5 ms·

> The more obligations a state takes to its population (not limited to citizens), the harder it is to enact an open-borders policy while keeping these obligatio

> The more obligations a state takes to its population (not limited to citizens), the harder it is to enact an open-borders policy while keeping these obligations. The opposite is true. Immigrants generally work very hard and accept minimal wages. (This is one reason why many citizens would prefer not to compete with them in the labor market.) Their labor can be highly effective in supporting an economy with strong, potentially expensive, social programs. In the US, our problem is that we've found that we can make them work even harder for even lower wages, and provide them even less social support, by making them "illegal."

mdorazio 6y ago
The opposite is true. Social programs are funded by tax dollars, not cheap labor that may or may not be reported for taxes at all. If you want to make an argument that immigrants are good for these programs you need to limit immigration to higher economic output (and thus tax revenue) individuals like many other countries do.
- justin66 6y ago
  > Social programs are funded by tax dollars, not cheap labor that may or may not be reported for taxes at all. The economy provides tax dollars. If immigrants are working hard for low wages, they're supporting the economy and economic growth. You're thinking very unclearly if you gauge the economic impact of a worker, or a class of workers, solely on how much income tax they pay.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    > The economy provides tax dollars. If immigrants are working hard for low wages, they're supporting the economy and economic growth. You're thinking very unclearly if you gauge the economic impact of a worker, or a class of workers, solely on how much income tax they pay. That economic growth is going to shareholders, not the immigrants who are being squeezed for their labor at low wages. People with high wages pay into social programs (Medicare and Social Security comes out of W2 income). Shareholders, via taxes on capital gains, do not. Ergo, underpaid immigrants are exploited by the shareholder class, at the detriment to society as a whole. Economic growth for growth’s sake is not a metric to be chased when you're discounting quality of life to achieve it.
- take_a_breath 6y ago
  ==If you want to make an argument that immigrants are good for these programs you need to limit immigration to higher economic output (and thus tax revenue) individuals== Do you have any sources on this claim? I'd be interested to read.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    I suppose similar was the reasoning behind the H1 visa program, which explicitly limited the lower bounds of salaries for the immigrants. (It did not limit other immigration types, of course.)
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    Sure, see pages 35-36 (combined with the previous section on poverty) of [1]. Note that most studies claiming otherwise do not account for income level of immigrants, which is what I am responding to here. Higher income immigrants are generally a net positive for social programs, but lower income immigrants are not. [1] https://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2001/mexico/mexico.pdf https://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2001/mexico/mex...
    - take_a_breath 6y ago
      1. I don’t see where your charts show that lower income immigrants leading to a deficit in the safety net. 2. Your study is 20 years old. 3. The Center for Immigration Studies is not un-biased on immigration. The exclusive focus on Mexico might have been a giveaway. The first section of their Wikipedia entry: “The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton. The organization was founded in 1985 as a spin-off from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and is one of a number of anti-immigration organizations founded by Tanton, along with FAIR and NumbersUSA.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studi...
username90 6y ago
> Immigrants generally work very hard and accept minimal wages. Not if they are eligible for social programs without working hard, then you get a different kind of immigration than US gets. US gets hard working people since immigrating there as a non hard working person is just dumb. However when Europe takes refugees who are eligible for social programs as soon as they arrive then they don't really get hard working people, those are the kind of people you would get more of if you opened your border and gave everyone the same social security nets.

mdorazio 6y ago

The opposite is true. Social programs are funded by tax dollars, not cheap labor that may or may not be reported for taxes at all. If you want to make an argument that immigrants are good for these programs you need to limit immigration to higher economic output (and thus tax revenue) individuals like many other countries do.

justin66 6y ago
> Social programs are funded by tax dollars, not cheap labor that may or may not be reported for taxes at all. The economy provides tax dollars. If immigrants are working hard for low wages, they're supporting the economy and economic growth. You're thinking very unclearly if you gauge the economic impact of a worker, or a class of workers, solely on how much income tax they pay.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > The economy provides tax dollars. If immigrants are working hard for low wages, they're supporting the economy and economic growth. You're thinking very unclearly if you gauge the economic impact of a worker, or a class of workers, solely on how much income tax they pay. That economic growth is going to shareholders, not the immigrants who are being squeezed for their labor at low wages. People with high wages pay into social programs (Medicare and Social Security comes out of W2 income). Shareholders, via taxes on capital gains, do not. Ergo, underpaid immigrants are exploited by the shareholder class, at the detriment to society as a whole. Economic growth for growth’s sake is not a metric to be chased when you're discounting quality of life to achieve it.
take_a_breath 6y ago
==If you want to make an argument that immigrants are good for these programs you need to limit immigration to higher economic output (and thus tax revenue) individuals== Do you have any sources on this claim? I'd be interested to read.
- nine_k 6y ago
  I suppose similar was the reasoning behind the H1 visa program, which explicitly limited the lower bounds of salaries for the immigrants. (It did not limit other immigration types, of course.)
- mdorazio 6y ago
  Sure, see pages 35-36 (combined with the previous section on poverty) of [1]. Note that most studies claiming otherwise do not account for income level of immigrants, which is what I am responding to here. Higher income immigrants are generally a net positive for social programs, but lower income immigrants are not. [1] https://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2001/mexico/mexico.pdf https://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2001/mexico/mex...
  - take_a_breath 6y ago
    1. I don’t see where your charts show that lower income immigrants leading to a deficit in the safety net. 2. Your study is 20 years old. 3. The Center for Immigration Studies is not un-biased on immigration. The exclusive focus on Mexico might have been a giveaway. The first section of their Wikipedia entry: “The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an anti-immigration think tank. It favors far lower immigration numbers, and produces analyses to further those views. The CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton. The organization was founded in 1985 as a spin-off from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and is one of a number of anti-immigration organizations founded by Tanton, along with FAIR and NumbersUSA.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studi...

username90 6y ago

> Immigrants generally work very hard and accept minimal wages. Not if they are eligible for social programs without working hard, then you get a different kind of immigration than US gets. US gets hard working people since immigrating there as a non hard working person is just dumb. However when Europe takes refugees who are eligible for social programs as soon as they arrive then they don't really get hard working people, those are the kind of people you would get more of if you opened your border and gave everyone the same social security nets.