4 ms·

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

by 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
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by dash2 5y ago

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]