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Stated another way, importing illegal immigrants has suppressed wages for Americans for decades. Nothing about that should be surprising. Illegal immigrant lab

by seneca 5y ago

Stated another way, importing illegal immigrants has suppressed wages for Americans for decades. Nothing about that should be surprising. Illegal immigrant labor is a key part if the American economy. These people are intentionally kept in a state of legal limbo. They're tolerated, but always could be prosecuted and have their lives destroyed. This keeps them exploitable and able to be treated in ways we would never tolerate for American workers. The entire game is that because they are breaking the law, employers can ignore labor law when it comes to employing them. It's like any black market. The fact that everyone is breaking the law means all bets are off. An imported serf class, intentionally kept in an exploitable legal state, is inherently going to reduce the leverage of labor that would otherwise occupy those jobs.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
Good God that's a coherent argument where I'm used to reading gibberish.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> importing illegal immigrants has suppressed wages for Americans for decades. Er, no, to the extent immigration is an issue with the recent wage rise legal immigrants have done that. Net illegal immigration dropped below zero without significant upward wage pressure well before the pandemic. EDIT: Just to be clear, its not actually legal immigration dropping, either, that led to the tight labor market; its the acceleration of permanent (e.g., retirement) and temporary departures from the labor force during (and in part induced by) the pandemic
- pessimizer 5y ago
  During the peak of US anti-immigrant frenzy, net illegal immigration was negative.
dash2 5y ago
You may be right, but... got evidence? Here's Hanson et al. (2002): In this paper, we examine the impact of enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border on wages in U.S. and Mexican border regions. ... For a range of empirical specifications and definitions of regional labor markets, we find little impact of border enforcement on wages in U.S. border cities and a moderate negative impact of border enforcement on wages in Mexican border cities. These findings are consistent with [ed: i.e. either of] two hypotheses: border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration, and illegal immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border areas.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration this doesn't talk about anything regarding wages. > illegal immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border areas. That seems narrowly scoped to "US border areas" whereas the parent comment is talking about America in general. Likewise how do you provide a control factor for a study like that? I think the evidence is pretty much obvious and doesn't require a study to conclude. The market wouldn't prefer illegal immigration (which it does - ask any restaurant operating in the US) if it didn't reduce labor costs for businesses. So the opposite must be true - citizens and legal immigrants would increase labor costs. The other factors are simply true by careful observation. How is it not obvious that a labor class that has no legal rights of citizenship is also not going to have legal rights in the labor market? (i.e. ability to legally fight wage fraud, depressed benefits, etc.)
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    The idea that you could add millions of workers from third-world nations (per capita PPP GDP for Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are 8,500, 4,490, and 2,200, respectively, compared to 63,000 in the US) without creating downward pressure on wages just doesn’t pass the sniff test.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
wyldfire 5y ago
Before they were illegal immigrants they were migrant workers. For years they would come across the border freely for seasonal work. The US has arable land that can produce crops that compete with crops in Central America. But the labor there is cheaper. Seems like there's some elements similar to prohibition - the desire is strong enough to create a black market for labor and immigrants are willing to take these risks. Maybe if we permitted more seasonal ag work visas and a lower minimum wage (but still safe workplace requirements) it would be a better compromise. It's very sad that falsehoods about the immigrants fall into racist tropes and all of a sudden we can't have a reasonable dialogue about better solutions to the problem.

by seneca 5y ago

Jeff_Brown 5y ago

Good God that's a coherent argument where I'm used to reading gibberish.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> importing illegal immigrants has suppressed wages for Americans for decades. Er, no, to the extent immigration is an issue with the recent wage rise legal immigrants have done that. Net illegal immigration dropped below zero without significant upward wage pressure well before the pandemic. EDIT: Just to be clear, its not actually legal immigration dropping, either, that led to the tight labor market; its the acceleration of permanent (e.g., retirement) and temporary departures from the labor force during (and in part induced by) the pandemic

pessimizer 5y ago
During the peak of US anti-immigrant frenzy, net illegal immigration was negative.

dash2 5y ago

You may be right, but... got evidence? Here's Hanson et al. (2002): In this paper, we examine the impact of enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border on wages in U.S. and Mexican border regions. ... For a range of empirical specifications and definitions of regional labor markets, we find little impact of border enforcement on wages in U.S. border cities and a moderate negative impact of border enforcement on wages in Mexican border cities. These findings are consistent with [ed: i.e. either of] two hypotheses: border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration, and illegal immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border areas.

mbesto 5y ago
> border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration this doesn't talk about anything regarding wages. > illegal immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border areas. That seems narrowly scoped to "US border areas" whereas the parent comment is talking about America in general. Likewise how do you provide a control factor for a study like that? I think the evidence is pretty much obvious and doesn't require a study to conclude. The market wouldn't prefer illegal immigration (which it does - ask any restaurant operating in the US) if it didn't reduce labor costs for businesses. So the opposite must be true - citizens and legal immigrants would increase labor costs. The other factors are simply true by careful observation. How is it not obvious that a labor class that has no legal rights of citizenship is also not going to have legal rights in the labor market? (i.e. ability to legally fight wage fraud, depressed benefits, etc.)
- marcusverus 5y ago
  The idea that you could add millions of workers from third-world nations (per capita PPP GDP for Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are 8,500, 4,490, and 2,200, respectively, compared to 63,000 in the US) without creating downward pressure on wages just doesn’t pass the sniff test.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

wyldfire 5y ago

Before they were illegal immigrants they were migrant workers. For years they would come across the border freely for seasonal work. The US has arable land that can produce crops that compete with crops in Central America. But the labor there is cheaper. Seems like there's some elements similar to prohibition - the desire is strong enough to create a black market for labor and immigrants are willing to take these risks. Maybe if we permitted more seasonal ag work visas and a lower minimum wage (but still safe workplace requirements) it would be a better compromise. It's very sad that falsehoods about the immigrants fall into racist tropes and all of a sudden we can't have a reasonable dialogue about better solutions to the problem.