While the presidential contest between the eventual Democratic nominee and John McCain promises a political debate rich in contrasts, we will hear not one meaningful word of debate over what may be the most interesting and pervasive domestic policy challenge of our time: immigration.
In a nation of roughly 300 million, close to 40 million of us are immigrants. Of those, somewhere between a third and half are here illegally, though estimates vary greatly.
For the sake of this discussion, however, the difference between legal and illegal matters not one iota. Because when it comes to immigration, legal status has much more relevance to the immigrant than it does to everyone else.
On the issue of immigration, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and McCain are virtual clones. All three support liberalizing our already liberal immigration rules. All three support some kind of easy-to-achieve legal status for people who are in the country illegally. All three would impose some modest increases in spending on border security and employment status verification, measures that are regarded as sops to national security hawks.
But for the most part, no matter who wins this election, immigrants and would-be immigrants will celebrate — and rightly so.
Is this rare example of bipartisanship a good thing? Many readers of this newspaper, rooted deeply in the aspirational culture of immigrant Jewry, will likely think so. Jews are commanded by Torah to welcome the stranger, and we know from painful experience what it means to be turned away at an hour of desperation.
These principles are not irrational or ill-conceived. The problem is, they are utterly inconsistent with the other elements of our aspirational culture — especially the one that says that the immigrant should move up the ladder of opportunity.
If you believe the gap between the wealthy and the poor is an outrage, that there should be far more opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities, that Americans should not exit the workforce because jobs pay too little — if you believe all this, you cannot at the same time support further immigration to this country. These problems are all symptoms of the same disease: an oversupply of cheap, uneducated workers.
It is not xenophobic or nativist to point this out. It’s simple economics.
Consider: Economic conservatives embrace liberal immigration precisely because it provides cheap and easily available labor. They may declare some sentimental regard for the pluck of immigrants. But economic conservatives are no fools; they love any market mechanism that stands on the side of greater efficiency in pricing. In this case, if American workers get too uppity, bring in the foreigners to make goods and services cheaper.
Today’s labor Zionists may be surprised to find themselves in the same ideological bed with the kind of people who used to exploit their grandparents — but that’s where things stand.
Immigration can’t be simultaneously good for both the employer and the immigrant. Someone is paying the bill. And as it turns out, the bill is being paid by the people liberals say they are defending: the poor, the uneducated, the weak and the defenseless.
We receive roughly 2.5 million immigrants each year to this country. Except for a few thousand, virtually all of these immigrants are here for economic reasons. They need to earn more money than they would in their home countries.
And that they do. They have entered our workforce in massive numbers. From 2000 to 2005, virtually nine out of every 10 new workers in the American labor force were immigrants in that period, according to the government’s population survey.
But this influx has had another impact. The number of American-born workers who don’t even look for a job jumped by 10 million from 2000 to 2007, according to the Labor Department. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that favors a more restrictive immigration policy, the workforce dropout rate has risen among a number of major demographic groups: young American-born men, American-born black men, American-born Hispanic men, American-born adults who didn’t graduate from high school, and American-born adults with only a high school degree.
Who can blame them? Wages have indeed suffered, in real terms, because of immigration — by about $1,700, or 4%, between 1980 and 2000, according to Harvard economist George Borjas.
And here’s the thing: No matter what people tell you about immigrants doing work “Americans won’t do,” most of the jobs immigrants are now entering are in fact still dominated by American-born workers: maids, construction laborers, dishwashers, janitors, painters, cabbies, grounds keepers, and meat and poultry workers.
If we continue to keep up our immigration policies, we will begin to see a massive shift in the workforce — in fact, one that has already begun — where those who are educated enjoy the twin luxuries of high relative wages and low relative prices. Those not so lucky or blessed or motivated, depending on your theology, will suffer grinding subsistence.
Those who come to this country eager to improve their lot, in short, will move exactly one rung on the economic ladder before being pulled back by those who follow behind them. Meanwhile, millions of able-bodied adults now sit on the sidelines of our economy, preferring the stable though not prosperous lifestyle of disability payments and other social welfare to the rough-and-tumble of the low-wage, low-skilled working world.
I don’t blame them for their choice. It is rational. It is also sad — and it speaks poorly of a country that prides itself on opportunity that the only leg up we give is to those willing to work here for cheap, and preferably, off-the-books.
Today’s suburban liberals, grandchildren of immigrants themselves, should be howling in protest. They should call out immigration as an unnatural drag on the well-being of ordinary, hard-working Americans. Forget Big Oil, Big Pharma and any other Bigs. The true enemy of the working man is Big Immigration.
The awareness of this problem won’t come in the national debate about our next White House occupant. Those candidates have already staked their positions, and they are indistinguishable. But the lover of labor cannot hide from the truth that the solution begins with a wall — and a polite policy that says no more new immigrants, not until we restore opportunity for all at home.
Noam Neusner served as President Bush’s principal economic and domestic policy speechwriter from 2002 to 2004.
Funny, I didn't know Tom Tancredo was Jewish. Neusner's economics are all wrong. He assumes, like other nativists, that there's a fixed number of jobs, and if immigrants enter, then natives won't get them. But that's a false assumption. Immigrant workers spend money and create economic vitality. We need jobs for Americans, yes, but it's not an either-or proposition. There's a problem with underpaid illegals, who are exploited by unscrupulous employers because they're without legal protection, but in this market, housekeepers are making quite decent money (more than most factory jobs). Imagine if Neusner's view had prevailed when our grandparents were coming here during the Ellis Island period!
How does the author reconcile the above with EU's success in integrating much higher numbers of equally unskilled and uneducated populations into its economy? After all, we are only slightly smaller than EU's economy. Also, is the author against Turkey, a population of 80M of mostly unskilled/uneducated muslims entering EU for the same reasons?
Funny, I didn't know Tom Tancredo was Jewish. Neusner's economics are all wrong. He assumes, like other nativists, that there's a fixed number of jobs, and if immigrants enter, then natives won't get them. But that's a false assumption. Immigrant workers spend money and create economic vitality. We need jobs for Americans, yes, but it's not an either-or proposition. There's a problem with underpaid illegals, who are exploited by unscrupulous employers because they're without legal protection, but in this market, housekeepers are making quite decent money (more than most factory jobs). Imagine if Neusner's view had prevailed when our grandparents were coming here during the Ellis Island period!
I wholeheartedly agree with Fred's points concerning the economic illogic of this article. I would like to add one point concerning pure economics and another concerning my preferred interpretation of Jewish values concerning immigration. According to most economic theories, immigrants only become a drag on the ability of others to sustain themselves in a country when the advantages provided by their added ingenuity, benifiting all of the immigrants, their generally higher savings rate, and, yes, higher quantity of work for the same wage are outstripped by the sheer disadvantages of having more people using the same physical resources. That does not seem to be a very big disadavantage in a country that is too rich in land for crowding to be a problem and, at this point, too poor in most other physical resources for its economy to substantially orient itself about the use of these at any time in the future. I think we persist outside the relevant ranges for these non-reproducible resources to matter as much as you would have them matter. Ethically, given these facts, we Jews are called upon by our ethics to support more immigration to the United States, a country whose legal and economic profile allows them to prosper here, and greater legalization of these immigrants, for the sake of equal justice. Achieving better outcomes through better laws preferentially to any other means is a Jewish value. The foundational event of Judaism was not being a stranger in Egypt but the formation (or "revelation" if you happen to prefer this terminology) of a new law in the desert thereafter. In the religiously heterogeneous country in which we have the most influence, we should be encouraging legal changes in accordance with these values.
EU's success in integrating much higher numbers of equally unskilled and uneducated populations into its economy? The EU's success? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/03/france French [Muslim] youths open fire on police French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest. The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, was involved in a series of crisis meetings today following the clashes between police and immigrant groups in at least 10 poor suburbs, during which youths torched car dealerships, public buses and a school.
"If you believe the gap between the wealthy and the poor is an outrage..." The wealth gap is both desirable and emblematic of America's freedoms. Bill Gates is worth $50 billion. He created an econo-sphere consisting of millions of jobs (Microsoft as well as numerous software and hardware companies). Is it better to have folks like Bill Gates? Or should we discourage exceptional effort and advocate a socialistic state that attempts to "level the playing field"? I'm no expert in history, but I think the Soviet Union tried that for about 80 years. It didn't work out real well, with tens of millions dead.
A country must control it's border. We need to close the border. If the legal immigration process is too cumbersome or takes too long then it needs to be repaired. You can't just have people flooding across the border without restriction.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120511125873823431.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries One does not have to look long or hard (this is from today's WSJ) for a data-based argument in a mainstream source that supposed widening inequality is overstated, recent economic growth has benefitted rich and poor alike, and that economic mobility remains robust. There is ample analysis refuting Neusner's darkling theses about the economic effects of immigration and the economic picture more generally.
Neuser is about 80% wrong, by my lights. I do agree with him that we need to control the southern border and that we need more urgency on this than has been demonstrated by the three remaining presidential candidates. But I also agree with the comments above as to Neusner's departures from economic coherence. For example, Neusner decries income inequality as an "outrage." Income inequality is not an outrage; it is a price of capitalism, by which we purchase immense national wealth, unexampled social and economic mobility, and expansive individual freedom. I would think someone as sophisticated an accomplished in the real world as Neusner would avoid implying the contrary. Neusner states categorically that "Immigration cannot be simultaneously good for both the employer and the immigrant." That is nonsensical on its face, unless Neusner embraces some Marxist critique that all wage employment is exploitation. Or is it the statement merely a lamentable typo? Two better questions than Neusner's: whether recent immigration has enhanced general welfare, and whether it will continue to do so as those who immigrated and who stay have children and grandchildren who are not immigrants (I think the answer to the latter question may a less emphatic "yes" in Europe than it is here, for reasons having to do with restrictive labor markets in Europe and divergent cultural factors between our respective pools of immigrants). Neusner focuses on the allegedly diminished wages of a seemingly static class of uneducated domestic workers, who therefore allegedly opt out of working. Noam provides evidence (from Borjas) on the first item, but nothing but implausible speculation on the others. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114532411823528296.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries Above is a link to a WSJ piece by Borjas, in which he concludes that Mexican immigration lowered the wages of high school dropouts only, and only by 5% (presumably adjusting for inflation, etc.) from 1980 to 2000. So, for Neusner, who adopts Borjas' analysis, the Mexican effect of lowering a $25,000 wage to $23,750 would cause masses of native-born Americans to lose heart and quit working. That has to be nonsense. Diminution of native-born employment for high-school dropouts is more plausibly caused by other factors. The noneconomist observer notes also that during the latter half of the period covered by Boras and the period since then (so, from the 90s to the present), America has had the lowest unemployment rates in my lifetime. This means that opportunities to leave the ranks of the working poor are plentiful, and recent data on economic mobility bear out that many working poor indeed do move up the ladder (I'll get cites if they are requested), contrary to Neusner's picture of a static class of perpetually grimacing high school drop-outs who quit the labor force because of a minuscule diminution in their wages, during a time of nearly full employment. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927381 This link is to a 2006 scholarly paper by Ottavio and Peri that reaches conclusions contrary to Borjas in all important respects. What Neusner cites as Fact is the result of controversial analysis. Neusner's reliance on Borjas is evidently total, since he does not cite or distinguish any analyses contrary to Borjas. If this Ottavio and Peri piece is stronger than Borjas', will Neusner abandon his viewpoint and publish a retraction?
There are roughly 105 million Mexicans, many with little or no education, living in fly blown poverty, and carrying diseases we had once exterminated in America. Would it be okay for all 105 million to join the 20 million-plus already here? There are about 14 million Guatemalans in the same sorry condition as their Mexican counterparts. Could we please allow them all into America with open arms, too? There are 15 million people in the back waters known as Honduras and El Salvador. Would it be "immoral" to not issue an open invitation and the keys to Anytown, USA? And that's just Central America. How about the rest of the world? In order to be consistent how many of India's 1 billion people -- Communist China's 1.3 billion -- and how many from Africa and the Middle East are we actually supposed to welcome here legally and illegally? When would the nut job multiracialist disciples and their string pullers be satisfied? More and more it seems they'll never be satisfied 'til European Americans (and America) comes to resemble the very places these people come from. These invaders see our inherent "kindness" as a weakness. They want your money, your job and your future and they actually believe they are entitled to it.
“These invaders see our inherent "kindness" as a weakness. They want your money, your job and your future”. hahahahaha
Prejudice, meet Cowardice. I often attibute these sort of comments to Fox News induced paranoia, but you what? Maybe you should be a afraid. Because if any wetback with half a brain can do a better job than you, maybe you don't deserve it in the first place, you lazy redneck tool.
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