“the chief problem that immigration creates ...is that it floods the job market with competitors... actually better that immigrants be illegal, because they cost less.”
“Malthusian nonsense - economically, culturally and morally ignorant. In the original article.”
1) The statement is correct.
2) The statement has nothing to do with Malthus.
The statement is correct:
1A)”illegal immigrants cost less” - is supported by the data that illegal immigrants cost $10 billion in taxpayer susbsidies, but would cost $29 billion if they were legalized. This makes sense, as many programs for low-income people require legal residency or citizenship. An illegal alien making minimum wage today might pay no taxes, but 15 years from now as a citizen would be able to get an EITC subsidy.
1B) As for “it floods the job market with competitors”, surely it is in keeping with the tenets of classical economics that by law of supply and demand a greater supply will lower price at equivalent demand.
2) There is nothing Malthusian about either statement, and perhaps you might retract that nonsense or find a quote from Malthus that would remotely resemble his points. The Malthusians of the modern age are the environmentalist and “Peak oilers” who keep thinking resource limits mean the end of prosperity.
The arguments against unwise immigration have to do with the fact that we are importing illiterate and impoverished people into our country. If it was an okay thing to have 20 million low wage, low skill, barely literate people, we could simply save ourselves $400 billion a year and shut down our education system.
Also, Malthus was an economist and had nothing to say about culture.
No, it is emphatically not standard economics that increasing the working population will impoverish existing workers. But it is doctinaire Malthus.
Malthusian economics predicts that increasing the population will reduce the wage level, that a huge population boom will be accompanied by a huge standard of living fall, and that the wage levels of all countries will converge over time to the level of subsistence. All are directly falsified by actual history. And marginal utility economics explains why.
Wages are set by productivity, not the number of people in the world.
Also, the number of people in the world does not change when one of them crosses a border. Workers in Mexico supply labor just as workers in Arizona do, and capital can move to utilize that labor in either case.
Actual output is what determines the standard of living. Anything that raises it, is economically beneficial not economically harmful. Changes in the utilization of resources that increase overall productivity, enrich those directly concerned, without picking the pocket or breaking the leg of anyone else on earth.
The fact that neither you nor the original article writer understand and of this, is exactly why I called it economically ignorant. You are not the only one. Half the world doesn't understand the point, and still believes Malthus's errors on the subject.
There are excellent arguments against amnesty and against illegal immigration. When instead we get arguments against immigration of any kind, they deserve to lose. Legal immigration (sustainable rates, with assimilation, etc, etc) is not economically harmful to people here. It is so beneficial it has been is the single largest cause of our actual prosperity.
It is politically stupid to try to insist on the point, as well. Not only do you change a position that deserves to win (opposing illegality, lack of control, etc) into one that deserves to lose, you also jettison half your political allies, who will not follow you over that cliff.