Posted on 07/03/2014 11:03:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
IF ANYONE ought to appreciate the power of immigration to stimulate employment, it is America's energetic anti-immigration advocates, whose jobs wouldn't exist if it weren't for the influx of immigrants they spend their days seeking to curtail.
Then again, appreciating anything about immigration — least of all the ironies of our endless debate on the subject — goes against the restrictionists' grain. Fulminating about immigrants is one of America's enduring pastimes, and it doesn't leave a lot of room for wry humor. Or for logical consistency. Which helps explain why immigrants can be depicted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as indolent leeches who flock to the United States to go on welfare — and condemned on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for taking away jobsthat would otherwise go to Americans.
Last week the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors sharp reductions in immigration, released a report purporting to show that all net jobs created in the United States over the past 14 years have gone to immigrants, both legal and illegal. Using data collected by the Census Bureau, the report's authors, Steven Camarota and Karen Ziegler, note that between 2000 and 2014, the number of working-age native-born Americans with jobs declined by 127,000, while the number of immigrants with jobs climbed by 5.7 million.
"This is truly remarkable," Camarota and Ziegler write, "because natives accounted for two-thirds of overall population growth among the working-age population." As a result, the number of US-born natives who don't have jobs — both the unemployed as well as those who have dropped out of the labor force altogether — has swelled by 17 million since 2000. The takeaway? Far more native-born Americans would be working if immigrants hadn't soaked up all the job growth since the turn of the 21st century.
But the report's incendiary conclusion — "What employment growth there has been has all gone to immigrants" — doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
To begin with, the number of native-born Americans working in 2014 has not declined since 2000. It has increased by 2.6 million. The authors of the report acknowledge as much — in an endnote, on page 17. It is only by excluding the record-high cohort of workers 65 and older, one of the fastest-growing age groups in the labor market, that Camarota and Ziegler can claim that immigrants are taking all the available new jobs. But it is just as plausible to blame the long-term stagnation in the employment of "working-age" American natives on older employees as on those born in other lands. Should senior citizens who wish to work be forced to retire at 65?
In the zero-sum world of the anti-immigrant advocates, foreign-born workers can only gain at the expense of the native-born. But in the real world, immigration generally enlarges the economy, boosts productivity, and adds jobs. Immigrants amount to less than 13 percent of the US population. Yet 28 percent of all new American companies launched in 2011, as Rupert Murdoch wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay last month, were founded by immigrants.
Broadly speaking, immigrant workers and US-born workers are not substitutes but complements; because they tend to have different skills, they generally don't compete for the same jobs. Immigrants are more likely to be employed at the high or low ends of the labor market, explains Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, while most Americans have skills in the middle. Supplying the immigrant skills needed by the economy simultaneously enlarges demand for native skills.
Restrictionists hint at some kind of inverse correlation between gains in employment for US-born and foreign-born workers, but they can't show what doesn't exist. Look past their tendentious presentation of the data, as Nowrasteh wrote about an earlier Center for Immigration Studies report, and you notice that for the most part "net gains in employment for natives and immigrants move in the same direction." When natives gain, immigrants gain, and vice versa. We all work in the same labor market.
Which isn't to say that all workers are created equal. Not only are immigrants disproportionately entrepreneurial, they are also more likely to move to wherever work is to be found. Almost by definition, newcomers to the United States are self-selected for mobility and flexibility. Less encumbered by local ties, they're quicker to take advantage of employment opportunities. Their hustle is admirable, not a cause for resentment.
Immigrants aren't taking jobs that "belong" to Americans. They are fueling the economic engine that creates more opportunity for everyone, and we would be poorer by far without them.
Like the RINOs, I too believe the US needs way more immigration. Unlike the RINOs. I believe in the deportation or incarceration of every illegal.
wow, talk about open border propaganda. The only gains in employment are among older people, a lot doing greeter jobs to stay solvent. So we import illegal slaves to take away the starter jobs that kids used to do. Talk about trying to polish a coprolite.
Increased supply reduces prices.
So if you’re a poor legal American, you should know that illegals are cutting your paycheck.
What hogwash. Americans have skills at every point on the employment spectrum. And the above is putting out the same sort of nonsense where the same open borders advocates claim there is a big STEM worker shortage, when facts show that there is a surplus and many cannot find work in the field for which they prepared.
And, unfortunately, many of our lower skill citizens are on one or more poverty programs, and taking a lower paying job would yield them less than government programs.
With all the Americans who are unemployed, underemployed and on government poverty programs, there is probably no shortage of workers in any field.
My brother had to let go his entire construction crew of African-American and white workers when he had to close his construction company because he could not compete with the cheaters who were hiring exclusively illegal aliens.
Of course the same thing goes for Americans. Some children grow up to become net contributors while others consume.
I posted this recently that Meg Whitman, when she was running for Governor of California, said that the state had about 13% of America’s population but about 35% of its welfare recipients. And CA is, I believe, the state with the highest percentage of immigrants in the nation. So, what does this say about the benefits of immigration? Remember, even with legal immigration, we (the U.S. government) wants people from the Third World to come here and not people like the kind who made America the envy of the world in so many ways.
It's mostly the fault of payroll taxes, but we can't get rid of those because grandma might have to give up bingo.
We have brought in 27 million legal permanent immigrants since 1990. The last two decades have been the two highest in our history. So where is this great economy that resulted from this massive inflow of foreign labor?
“Which helps explain why immigrants can be depicted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as indolent leeches who flock to the United States to go on welfare — and condemned on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for taking away jobsthat would otherwise go to Americans. “
No inconsistency there. We’ve let enough illegals in that there are enough to both take jobs and clog the welfare rolls. That’s not even counting those who work for low wages or cash under the table AND collect benefits at the same time.
“In the zero-sum world of the anti-immigrant advocates, foreign-born workers can only gain at the expense of the native-born”
When you have high unemployment, it really is a zero-sum game. Since there are no free jobs, and very few new jobs being created, then the jobs immigrants take must come from somewhere, and it’s not from the “job fairy”.
The only way you can make the case that there is a worker shortage is if we were at zero unemployment (or effectively zero, when you exclude the disabled and the shiftless). Since we aren’t, that kind of claim is just laughable.
It appears that Townhall is yet another “conservative” website that is slip-sliding away toward RulingEliteville”.
I’m removing the site from my favorites.
“Which helps explain why immigrants can be depicted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as indolent leeches who flock to the United States to go on welfare — and condemned on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for taking away jobsthat would otherwise go to Americans.”
And the fact of the matter is that both statements are true.
Since they get both jobs and welfare with fake IDs, there is nothing to stop them from working and drawing welfare/food stamps.
Pedro works in construction either for cash, or with a fake ID claiming 10 dependents. No taxes paid, no need to file tax returns.
Pedro’s wife works as a maid with fake ID and claims single with 5 dependents. She gets a huge EIC check back from the IRS, along with welfare, food stamps, and section 8 housing.
Together they get about $60K a year in cash, and the taxpayers pay all their living expenses!
bump
True, this article is pure hogwash
I suppose this was long ago but I remember when Fresno, CA was designated an All American city. I’m not sure what that meant but I used to think that it was a very nice little city which apparently had done a number of things pretty well to become a place to be recognized and awarded and also to be emulated, you would think. But recently here I saw an a post about high crime problems now plaguing Fresno. And all the stuff I’ve read by Victor Davis Hanson, who lives near Fresno on a family farm, describing how things are changing for the worse where he’s lived for decades.
Anyway, seriously, in just this one place, Fresno, CA, what are the good things to say that the influx of immigrants has brought to the area.
I think people like Jeff Jacoby and Michael Medved and Larry Kudlow and on and on just have a mindset that is inconsistent with the TRUTH when it comes to immigration.
Saw that happen in SoCal 20 plus years ago....and it's happening in OK now too!!
A person that see's..can tell what's happening.
What a load of drivel. Illegal immigration has driven blue-collar wages down. And in 2002, during the IT slump (that I got caught up in), a half-million H1-B visa holders were brought in, even though they are only supposed to be hired if there are no Americans for the job. Half of science and engineering grads in this country don’t land jobs in their field. It’s all about keeping American wages down.
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