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> You sound like someone with the ability to live anywhere, who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere." And you sound like someone with the

> You sound like someone with the ability to live anywhere, who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere." And you sound like someone with the same privilege speaking from a place of paternalism. Restrictive borders disproportionately harm the poor. > I have family in New England who ran an all-organic dairy farm. They had to shut down a few years ago, in part because they couldn't compete with the farms who paid undocumented workers under the table. Others have already debunked your trafficking claim, but your anecdote about an all-organic dairy farm is particularly laughable. 'Dey took ar jerbs' has been debunked for decades now.[1] My mom grew up on a dairy farm in New England (I'm visiting my Grandma there in a month), and I can tell you that there's plenty of reasons that most of them are closing/consolidating, and undocumented labor isn't even top-5. > In Germany, the 2015 migrant crisis nearly brought the far-right "Alternativ für Deutschland" into power. That crisis only abated once the Balkan states took it upon themselves to secure the E.U.'s southern border. Wait, the migrants and open borders are to blame for xenophobia? You do well to point out that Bush supported the DREAM act and take about as wrong a lesson from that as you possibly could. The lesson is not 'give the xenophobes a compromise to get slightly-more-sane immigration policies', it's that the rise in ultra-right wing nationalism/xenophobia around the world in the last decade should be the real thing keeping people up at night, not some imagined migrant 'invasion'. [1]https://contexts.org/articles/the-economics-of-migration/ https://contexts.org/articles/the-economics-of-migration/

_iyig 7y ago
Your article leaves out a lot, and you present a false consensus. Here are some counterpoints: "Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men." This would seem to contradict your statement that, "Restrictive borders disproportionately harm the poor." https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pd... "Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year." "But that’s only one side of the story. Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer. And the additional profits are so large that the economic pie accruing to all natives actually grows. I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year." tl;dr Low-skilled citizens are still hurt, and the "bigger economic pie" from illegal immigration turns out to mainly be due to wealth concentration and bad statistics. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto... >Wait, the migrants and open borders are to blame for xenophobia? No, lots of people in Germany are worried about mass-migration because... you know, just read my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20957989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20957989
dsalso 7y ago
And open borders hurt everyone
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  That's why we have closed borders between us states, right?
  - dsalso 7y ago
    No they do not have closed borders. Btw, since you are so pro open national borders. I am a Mexican based in Mexico City, I know a lot of people who would like to live in the US, would you be interested in sponsoring them, maybe hosting them at your place? That way they wouldn't have to risk their lives trying to just get to the US border Feel free to reach out.

_iyig 7y ago

Your article leaves out a lot, and you present a false consensus. Here are some counterpoints: "Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men." This would seem to contradict your statement that, "Restrictive borders disproportionately harm the poor." https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pd... "Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year." "But that’s only one side of the story. Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer. And the additional profits are so large that the economic pie accruing to all natives actually grows. I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year." tl;dr Low-skilled citizens are still hurt, and the "bigger economic pie" from illegal immigration turns out to mainly be due to wealth concentration and bad statistics. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto... >Wait, the migrants and open borders are to blame for xenophobia? No, lots of people in Germany are worried about mass-migration because... you know, just read my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20957989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20957989

dsalso 7y ago

And open borders hurt everyone

UncleMeat 7y ago
That's why we have closed borders between us states, right?
- dsalso 7y ago
  No they do not have closed borders. Btw, since you are so pro open national borders. I am a Mexican based in Mexico City, I know a lot of people who would like to live in the US, would you be interested in sponsoring them, maybe hosting them at your place? That way they wouldn't have to risk their lives trying to just get to the US border Feel free to reach out.