” He does in fact argue against legal immigration. His whole point and the only one in dispute here, is that the conventional attitude that “legal is good, illegal is bad” is false. “
He does not argue against legal immigration in general, but argues against current existing mix of legal and illegal immigration and how they are intertwined.
You are arguing against a generality that wasnt put forward - that is the strawman. He is making specific claims, most of the them well-backed up by facts.
1) One of them is that legal immigration flows support illegal immigration flows, and I can personally vouch for examples where I’ve seen that happen.
2) Another is the economic argument, and I just would suggest you reread the point. There is a vast difference to impact on “economy” as an abstraction (which may be positive if all you do is sum GDP), and on specific players in the economy, such as taxpayers who get socked with higher tax bills to pay for the welfare for imported impoverished people.
“When a man explicitly says the problem with immigrants is the extra competition they represent for low wage jobs, as the article clearly does, ...”
is he saying anything wrong? Putting some label on the statement doesnt refute it. This line of argument he makes happens to be true.
OTOH, where you are correct is to point out that as a general rule immigrants can and often are a net plus for economy and society. There is a problem here:
`
“Indeed, my point in fighting against the perception that only those against immigration of any kind are against this bill, is precisely to uphold the “illegal bad, legal good” dicotomy that the article is deliberately trying to undermine.”
We are in violent agreement there. I think it is bad politics and to some extent bad policy to mix the two.
I am pro-legal-immigration and anti-illegal-immigration.
Nevertheless, I am basking in the glow of victory (for now) against amnesty.
That argument is fundamentally based on a notorious and notoriously stubborn, nigh ineradicable, piece of economic blockheadness and blindness, apparently all too natural among men. Which originated with Malthus and metastasized into a doctrinal cancer with Marx.
Yes, he is saying something wrong, specifically where you think he is saying something commonsensically right. No, this line of argument that you say is true doesn't happen to be true. Your continued inability to grok that a Malthusian economic theorem is utterly false does not make it basic economics, or obvious, or common sense, or true. It is not false because it is labeled, it is false whether the label is known and understood historically or not.
You acknowledge that immigration has been a net benefit to the economy. OK, how? What is the specific mechanism whereby an increased population of competing workers, *increases* the average net wealth of everyone?
It does. If it didn't, legal immigration on a vast scale would have impoverished this country, when in fact legal immigration on a vast scale made this country the wealthiest society in human history.
We didn't become the wealthiest society in human history by watching the average level of wages sink ever lower as the population rose. Instead, the average level of wages rose relentlessly as population rose. Why? What specific economic mechanism was (and is) at work?
Malthus and Marx, and the adage you sign off on in the article, have no explanation for this patent fact. Marginal utility economics (and specifically the theory of factor incomes) does.
I am glad we agree on political practicalities of opposing illegal immigration, and I am very pleased this horrible bill is dead for now. But to me it is at least as important that people actually grok the economic point, that other men working neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
"Thou shalt not covet" extends to thy neighbor's *job*, as a principle of economics, as well as morality.