I read some articles tonight about the effect of immigration on unemployment and wages. Most accounts say there is negligible effect…perhaps only that native high school dropouts suffer a bit. In general, prices drop and demand rises.
Why the big stink about immigration then if no one can identify it as a wholesale negative?
Without immigration the US would barely have a replacement birthrate. Economic “growth” is all predicated by a need for increasing population. Europe is having fits with its aging population and shrinking workforce. Immigration is a positive.
Immigration, if it is bad at all, is bad for the poor and uneducated. Since those who make laws are largely rich and white, why do they care? Prices in general go down. All the rich whites can afford a gardener or a housekeeper.
Well…that’s a good question….one that has nothing to do with economics. I think there is certain affront to the government that we cannot control our own border. Especially in the face of the “war on terror”.
Also, I think the tall, rich, educated, skilled, white politicians have some sort of instinctive hestitation towards opening the flood gates to short, poor, largely illiterate, unskilled immigrants. It is akin to “losing” the country. The fact that they don’t speak English is probably not helping either.
I have no strong feeling one way or another. I guess I fall into the skilled, white, educated camp (although not rich)….but I don’t care one way or another about “losing” the country.
Losing it to what? To immigrants? Isn’t that how we got here in the first place? We’re all immigrants.
Well…sort of. At the turn of the century everyone was an unskilled worker…..so an influx of more unskilled workers simply increased our labor pool…they were not different than the whiteys who were already here. No one had a high school education. We were all in the same boat so to speak.
Now all the “natives” have college educations and the immigrants not only don’t have high school educations, they don’t even speak English. That makes it a little different than the previous immigrants.
And that is what it comes down to if I had to guess. The “general public” is apprehensive. It is fear of the “unlike”. “Unlike” being a different level of education, different language, and different physical characteristics. Because economists can’t find any overtly negative effect of their influx. They’re just here. They aren’t making us poor or taking our jobs.
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I speak Spanish well enough.
Venga. Me da igual.
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