https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216
Theft.
Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.
And besides the guy who breaks in, who is the real beneficiary of the wealth? The fencer...the pawn shop owner.
Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer. And the additional profits are so large that the economic pie accruing to all natives actually grows. I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year. Immigrants, too, gain substantially; their total earnings far exceed what their income would have been had they not migrated.
So illegal immigration tends to **** over blue collar American workers. It is great for the immigrants coming into the country, their position massively improved. It is also great for business owners who can now get the same level of production at a much lower rate. When you guys bitch about income inequality, does this ever enter the equation?
Oh but wait, there's more theft.
When we look at the overall value of immigration, there’s one more complicating factor: Immigrants receive government assistance at higher rates than natives. The higher cost of all the services provided to immigrants and the lower taxes they pay (because they have lower earnings) inevitably implies that on a year-to-year basis immigration creates a fiscal hole of at least $50 billion—a burden that falls on the native population.
What does it all add up to? The fiscal burden offsets the gain from the $50 billion immigration surplus, so it’s not too farfetched to conclude that immigration has barely affected the total wealth of natives at all. Instead, it has changed how the pie is split, with the losers—the workers who compete with immigrants, many of those being low-skilled Americans—sending a roughly $500 billion check annually to the winners. Those winners are primarily their employers. And the immigrants themselves come out ahead, too. Put bluntly, immigration turns out to be just another income redistribution program.
So the powers that be will use emotional appeals and will accuse you of things like racism because they and their corporate backers are getting filthy rich off of this process. If you don't think so, have Rockfish post one of his income inequality graphs and compare the timeframe when income inequality explodes to when Reagan (mistakenly) enacted the first amnesty.
yes, the working class has absolutely taken a huge financial hit from mass immigration.
and a psychological one as well, as their employment stability and working conditions take on huge punches to the gut as well, not to mention their ability to take care of their family.
on the other side, even you yourself would never back a world were a person's and his family's entire lot in life, and their safety, all hinges on which side of a man made line drawn on a map they were born, were it you born on the wrong side of that line.
we can all claim our ancestors did this or that to make this nation what it is, but we aren't the ones who built it, and we're just taking credit for the deeds of others when we think we deserve the privilege of being born on the lucky side of the line.
while you totally grasped the message in the article that addressed that absolute fact that the working class have had their lives significantly altered in a negative way by mass immigration, you totally missed the main point of the article.
which was, that there are 2 sides to this crisis, and that both sides have valid life altering ramifications hanging in the balance.
that said, nobody else on this board grasps the "2 sides to the story" thing either, nor is getting that point even of importance to them.
neither you nor the other posters from both sides here are concerned with solving the crisis, only with using it flame the divide.
the political strategy of "never let a good tragedy go to waste", is never so played out than with the immigration debate by both sides.
neither side makes any attempt what so ever to solve the problem for both the working class and the immigrants, but only care about solving it for one side while giving a big "fk u" to the other.
and not solving it for both sides will never bring a lasting solution, because until it's solved for both sides, the other side will never stop attacking a one sided solution that only solves anything for the other side.
the working class took a huge financial and mental hit from mass immigration.
most everyone else financially benefited from it. some immensely.
that said, the working class isn't some obscure niche group. they are the majority of Americans, and the ones who make everything work.
the owner class has made out like bandits financially from mass immigration.
immigrants are never going to stop trying to get into the US,
NEVER, and for the economics and financial winners and losers of immigration, it's really totally irrelevant whether they are legal or illegal, as the financial impact, negative or positive, is the same regardless of legal status.
the only lasting, as well as fair, solution to the issue is to allow those unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side of the line to be able to cross to the better side of the line, and for the working class to NOT have to take a life changing financial hit for allowing the less lucky to make that crossing, while the already financially better off make out like bandits financially.
easier said than done, but a living minimum wage, more protectionist policies that keep jobs on shore, a union friendly environment where the ones doing most of the work can leverage some of the gains as well, and a medicare for all type universal health care system, would be good starting points.
as far as who finances things, you can't get blood out of a turnip, and those making the big bucks, are also the ones who have made out great financially from mass immigration.
thus we need tax policies more akin to the days when things weren't so unequal financially, and to shift much of the mass immigration costs from those being killed financially from mass immigration, to those benefiting greatly from it.
immigrants looking for a better life will be much more accepted by the working class, when the working class aren't the ones taking it up the backside from mass immigration, while everyone else benefits from it and can easily take the high road, because it isn't their ox that's being gored.
of course to get that done, everyone needs to say fk u to both political parties and both parties' Wall St mandated economic agendas, and start addressing all issues on their own merit.
