualify as PLU.
Let's hope that supporters' own kids aren't aspiring to careers in, say, STEM fields. Which are plenty tough enough as it is, without adding further downward pressures on wages and prospects."
I know Steve is real big on noticing how extended families are more powerful than the sum of their parts and stuff like that, but many, if not most white, non-Jewish "masters of the universe types" are selfish, hyper individualists who often show a shocking lack of concern for their own children and other relatives. I can think of specific examples of what you describe among people I know: the rich white dad who demands open borders and cheap labor, while his own children can't find summer jobs or have to suffer through an 80% foreign engineering program. The good news is that younger white Americans from affluent families are increasingly aware of how various other groups are using "collectivist" strategies to out compete them.
One trait of rich baby boomer white males is that they seem to not be able to grasp that the labor market has changed since 1971 or whenever they had their last job that didn't involve being rich. They will often cite some summer jobs they had in college to prove they "know that unions are bullshit because I was in one for three months." They don't seem to understand that their unionized supermarket or factory summer job paid something like the equivalent of $30 an hour in today's money, while people with those same sort of jobs today, if they can find one, are making $8-10 an hour.
@David
"Wow, Nikki D is giving an actual argument now. Too bad it's terrible."
I make NOTHING but arguments here, and I always pawn you gys very badly. All you have is name-calling, hominem invective and ganging up on me. You think that ad populum, that patting each other in the back and agreeing with each other makes you "win"the arguent. It's pathetic.
"So the bottom line is, [...] the increase in the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables for an average family would be about $10 a year, or about the price of a movie ticket."
Wow, you are not the sharpest pencil in the box, are you? 10 Dollars a year? More along the lines of 6 THOSAND Dollars more a year. It's simple arithmatic.
@Rohan Swee
"I see you've changed your schtick, Nick. What happened to the teary-eyed Compassionate Democrat drama queen berating everyone else here for their bigotry and lack of concern for their fellow man? Now you're a noble steely-eyed Randian, ready to reduce the 20% to the degraded living standards that reflect the real value of their labor."
You show a complete lack of understanding what libertarianism is. I NEVER claimed to be in favor of economic equality; I have always stated that I am in favor of LEGAL and social eqality, which are the tenets of libertarianism.
You talk about fairness? What about being fair to poor Mexican workers? How fair is it to deny Mexican workers a chance to spport their families and due to their nationality and FORCE emplyers to pay 10 X more to an American worker just because he was LUCKY to be born in America? How come is this fair? Who are you to talk about fairness? Can't you see how UNFAIR this is to Mexican workers?
"So I assume a born-again libertarian like yourself, who's agin' "taking money from others" to pay for "artificial"* wage increases, is also going to be against any public programs that aim to provide some minimum decent level of housing, medical care, diet, education, etc. for these people who, let's face it, just aren't worth their keep? Because they sure as hell can't afford any of that stuff on what they make, unless their employers' labor costs are heavily subsidized by "other people's money", as they are now."
This paragraph is extremely convolted, so I will try my best to address the points I think you are making here.
I am a libertarian who believes in human equality in terms of RIGHTS and OOPORTUNITY. As a very nice man, I am also, however, in favor of taking care of people who cannot take care of themselves.
You talk about taking care of the indigents, but of course, you are only concerned with AMERICAN indigents. You couldn't care less about starving people in Mexico. To you, they are inferior to Americans, even though that is only a legal formality and they have the same capacity for pain and human feelings that Americans have. So what moral grounds do you have to judge me?
Me complaining about the unfair treatment that Southern European immigrants received in the U.S does not make me a "liberal" as upholding legal equality is one of the axioms of libertrianism and not necessarily liberalism. This is COMPLETELY different from complaining about economic equality, something that I have NEVER done. So you can't acuse me of being "flipping".
"The difference being that the actual cost of those things would now be transparent to the consumer. As they were back in pre-Mexodus days, when, astonishingly, Americans of modest means were not wandering the streets hungry and naked. I distinctly recall abundant food on the table and quite sufficient and rather better-quality clothing in my closet.
You can pay for your lettuce at the check-out counter, or you can pay a great deal more for it through all the opaque blood-sucking channels of the current open-borders welfare state."
This is all BS and speculation.
Angry Spaniard Fop said...
...
The alien says the never-ending flood of his fellow aliens is good for us, the people he thinks should be hacked to death with machetes.
Well that settles it. I don't see how anyone could doubt that he has our best interests at heart.
Pointing out how terrible you folk are at governing yourselves, creating functioning economies, and feeding yourselves, and so you should all get to come here isn't really bringing your A game.
Me complaining about the unfair treatment that Southern European immigrants received in the U.S
Yet bunches of Southern Euros still came to the US instead of to Latin/Lusitanian America, which is larger, has more resources (or had, y'all might have stripped it like locusts), and languages closer to their own. Despite (arguendo) being treated badly by Anglos, y'all wanna come here, cuz when left to self-determination, ya starve? Surely you can see why we're concerned that having lots of you here will make the US more like the trash holes the Latinoas created and are now fleeing? You hope that we'll lift you up, but what if you just drag us down? When America becomes super-hispanicky, where will the Hispanics go to pick fruit, mow lawns and live on the social, political and economic capital that you couldn't create? The US already has a black population that we can't uplift. Why do you think we can civilize y'all? There aren't enough Whites to carry another burden.
When waves of Northern Europeans immigrated to South America, how were they received?
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