White House to halt deportation of young illegal immigrants

[Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by Northside Storm http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2007-.../2007-1-10.htm Right, you keep on throwing out your ad hoc assertions, I keep on pulling reams of literature. I would actually enlighten you on the shifting labour market, but that would require you to read more Card (which I heartily recommend though.)

OK so it lowered wages by 1%. Obviously there are differences across what is considered unskilled labor with those working hard labor or in service industry getting hit harder. Looks like we agree. Good for me, bad for unskilled workers.

[Bandwagoner]

From your article

In a widely-cited 2003 paper studying immigration in general, and in a 2005 paper with Larry Katz focused on Mexican immigration, Borjas combines data from several decennial censuses and divides workers into education-work experience-year "cells" (categories). For example, the highest immigration cell in Borjas (2003) is high school dropouts with 16-20 years of experience in 2000 (50% foreign-born); the lowest immigration cell is high school graduates with 1-5 years of experience in 1960 (1.2% foreign-born). Comparing across cells rather than across regions of the country, he finds that native-born workers in cells that experienced larger increases in immigration, also experienced relatively slower wage growth. His estimates imply an immigration-induced 10% increase in the supply of low-skilled workers reduces low-skilled wages by 4%.

So right now with the raids and million dollar fines, big business and industry shy away from illegal workers. With these previous illegals entering the legal job market who knows what % they will have but the effect is obvious. Higher unemployment and lower wages.

I only attack your source when it has nothing to do with the subject (2002 study on corn prices, 1962 study on unskilled workers) or is laughable (fibrous vegetable kcal/$ vs junkfood) When you recognize these issues and post another article with relevant data less than 20 years old, I talk about it.


Also you seem to believe if you post a wall of text with a link to a paper it makes the information relevant and your argument valid. It doesn't. All of the facts I posted can easily be verified.

Texas is tied for the largest share of the population working at or below min wage. Service industry workers make far below the national average. Second most illegals as a state and probably most as a percentage of workers.

Especially for someone with as much free time as you have. If my facts are flat out wrong or irrelevant to the argument, call me out. If my conclusions are faulty, say something. Claiming intellectual superiority based on lack of links for every single fact without even claiming they are possibly false is childish and makes your argument weaker.

[Northside Storm]

Originally Posted by CaseyH OK so it lowered wages by 1%. Obviously there are differences across what is considered unskilled labor with those working hard labor or in service industry getting hit harder. Looks like we agree. Good for me, bad for unskilled workers.

Um, where did you get that it lowered wages by 1%?

U.S. consumers also benefit to the extent that immigrants drive down the cost of goods and services which use a lot of low-skilled labor, such as household production (maids and nannies).

The price of goods and services don't just reflect labor costs in pure terms. They could just be a reflection of being able to hire more workers at a set lower marginal rate (which doesn't decrease as quantity supplied increases), which in an industry with increasing returns to scale or even constant ones, would drive prices down. In any case, want to fight inflation? Tada!

[Northside Storm]

Originally Posted by CaseyH Especially for someone with as much free time as you have.

I was amused at this personally, because...

Northside Storm
Posts Per Day: 3.41

CaseyH
Posts Per Day: 5.61

Anyways, turning away from that, Casey, sadly even if your facts were verifiable, they imply correlation at best, and are not phrased in terms of a natural experiment or study, and are severely lacking in context (for example, could the harsh labor laws, and "right-to-work" crap present in Texas be more responsible for the dire plight of the unskilled laborers? How do you control for these variables? Do these results have any relevancy on the national stage?). I don't ask for citation for s**ts and giggles, and I don't paste articles for fun. It is obvious me and you are not here to be research analysts, but let's not pretend that what you say stands or not because they are "verifiable". Your facts lack context, and I have no idea of the date they were sourced, where they were sourced from etc. I don't ask you to make your own study, but if you want to prove a fact, do it with citation (please.)

[Northside Storm]

Originally Posted by CaseyH So right now with the raids and million dollar fines, big business and industry shy away from illegal workers. With these previous illegals entering the legal job market who knows what % they will have but the effect is obvious. Higher unemployment and lower wages.

How is it obvious? you cited the Borjas study which is one study to try to prove your point. Borjas himself is known for being a bit of a stickler when it comes to this. He's like the Exxon man for global warming.

Though definitive evidence is hard to come by, because of less-than-perfect data, most studies of the effects of immigration on wages and employment for the native-born find little or no effect. Several economists have gotten around the data limitations by doing what are called “natural experiments,” which in this case are what happen when a sudden influx of immigrants lands in a specific region. David Card of Princeton studied the effects of the arrival of 125,000 Cubans in Miami during the Mariel boatlift in 1980; his conclusion was that there was no significant effect on either employment or earnings. Jennifer Hunt studied the effects of 900,000 people repatriated from Algeria to France in the early 1960s, and similarly found little effect. Ditto Rachel Friedberg’s work on the effects of Russian immigration to Israel in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Interestingly, Card’s Cubans were mostly low-skilled, and Friedberg’s Russians mostly high-skilled—yet both sets of new arrivals had similarly minimal effects. Also, many economists have compared the wage structures (e.g., the gap between the earnings of college graduates vs. high-school dropouts) of cities and states with high and low shares of immigrants, and found the immigrants share of the population to be of little or no influence. Wage structures aside, it also looks like immigration has no effect on broad economic trends—in fact, immigrants are drawn to locations with strong economies, and shun those with weak ones. A simple version of this: most of the cities in the graph below with high immigrant shares had above-average income growth between 1980 and 2000; those with low shares, below-average growth.

But the Harvard economist George Borjas—himself a Cuban immigrant who now acts like he wants to shut the door behind him—argues that comparing local labor markets is wrong, since people and capital are mobile. Native workers might leave a city that had experienced an immigrant influx—or, like immigrants, gravitate towards high-wage cities. Instead, argues Borjas (writing with Lawrence Katz and others), the national labor market is the proper unit of analysis. Borjas & Co., working with heroic models with heroic assumptions about the mobility and substitutability of capital and labor—statistical systems that are always highly susceptible to assumptions—find that high-school dropouts have taken a 4–8% wage hit because of immigration between 1980 and 2000. The rest of the educational distribution took smaller hits. Missing from this analysis are the words “union” and “minimum wage,” making it incomplete and tendentious, since it’s likely that union-busting and the eroding value of the minimum have had more effects than immigration ever could. (Casey---a big problem with you just throwing out your "facts" about Texas is this same lack of context) And there appears to be no evidence that natives actually migrate in the ways that would be required by Borjas’ assumptions. In a recent review of the field, the excellent economist David Card notes that studies like Borjas’ are based on “the belief that labor market competition posed by immigration has to affect native opportunities, so if we don’t find an impact, the research design must be flawed.” Card is very familiar with these convenient assumptions; back in the 1990s, he showed, contrary to the deepest faith of most economists, that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t destroy jobs; economists resisted his evidence because it just couldn’t be true. But it was.

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Immigration.html

[GladiatoRowdy]

Originally Posted by Commodore I disagree with the characterization that this is just different law enforcement priorities. This is ignoring the law entirely, not selective enforcement.

This is the very definition of "selective enforcement." It is saying that we will reduce the law enforcement expenditures on people who fit a certain criteria in order to focus those resources on people who are truly dangerous.

[MiddleMan]

I'm not even mad.

[GladiatoRowdy]

Originally Posted by Sweet Lou 4 2 It's sad because there are so many great ideas that come from the Republican party. So much sound policy. And the biggest victim of how this congress operates isn't the Democratic policy that is getting sidetracked, its the actually logical legitimate ideas from Republicans that would solve problems but are not going to be allowed by House Leadership out of a political need to oust Obama.

Quoted for accuracy.

[Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by Northside Storm I don't ask you to make your own study, but if you want to prove a fact, do it with citation (please.)

I agree to post the sources if you discontinue calling online articles "reams of literature". They aren't.

And when my posts average 1000 words and 5 links like yours, you might be able to compare posts per day.

Casey, sadly even if your facts were verifiable, they imply correlation at best, and are not phrased in terms of a natural experiment or study, and are severely lacking in context (for example, could the harsh labor laws, and "right-to-work" crap present in Texas be more responsible for the dire plight of the unskilled laborers?

Sadly, if you hadn't completely dismissed my post for a lack of links for easily verified information, and it using independent thought, we could be discussing the reasons. I am open to hearing why the correlation is fantasy.

And the previous research really won't apply very well to the current situation. The people we are talking about are already here, not fresh immigrants, and of a specific age bracket higher than average in unskilled labor. They are also solely illegals and not immigrants as a whole. This is just a raising their employment opportunities from illegal to legal.

[Northside Storm]

Originally Posted by CaseyH I agree to post the sources if you discontinue calling online articles "reams of literature". They aren't. And when my posts average 1000 words and 5 links like yours, you might be able to compare posts per day.

Right, Casey. you tell yourself that.

I myself love posting here, so I'll keep on doing it. If you want to imply that it is a waste of time doing so, then so be it, but you might want to consider trimming your posts if so.

Sadly, if you hadn't completely dismissed my post for a lack of links for easily verified information, and it using independent thought, we could be discussing the reasons. I am open to hearing why the correlation is fantasy.

I like links because I don't think either you or me are fully qualified to talk about this, and because for all I know your facts could have come out of thin air. In either case, we are discussing the reasons, and if you are open to hearing why the correlation is fantasy, I just did last post. To summarize briefly one point of contention, it contains no context of shifting labour laws and markets that might have more to do than anything immigration does for unskilled workers.

And the previous research really won't apply very well to the current situation. The people we are talking about are already here, not fresh immigrants, and of a specific age bracket higher than average in unskilled labor. They are also solely illegals and not immigrants as a whole. This is just a raising their employment opportunities from illegal to legal.

If an inflow of immigrants won't affect the labour market, why won't an "inflow" of "legal" immigrants?

Also, this is why I like citation, for all I know you pulled the second fact out of thin air, and despite your assurance that it is verifiable, I don't really want to put in the time to verify it. I have kindly given you the source links for everything I post, I merely ask that you do the same.

[asianballa23]

so will this encourage more illegal aliens living in the US to have more kids? As if they dont have enough already...

or encourage more foreigners to bring their kids here illegally or to com here and start popping out a clan?

[Rocket River]

Originally Posted by GladiatoRowdy This is the very definition of "selective enforcement." It is saying that we will reduce the law enforcement expenditures on people who fit a certain criteria in order to focus those resources on people who are truly dangerous.

and I have an issue with that

Rocket River