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I am sympathetic with your broad POV, but in fact there is precious little evidence that immigration has harmed workers wages. For reviews see e.g. Kerr, S.P.
by dash2 8y ago
I am sympathetic with your broad POV, but in fact there is precious little evidence that immigration has harmed workers wages. For reviews see e.g.
Kerr, S.P. and Kerr, W.R., 2011. Economic impacts of immigration: A survey (No. w16736). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Dustmann, C., Glitz, A. and Frattini, T., 2008. The labour market impact of immigration. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 24(3), pp.477-494.
By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that trade with China harmed US workers' wages, starting with:
David, H., Dorn, D. and Hanson, G.H., 2013. The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States. American Economic Review, 103(6), pp.2121-68.
I don't say academics are guaranteed to be right, but they have looked pretty hard for labour market effects of migration, and not found them. There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot - but you don't see broad overall effects.
- Mikeb85 8y ago> There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot And that's the point. Obviously plenty of people in the US are very well off, that won't make poor people any happier. Also, outsourcing labour and bringing in migrants have similar effects on wages because in both cases domestic labour is being replaced with lower-cost labour.
- dash2 8y agoYou may think that poor people have suffered from migration - but it is very hard to see in the data. That is my point.
- Mikeb85 8y agohttps://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 No, the data supports it, especially over the time period outlined by the original article.
- dash2 8y agoThat paper is interesting but it was published in 1991, and it predates the modern use of exogenous shocks to get clear evidence on causality. In particular, it doesn't directly estimate effects on wages - it calculates them from an economic model. Whereas this paper looks directly for wage effects, in the context of a big local labour supply shock, and doesn't find them: Card, D., 1990. The impact of the Mariel boatlift on the Miami labor market. ILR Review, 43(2), pp.245-257. Borjas is an interesting guy and I respect him, but I don't think the overall literature supports his negative view of migration's effects on wages. I stand by my claim, not because I'm a huge expert, but backed up by the two literature reviews mentioned above.
- Mikeb85 8y agoYour paper is literally cited and explained by the one I posted...
- HarryHirsch 8y agoThe fact that IBM (and others) insist on the continued flow of H1-B workers shackled to their visa is evidence enough that it harms workers' wages.
- dash2 8y agoThat wouldn't prove it harms workers. It would prove it benefits IBM. What benefits IBM may also benefit the rest of the US - for example, by lowering the cost of IBM's services. Labour economists have spent thousands of hours analysing data to understand the effects of migration. There are thirty years of papers. Some are quite good. It would be better if the public debate were more informed by this effort.
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- weberc2 8y agoSeems like this would have made for a great dialog with the working class rather than refusing to engage and painting them all racists and deplorables. Imagine how different the political landscape might look if we tried to bring people into the fold instead of looking for ways to implicate them as closet Nazis.
- dash2 8y agoAgreed!