This is the usual diatribe of the capitalist class - “we need more workers or productivity will fall”. What they really want is low wages for unskilled and skilled workers. Immigrants keep wages low because there is a larger pool of people who will accept anything because they don’t have much choice. Around here, a far suburb of philadelphia, I saw a pt job for $10-12 /hr with bachelors degree preferred. This is typical of what i see because I look everyday. Capitalism is based on continuous never-ending growth, sorta like a cancer tumor. Limited growth with less people consuming less resources is a good thing for the Earth and the majority of people inhabiting it. It’s good for everyone except the capitalist owner class.
7
The U.S. economy needs immigration but the right kind of immigration. We need individuals with the skills in strong demand in our economy, e.g. engineers and medical professionals. While employers of unskilled labor may want more unskilled immigrants who won’t complain about low pay and bad working conditions, overall the U.S. does not need more unskilled labor. The unskilled laborer who makes minimum wage and brings over their elderly non-working parents is not going to solve the problem of the social security fund being depleted by the ever growing number of retirees.
The employers who complain that they can’t find non immigrant labor to fill jobs need to remember that the laws of supply and demand have not stopped functioning. If you want to attract workers that will show up every day and do a good job, then provide the pay and benefits and working conditions to attract and retain those type of workers. Do not pay minimum wage. Do not offer zero vacation time. Do not send workers home after they showed up for a full days work but your company is not that busy. Do not put employees on a flex schedule where you can tell them 8 hours before work starts to not come into work. Etc.!
3
We don't "need" continued economic growth. What we do need, however, are more reasonable expectations about continued overconsumption of -- everything.
8
I would love to know who these immigration geniuses like Stephen Miller think will take care of our very elderly and disabled citizens. When my father was ill, in an area of the country that is predominately white, every night time caregiver came from a different part of Africa, the Caribbean, or Latin America. The work is challenging, the pay is terrible, and the level of need is critical.
As our population ages, this will become a far greater crisis as the Trump administration's slashing of immigration as well as worker protections makes American born workers ever less likely to do this vital job.
2
These arguments always appear circular to me. We need more people to do more work to increase productivity to increase consumption - which then only results in the need for more people! In the meantime, we are "consuming" the world to an early death with all the attendant problems of pollution and overpopulation.
Our immigration selection process should be both selective as well as reward those who apply through legal channels. American citizenship is a prize and it took Blacks almost four centuries, really right up to about 50 years ago, to achieve it in full measure and start to benefit - and we're still not there yet.
The only people who unrestricted immigration enriches are the affluent, who can afford to pay others substandard wages to do the jobs they don't want to do. It benefits business owners who pay frightened illegals substandard wages - with no protections and benefits - further depressing wages, a living wage, for American citizens.
Stop the insanity! Less is more.
6
Pay people well. Make the job enjoyable. Any job can be enjoyable if people are respected and not overworked. So you have to bend and pick vegetables for a while? Fine. Just make it four hours and not twelve. Maybe this means hiring more people for shorter shifts. Maybe it means paying them a living wage, offering health care. Oh, what? Can't afford that? That's why we need universal coverage. And a national retirement program. Then people could move more freely in the market and take jobs like picking vegetables.
1
Did anyone tell Mick that Trump’s beloved Norwegians won’t come here and work for minimum wage? Do you think he knows?
1
On the one hand, more growth for the sake of growth must not be our goal. Restraining consumption to minimize climate change is far more important.
On the other hand, any business people, and all supposedly pro-growth Republicans, who supported and still support Trump: You are reaping what you sowed. Nobody is going to feel sorry for anyone who played any part in inflicting that monster on the country, who now cries that he can't find enough workers. Hatred doesn't pay, except for cynical politicians perhaps.
2
If a business owner doubled the salary and raised the price of goods, would his domestic and foreign competitors do the same? Will the consumers be willing or afford to pay more?
If not, the owner will be out business.
Another elephant in the room is automation. When the cost of labor becomes high, automation will be introduced to displace the labor. Then how will the moneyless unemployed buy products made by robots?
I don't see how needing and wanting "legal" immigrants is at odds with a crackdown on illegal entry. If anything, I would think that legal immigrants would prefer a destination that upholds the rule of law as a bedrock of their future prosperity and overall welfare.
3
@Charles Becker, Trump and his administration mouthpieces have said, for the most part, this country is “full”. “We don’t need more immigration.” It has also conveyed that message so successfully that legal immigration has decreased markedly in line with decreased immigration quotas posed by Trump.
In addition to that, Trump and McConnell have refused to take up legislation to solve the immigration issues we have in this country. As a country, we need to address employer needs, educational needs, cultural challenges of immersion to American culture and the costs as well as the benefits of immigration.
And I agree with @McGloin, it seems that corporations have wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. Illegal immigration has created a cheap, subservient labor source that saved them money (including Trump Inc.), but cost our social service net by covering healthcare costs through the local ED and Medicaid.
2
We may need more immigration for economic growth, but that shouldn’t be the objective. The objective should be better standard of living for those that are here already, no matter what their race, ethnicity or origin to this country.
If our current administration wants to make it more attractive for educated, multilingual, loyal and hard working people to come and remain here, then our country has to offer better opportunities for all, including the people who are already here. We do have plenty of people to fill jobs here, but the incentives and opportunities to train here for those jobs are less available than they ever have been.
Career opportunities in healthcare, education, and engineering are plentiful. Access to the education to meet requirements for those jobs aren’t as accessible to the people that are already here. There are also personal care attendant, qualified child care providers are needed, people to repair our roads and water and electrical infrastructure are needed. The missing piece is financing the education and the benefits and incomes to pay people a living wage for these jobs. If people get paid appropriately, that money will circulate in our economy. When workers don’t get healthcare benefits or adequate pay, corporations save money and taxpayers pick up the slack. I’m tired of subsidizing corporations and rich people.
4
More immigrants who are more illegal is their plan.
Here is a real immigration plan:
Make legal immigration take 2 years instead of decades.
Greatly increase judges and others responsible for processing immigrants and making sure they are not a danger to us.
Give everyone the same employee rights and enforce them equally so that illegal immigrants are not good weapons against citizens. (I use the phrase "illegal immigrants" because that is how employers use them against citizens and control them as cheap labor.)
End the drug war (which only rewards violent criminals with higher prices because demand does not change with the price) to reduce pressure on the borders.
Let the Dreamers go through the two year process here.
The owners of capital created open borders for themselves at the same time that they closed the borders for labor. This is a manipulation of the labor market by employers. It creates major bargaining chips for the employers that lets them drive down the price of labor. They can threaten you with, or replace your with, illegal immigrants. They can threaten to, or actually, ship your job to a low wage country.
Essentially, the problem with the Right-Wing plan for immigration is that it is a scam specifically designed to create an underclass of workers. Then they talk the people they fired into blaming the immigrant instead of the guy that fired them.
This article shows that none of this is an accident.
Democrats need to put together a real policy.
9
WRONG. Not slow. CONTRACT. The economy world-wide will CONTRACT in approximately 20 years at the current birth-rate projections.
This is due to generational momentum. This CANNOT be stopped, only slowed.
In that way it's a lot like global warming. It CANNOT be stopped, only slowed.
So part of the conversation needs to be about how society will adapt to a world where there are fewer people every year for at least an entire generation while global temperatures continue to rise.
2
Essentially promoting a pyramid scheme of population growth for economic growth. At some point the scheme collapses and we all pay for it. Let’s not keep promoting population growth as the only solution, can’t keep growing forever
3
Of course they’re hurting for more immigrants the question is what color they prefer them to be...
4
“He wanted them (immigrants) in a legal fashion.” Translation:
“He wants them in an English fashion”!, i.e. white people only.
4
Well, you can now expect this guy to get fired.
1
So Trump builds wall on the Mexican border and then Mulvany goes to England to beg for more immigration. I guess Norway would've been too obvious.
3
They're not against immigration. They're against brown people, here or abroad. The base loves him for it. And the Republicans are scared out of their minds of the base and its demagogue. White conservative Trumpies are the only real, hard working, patriotic Americans. It's their country and they can do whatever they want to. Or so they tell us. The truth is not so exciting: The Democrats want sane, safe, and humane immigration and border policies. They were part of several such bipartisan plans which were deep-sixed by Trump and his Republicans. In order to get reelected, Trump needs to demagogue immigration. If the problem were solved, he would have nothing to work with.
6
Hilarious. Why would anybody with a choice move here? No universal health care, no parental leave, no sick leave on many jobs, no overtime (thanks Trump!), no 35-hour work weeks, and no real vacation time. What are they smoking over there?
6
Funny - my company is currently going through a round of layoffs and the only people that seem to be avoiding the ax are the h1b visa holders. They are essentially cheap indentured servants as the company owns their visa.
7
"Immigrants are critical to expanding the United States’ labor pool."
Based on an American refusal/disregard for domestic uneducated and poorly educated citizens, immigrants are critical to expanding the US labor pool. How many Americans are in the labor trash heap because of a national commitment to the assumption they cannot be educated to meet our critical labor requirements?
Show us the proof that the unemployed and underemployed are uneducable.
Anyone ever observed illegal discrimination based on gender, race, age, etc. regardless of the law? All those folks cannot do the critical jobs? I watched women get second class treatment my entire career, etc. Age discrimination, rampant.
Hiring and training on the basis of merit awaits major improvement based on my many years in the labor market. This is not me whining. I saw forbidden bias stopping people constantly.
Immigrants of great merit on the job? Absolutely, yes. Hard national commitment to improving the quality of the domestic workforce. Not for a minute by either major political party.
Let's get serious about training the workforce.
5
Mulvaney, the man who carries the water for the payday lenders, just showed his true colors: he's a toady for big business which loves exploitable labor.
3
The post-2016 part of that bar chart says all that needs to be said. In a word, duh.
3
The Times and others are playing a transparent game of blending various, distinct groups under the umbrella terms “immigrants” or “migrants” then pretending administration efforts to protect against illegal immigration are attacks against the entire umbrella group.
Nobody buys this but the same people who are already fully-owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. Try another approach
2
I know plenty of people already here who need work. We have millions of part-time workers looking for full-time jobs. Maybe Trump and Mulvaney can start up the slave trade again because slaves is what they are really looking for. They don’t want pay people liveable wages nor do any Republicans.
3
Yet those people aren’t willing to go to where the work is, unlike immigrants who will brave a dangerous trek across Central America to get here.
Another article trying to call people who trespass into the US immigrants or undocumented workers or whatever shady name one can make up.
Most are not opposed to legal and orderly immigration. What most don’t want is an influx of people from south of the border to waltz in and be allowed to stay under the guise of being an immigrant. It’s patently unfair to those in the rest of the world who follow the letter of the law and are offered citizenship.
3
This is like a Sophie's choice for the GOP. On the one hand, the economy suffers without more immigrants. If Trump was not limiting immigration, this economy might really be raging, making him and the GOP look better. On the other hand, fewer immigrants means fewer taxes to fund social Security and Medicare, giving them fuel for their long-term dream of cutting those programs.
2
This is one of the more misleading articles I have read in a while. Yes, “Gross domestic product growth comes from two main ingredients: population and productivity gains.” But only productivity gains lead to improvements in the quality of life; more people doing the same things in the same ways don’t add to the original population’s standard of living.
The U.S. may want to increase or decrease immigration flows to iron out natural demographic fluctuations such as the baby boom. But elevating GDP growth to a goal in itself will lead to long run disaster. Not only does GDP growth based on population increases not increase living standards, it also makes our economy dangerously dependent on an unsustainable source of economic growth.
There are plenty of reasons to argue that international migration is a good thing and makes life more interesting. It may even make societies more productive in some indirect ways. In the long run, however, an economic system that cannot adjust to a stable population will crash; our planet cannot support an indefinitely increasing human population and the time of reckoning may be closer than we all realize.
1
The birth rate in the United States is about 1.8 children per woman. A nation needs about 2.1 births per woman to maintain its population.
As the Baby Boomers retire and eventually die off, without immigration there will be fewer people here. In a crowded world, that may be a good thing but it will cause problems here.
An aging population is less productive but it also needs more health care workers to care for the elderly. So as the economy becomes less productive over-all, it also has to divert resources for the retired.
Trump has been wrong about legal and illegal immigration all along. Those immigrants along the Southern border are the exact type of immigrants this nation needs. They are young and they have children.
They also want jobs and they willingly take jobs that native born Americans avoid.
We need another president. One that has a clue.
2
@Tahuaya Armijo
The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950. The US may now be characterized as ‘overpopulated’.
Increased population does NOT translate to a better quality of life. In fact, it places a tremendous strain and burden upon everything and everyone...including the environment. We need fewer people, not more..
4
Yet another example of the Republican Party and it’s ally the Chamber of Commerce trading the country’s future good fortunes for more power and Trump narcissism today (eg, added to the slowing population growth problem, the blooming GOP deficit etc...).
1
Why would people from a country that has universal health care, like most of Europe, want to come here? Only the extremely wealthy that can afford our exorbitant health care cost would want to immigrate. Or the relatively unskilled third world workers Trump doesn't want.
2
Earth simply can't sustain limitless population growth. Bringing in more immigrants might help with the retiring Baby Boom generation, but we have to find some other long-term solution very, very quickly. We are already seeing countless species at or near the brink of extinction and serious climate disruptions because there are simply too many of us. The best thing to do is to try to figure out how all of us, not just the US, can cut back on, not expand, our populations.
6
Immigration is not expanding the population. It’s moving the existing population around.
6
The UN predicts the worldwide population will level off at around 12 billion, and they have an excellent factual record with population predictions. We're need to plan for a world with about 12 billion people in it - population is not going to increase forever. The best ways to slow growth, BTW, are addressing extreme poverty, and educating and providing opportunity to women. When people are not so desperately poor and their children are not perishing, they have less children. When women are educated and have the opportunity to better their lives, they have less children.
1
Depends on the nationality and religion of those who we invite in. Europeans 1-2 children, Asian 1-2 children, Hispanics,especially Catholic ones 3-6 kids. I am not criticizing any race, but it is worth differentiating them in terms of potential reproduction. Most are not opposed to any race, but immigration does need to be fair and equitable with people from around the world and not just south of the border.
1
Why is growth = good an unquestioned given?
When do we stop focusing on the never-ending need for growth and develop sustainable systems?
13
When he says growth, what he really means to say is make more money. These immigrants don’t just work, they also buy things.
It’s entirely about money. Entirely.
3
Are you serious? The answer is: Capitalism. That's how it works. It is insatiable. No growth = economic collapse.
It is a myth that immigration is required or even desired for economic growth. China now has the largest economy in the world with no immigration. The difference is they are entirely focused on educating their own citizens instead of being reliant on immigrants to do their heavy lifting. It is a liability in the long run that the United States is so dependent on foreigners for its long term success.
11
@John
Nonsense.
1. To start with, immigrants are NOT foreigners - at least they should not remain so. People immigrate mostly with the aim/desire to _become American_.
And in many cases they immigrate _already educated_, and often educated much better than we educate our citizens.
2. Second, it's a fact that all developed countries (US, Europe, Canada, Japan) have aging populations. They need new blood, either by having more babies (ain't happening) or by welcoming newcomers from abroad.
The US is luckier than other developed countries in this regard - its population is less skewed toward elders. Why is it "lucky" this way? Precisely _because_ of immigration to the US.
Yes, in the long run the US needs to educate its citizens - and even in the short run. And it needs more _young_ citizens, which immigration provides.
[A "modest proposal", speaking purely of what's best for our capitalist economy (which is NOT the way to think), might consider, instead of restricting an inflow of young immigrants, exporting our elders.]
3. Third, China, although also an aging population, has a _gigantic_ underdeveloped rural population, which has been pouring, and will continue to pour, into the cities and become incorporated in the industrial labor pool. This is internal migration.
The equivalent, for the US, is immigration from our "hinterland" - in particular Latin America. The added bonus is that such immigrants are young and have more children that the average US couple.
1
China is facing a labor shortage of untold proportions with an aging population that could crash their maturing economy, which is why the one child policy was repealed.
2
@John
Not a myth John. And what are Republicans doing that's positive for education?
2
Immigrants provide low level labor which Americans are unwilling to perform, but gives them a foothold to attain higher goals for themselves and their offspring. Also when employed, they produce taxes which shore up Social Security, and they become consumers of products and services which corporations want to sell. Building a wall is an emblem of hatred and bullying. Separating families and locking children in cages is cruel and a recipe for radicalization. Providing a work force with education and good health results in the overall strength of the country.
9
A note to those who have commented to the effect that employers want more immigration in order to get "cheap labor". I lead a manufacturing company, so I think I have some experience in this area. Here's the truth from my perspective:
No, we're not looking for cheap labor. We're looking for employees who, for a fair wage, will show up to work consistently. We need employees who have a level of education required to operate equipment, some of it complex. Some of our manufacturing positions can be repetitive and require physical activity ... so they need to be prepared for this. For the sake of their safety and that of co-workers, they can't show up to work in a condition where their cognitive skills are diminished.
For the above, we pay well (average hourly wage greater than $17.00 per hour), provide excellent medical benefits, paid vacation and personal time and have a well funded 401(k) program.
Over the past 20 years, these jobs have been deemed by many as "undesirable" and finding employees has become increasingly difficult. Yes, many positions have been filled by legal immigrants as my company has done E-Verify screening over this time frame. But fewer and fewer native born citizens either apply for or stick with jobs at a manufacturing company. The work is "too difficult" or isn't more appealing than sorting and processing packages at a distribution warehouse or taking orders at a fast food restaurant.
That's the fact of the matter.
407
@Bruce Simple supply and demand states that if you have trouble filling a position for a certain wage then you need to increase the wage to fill the position. What you advocate is gaming the system by increasing the supply of labor. What you claim is a fair labor price obviously isn't accepted as a fair price by those you would try to recruit. Instead you want to increase the supply of labor so you can keep more of the profits of the output. In other words, game the system so the rich get richer.
156
@Bruce. Yes, this is what people refuse to admit. Ambitious, hardworking immigrants will take the jobs that native born Americans will not. Many Americans seem to feel entitled to a soft life.
49
@Bruce
There are supply and demand curves for labor and where those two curves intersect sets the price for labor. Instead, businesses today set the price of low wage labor artificially low and then claim no one will do the job. Supply and demand tells us that the businesses need to respond by raising wages, not by encouraging an endless supply of first generation immigrants to undertake their poor paying jobs for the cheapest.
122
We want wealthy immigrants from Denmark and Norway, because, you know, these folks like to pick vegetables.
9
I was wondering when this confession by Mulvaney would make it into headlines.
There are a lot of anti-immigrant sentiments being expressed here often in the guise of not wanting immigrants to be exploited or assuming they would rob our jobs.
No mention of the way immigrants have revitalized the economy of innumerable small towns as they start businesses and restaurants for example. Or what genuine gifts of intellect and imagination they might import here.
Even those who purport to be concerned for their welfare assume they worthless as full human beings—a step above beasts of burden.
10
Thank you! I’ve been troubled for a long time by the attitudes of people here toward immigrants. You nailed it.
8
Of course they want more cheap labor.
That's what unregulated, profits before people, capitalism is about.
After 40 years you would think they would come to the conclusion that Reaganomics is a failure?
6
The health and well-being of the planet cannot afford more people, more immigration, more consumerism, more waste, more overpopulation, more pollution.
Burdening the country with even more people is contributing to climate change, the degradation of nature, and is an environmental stressor.
3
The thing about being on one planet, it really doesn’t matter what country someone lives in when it comes to climate change. Everybody contributes to emissions and while Americans are especially high energy consumers, we are not especially high polluters on a per capita basis.
1
@Ashley
Illogical.
Immigration doesn't add to world population.
In fact, young immigrants to the US _lower_ world population, because families are smaller as standard of living rises.
1
If legal immigration has been slowing, how much of that is due to our immigration services having to divert time and resources to handling asylum seekers at the border and illegal aliens already in the country? The article mentions that the influx of illegal aliens has been reduced as well, but to achieve that, how many legal applications for entry and work permits have we had to shelve for lack of personnel to process them?
In a way, it’s a zero sum game. While we need immigrants — skilled, English-speaking individuals who will contribute more to our economy than the resources of which they will avail themselves — the same institutions that would enable us to welcome them are instead burdened with handling the onslaught of people who want to come to the US because they and the generations before them failed to make their own countries livable.
Arguments will continue to be hashed and rehashed about how immigration beneficial vs bad because they stagnate or lower wages.
If you want to bring about real change, stop voting for politicians who are in the pockets of corporations. But a large number of people who are against immigration will vote for republicans who have shown clearly and unequivocally time and time again that they do not care for little people and that they will do everything in their power to transfer YOUR money to their corporate masters.
There is just no denying this truth. Until you start voting for people who actually care about your welfare, we don't want to watch you throw silly feats over immigration.
4
So has anyone read or heard Angela Merkel's speech on immigration to Germans ? In it she states why America is great & an economic powerhouse! Immigrants! From everywhere! Germans are just beginning to reap the benefits of Syrians! Anyone ,absolutely any one who is in the US , must be covered by human rights covered in our Constitution. Tired of people selectively reading what they want to. So tired of an administration of ill informed, badly educated people pandering to an infantile President.
7
Why don’t they pass hr1044 quickly in the senate then?? That will remove caps on countries with large number of engineers! They are driving away Indians and Chinese, especially Indians where it not take 120 years to get a green card. And the Indian immigration queue hasn’t budged for last two years.... these are serious concerns. At the pretext of illegal immigration they are also hurting legal immigration.
1
Have Steven Miller and his Alt-right friends (if any) pick veggies. All the raw food you can eat and let them openly carry their guns in the fields.
Worker problem solved.
7
NYT: Would you please, please revert to the way you used to label photographs: Name all of the known people in the image, and in what order each appears from right or left, top or bottom. You simply cannot assume that every reader, now or in future decades or centuries, will automatically recognize who’s who, nor assume that people whose faces don’t appear head-on or in sharp focus are not the subject of the image. If someone’s image is worth keeping in a piece of photojournalism, and not cropped out or a different photo of the primary subject used, then s/he/they deserve to be named if possible and if doing so won’t cause them harm.
1
Given everything that we know about this administration starting with the criminal in the White House it is foolish and a waste of resources to report on anything they say. Let's focus exclusively on what they do and the policies they implement. The most powerful office on the planet is being occupied by a pathological liar devoid of any moral compass and/or conscience. He's surrounded himself with sycophants and nincompoops eager to do his bidding. Forget the tweets and all the other nonsense. Continue to uncover and report on what they do.
2
I make it a habit to NEVER to believe a Trump aide. Like their master they lie.
2
The Left: Overpopulation is a problem and is killing our environment.
Also the Left: We must import an unsustainable level of immigrants into our already environmentally burdened country.
Pick one guys..... pick one.
2
I don’t like overpopulation doomsayers. They remind me of Thomas Malthus, whose ideas paved the way for a form of social Darwinism which said poor people dying off is a good thing for the planet. I don’t agree. More people is a resource. Technology grows exponentially and we find new ways to care for ourselves and the planet.
1
@Mystery Lits
Immigration to the US _reduces_ world population. Families with a higher standard of living have fewer children.
1
Malthus, himself, was concerned with improving social welfare and releasing the lower classes from poverty. But that isn’t how his ideas influenced those who followed him. Quite the opposite. I worry about the same thing now. That well-meaning concerns about overpopulation will lead to wealthy people “pulling up the drawbridge” and leaving the rest of the world to fend for themselves, believing that the world will ultimately be better off without them.
1
"Why a Top Trump Aide Said ‘We Are Desperate’ for More Immigrants"
Why?
Mick Mulvaney, who has an occasional mental problem, had it happen again - Mulvaney accidentally let the truth slip out.
Mick seems to lack the ability to completely distance himself from reality - it seems like a real liability to someone high in the Trump administration. For now. But if Mulvaney slips up too much more, don't worry... Trump is "behind him 1000%". See you, Mick.
2
Immigration for economic growth is a Ponzi scheme.
5
The threat of the Corona virus is going to require that more immigrants are available for jobs that Americans do not take. That work includes cleaning schools and restaurants and businesses so that people will not be infected in them. More cleaning will reduce infection rates, but who is there to do that work?
2
If you want some perspective on what it is like for a comfortable middle-class person to immigrate to the US, read The Nordic Theory of Everything. The author moved here for a relationship. She outlines the stress of no insurance, the stress her peers with children have over education, the anxiety about taking days off, the daily worries she had to suddenly confront that were ever present in her life in Finland. It's a great read and it clearly shows how cheated we are as middle-class tax payers. We bear much more of the burdens of modern Life due to our vastly unfair tax system that favors the wealthy and companies. Guess what, companies in Europe make money and wealthy people do just fine living in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Do believe the propaganda coming from the corporate media in this Country.
4
More people working and getting paychecks and then spending those paychecks. Rinse and repeat every two weeks or so. Why doesn't Trump understand this?
5
Producing a lot of children as a woman might seem like a good idea to politics. But how are you going get enough income to support your kids if you are not able to afford childcare?
1
Well, some people rely on welfare; but too often those children do not become particularly productive. That cuts across all sorts of demographics.
These are not unskilled people. I work at a CUNY School and we have students from all over the world receiving an education so jobs will be filled in all areas of the economy. This is skilled labor and high paying jobs for the future and future citizens. Why are you assuming they are not educated or low skilled or undocumented? What about the dreamers? They are educated and American in every way. Let them be citizens already.
8
It is revealing that Mulvaney gave this speech in England. It is the same message as always: we welcome white-skinned, educated people who speak our language.
4
Let's be frank here, shall we.
Immigrants are critical to expanding the United States’ CONSUMER pool.
That's the gist of the matter.
2
All of the gains of increased economic growth go to the top 1%. So increasing the economic pie only helps the 1%. The growth in GDP has been shown over the last few decades to be through finance and investment banking. So this argument is nonsense. Increasing population improves life at the top but no where else it seems.
5
"Growth for growth's sake is the idealogy of the cancer cell."
Humanity is still looking at this problem through a lens that will produce unmitigated ecological disaster. Unrestrained capitalism and never ending population growth will be the destruction of the human species.
10
@Yachts On The Reg
Immigration from poor, rural countries to rich, industrialized countries REDUCES the growth of world population. Families with a higher standard of living have fewer children.
1
@Drew
You're still talking about reduced growth? The Earth can't sustain the current human population of 7.6 billion let alone anymore growth.
We need population REDUCTION or we are in for a world of hurt.
1
Why can't we invest in unemployed youth, especially minorities, middle agers, and people in their 60s and 70s who want to work but are not included in the "unemployed" because they know better than to think they can get hired.
6
Needed: qualified people and people who want to work. In today’s market the ones you mention can work - if they want to.
1
@David Roston: Because few members of the demographic you mention have any interest in gutting chickens; picking lettuce, beans, berries and tree fruit; bussing tables; doing warehouse work with a lot of heavy lifting; working in hotel housekeeping; and the myriad other backbreaking, ‘entry level’ jobs that many immigrants, regardless of their credentials, are willing to do to escape violence, poverty, and limited opportunities where the came from — and in hopes their hard work will create opportunities for their children and grandchildren to move up in the world.
Kirk Douglas’s father immigrated to the U.S. and was an illiterate rag man. Stephen Miller’s great-grandfather — the same story. Donald Trump’s grandfather was a draft-dodging barber’s apprentice. My illiterate maternal grandmother came here fleeing pogroms and worked in New York sweat shops — her children went to college; her grandchildren went to graduate school.
Of course we should invest in education and job opportunities for our existing citizens. But that isn’t going to be enough given this country’s low birth rate. You want a shrinking, aging population and economic stagnation? Ask Japan how that’s working out.
And don’t tell me ‘we’re already full up.’ This country has vast sparsely populated open spaces and hundreds of small towns that are slowly aging, shrinking and dying, that desperately need an infusion of new blood, motivation and creativity.
If we become a fortress nation, our future is dim.
3
Because the same Trump voters who hate immigrants also hate education and government spending?
The U.S. could recapture the leading role in the world, solve the immigration problem, and get growth back on track in one simple step: Start offering statehood to various countries. I'd start with Mexico and Canada. Then perhaps the U.K., and select Latin American countries. Pretty soon, the U.S. would make the rules for sure. Even on climate change.
@Herr Andersson
Start by redividing the US into states of more equal population. It's antidemocratic, and ridiculous, that Wyoming has 2 senators for 1/2 a million people, while California has only 2 senators for 40 million people.
A single Wyoming voter's vote is worth the votes of 80 Californians. Unfair, undemocratic.
This is an antiquated vestige of an 18th-century land-owning slaveholder class.
It's time it was swept away, along with the electoral college. Lots of fundamental political reforms are needed, if we're ever going to see a semblance of democracy in the US.
There are many reasons why we need an immigrant workforce, but one is that the US has not been making it easy for many to get a decent education. Other nations subsidize higher education heavily because they recognize its importance, not just to individual citizens but to their societies as well. The US educational system is fractured by competing interests that produce unequal outcomes, and there is a strong pull towards privatized, for-profit education. The high cost of higher education discourages many Americans from attaining the specialized skills that are so necessary to maintaining our country's national and global competitiveness, leading to the need to "import" workers from abroad.
6
People tend to associate with other people of similar occupation, education and social status. Based on your comments, I think few of you have actually tried to find reliable and caring workers to fill the "not very glamorous" jobs, without which, our economy crumbles. This includes things like washing dishes in a restaurant, cleaning rooms in a nursing home, putting a roof on a house in 90F heat, paving the driveway.
Not everyone has the skills or potential to be a Doctor, Lawyer or Chief, but without hard working service workers your middle class life will be a lot less enjoyable.
The low skills folks that work for me are paid pretty well, (double the minimum wage), like their job, have developed basic specific job skills and even know the names of their children (lots of citizens don't). America needs a reliable green card system for low skilled workers that lets them live here, pay taxes and resolves all the immigration issues that have been debated for 40 years, but never resolved.
Think about what you will do when the nursing home where your aged mother lives is unable to hire anyone to clean her room or cook her meals.
5
Why is economic growth always considered so important?
Seems to me that avarice always needs more and more and more; while wisdom and contentment say that once a sustainable, moderate level is achieved or acquired, enjoy what you/we have. Relentlessly pressing for more is ultimately a path to misery.
Besides, while birth rates may be lower than a century ago, so are rates of mortality due to war, disease, and injury, including among our children.
7
So we're headed the way Japan and Europe have gone. But that's been predicted for years. Obviously Trump does not understand what a rate of 1.73 births per child-bearing age female in the U.S. actually means, LOL! Meanwhile, most recent GDP estimate has been lowered from 2.3% to 1.2% due to complications from the novel coronavirus outbreak in China. Now, multiply that around the world - as we're seeing now play out before our eyes. Oh joy.
3
@Jan No, low birth rates are good, not bad. The media campaign that low birth rates are bad is wrong. Low birth rates are good for humans and good for the planet. Have you heard about Climate Change? Many of the world problems are due to still high birth rates in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and Central America.
1
@Roy
Yes. But what you are perhaps missing is that increasing immigration from poor, rural countries to rich, industrialized countries REDUCES the growth of world population.
Families with a higher standard of living have fewer children.
Your argument is an argument for importing and making citizens out of young families from poor, rural countries.
Think about it...
Mulvaney is exactly right, even though most ultra right wingers won't admit it or accept it the "working age" labor pool is shrinking both to boomer retirements/deaths, and the fact that so many in that age group have taken themselves out of the labor pool (drug use, uneducated, etc). There are only three ways to increase the labor pool: 1) more births (and that is declining, has been for decades), but wait 18 years...; Raise the retirement age (slowly being done, but not fast enough to increase the labor pool); and 3) more immigration. Much, much more immigration.
Unfortunately the Repubs have fought tooth and nail against immigration reform for the lat 20 years. Remember how GW Bush wanted to liberalize it? His own right wingers shot him down.
It may sound good to only admit people with "skills," whatever that means. But the fact is we cannot predict which skills are actually needed, especially if it takes many years to even move thru a legal process. By the time a "skilled" person gets here their skill may be obsolete, or the jobs saturated in their area.
Better to admit a wide range of people, unskilled, skilled, educated, uneducated and let them figure out what they can do once they are here. And they will figure it out very quickly because immigrants come to the US for ONE reason - to have a better life. And unlike so many "native-born" Americans they appreciate the opportunity and will work hard to succeed. Immigrants keep our economy running.
9
I agree with the view that immigration actually helps this economy, and that while wages at the low end of the scale that might be hurting some should be dealt with by raising minimum and low wages.
However, there seems to be a premise that both those for and against immigration accept as a given: We should care about the well-being of Americans more than the well-being of others. This is essentially tribalism- we should care about one race more than another, one tribe more than another, people of one religion more than those of another. We should care about "our" interest.
Why?
Why should I care more (or less) about someone from Laredo versus someone from Nuevo Laredo? Because one is an American and the other is not? Is this any different than because one is black/white and the other is not? Regarding jobs, I am much more likely to lose my New York job to someone in New Jersey than to someone from Mexico, etc. I am a race man, but its the human race. (Sorry raccoons, I may still have a way to go.)
Sadly, the world is tribal, and you can't run for office as a consistent humanist. However, as members of the same species, we all, even caring Progressives, need to examine our unconscious and unspoken premises, inhaled from all those around us. It would only make the planet a better place to live (unless greenhouse gases make it unlivable.
6
@Peter Wolf
Indeed.
And even if one takes the view of favoring "us" over "them", a long, wide view of that informs us that we _are_ them, and it's in _our_ interest (even "our" defined narrowly) to increase immigration, especially from poor, rural areas.
1
This is a nationalist attitude which is pervasive throughout western countries, particularly on the right, but increasingly on the left as well. Us first! Not much better than me first, if you ask me.
1
Same story, different date. When we have 15% unemployment, the same people tell us we need more immigrant workers. Hotels, landscape companies, and golf courses in Jackson, WY, went to Mexico durng the recession to find workers. Said no Americans were available. Plenty were. Easier to find workers and underpay them if they come from Mexico or are here on an j-1 student visa.
Same people who never saw the recedsion coming, think imported labor dorsn't harm working class Americans. Not a surprise. Flooding a market with cheap labor undercuts wages and raises rents. Simple obvious economic math that the cheap labor supports want to ignore so they can reap the rewards.
12
To most of us, this is a no-brainer. Our country needs immigrants. They're our lifeblood. They fuel growth, and add a dash of culture to ours and influence our food choices and tastes.
To make them feel unwanted is detrimental to our way of life. It's the worst thing we can do to our country's future and culture.
I'm all for ridding our country of criminals. We should start at the top and proceed with a trickle-down effort.
8
@Pamela L. Really, no-brainer! California currently has a severe housing crisis. Do think that might have anything to do with how many people have come to and live in California? The population of California has doubled since 1970 from 20 to 40 million people. Do you want it to double again? I don't know how an every more congested world is a better world. What would be wrong with a stable or falling population, and just trying to do things better? Why do we have to have endless building of new housing units? Do you care about Climate Change?
3
@Roy
...
The view of someone who made it to the comfy beach before it became crowded from others wanting to do the same.
Stop with the "It's our beach!" xenophobia. Or give up your spot on the beach and move to a less crowded state.
Just because you got here first doesn't mean you have more right to this patch of land than anyone else.
@Pamela L.
"They're our lifeblood."
Even literally. We are _all_ immigrants, except for those who walked over the land bridge from Asia thousands of years ago. Some (e.g. slaves) were unwilling immigrants. But we all came from abroad.
This idea that our economic health and social security system depend on an increasing population or endless productivity gains is ludicrous on so many levels. The tech revolution and the gig economy are the main reason for the recent wealth booms in this country and this new gig economy cannot be measured by old school ideas about “productivity” or amount of product. Those six figure salaries are paying a heck of a lot into social security, likely as much as 10 manufacturing wage immigrants.
This article is so outdated. In fact we need HIGHER wages for the lowest paid workers, and that may mean continuing to curb immigration, but humanely. It also means creating a better American pipeline for the gig jobs in our universities and stop importing that labor.
If we as humans can’t invent a way to measure economic health in ways that doesn’t require ever higher volume of population and trade and stripping the world of all natural resources and increasing our numbers then what the heck, maybe we are due for a nice big global recession to think it over and figure something else out anyway. It’s like the author is living in a universe where everything is fine, like 2001-2007.
7
@A Bravo, well said. We do indeed need a different vision of economic growth besides one of endless population growth and stripping the world of natural resources!
2
@Roy
100% agreement.
And 90% irrelevant to the question of immigration.
And the 10% relevant actually works in the other direction: Immigration from poor, rural countries to rich, industrial ones actually REDUCES growth of world population.
Families that are more well-off have fewer children.
The only way to think about immigration, if you're interested in world population, world health, or climate change, is to think globally, in terms of _MIGRATION_, not parochially, in terms of invasion by immigrants.
Climate change is, and will become increasingly more so, THE engine of mass migration across the planet.
We need to think long and hard, and discuss and debate hard, about economic growth, climate change, and migration. Time to take head out of sand and look around.
1
Cheap labor for the service industry while wages for the middle class continue to stagnate or decline.
The disparity between the wealthy and poor, the educated and non-educated, will only escalate.
9
Let's hope the service industry just collapses.
1
Why did he say it? Well, I know this is a novel concept in the Trump administration; but he said it because it is a statement based on empirical evidence and is demonstrably true.
Imagine that!
10
Note to Immigrants:
Trump administration has an office of “Denaturalization” - which means that under Trump even if you get US citizenship, you could have it taken away from you.
The US, right now, is not necessarily a good place to immigrate, if you hope to have citizenship ultimately and for good.
6
@TheraP
Only if you had committed criminal acts *prior* to applying for naturalization and then lied about it on the application.
I’d say that the expectation that people swearing allegiance to our country do so honorably and truthfully puts us in a pretty good light in the eyes of honest people, that is the ones that comprise the vast majority of potential immigrants.
The things that are happening here in Maine will spread to other states if they can’t keep the population growing. The only reason US population overall is not shrinking is due to immigrants. Europe is like Maine, falling off a population cliff. Few working age people means old people with fixed income and high needs for medical services are the majority of consumers. Everything gets more expensive.
It’s a feedback loop that causes a regional economy to circle the drain in a death spiral. An aging population creates low demand for appliances, new vehicles, new homes, and most retail goods beyond the basics required to sustain life. So these businesses struggle to stay open, don’t pay decent wages. People move away.
Health insurance and medical care is more costly because it’s legal to discriminate against rural residents in Maine (we require more services per capita because the young healthy people moved away). So more businesses and workers move away. Old people follow the young if they can afford to leave. Economic death spiral.
Without students, schools are closing, kids ride the bus hours every day. More people decide to move away. The tax base shrinks further. School employee wages are low, the school roof leaks, the buses break down. Taxes go up.
People are angry and sad, and find it easy to blame immigrants that don’t even live here for the economic death spiral.
9
Immigrants are the hardest workers. I am a student worker and the majority of kids working in my lab are immigrants. Not only a language barrier to contend with but constraints no American would tolerate if they lived in another country. So Yeah--immigrants improve everything.....
9
"We are desperate for anyone? Any claimant?
Canada has a grading grid to adopt immigrants which includes education level, language skills, age, arranged occupation and etc.
For example, google
Six selection factors – Federal Skilled Worker Program (Express Entry)
This is one of the processing procedures.
Trump likes it.
I don't totally agree with Democdrats emotional plea on the immigration issues.
4
Democrats supported the bipartisan immigration reform during the Bush administration and the Obama administration. Republicans have always been the ones who refused to consider the legislation. Before the midterms, Trump had a televised meeting with democrats and claimed that he would sign any deal and that he would take the heat. Democrats had offered 25 billion for the wall in exchange for DACA protections. But his right wing flank were aghast and whispered in this ear, and Trump melted in the heat and he reneged.
5
With President Trump’s affinity for high-skilled, highly educated people from Northern Europe, I wonder if the mushroom industry can cough up about $100,000 a year to being these people over to pick mushrooms? But then can anyone afford these mushrooms?
8
@Dragonlady , somehow I don't anticipate a flood of Northern European immigrants whose life ambition is poorly paid backbreaking physical labor in a country with a frayed social safety net.
2
Without immigrants, who is going to cook and clean for all of the Republicans at Trump's hotels?
21
That's right, it's no coincidence that the rise in the stock market (since 1910, when we started tracking it) coincides with the rise in population.
3
Nobody has the time for nuance anymore. THAT is our fundamental problem.
As long as the left muddles (deliberately so in my opinion) the positive and negative effects of legal and illegal immigration without studying them SEPARATELY, Trump will continue to own the immigration issue.
When we say immigration is a net good, nobody knows what that means exactly. Good for the GDP? Is that because of high skilled STEM immigrants or “low-skilled” blue collar workers? What about Bernie in 2007 when he effectively said we can’t have both a welfare state and higher levels of low skilled immigration?
This issue is really nuanced and treating it without the complexity it entails isn’t helping anyone. But I’m not holding my breath for seeing any nuanced discussion on pretty much any subject matter given the farce of a “debate” we had in South Carolina.
Nobody has the time for nuance anymore. THAT is our fundamental problem.
13
@STEM Immigrant Sadly, with a population that has an average attention span of 7 seconds (shorter than a gold fish) and an 8th grade education, this democracy does not work with nuance. One-liner rules, and you are right, that is the problem.
1
@STEM Immigrant - Yes, let us have a nuanced discussion with President Trump. I’m sure his supporters are demanding it, unlike, as you said, the poor muddled Democrats who pay so little attention to reading reports and journals and waste so much time studying stuff. Useless!
2
@STEM Immigrant
Immigrants have made this country rich and continue to do so. Contrary to Republican lies, they do not come here to get free root canals. They come here because their home countries are unlivable.
NYC would not be what it is without immigrants.
My entire staff and immigrants: Mexican, Ecuadoran, Serbo Croatian, Columbian, Dominican. And I love them.
2
This is quite a clever move, the beginning of his exit plan from this administration.
2
Mr. Trump read this, twice or more. Commit it to memory. Give it priority on your Things to do List, ahead of golf. But keep it a secret from your base who you have convinced that all immigration is bad ( except from Norway ).
3
And if you want to know why there’s no rush to get an infrastructure bill passed, who’s going to build it when we’re constricting the labor
Force?
Little minds, such as our president, think of little things.
9
Mulvaney blundered. Republicans do not want more immigrants because they think that it's changing the demographics of the country and changing the culture. Republican business people want highly skilled foreign labor that accepts lower pay than native born skilled labor, so they want immigrants with less rights than American citizens. But in any case, Mulvaney has made a statement that makes the first group unhappy and one that the second group would rather discuss during campaign financing dinners.
2
"But growth in the native-born work force is rapidly slowing as the population ages and people have fewer children..."
People have lots of children when their economic prospects look good or, at least, do not look bleak. The middle class has been squeezed for over a generation, as pensions have disappeared, health insurance and medical care skyrocketed, Bankruptcy laws were changed to keep people perpetually in debt, and foreign workers have either sneaked in or have been brought in (i.e. the heavily abused H-1B visa) in order to lower labor costs for businesses and to lower wages for the middle class.
Thus, we do not have enough native-born workers because our citizens cannot afford children. Bringing in foreigners is not the solution, it is an exacerbating factor.
8
@NorthernVirginia
It's exactly the opposite.
Families that are more well-off have fewer children. Poor, rural families have more children, who help out in the fields etc.
1
I can't read all the other comments, but guess that I'm adding to at least some of those writers who believe that the idea of economic growth driven by population increase is unsustainable. Our current climate crisis, extinction crisis, water quality crisis, etc., will be exponentially exacerbated by a growing population that inevitably demands more resources. It's time for new thinking.
11
@Andy Bartlett we’re talking population maintenance, and we are losing population when the average native born American woman has an average of 1.73 children (see article & remember men are half the population and don’t give birth). The only thing keeping us from shrinking population is immigrants. You don’t what to know what it’s like to live where more people die every week than are born. It’s empty stores except for social security and veterans pay days. It’s depressing, babies and school age kids are lost in a sea of old people.
2
@Andy Bartlett
Thinking only of the US population is not thinking about population growth. Immigration of poor, rural families into the US _REDUCES_ the growth of world population.
1
And let's not talk about the impact of health care on GDP. It has been increasing at a multiple of GDP for decades. The current system continues to be unsustainable. Once you begin to rein in spending - which must be done - we will see a significant hit to GDP and job growth, reducing it up to 30%. All at the same time dumping more and more people into it, particularly, seniors.
Where are the people going to come from to take care of us old coots?
The Trump administrations complete lack of economic understanding, much less health care, is completely amazing.
6
This will only be exacerbated by the exodus of talent should Trump eke out another electoral college win. Millions are mulling over exit strategies in the event Americans are confronted with four more years of incompetence, autocracy, and dismantling of government's capacity to solve problems and provide services.
10
You realize that other countries have immigration criteria, and you can’t immigrate without a job, language skills, income, and cash?
5
@myjob: Exactly, which is why the educated, talented, well-off people will be the ones leaving. It’s called Brain Drain. It has been going on for a while from rural to urban USA. Soon it will happen from urban USA to other western democracies. Then the whole country can look like Trumpland.
Immigrants, and citizenship please. More people here will grow the economy.
7
There are very obvious reasons for the birth rate of native born citizens to be declining. First, college education. By postponing marriage and child birth beyond what was ordinary in mid-20th century America and earlier, there is less time to have children. Moreover, now most women pursue their own careers, which means babies are inconvenient, an interruption of what feminists said they were supposed to be, full participants in all aspects of society.
Most people want to have it both ways, to have children and strong role in work outside the home. Doing so, however, ensures some disruption and one result is fewer children. Change, however beneficial, does not come without costs.
As for foreign workers in this country, the trend is all over the place. A lot of businesses say they are utterly dependent on importing workers. Even summer lifeguards now are often drawn from as far away as Russia. The employers say it is because well off American kids don't want to be out in the sun for hours but the whole idea of work has been downgraded by many students as they try to build resumes that will impress college admissions offices. A job doesn't impress much, apparently.
3
False statement: The Trump administration wants more immigrants.
True statement: The Trump administration wants more non-brown immigrants.
Everything about the immigration policy is infused with racism and we will look back 100 years from now and see it through the same lens as we look at things like the Chinese Exclusion Act and refusing to take in Jews during WWII today.
15
@D
Nailed it.
And it becomes apparent when you see some of the logic used here. Arguments, for example, claiming that impeding immigration into the US is equivalent to, or even helps, slowing global population growth.
It's exactly the opposite: if you want to slow global population growth then you should want much MORE immigration into rich, industrialized countries like the US from poor, rural countries.
Rising US population from immigration does NOT increase world population. In fact, the opposite, as families with a higher standard of living have fewer children.
Racists will look for or invent any argument to convince others - and themselves - that they have a good reason for their anti-immigrant fears.
1
Much of NW Iowa's and S. Minn. (Steve King Lovers) Ag and food processing industries would flounder and fail without an immigrant workforce.
6
The Trump Administration has zero credibility.
Believe nothing they say.
10
What this article does... that the NYT LOVES to do and knows they are doing it..... is not provide a distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Until you are willing to have a rational open discussion about that distinction I don't take a bit of this seriously. Also to note, when there is a labor shortage... you can bet your paycheck will go up. Pack the country with a larger low skilled labor force and paychecks will go down.... you tell me which is better for American citizens.
9
Better start paying Norwegians to emigrate.
6
I am not sure people want to come to a country run by a dictator.
16
The GOP cannot have it both ways. They cannot want low-wage labor with no labor protections while also rejecting immigrants.
Let's experiment: Make every corporation in the U.S hire lazy, stupid, obese, drug-addicted U.S. citizens for all of their work and pay them $30/hour with health benefits, a pension and the same vacation/sick days as those in western Europe. Then watch the U.S. economy implode.
We grew our country on the backs of slaves and our slave labor mentality continues today by abusing immigrants. It's American exceptionalism at its finest.
10
What about stopping the prison pipeline that incarcerates brown and black and poor people at an alarmingly much higher rate than others.
What about the disparity in sentencing during the crack epidemic when black and brown people were locked up at much higher rates than whites who possessed the same drug only in a different form, cocaine.
Some of these very same people, had they had treatment, compassion and understanding, could have entered the workforce and been contributing members of society.
If they had gotten treatment, understanding and compassion, as seems to be all the rage today now that the opioid/meth scourge is ravaging non-Black communities, things would look a little different in terms of our workforce.
Immigration, if legal, is great but you have to get around businesses who are only too happy to employ those here illegally.. Like the mushroom farmer who employed two brothers for 10 years.. They are willingly returning home. This story was in this newspaper this week. Like the poultry processing plant raided by ICE. 600 people taken into custody. Guess who applied for those available jobs..American citizens. I wonder if there was a difference in pay?
Whether Americans want these jobs or not is another question.. especially harvesting fruit and vegetables. Automation may be what takes over in some industries.
I do think Mulvaney has had enough of the crazy and is looking to get canned so he can write a book & become a Faux News talking head.
The call for more immigrants represents terrible economics and is really just a call to keep wages down.
Merely boosting the GDP is useless if the population grows at a similar rate. The only groups that win are mega companies with no entering competition. What makes a difference is increasing the Real GDP per capita and increasing productivity. If we are short workers, then increased automation would free up workers to fill necessary jobs and increase productivity.
Would the mushroom farmer be as interested in more workers if they had to be hired permanently? Because if we bring in more people, they are here permanently.
4
For the past twenty years, foreign born professionals have driven home prices up as they are attracted to our community due to safety and great schools. They are the very best from their country of origin. But even folks who immigrate and work in day labor or at 7-11 put us to shame. Their ‘Mamba mentality’ allowed them to do what it takes to risk everything to be here and to excel in every activity they join. We are blessed to have them here. I suppose the ‘me first’ derision about immigration is normal to desperate ignorant people but the US is built on the very best in the world risking all to live and work here.
5
@ Tom
Woman for woman and man for man, immigrants do more good for this country than do the nativists who deride them.
My grandfather came here with a year of schooling and no money. As he worked mightily to better his lot, he was beset by many hicks and haters. But he did well and his descendants are without exception successful and influential. The descendants of his opponents are pretty much all still dragging their knuckles, stifled by their own ignorance and hatred. Res ipsa loquitur.
3
Maybe America. . . needs to sit quietly in the corner for a while, maybe rock back an forth a bit while drooling upon its belly button. Maybe we need to think a bit about why liberal Mom is still married to conservative Dad, and draw up some kind of an amicable separation agreement: you get to ban abortion, I get to keep it. You get prayer in school, but you can't bring it here. We'll hire immigrants to keep the lights on, you can hire old men.
Maybe a little separation would allow us to still live under the same roof, before someone starts throwing punches.
That said, there's a decent sized pool of underemployed people, and a huge pool of people who aren't in the labor force, and haven't been for the last 30 years. Maybe it's time for desperate employers to overlook that possession conviction 20 years ago, or face up to the fact that they might have to train someone on their equipment.
4
@Andrew or actually hire a female instead of someone's cousin on an Hwhatever visa.
Corporations can't make a profit unless they have slave labor.
1
maybe instead of subsidies for farmers to grow (or not grow) things we don't every year, we could use the money to move them to these jobs.
It's a simple, but would mean those farmers would have to do what their ancestors did: migrate to where the jobs are.
And we know how they fell about migrants......
America should want all the smart people to immigrate to America. Even the so called illegal immigrants showed they had enough gumption to get off their rears and make the effort to get here, a not insignificant effort.
Further, it won't be forever that huge population countries like India waste half their brainpower (the female half), or countries in Africa and the mid-East do the same. China is on a possible failure path due to the ill conceived one-child policy promulgated by, apparently, disciples of Malthus; and folks mostly don't want to illegally immigrate to China.
So American and Europe still are in the long term running; hopefully the Republican failure policies will be reversed, sooner rather than later.
2
What? What? You mean the Trumpistas in tribal regalia at his rallies are not simply replacing all the immigrants now barred from coming in as physicians, engineers, scientists, math-wizards; you mean they are not opening the entrepreneurial engines in Silicon Valley? What, what? You mean they are now ready to pick farm, replace sheets in hospitality?
Hmm. So it is the immigrants who will be paying taxes (sales and income) so that Uncle Sam sends out a 100 million checks each month to the 100 million class of dependents - who are mostly Trumpistas.
I think it is time for immigrants to figure out that we don't want free checks going to Trumpistas. Get a job, and don't forget to mention on your resume that you want all immigrants out. Cheers.
1
I know couple who have been married over thirty years who moved to Mexico after Trump was elected even though the wife was a U.S. citizen and the couple had been very hard working, religious, taxpaying members of my community. The problem was that the husband had illegally crossed the border as a youth. Don’t talk to me about freedom in America when a U.S. citizen is not free to marry the person she loves. Now we have lost to fine, honest, hardworking, taxpaying people and we now send her Social Security out of U.S.
3
It's our loss, not theirs.
And the best of luck to them for a long, happy, money-spending life outside of the what used to be the good old U.S. of A.
2
The "acting" staff Trump surrounds himself with are not able to do things that benefit our country because they work (in "acting" roles) for a man who isn't capable of thinking for the country. He regularly hired undocumented immigrants for his various companies - his latest wife was a undocumented worker when first in the US.
Yet xenophobia and shouting about a wall plays to the base, and he wants re-election. Useful, careful, well-designed policymaking, in comparison, is difficult.
Creating a coherent immigration policy requires coherence. We got covefe.
2
cant have it both ways- trump has made immigrants his problem.. actually he himself is the problem. remove trump from office for the republic to survive ..he is NOT a normal person... in any way shape or form. without immigrants the US would not be the place it is
2
This is the dirty secret of the republican party has kept from its constituents forever. We don't even have to go back to the Reagan years for examples; under George W. Bush the republicans had 6 years of the executive and majorities in both the houses of congress, and not a peep about immigration. But they use it at election time to stir up their base, who imagine that Mexicans are the reason they can't find a decent paying job. I grew up in Southern California and worked in construction there for 14 years, and have first hand experience that Mexicans (and Central Americans) are the toughest, hardest working people you'll ever find. And American Big Business knows that. They're the perfect employee, desperate, dependable, and they won't squawk about low wages for fear of being deported. Changes in the labor laws by republicans have made the 'Gig Economy' possible, so now they treat US citizens like illegals. Big Ag, construction, hotels and restaurants, and food processing all depend on a steady supply of illegals to make their profits and keep the shareholders happy. They form the foundation of our economy, and the Trump administration has made political hay by insulting, harassing, and persecuting them. It's beyond disgusting to me.
5
When it comes to the economy I'd be more concerned about electing a socialist president.
2
I look at this picture and see only one honorable man...
The Trump administration doesn't mind immigration. It would just prefer the immigrants to be less brown, Norwegian, for example.
1
Of course they want more immigrants... more people desperate and scared, who won’t dare ask for decent wages... somebody easy to intimidate, someone who is willing to work in dangerous and unsafe conditions, who they know will never dare turn their employers in... people who are cheap and disposable.
That’s what all the conservatives want.
They pretend they want to end illegal immigration, but what they really want is have a work force that willing to work like slaves for practically nothing.
2
More immigration. Less immigration.
High-skilled immigration. Low-skilled immigration.
More temporary workers. Less temporary workers.
It’s all nonsensical.
These arguments are all based on the premise that we actually control immigration. For the most part, we do not.
In order to control immigration, we need enforcement of laws and prevention of scamming, including:
1. A physical border barrier as recommended by Customs and Border Protection, supplemented by high tech detection technology. This and only this will substantially reduce people from scamming our asylum laws with phony claims.
2. A large increase in immigration judges to QUICKLY reject phony asylum claims and illegal entries. If they can’t stay in the U.S. for years awaiting a trial, they won’t make the journey in the first place.
3. Systems to prevent visa overstays, and to efficiently find and return those who do overstay.
4. Mandatory E-verify (Trump has gone swampy on this.)
Once we actually enforce our laws, we can debate how to change them.
Until then, such discussions are meaningless.
4
Here in New Zealand we are having the same discussion - more migrant workers are needed to boost the economy.
But these migrant workers are taking away jobs that New Zealanders can do because they will work cheaper, and allow themselves to be exploited just to stay here.
It's great for businesses, but not so great for the average worker as the wages are kept low by the migrant workers.
Not to mention the lack of jobs that we could do that are no longer available, although we know our rights and expect a fair wage and fair conditions.
We are fortunate that we do have a decent welfare system to fall back on, so it's not all bad. But most in that system would rather be working.
3
So instead of exploiting themselves they should just let their children starve to avoid offending the native population? That's just not going to happen.
@Bonnie Huggins
We have employment laws that control certain things - minimum wage, work breaks etc.
Migrants will work ignoring these, or even ignorant of them. They generally work until they can apply for residency, then bring in the rest of the family.
We have a lot of small businesses that take advantage of that.
No-one should be exploited - not even migrants. To be in support of the idea - which you seem to be - is wrong, and makes you part of the problem.
Migrants are also chosen over graduates for entry level jobs as engineers for example as they have the experience, but will work for the entry level wage meaning our graduates have no job to go to.
Automation is going to wipe out a lot of jobs. What then?
Is the "need" to get actual work done, or is it to keep wages low?
3
This article is off the mark. For the most part, it disregards the important distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
(The Times prefers the term "undocumented" for illegal, but this is Orwellian doublespeak.)
Mr. Trump does not, I believe, oppose immigration. He opposes illegal immigration. Though some of his tactics are inappropriate, in a larger sense he is correct. Our current situation encourages immigration by those who disregard our laws; abuse our policies on refugees; and, in many cases, put their children in danger. Anyone with a sense of humanity is sympathetic with the desperation that motivates most illegal immigrants. But we must also be cognizant of the effect we are having on those equally desperate people who choose to obey our rules, try to immigrate legally, and wait their turn.
We need immigration reform that discourages illegal entry, and maximizes legal immigration of as many as we can accommodate. We are a nation built by immigrants, and the article is correct that we would benefit from more immigration. I believe our President realizes this too. The solution is not going to be easy, and it must be bipartisan. We tried fixing things before, such as the Simpson Mazzoli Act of 1986, a law which did not work as expected. We must try again.
While encouraging legal immigration, we must accept the reality that there are more who wish to come than we can reasonably accommodate. We need rules, and we need to follow them.
11
Trump has demonstrated he does not like either. He has greatly reduced visas, blocked certain countries, made a lottery for seasonal migrant workers(which hoses both the migrants and business).
3
I disagree that adding unskilled laborers to an economy depresses wages. Being as these workers spend almost everything they make rather than save it, benefits and welfare as well, the overall economy is given a stimulus.
1
We need to have the same system as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and soon Great Britain.
We need to have a fair, transparent, points system that advantages people with skills and education and English-language proficiency.
We need to get rid of the system we have now that discourages educated people and encourages unskilled people and people who break laws.
Sadly, the Democrats prefer unskilled people and people who break the rules.
8
@Frank You've got it wrong buddy - it's the Republicans who hate all immigrants. They never support prosecution of those employing undocumented immigrants - just going after the undocumented themselves. Also - we need all types and skill sets in our labor pool - who do you think will pick those mushrooms in Chester County, who will work at the factories in Decatur AL. i work in manufacturing and finding low skilled labor to work on manufacturing lines is very hard nowadays - forcing plants to cut production. Those high skilled engineers and doctors and lawyers have their place, as do lower-skilled and lowed educated people.
5
@Frank nonsense, but hey, it sells
3
Many jobs that need filled are labor intensive, low paying jobs. The higher tech job, higher education , and higher paying should be filled by our own citizens. However, we have sacrificed investing in our schools for other priorities. Therefore, the high end jobs have a shortage due to our institutional and cultural failure to properly educate our people to fill them.
1
It becomes obvious that we need to learn how to manage an economy in the face of a declining labor force. Fertility rates around the world (yes--even in Latin America) are declining, and few countries even reach the replacement rate. And we can no longer assume, given our recent inhospitality, that immigrants are teeming just off shore.
Left unsaid in this article is that a major reason that our population continues, if weakly, to increase is longevity. So we're getting more old people, not more working age people (not to be too snarky, but just look at the crowd running for president, and the current dotard).
Also left unsaid, but obvious to anyone paying attention, is that our Trumpian friends have no trouble with immigration, they have trouble with brown people immigrating. They would love to have more Norwegians.
3
Articles like this make my blood boil! More people means more congestion, more crowding, more air pollution, more water pollution, more noise pollution, more light pollution.
I find it hard to see why ever rising human population leads us to a better world. Bigger populations mean bigger problems when things go bad.
Oh and how does more people, especially in this country where we consume so much, help the problem of Climate Change?
Minneapolis, near where I live, now has a build everywhere zoning policy, and large apartment building are popping up in Minneapolis and throughout the metro area, with many more planned, often replacing tree covered open space.
How wonderful if the USA and other developed countries could enjoy all the benefits of stable or falling populations rather than suffering from all the problems of endless growth.
The Population Bomb is still with us. What the world needs is more family planning not less, and fertility rates less than the replacement rate. World population is nearing 8 billion, up from 2 billion in 1930. The world keeps adding over 80 million people a year. That is a big problem. But no-one wants to write about it in the US media.
11
So - what are your suggestions? And: What are you going to do about this, personally?
@Roy check out Japan. Low to no immigration, low birth rate, declining population, no one to work with seniors in care.
3
@MEH How wonderful. Yes Japan is a model for world. Japan had become too crowded with 130 million people, so a falling population is great. Just devote more resources, a greater percentage of GDP to caring for senior citizens. They can do it, we can do it too.
Yes, the NYT keeps pointing out what a tragedy that Japan has a slightly falling population. And I am thinking how wonderful. More open space, less crowding.
The US Ambassador to Japan wrote in the NYT, a few years ago, that Japan had fallen behind because it had failed to open its borders to immigration and boost its population.
1
There is a plot in this article showing the decrease in the immigration to USA. Majority of voters would applaud to that, and it is certainly good thing for USA in general. This country is not and should be magnet to whoever wants to come here, illegals for sure, legal immigratns, we can talk about them.
This article is hugely biased in favor of immigration (both legal and illegal), nonsensical in terms of one of the key guys in the administration admittedly poking the eye of the boss (why would he ever do that?), and weak on facts - the immigration is dropping and how exactly is that affecting US economy? Is it hemorrhaging? Business close due to the lack of 'undocumented workers', or H1B visa holders?
3
@ss Get your head out of the quicksand of TRUMPIAN THOUGHT - talk to manufacturers in the mid-west and south of this country - find out just how hard it is to find labor to work on a manufacturing line, to find people willing and able to work in meat processing, to till the land, to pick mushrooms... And speaking of H1B workers, many people who would have been on the H1B path have instead opted to move to Canada taking their money with them.
4
If you’re an apple farmer in places like New York State you don’t need to hire full-time employees (i.e. annually). You just need workers for a two-three week period when the apples are ready for picking. Such workers are literally migrants because after 2 weeks they literally move south to other farms where those apples (or in kind) are then ready for picking. In fact NYS has laws and regulations governing these workers. For example the domiciles where they live while on a particular farm. Allowable weekly work hours etc.
A side note: with unemployment at record lows it will be harder to attract American citizens who can’t migrate from farm to farm for such short periods of employment. Especially at the salary levels paid to the migrants.
Hence expect the price of produce like apples to increase in the near future.
4
The fundamental problem is a system, capitalism, that has unending growth as its ultimate goal. At some point, you simply run up against limits. I know, not an original concept, but it frightens me how routinely this reality is dismissed.
5
There's always been a tension between the xenophobic, racist forces in the Republican/Trump party and their corporate enablers who need cheap, manipulable labor. The trick, and it's a big ask, is educating low skilled native workers that immigration is not their enemy, rather the lack of protection for labor and now over war on unions.
3
Well, Canada is certainly benefiting from the undercurrent of racist anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. Immigrants from third-world countries have done much to help turn Toronto and Vancouver into technological powerhouses.
Toronto has a population that's over 50% new or first-generation immigrant. It has a booming economy along with a skyline litered with contruction cranes. Walk down the streets of Toronto, and you hear a symphony of different languages and see a collage of different cultures. This immigrant population has found a welcoming home in Canada and have done much to contribute to an economy that is growing into the future. Plus, thiis immigrant population is helping to offset the pending demographic issue of an aging population.
10
The goal of Trump's immigration policy seems to be cruelty masquerading as toughness. The important thing is making immigrants and refugees suffer. Economic considerations are entirely secondary, being used only as a fig leaf to cover what is essentially sadism. Good luck convincing Trump or his followers that immigration might in some way be beneficial, even if it is economically necessary.
9
It’s no secret that Republicans want more immigrants. They just don’t want them to have any rights. A scared, pliable, deportable workforce is great for big business interests. This is why deportations must end: the government puts a huge thumb on the scale for capitalists when it helps businesses dispose of troublesome employees through deportation.
The Trump administration is expanding the number of H2 visas for temporary migrant laborers. This is because that is the most exploitative program, akin to human trafficking, in which employees’ visa status is tied directly to their employer. So if someone wants to point out awful working conditions, a company can have them deported and blacklist them from ever being hired again.
Since we apparently really need people to come and work, and in fact much of our economy is powered by undocumented labor, all of these people should be on a path to permanent residence. Otherwise the immigration system is just being used to support labor exploitation.
305
@Andrew
They seem to, with a few exceptions in the Senate, hate whistle blowers. Perhaps they are jealous of people with a spine. A workforce that can be threatened with deportation or otherwise lacking legal standing would be very appealing to those who habitually bully people.
13
@Andrew
'...all of these people should be on a path to permanent residence.'
I totally agree. It will never happen with these Trumpista clowns in power.
16
@Andrew
Disagree— there is a need for robust, well-regulated non immigration-based guest worker programs. If there are problems with the H2 visas, these should be addressed by law-makers.
There simply is not much political support for continuing large scale permanent immigration of low-skill workers. Trump didn’t win the election because he had a great health care plan.
6
We are the richest nation on the face of the Planet. To think that we cannot absorb more people is a fallacy, in my view. What it amounts to is establishing public policy at the Federal level that creates a process to streamline the acceptance factors. We can do it if we choose. Might it cost money? Yes. But we seem to always find enough money to build instruments of warfare. We use anecdotes to incite fear and repulsion of good people who want little more than to live in peace and provide for themselves and their families. And let's not forget that most middle class workers were once entry level workers.
7
Yes, immigration expands the labor pool.
That is what employers want, more cheap labor.
That is not what America needs to have a healthy economy.
That is not what workers -- born here and immigrant -- need to see their stagnant wages rise.
The official unemployment rate is low, only because that rate is gamed and does not count those who are so marginalized that they are not looking for work.
The labor participation rate, the percentage of working age people -- born here and immigrant -- with full time work, is low.
Mass immigration is now, and has always been, nothing but a cheap labor scheme.
When World War I shrank immigration, the tighter labor market triggered the Great Migration of African-Americans into the economic mainstream. It also lifted all workers' boats with better wages. We need another great internal migration now to improve opportunities for all the workers -- born here and immigrant -- who are already here.
142
@csp123
Mass migration for minimum wage subsistence jobs? World do you live in?
Our US migration was from farm to manufacturing from the South to Mid-West and Northeast. Those jobs are now in Asia and wherever cheapest labor exists.
Mass profits for corporations help no one but the owners and CEO’s.
Workers are left behind.
Look at the facts.
50
@Chris, you draw unjustified inferences about the nature of my argument. I said nothing about closing borders. The choice is not continued record immigration or no immigration. The choice is to set immigration at a level that does not supply working age people far beyond the actual demand for them.
I also do not presume that the economy is a zero sum game. History shows that we can have a vibrant economy with moderate immigration. Our economy was never more innovative, productive, and wealth creating than in the moderate immigration years of the 1950s.
Immigrants are not 4x as likely to form new businesses. No study has ever shown what you claim. Census data show that immigrants as a whole are less likely, not more likely, to start businesses.
Mass immigration will not solve the alleged problems of an aging population. Immigrants get old, too. The demographics do not support your claim.
The low labor participation rate does not stem from affluent people not wanting to work. Underemployment is rampant throughout America. You can see it, if you look at less well-off groups. You can hear it, if you listen to them.
The argument for continued record immigration presumes that certain jobs must remain so degraded that only a desperate immigrant will do them. The history of America in times of moderate immigration shows that this is not so.
34
@Johnny D, are you disagreeing or agreeing with me? I agree wholeheartedly that US workers have been and are being left behind.
Many US jobs that are now minimum wage subsistence jobs were not so degraded in times of moderate immigration. Jobs in the meat packing and poulty processing industries, for example, were then good unionized jobs.
Yes, we have lost many manufacturing jobs to Asia. But the American economy is still over 70 percent domestic production for domestic consumption.
A tighter labor market will help workers now, as it has done in the past.
8
Ask any business owner right now and they will tell you that a lack of applicants for jobs is the biggest problem they face. The people arguing that if businesses would just "pay more" they would be able to find more workers simply isn't true.
As of this week, it looks pretty likely that the cause of the next recession will be the Corona virus. But it hadn't come along, the recession would have been caused by the labor shortage. It is very simply holding down growth.
2
The population problem seems to be largely the “problem” that highly educated people are just not having many, or any, kids. My husband and I have PhDs and good jobs. Am I going to risk that by taking maternity leave and being sleepless on the job for years? (Much less more than once to make enough babies to replace us both?) Eh. As children of large families, immigrant or otherwise, climb the educational ladder, they’ll probably also stop having kids, or have fewer. I’m not sure what the answer is, but the politicians panicking about how my ovaries will affect the labor market should consider the issue less from a business management perspective than from the perspective of young smart people trying to decide if they should have a kid. Because I am.
Figure out how to make it easier for smart young people to have kids if you want them to decide to have kids.
10
That is right. Conflate the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. We are in the fortunate position of being able to invite immigrants from almost anywhere in the world and they will come. The mass rush of illegal aliens across the southern border is clear evidence of that. And those are mostly from Mexico and Central America. Were it simple for those from South America, Africa and Asia to immigrate, they would come in the tens of millions.
So the basic argument of the left is that because we demographically need immigration, we need to let almost anyone come across the southern border utilizing refugee claims that the left knows cannot be adjudicated quickly and once released most aliens never show for a court date. This is all really a pretext to build the future voting base of the left.
The article never mentions that the legal process for admission can be made quicker and easier very easily, reversing any claimed future immigration falloff.
The country of immigrants (that made this country great as many of your readers boldly proclaim) came at a time when there were actually requirements to have sponsors who would be responsible to keep the newcomer off social welfare. The Democrat plans now are to provide health care and welfare benefits gratuitiously. How many votes will giveaways bring down the road?
If you and the American people want more poor and uneducated immigration, simply change the law. Make this a campaign issue, but be honest for once.
2
Lots of criticism here. Republicans have done nothing to make things better. Obama wanted to discuss. John Boehner would not even sit down. Are some dem ideas wrong or naive? Sure. But Republicans have no ideas outside of a wall. What gets me is why has The Chamber of Commerce has not sat Trump down and read him the riot act. It’s their biz that he’s hurting.
3
@Gub They are working on a technology to change skin and eye color, then they can come in and not upset the Republicans.
What happened to supply and demand? A shortage of labor should drive wages up but we can't have that. Cuts into the bottom line. I guess that only applies to profits not people.
5
From this and other articles, it does appear that we need more temporary migrant laborers, so the Democrats should write legislation that supports that, But also funds inspectors to ensure humane working conditions and audit fair wages; I bet the temps would be happy to go home after the growing season.
We do however, Not need extra STEM workers. New technology continues to supplant employees and kids getting out of college With STEM skills are still having a hard time finding a/any decent paying job. Until someone at a high level finally realizes that employment provides consumption and is more important than higher and higher mechanized productivity, which they only pass on to the C suite and shareholders (God forbid the employees), we don't need Any more immigrants. We need to provide good-paying jobs for the existing citizenry and immigrants already here.
The Republicans are begging for more immigration very likely at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, demanding more workers to push wages back, instead of forward as of late because of "shortages", notwithstanding your quoted made-to-order "studies" that additional immigration will not put downward pressure on wages.
1
What’s proposed here is that America should follow Europe’s lead allowing a significant entry of immigrants to bolster the labor force. To fill an employment vacuum by providing individuals to take on the type of low paying jobs the highly educated native population rejects for themselves. In Europe it was pressure from the corporate/business sector that brought about a lenient immigration policy bringing to Europe a large influx of immigrants largely from the Mid-East and Northern Africa. Europeans are still dealing with the effects of this mass immigration entry as it has tasked if not overwhelmed each country’s infrastructure and its available resources necessary to both facilitate and accommodate the assimilation of these immigrants. Can America do better than the Europeans have done with such a vital society issue, who knows?
1
What greater proof is there that immigrants help their adopted country than the United States of America?
No other country has welcomed so many immigrants in its history. This has made the U.S. into an economic and political powerhouse.
I am an immigrant. I came to the U.S. for college on a full academic scholarship and am grateful for all the opportunities afforded to me since then. I remember my mother exclaiming, "What an amazing country the U.S. is!"
Immigrants are and have been key to this country's success since its inception (Hamilton was an immigrant!). Only those who are blinded by their bigotry cannot see this.
5
I was born in 1947. That was a different country than the one that exists. While most seem to focus on demographics to describe the difference, to me it’s how people view and treat one another in public. When I was a child, Republicans and Democrats were rivals but all felt strongly about sharing a future. That’s gone.
12
The idea that we need an every growing population to feed an ever growing economy is a Ponzi scheme. Nothing can grow forever on a finite planet, let alone a finite country. The sooner we adjust our economic policies to acknowledge the reality, the healthier future we will have.
Also, for those who deny that mass immigration depresses wages as these columnists do, I want to ask them what makes labor costs are somehow exempt from the principle of supply and demand. I really don't see how they can get away with saying that immigration raises wages, given that overall wages have been stagnant since 1973, a time frame that correlates with high immigration levels.
I, along with others, are alarmed by the growing tendency to dismiss the word of those who are knowledgeable on a subject. However, when economists say something so patently absurd as this, it gets easier to understand why citizens are increasingly skeptical of credentialed experts.
4
@James Bowen
I'm sympathetic to the argument that more immigrants in the workforce would depress wages. As the article points out, there is some emperical evidence for this. But what gets overlooked with the simple supply and demand argument is that it's not a one way flow of money from employers to workers. The employer pays wages, but the employees also spend at least some of their wages on goods and services, potentially increasing demand in those areas.
As an example, if a group of mostly unskilled workers immigrates, maybe there is increased demand for doctors and medical services to serve this group. The key question is how does it all balance out.
I think what should be obvious is that no matter what the average effect is, it's almost guaranteed that some sub-group of people will experience some negative effects.
@Evan Thanks Evan. I think your question can probably be answered with a simple thought experiment. Say 1000 new workers move into a new town. Those workers are going to need 1000 jobs. Yes, those workers will also need various services, the demand for which will increase. The interesting question is how many service jobs will be needed to meet the demands of these workers. I don't know what the exact number is, but I am pretty sure it would be well less than 1000.
Why are people seeking asylum in this country considered "illegal"? That has been the tenor in this land since at least the 90s. Certainly there are illegal immigrants, but a large percentage of the people lumped into that category are applying for asylum, even if they appear directly at a border crossing and declaiming themselves as asylum seekers. Our country has become fearful of The Other.
11
Of course businesses say that more immigrants are needed for the economy to grow. But dig down and all it is is a way to pay their workers the absolute minimum wage. If there is a tight workforce situation, they would have to actually pay their workers a decent wage. And people wonder why the middle class has disappeared in the US - massive immigration is the reason.
21
@Tom K: Except that immigrants increase the population, and that expands the economy. In other words, the economy expands with the population.
Otherwise, perchance the U.S. should have closed its borders in 1780 so that all Americans then residing in the U.S., and their progeny would then enjoy bountiful wealth?
1
@gschultens The immigrants also increase the welfare rolls and result in me paying ever higher taxes. Of course, the rich owners of the businesses don't care as they get more sales. But the ever shrinking middle class picks up the costs for these immigrants.
2
@Tom K There are numerous factors as to why the middle class is disappearing - perhaps one being "massive immigration" (although, sidenote, massive immigration has occurred since the birth of this nation), however another is that there are policies in place that protect the ultra-rich and further concentrate wealth in this country. The rich keep getting richer, and unfortunately, they are the ones in power (for example, Trump) or they act as lobbyists for those already in power. We have to stop blaming broad structural problems on one source; or rather on one group of people.
4
There is a shortage of nurses in this country. With the aging population, there will soon be a shortage of home healthcare workers and nurses' aides. When my husband was in a hospital in Oklahoma City a couple of years ago, nearly all of the nurses and nurses aides were immigrants from Asia and Africa. Would they have even been allowed in the country under Trump? Trump wants millionaires to immigrate to the USA. Will he let nurses' aides in, too?
17
Yes, says this long-time American born and trained RN. Sure Trump will let US hospitals hire and transport foreign trained nurses: their work visas will be tied to their employers making it difficult to complain about overwork. They are not US citizens so they have limited rights. They will be paid less than their citizen colleagues. And we will deplete the rest of the world of trained nurses and the services they provide to the community. All of this is happening right now and has been for the past 20 years.
BTW there is NO nursing shortage in the US-just a shortage of hospitals willing to pay for the expertise, knowledge and skill that comes with an RN license!
5
@Linda Perhaps if they paid the nurses' aides better and made less profit, it wouldn't be so hard to find domestic aides.
1
We could let in a mass if immigrants willing to work for less wages ooorrr we could use invest in the future of our young people by subsidizing more nursing schools.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/news/economy/nursing-school-rejections/index.html
We should definitely have more LEGAL immigrants.
4
A large percentage of people appearing at our borders are asylum seekers, but for some reason the administration has been referring to them as "illegal". It is not illegal to request asylum, but the White House and FOX keep calling them illegal.
2
The headline seems misstated. The article is about the underlying economics. The *story* is that a Trump administration official understands.
Where is he coming from? How come he can think? What is he doing in this administration anyway?
So the reporter ought to have tried to understand Mulvaney's mindset, not the underlying economic logic, which is pretty well understood by people who pay attention.
5
It's a shame that it's become so expensive to have, maintain, educate, and further support children in this country. Friends with children currently budget between $275,000 and $450,000 per child to see them all the way through college, and in some cases beyond. Those are after-tax dollars.
6
Most of it being healthcare and education!!
Americans should not support any kind of tiered immigration or guest worker system. That would just put us one step closer to places like Saudi Arabia, where large segments of the population are guest workers that are treated like slaves. The only type of immigration should be where the end goal of all immigrants is citizenship. That is how you preserve a republic. Regardless of the specific numbers, that should ALWAYS be the end goal.
22
Agree - and get rid of H1B etc
This is the visa type that effectively discourages parents from guiding children to STEM since imports depress oppirtunities
2
@ Maggie: It is terrible that we should only have merit-based immigration, unless that skill of merit is desire to work. If we are talking knowledge-based, we are essentially saying that we cannot develop that knowledge skill here, which is another way of saying our education is lacking. So what we should do, if we want these knowledge skills here, so that our citizens can fill the needs, is invest in education so we develop these workers.. Ah, but that would require public investment in education, which we fight tooth and nail about. It is these knowledge skilled areas where we should be most restrictive in regards to legal immigration.
1
Out of all the hate speech out there that I've read about the current administration I have yet to see one credible reference that the administration has a problem with legal immigration.
Even the Great Deporter in Chief, former President Obama, failed to do anything meaningful about illegal immigration, just as all administrations before.
5
I can’t help but point out the “hate speech” that the current administration leveled at Obama in particular how he accused O of being feint on immigration. I just wish you guys would make up your mind about your opinion about O and his policies on immigration. Was he weak? Or strong?
1
@Stephen
Face it, blame the previous one is the most common way of deflecting criticism of any administration. As far as I'm concerned both former President Obama and President Trump have been weak.
Immigrations is something to be addressed legislatively not via executive orders. And that's all that's been happening, executive orders. So the blame really falls on Congress, which the media seems to completely ignore.
Of course Mr Trump's behavior and tweets seems to command the attention of media. So I guess the blame can also be placed on the media in it's entirety. The bulk of MSM is, of course, very liberal so are obsessed with anything that can be done to damage Mr Trump's administration. But the few conservative venues just fall in lockstep attacking back. All the while all sides ignoring where the real problem lies. Congress.
Lots of posters on the thread have written that the logical response to the scarcity of labor is that wages will rise. Indeed they have, a teeny bit over the past couple of years. But the system finds a way to always get one over on labor, because as wages rise, and workers have more money, then OMG, we get the dreaded INFLATION! which the wealthy really fear, because it eats away at all the money they have socked away rotting in their vaults, but it also means that in reality the workers don't really see any gain because stuff just gets more expensive.
But lo and behold, things have not gone as expected lately! We have indeed had some wage growth without the dreaded inflation, so maybe all those economists have had it wrong...I say we keep raising wages and see what happens to the labor market, will it continue to tighten, or will more people choose to participate in some mind-numbing activity if the money is good enough?
6
Where have you been hiding - the LARGEST expense for most people is housing health and education. Those all have risen at sickening rates.
1
Legal immigration. There is a distinction. You can continue to ignore it, but that does not mean it's not there.
7
It's mainly to rescue our entitlements.
2
What ‘entitlements’? That is a trick word by the powers that want to control you.
During our working life most/ all of us put about 10 pct towards SS and Medicare. HOW are those ‘entitlements’ in the sense of being different from ‘savings for future’?
8
@Tamza Because SS is more of a Ponzi scheme. As we pay in, it goes right out to retirees. There is no savings involved. It needs workers to continue the funding.
1
@Moira Rogow
All of us, collectively through our taxes, paid to help educate and support the present-day workers. Some were our own children, most were not. That's not a 'Ponzi scheme', it is a return on investment. Stop trying to make SS recipients seem like freeloaders.
2
"Yeah, we did it, get over it"
"Republicans are hypocrites about the deficit"
"We need more immigrants"
I'm starting to like Mulvaney. He keeps saying the quiet part out loud.
5
I know: let's have VP Pence lead a prayer group that asks the Devine, for a better class of immigrants. You know the kind; English speaking, mostly white and college educated.
11
@N . Fidel But he needs to find immigrants who want to have babies. How do you do that without invading their privacy?
Regrettably, Pence thinks he speaks to the divine every day - in the oval office.🤭
The reason this has been a successful country is BECAUSE of immigrants. People don’t seem to get it.
21
1. A gaffe is just a case of a politician accidentally telling the truth. Mulvaney seems prone to gaffes.
2. Set-up: The president screams at immigrants, "our country is full, turn around". (Sample: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/trump-america-full-or-emptying.html). Joke: A year later, the chief of staff correctly notes a need for immigration.
3. History will debate fiercely in what way Trump harmed the country most. This trifling difference will not even rank in that debate.
3.1 But: Trump's complete repudiation of the US as Reagan's "shining city on a hill", and the way that Trump changed the world's view of America, will rank.
5
So what is he going to do about it?
1
You should check your facts: "The expected number of births per 100 women in America has dropped to just 173, based on data from the National Vital Statistics System." Doesn't make sense to me. Maybe per 1000 women?
@RJM The number says that the average woman will have 1.73 babies over her child-bearing year (173/100 = 1.73). Since she has a husband, that means that two people create less than two children, which means that the population shrinks. If a woman has 2.1 children over that time then she and her husband produce about the same number in the next generation, keeping the population roughly constant. A few babies die, which is why 2.1 are needed instead of just 2.0.
3
Replacement rate of population is about 2.1 per woman. The 173 per 100 means 1.73 - ie population declines. This has been happening in Japan and many EU countries for several years.
1
The American Dream.....the middle class and our inventiveness and productivity......were the result of a historical labor shortage. Mass immigration destroys all of that.
4
Tax breaks to move operations out of country and non-livable wages out of country ruins all that. In addition automation and AI ruins it too.
5
White people from countries of the sort Trump would welcome, like Norway, don’t want to emigrate to America. After all, why trade a good thing for life here?
8
@Marc Although, to be clear, someone from Norway or Sweden could probably triple their income and cut their taxes in half by working in the U.S., especially if they're an executive or in management.
4
@Adrian But the fact is that they are not coming here. Explain that.
5
@Adrian
Not likely;
Triple their income? Executive income, taking in to account certain cultural differences, i.e. expense accounts, are roughly + or - 10% within each other,
worldwide.
Cut their taxes in half? Maybe, but then they would have to pay for all those things you get with taxes in Norway. Like healthcare, childcare, free higher education, functioning infrastructure, etc., etc.
You must be using the trump slide rule.
FACTS PLEASE!
4
Paul Ryan constantly whining that social security will not be sustainable. Well more people in the workforce particularly the young helps with that but no we had to almost put young blocked. Now a lot of other countries are getting better and their first choice may not be US. If someone like me can see solutions u wonder how some in Trumps cabinet including Trump haven't figured it out.
1
Cut his pensions and healthcare and paul ryan will come to his senses.
2
Mick Mulvaney has inadvertently become the author of "Notes From the Republican Underground". While Trump is happily unspooling his America First populism, Mulvaney was sending up an s.o.s. flare at the Oxford Union conference last week. His two cries of warning consisted of his deep unease with the impact of Trump's trillion dollar deficits on the future of our economic growth. The deeper we go into debit the more taxpayer money from our children and grandchildren will be used to pay the interest on the debt, hollowing out the economy. His other warning flare consisted of his deep unease with an anemic labor market caused by America First restrictions on pools of foreign workers who are needed to stimulate economic growth.
It appears that all the old Tea Party warriors in the Republican Party are missing in action. It's almost as if their Obama era discontents have been self-censored under Trump's reign.
1
@Dan So why doesn't Mulvaney say it in public instead of a private meeting from which someone has to smuggle out a recording?
Republican after Republican has walked up to the dike, seen the leak, and decided not to get his/her finger dirty. The worst example is Susan Collins. She doesn't have the brains she was born with.
Labor shortage = wage inflation. Look for this to start happening.
3
A company that I am involved in provides "non-destructive testing services" for industrial applications. It's largely a blue-collar, 9-12 months of training post-high school job in high demand. Great for a person who lacks a college degree and wants to work outdoors. Starting salaries (w/overtime) a person can make $70-80K/year and within 5 years $100K.
We have huge challenges in hiring and retaining domestic workers. 1) Drugs - it's a safety job and we cannot tolerate drug users. The level of drug use is off the charts.
2) Reliability - the joke in the team is that Friday is a day off because the weekend is coming and Monday is a day off because of the rough weekend.
About 1/3 of the workforce is highly reliable, no drug usage, makes a very good living, been with us for many years. Rest of workforce is constant turnover.
This is not about training, it's not about immigrants (legal) who take away jobs. We simply cannot fill the roles in a reliable way
9
@Chris
Yup.
Your numbers seem high but the level of dysfunction in the potential workforce is a problem.
Legalization of marijuana presents its own issues.
1
One problem that doesn't get talked about much is the effect decreased immigration could have on retirees.
A worker shortage is generally inflationary, as employers pay more to attract increasingly scarce workers.
Inflation is the number one enemy of retirees: they are on a fixed income. Severe inflation can wipe out the value of their retirement savings.
Falling immigration rates thus represent a very real threat to a huge swathe of Americans. Fewer workers means rising inflation, which cuts right at the heart of retirees' well-being.
2
No your just making economic arguments that have history and relevance. Trumps team of geniuses have no need for that.
@JRoebuck Oops. My bad. Thanks for correcting me. :-)
Mick knows Americans born in the USA aren't going to pick apples, cantaloupes, potatoes etc. nor work in meat processing plants.
But Trump has his base complaining about legal, illegal immigrants who are taking their jobs.
Doesn't take a self proclaimed genius like our dictator to know this is not feasible.
However, Trump, like his consort, doesn't really care either, do you?
He's just trying to run the con to solidify his dictatorship and avoid prison.
I'm sure he has a contingency plan to relocate to a safe Haven if that fails since cheating on taxes & corruption & are his strengths.
So he either becomes founder of Trump Dynasty forever or flees.
In either case, we'll have to tear down the wall & let legal immigrants in,
They work harder than the base & they commit fewer fines.
7
These statements by Mulvaney are a good example of doublespeak. You talk to two groups with opposing interests, and you give them different messages. Business loves illegal immigration, as it drives down wages, whereas most voters hate it, for the same reason.
Mulvaney as part of Trump's entourage indeed may be "desperate", desperate for money to beat Bloomberg. But whether Trump has any credibility that can be converted into large amounts of hard cash outside Fox News viewers and Putin remains doubtful.
The GOP has, of course, just as Trump, large reserves . . .
1
Voters scapegoating immigrants are the real problem; we have about 10 million undocumented in a country of 325 million, and the trend is flat to down. That is a minor issue.
Economists almost unanimously agree legal immigration is a win for the country; after all, its how we got this far, so this isn’t a leap.
If you’re worried that somehow immigrants hurt the poor, rest assured, voting for Republicans who cut the safety net and refuse to expand the ACA are doing far more damage.
6
That's not true. If the US is "desperate for more immigrants" then they should have made applying for permanent residence not limited to those with family ties! I know someone who has lived here for 10+ years legally on various visas and still doesn't have a path to a green card. If this person had been in Australia or Canada living the same kind of life they're living in the US, they had already been an Australian or Canadian citizen. The US immigration system is the most ridiculous of all. It favors heavily family ties and luck (re: diversity lottery) regardless of skills and economic contribution.
1
Birth rates are falling below death rates. More and more people are singles with no kids. Give people tax and other incentives to have kids. Immigrant voters are 1 in 10. By 2045 whites will be in the minority and immigrants, latino and asian will have a bigger share of the votes
This is simple concept that even G. W. Bush understood. The Texas economy collapse without immigrant labor, in everything from the service sector, to oil and agricultural. I surely wish that the people who change the sheets and cook meals in Trump hotels and resorts would all collectively strike on Trump. Maybe when his golf course greens get overgrown and full of weeds will be be thankful for the immigrants who maintain them.
3
Undocumented workers can’t strike easily (when they get fired, their status means they have no remedies, despite the fact that firing any person for organizing is illegal). The temporary workers that Trump likes to hire have a few more rights, but are generally too afraid to act on them, since the government refuses to hold employers accountable for labor violations. Their visas are tied directly to their employment status, and employers band together to create blacklists, so that if anyone tries to organize they are usually deported and blacklisted before they can even say the word “strike.” This is all terrible and needs to change.
3
After so much damage is done, Mulvaney gives voice offshore to what he had to know was the truth on the ground. Another profile in courage, trying to feather his post-Trump nest. Like so many of "only the best people" who decided to lie down with this dog, Mulvaney is waking up with fleas. They won't go away. He should.
3
Illegal immigrants make up a large percent of farm workers, but only a small percent of the the nation’s illegal immigrants work on farms. Pew Research Center data shows only four percent of unauthorized immigrants work on farms. We could deport 96 percent of unauthorized immigrants without affecting U.S. farms.
https://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/11/03/occupations-of-unauthorized-immigrant-workers/
4
Trump's main campaign agenda item is to stop immigration. Everyone knows that immigration has been encouraged by businesses from the time the US created the Mexican US border after the Mexican American War. For the US economy to keep growing workers will have to be found. Billions of dollars are lost because of Trump's attempt to manipulate white voters fears and resentments of alleged encroachments on their employment prospects and well being.
What the USA really needs is a FOCUS on a quality, super-efficient immigration department. Anyone who has immigrated to the USA knows how cumbersome, inefficient and messy the system is. It is a DISGRACE. Yet neither side focuses on this. One side wants ZERO immigration and the other wants unlimited immigration.
Can we please start focusing on getting things done that actually WORK for the USA?
2
Which country with huge numbers of untrained, poorly educated workers has a thriving and growing middle class?
1
I don't know. It WAS the United States of America.
There.s been a staffing shortage at Mar-a-Lago, so this is a presidential priority.
3
Interesting, too, that Mulvaney (btw, Mick Mulvaney, a good "American" name!) uttered this sentiment in the UK where anti-immigrant feeling drove Brexit, despite the pretense it was about something else. They may be feeling the shortage there too soon.
1
There’s a disconnect somewhere. When Arkansas said all healthy people on food stamps must find work, there were no jobs to be found. Now, Mick M says we have plenty of jobs with no one to do them. This supposed paradox is so typical of American logic. Maybe our Republican and Democratic politicians can actually try to understand their own country and let the rest of us know.
2
Immigration is great.
Several issues persist:
1. Can we also solve the lower birth rate issues? This is likely based on our historically unusual economic forces.
2. Let's not jump to conclusions that "Americans' are not good enough" so we need these immigrants. (Immigration is good.) Americans are extremely entrepreneurial despite our bizarre and unaffordable healthcare system, unreachable legal costs, and other structural road-blocks.
3. In the last handful of decades the US has been anti-STEM. Words are free so don't pay attention to them, look at actions in the US towards STEM and STEM workers. So, don't just admit STEM workers throwing turmoil into these job markets. Focus on healthcare and related workers in areas that have crimped broad entrepreneurial action by Americans and recent immigrants.
2
Immigrants bring energy and new ideas, not only bodies. If the objection is to illegal immigration, then stop drastically restricting legal immigration.
Look at the entrepreneurs and the creativity that the waves of immigration have brought.
It distresses me that so many people would slam shut the doors that admitted our own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
We need comprehensive immigration reform the would eliminate the arbitrary and mean-spirited current White House policies. We should not be afraid of the conversation and the hard work of figuring out what we collectively need. And I don't think Stephen Miller should be the sole policymaker here.
40
Mulvaney's recognizing the train-wreck that the Trump administration and its policies are, and is trying to salvage a political life for himself after the regime's demise.
63
@Michael Grillo
No. Rich people are leaning on him. He is tea party corruption to his core. His first target was the consumer protection bureau.
Guy should be out of a job and forced to live off what he earns from his labor in the real world.
There's a lot of confusion between growth in GDP and growth in per capita GDP adjusted for price changes. Only businesses care about the former because it means more corporate profits. The rest of us care about the latter measure whether we know it or not because (distribution aside) it is tied to our incomes. The Times and many others here seem not to understand the difference.
The per capita measure was about 1.8 percent and is due to productivity gains and inflation. After inflation is taken out there is actually no growth in the country at all. Zero. The GDP number shows the same - no real economic growth.
By letting in more immigrants we will certainly have more GDP growth, but we may not have per capita GDP growth. It depends on who we let in. Adding in more "relatives" or unskilled workers is not going to raise incomes which is the REAL issue. It will just boost corporate profits because more people will be buying diapers and cokes.
2
@Ross Salinger You clearly did not read the article. If there is restricted immigration, and mushrooms are left to rot, then the price will go up, driving per capita GDP down. Extend that calculus across all of agriculture and overall production will drop.
What is required is a balanced approach, not the meat ax approach by Trump. But for more than a decade now, Republicans have opposed this, mainly because Obama was in the White House.
7
As has been true for several decades, the GOP message is shaped and re-defined for each discrete audience.
For those working class voters who fear (with or without good reason) that immigrants are taking their jobs away, the message is: Immigration is Bad.
For those manufacturers, corporate farm owners, or any other business that depends upon immigrant labor to fill the most basic jobs, the message is: Immigration is necessary.
We all know that Trump himself has employed many undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigrants to run his own businesses. The message: Do as I say, not as I do.
In the Trump administration, there is no way to expect a complete or truthful answer on any subject----only what Trump deems good for Trump.
14
Let's rephrase Mulvaney's argument in other words: the US economy has an unquestionable, imperative need for growth, and humans must do anything to quench its thirst. Americans or immigrants, all should pay their tribute to the great Economy god. No amount of democracy (as faillible as it presently is) or values (as xenophobic and backwards as they may be) shall question this fundamental, religious principle.
The Economy demands, and all shall obey.
Well, I would like to remind Mulvaney that the economy should be at the service of humans, not the other way around. Even more so when the fruit of the present economy are so unevenly distributed and the planet can't sustain it anymore (as numerous systemic studies have shown).
If the American population is declining, then maybe it's all natural that its economy declines as well. I don't get why America should force-engineer population growth just so Wall Street can see positive numbers.
I am not making an anti-immigration argument, I'm just questioning the barely-questioned need for economic growth. Maybe it's time to measure the performance of an economy against objectives of equality and adequacy, instead of pure growth.
12
Immigrants make the world a better place for all. What needs to stop are the illegal immigrants entering out country without permission. In Nevada we have over 140,000 illegal immigrants, which Nevada government turns a blind eye to their existence.
We have laws in place for a reason. If we cherry pick which laws we follow and which laws we ignore, than why have laws at all? Sanctuary States should not exist. Nor should cities tell their police departments they do not have to work with ICE or the Federal Government, when in acting those laws.
We need to rethink our immigration policies so that those wanting to live in the US have a better change of doing so. I'm not against immigrants, I'm just against immigrants who feel entitled to live in the US without doing the paperwork first.
@Valerie - It is a constitutional fact that local and state law enforcement are in no way obligated to enforce federal law. Back when republicans used to believe in limited government they would refer to this as an “unfunded mandate.” If Trump wants local law enforcement to do the job of the feds, he can tax some of his buddies to pay for it.
11
A factor that is not receiving enough attention from economists, politicians , Media is the aging of our population.
Some 12% of our population in 2010 was over 65, today16% and rising to 20 percent in 2040. This is one of the main reasons why our unemployment rate is so low coupled with the related growth in the Health Care Sector.
This demographic trend is consistent with other industrialized economies who have similar our lower unemployment rates.
They are better placed to deal with this trend as they have much lower per capita costs , better health metrics and a deficit that as a percentage of GDP is lower than ours.
However European nations in particular are increasingly dependent on immigrants to care for their elderly.
Likewise we need immigrants to care for us so Mulvaney is right we need immigrants however what is clear those immigrants will of necessity come from South, Central America and Asia. So Mulvaney needs to talk to Trump and Millar and convince them.
1
Immigration is, I've noticed, one of the only issues where the NYT comment section is notably more conservative. It's pretty funny.
Either way, as long as the system targets immigrants and not employers, you'll never see those higher wages. The history of the labor movement is the history of the war between employers and employed, not free workers versus slaves, nor citizen versus immigrant. Target the exploiters.
23
@Roarke Immigration riles up conservatives more. That's why.
@SteppeSon
Illegal immigration.
There’s a difference even if ‘progressives’ refuse to acknowledge it.
@EGD
Trump is curbing legal immigration as well. If his policies had been in place twenty years ago, I wouldn't be here now, a college-educated naturalized public sector worker. Not that it would make a difference to you 'conservatives'.
Trump’s administration contradicts itself - and common sense - yet again.
10
Just goes to show you how politicized this Administration is. There is a reality that the Trumpists do acknowledge but don't want the public to be aware of, because they'd rather demagogue the issue than be honest about it. This is not government for the People, this is government for the powerful... and who want remain powerful.
11
The belief of many immigrants trained in STEM is that a glass ceiling will eventually put their careers on a plateau. As a middle aged scientist passed over for promotion at Exxon said to me: They can always find another immigrant PhD.
My belief is that many would-be immigrants in East Asia are staying or returning home. Seattle, Silicon Valley, NYC are no longer attractive to them.
7
@David There are record numbers of H1b visa holders who will not willingly return to India and China. So many that they have been lobbying to change our per-country caps on Green Card issuance to benefit themselves exclusively for up to the next 20 + years, cutting out all other countries for employment based Green Cards. That is the basis for the very ill-considered Sb386 which, so far, has not passed.
2
@David It all depends on the field of study. Don't tell us that immigrants are leaving Seattle or Silicon Valley. they are coming in droves because of the opportunities. Exxon is not Seattle.
2
@David
The issue with Seattle, Silicon Valley, and NYC is the absurd cost to live there.
Other technology centers are springing up that are more affordable and will attract immigrants and domestic migrants.
1
So Americans are to get cheap paying jobs because the manufacturing base shrinks. Is there no end to this problem which started with liberals saying unlimited immigration is good? Now the powers shifted to Republicans from Democrats.
@Ryan Bingham - No liberal ever said that unlimited immigration is good. Why do conservatives just make things up?
4
As an immigrant I may be biased. But as a father it appears to me that raising children to be productive employees costs a lot. Like, 20+ years of sustained effort.
If you let an immigrant in, you get that for free. Think about that.
All these Indian and Korean engineers working at Intel? We got them for free. Therefore, keeping immigrants out is not very smart.
And for all the people complaining they'll take "their" jobs: The job market is not like a pie that we need to divide, where we all fight for a piece. The job market is more like land that needs to be worked - the more productive employees, the better the yield.
20
@Marc That's like saying that children of wealthy people should be hired first because they're of more value than the other ones who have had to take out student loans.
2
@Margo, I met a French girl with a masters in law and human resources from a French university in Mexico City last year. Her choice of education would be very valuable in a country like France with strict pro-labor rules. I can't help but wonder if that's why she was hired on a one year contract in a midwestern city to a) learn French labor rules by hiring a temporary cheaper employee rather than an independent French law firm b) who is even cheaper as her education was completely covered compliments of French tax system. She wasn't interested in looking for a job in Mexico, but there on vacation. She was headed to Canada shortly afterwards for some additional certification or other and I assume she was going to look there for more permanent employment rather than just a year's gig.
We don't need more people. And we don't need economic expansion. Neither increasing population or increasing economic activity is sustainable. (And it will increase global warming which will effect economic wealth and expansion).
13
@David Binko
Yes, we do need economic expansion to ensure material progress.
Few prefer to return to Victorian days of grinding poverty.
6
It seems like such a no-brainer. Create a sophisticated immigration system that provides rotating and time limited stays in an organized and regulated process. We now have these things called computers and giant corps that work smoothly despite large numbers of workers. Why is it so difficult to get Smart about low skill, low wage work forces?
The Only possible conclusion is that the US Employers who participate in this illegal immigration game like to keep it unregulated and hidden to enhance their slave owner like powers over these people.
9
If infrastructure projects are to go ahead, immigrant labour will be necessary to avoid wage inflation. Indeed, wage inflation would need to be countered by rising interest rates, which is unthinkable.
The US worker is doomed to be poor unless...unless Bernie replaces Trump.
4
I'm just amazed by the hypocrisy - I know farmers who chant 'Built the wall,' in public, but privately are mortified at the loss of undocumented laborers.
There are such simple solutions available that solve all these problems. No wall needed.
Enforce existing federal law. American businesses (whether farmers, chicken plants, or mushroom producers) hire only documented workers at penalty of vast fines and imprisonment. (The mechanisms for documentation actually exist and need only be ramped up to accommodate need)
This would protect the workers and their employers. And in comparison to the billions being diverted to build a useless wall, it could virtually pay for itself.
38
It sounds hypocritical until you realize that employing undocumented workers gives that farm owner far more leverage and power than someone with the legal right to work. The more likely an undocumented worker is to be deported, the more desperate they are to stay in the employers good graces.
The GOP don’t want to fix the immigration system, because they want to keep undocumented workers in their exploitable state.
7
O my gosh. What if "growing the economy" is not the peak of American success? What if stability and conservation of land and resources plays a part?
22
@Ernest Montague
Ever work at a failing company? What little collective decency remains would likely evaporate without a commitment to sustain growth - and take the environment down with it.
1
Oh no a labor shortage, if we let it happen then wages would have to rise to reflect the scarcity of that resource. Wait what were we talking about again? More cheap foreign labor from countries where people have next to no expectations for American middle class life, thus ensuring the continuing depression of wages across the board? Yes more of that please.
31
No one should listen to anything coming from the Trump Administration. They are all liars—Mulvaney is a nasty piece of work besides.
The wages people are making now at lower level jobs are not sustainable. Pronouncements from the WH have no baring on anything.
1
Twelve years ago I learned in a college course that the US birthrate is too low to replace workers, and that this labor shortfall has for several decades been covered by immigrant workers. I'm not sure how service and agricultural sectors will continue to grow now that immigration has slowed to a trickle. Nobody thinks about who will detassel corn or process chickens or work in restaurants and hotels. I observe all this with some alarm and concern.
8
@Jill There was a recent Times article about all the US citizens--black, white, younger, older--who flocked to a chicken processing plant for jobs after a raid of its illegal immigrant work force.
Really? Well, let the corporations whine and cry for more cheap labor. Meanwhile, I am going to sit here and wait until wages rise, more affordable housing appears, college becomes affordable, the air gets cleaned up, and politicians start listening to the people. I have no hostility at all toward immigrants, but let's start solving the problems of American citizens before we admit more immigrants.
12
@Madeline Conant but are not American citizens themselves Immigrants ?
As always, one wonders just which right-winger’s gonna be first to try and explain to people what strangling immigration will mean to our economy, let alone what it’ll do to the eldercare they’re going to need.
I’m not even going to bother considering which one’s planning to fess up to the general immorality and illegallity of the way we’re treating refugees, let alone the sheer lunacy of helping everything south of the border along the road of chaos while fantasizing that nothing’ll spill over on us.
10
American workers can provide care to elderly. The low wages make it hard for them to accept that work, that's all. Please don't deny the fact that American workers exist who can fill the jobs.
9
@Margo I agree that there are many unemployed American workers who would happily take a job doing just about anything that needs to be done—at a living wage, and backed by a union that would have their back.
Barring that, companies will continue to import and exploit foreign workers.
7
@Margo
@Teri
The vast majority of studies show that immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, do not decrease the wages of citizens. Yep, Trump says it. And Sanders keeps on sayin it, which is really inexcusable. That don't make it true. (To see Sanders' baseless non-answer on the topic, read his endorsement interview with the NY Times.)
1
We don't need immigrants. Start educating Americans first.
6
Of course, immigrants are vital for U.S. progress. And Trump knows it too...but is too arrogant and petty to admit it.
4
@manfred marcus
Trump is also too dishonest to admit that he hires undocumented workers. Of course, he preserves 'deniability' by having underlings do it.
Mick must want to get himself FIRED. And just who was in that "private audience" listening to him?
6
You mean the Norwegians aren’t lining up to come here like Trump wanted?!?
62
@David
Nah.. Neither are the Swedes.
2
Fascinating that a country “desperate” for immigrant labor (according to business leaders, Republicans and white Democrats) has no trouble at all imprisoning millions of young able bodied Black men and under educating many millions more.
18
With the onset of AI driven automation there are prognostications of large losses of jobs, including skilled ones that can be automated in many sectors. If we have to hand out monthly stipend to support hordes of our potentially unemployed citizens, does it make any sense in increasing the nation's financial burden by encouraging more indiscriminate immigration?
With fierce competition from the Chinese in the fields of science (eg. genetics), computer science, technology and engineering, we should allow only the best in these fields where we have heavy shortage of skilled professionals, including doctors who are needed to service our increasingly elder rural population.
3
@Zor Prognostications are just that prognostications. Right now there is a shortage of people to work, and do you think there will be crack computer engineers trying to determine how we can get robots to pick mushrooms, apples, oranges? Or even care for the apple tree, orange grove? The problem staring the US in the face is the fact that we have too few workers to produce a GDP that meets the needs of our ever present budget deficit. As GDP falls, the value of the dollar will fall, and the value of our investments fall. To compound this issue, we will have fewer workers to support the aging population with fewer resources. We need leaders to directly talk to the small minority of people in this country who yell build that wall and tell them that their future will be trying to climb over it if we don't change our course.
1
@Russell Smith We can issue temporary seasonally adjusted work visas to meet the agriculture sector's needs.
Why not increase the labor force participation by providing free skills training to millions of Americans, and deploy them into productive labor force? Or, are they lost for ever?
2
@Zor But we have a science denier as president!! And he only wants to feather his own and his Buddies nest, to the with the rest of us!!
1
With reduced immigration the value of a person's labor will rise. Currently, many households need 2 incomes to make ends meet. Too many low skilled immigrants help create housing shortages and wage disparities...creating a need for more government services for those at the bottom rungs of society. Robotics and automation will increase further pressure on the poor.
Let's focus on increasing opportunities for our underclass, that is more important than maximizing quarterly growth numbers at this time.
9
@Lane We would like to think that would be the case in a true capitalistic society, although we see that we don't live in a true capitalistic society. Those Business owners and CEO's run Washington, and we currently don't have representation at the same level. The choices will always be made (until we can get rid of Citizen's United) in favor of maximizing profit over caring for the average American.
4
@Russell Smith. The Citizens United decision recognizes a corporation as having the same rights of a individual person. Those individuals forming the corporation have the same rights as workers joining together to form a union. Seems if corporations shouldnt have this right unions shouldnt either.
What he means is that the companies are desperate to suppress wages of both blue and white collar workers by flooding the marketplace. H1B and OPT are already vehicles for ageism and wage suppression. And other work visas are not that better. The only visa that makes any sense is the O visa. He’s clearly in the pocket of Silicon Valley tech companies, and is eyeing a cushy lobbying job.
What happens when a recession hits? It’s the American middle class footing the bill.
27
I agree. When a government figure starts saying these words we all know darn well the lobbyists have been buddying up to him.
Maybe there could be a little investigation into who has been talking to him?
5
"Fertility has dropped since the baby boom of the late 1940s to mid-1960s, and has plunged recently. The expected number of births per 100 women in America has dropped to just 173..."
One way to look at this is Americans expressing a collective preference to live in a less-crowded country. This preference should not be frustrated by elites who prefer endless growth.
Another way to look at it is to ask, "why is it so hard to form a family in America today?" If a married couple is having trouble having children, generally they explore why, rather than just inviting the neighbor kids to come live in their house.
Immigration drives down wages, crowds schools and roads, and drives up housing prices. All of this makes it harder for Americans to form stable households and have children. Immigration is not the solution, immigration is the problem.
15
The dirty little (not so) secret subtext of all this is pure power politics. Republicans want legal immigration from relatively high skilled workers, not because those folks contribute to the economy on a high level basis, want to live the American dream, etc., etc., but because they are generally conservative and vote for Republicans.
Canada has that type of system. It harshly represses illegal immigration and allows legal immigration only to those who can buy their way into Canada through the federal immigration point system, by flashing large bank accounts or the prospects of creating jobs with small business. Progressives in Canada have been dismayed to see these prosperous immigrants vote for the Conservative Party, helping elect Conservative governments like that of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister, Rob Ford as Toronto mayor, and his brother Doug as Ontario Premier. That's what Trump and the Republicans, cynically, want to replicate in the US.
On the other had, Democrats, just as cynically, want to suppress legal immigration from potentially conservative, well-to-do immigrants in favor of illegal immigrants, diversity lotteries, and family members. Those people and their children who are born in the US and automatically become citizens are seen as sure-fire loyal Democrat voters.
It's all politics. As always. It would be nice to see the press stop the phony moralizing about it.
7
Immigration Bolsters the Economy. One Trump Official Acknowledged That.
Immigrants are critical to expanding the United States’ labor pool.
Rick Mulvaney (2-27-20).
This has always been self evident to anyone watching birthrates drop worldwide. I always felt the US had an advantage here and we did until our latest iteration of president decided all immigration was verboten. Our stable genius is anything but.
6
Immigrants can’t vote for Trump but they remain a handy scapegoat to fire up his base. The wall is a joke, a very expensive joke, a symbol of Trump's fervent defense of white Christian rule. Of course his wanting knowledge of economics has created an exploding deficit, vast wealth inequality, and a war against labor unions and healthcare. He constantly points to the Dow as proof of his effectiveness. Corporate profits rise while wages remain stagnant and the middle class erodes. The job market rating appears to be rising but many of the jobs are minimum wage part time positions. Now we have a labor shortage for the very jobs that immigrants have traditionally performed, jobs most Americans shun. As pandemics occur and the population ages, we're also facing a shortage of doctors and medical personnel. We'll need to find immigrants to fill those positions too. When we needed to expand infrastructure and build a continental railroad, we used immigrant labor. When we needed to modernize cities, build housing, and field crops, we used immigrant labor. It's not a mystery. It's history. It's basic knowledge.
5
When you need a living wage you will shun those jobs unless you're desperate.
Look at office cleaners, for example. They used to be employees of the company where they worked. Then they were outsourced, often to the building management. Then those jobs were contracted out. Each level progression meant less pay to the workers. Is that fair or right? Restore a decent wage to the workers and see American participation return to those jobs.
5
@Margo
Well put. 'Outsourcing' always results in money-saving to the company doing the outsourcing. That makes the company's stock rise.
With every increase in the 'gig' economy, corporations gain more power over those who actually do the work.
3
For most people, the cost of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in America is too expensive thanks to our lack of public spending in infrastructure, health-care, and education. Build it and they will come
5
@Fiona
Yes it is too expensive for minimum wage earners. But that has nothing to do with infrastructure. That has to do with financial speculation in real estate. Those commercials that promise wealth from flipping houses, and builders who build to the max on every plot, are the keys to our problems. The 2008 crisis was just one facet. And before anyone suggests massive government spending in ínfrastructure, let me add that we don't have the money from revenue, tax revenue and besides that is a community tax problem anyway. Property taxes are already maxed out.
2
It really doesn't matter what happens with immigration laws. The only people who will come are desperate. The US is no longer very attractive in that it is one of the lower ranked countries of the supposed advanced nations. There are many other countries who would be much better places to go, especially if you were and educated and productive person.
Everything here is corrupt. You cannot expect a merit based system.
No amount of immigration is going to prevent this ponzi scheme from crashing. When the worst of climate change begins we will block our borders, and rightfully so. No one will be able to handle the refugees of the future.
Surely there must be some way to get rich on the apocalypse.
4
Pandering to the audience is what Mr Mulvaney was doing. Every European knows that the USA has NO legal immigration, other then the limited lottery based one, and there the zillions around the world have made the chances of winning a green card slim to none. And those legal immigrants usually do not have the job skills that will support an American standard of living. The only way a professional can immigrate is through H1. And that quota is taken by large American corps recklessly even though they could hire/train Americans.
5
Most important for immigrant labor is that they become documented so they can pay FICA and taxes just like the American workers.
6
What Mulvaney acknowledge about immigration has been the norm since the founding of our nation. Problem is, since the arrival of Mr. Trump and company to power, non-white immigrants, even skill ones, are undesirable. White Europeans would be out of their minds to immigrate to a country with unaffordable healthcare, housing, education and with rampant gun violence. Even our traditional immigrants, Mexicans, have started to leave in droves back home.
2
@JCA Trump deliberately selected immigrants as scapegoats and directed his voter's anger and fear at them. He traumatized thousands of children and their families. Now he wants to exploit them in other ways?
Everything Trump does from now to November will be what he imagines helps him get re-elected. It's all about him, all the time.
5
"But growth in the native-born work force is rapidly slowing as the population ages and people have fewer children, "
Although we need immigration and a plan to integrate immigrants into our society and education, the so-called native-born population should be doing their part by increasing their number of children. This will create a healthier American society. Birth control isn't supposed to mean "total birth suppression"! Children are a guarantee of a healthy society and a robust hope for the future.
1
@jeanisobel1, tell that to the people who insist that nobody who can't afford kids without any assistance should be having them.
1
Gotta love that addiction to growth. We'll just keep growing forever and ever and never stop! A train with no breaks? Who wouldn't want to ride that?
Unsustainable nonsense.
But then, ask yourself: where's this GDP as a result fo rampant reckless growth being concentrated? If you guessed "yeah, probably the rich" then ding-ding! You win!
4
@JB, agreed. A lower GDP is not necessarily bad if wealth is more evenly distributed as a result.
3
The question isn't if we need immigrants. The issue is skill-set. If you have great tech skills, then American tech businesses roll out the red carpet for you. If you are illiterate, then thanks but no thanks.
4
So let's fix the legal immigration system! Fix DACA! Get Mitch McConnell to let the Senate debate House legislation addressing immigration.
4
Trump's immigration policies are the worst sort of pandering. They hurt everyone. And, if Trump thinks that a xenophobic administration (think Muslim travel ban and "rapists and criminals") will go unnoticed among the highly-skilled folks who may want to immigrate here he is (again) woefully and willfully ignorant. If I was a scientist (which I am) I would happily choose a country where my brothers and sisters are welcomed over one where they are subjected to blanket slander.
8
I think he means expanding cheap labor pool.
Keep wages low.
More immigration.
6
Does this mean The President is about to be found employing some more undocumented workers at one of his many, very many real, business interests? Will he fire them along with Mick?
5
Hire me. I'm long term unemployed.
110
@Louis Anthes I have friends in Eastern Washington - farm country - who are always desperate for hard working help. As with those mushroom pickers in PA, the demand for backbreak labor is greater than the supply.
In Arkansas, chicken slaughtering facilities are hiring.
In California, lots of demand for tough manual labor.
This is work that I, a spoiled American, would not do. Nasty, tough jobs that leave a person shattered at the end of each day. Are you stepping up?
53
@jrsherrid Perhaps he's a US STEM worker, maybe over 35 even, who is overlooked by employers who prefer to hire cheaper, compliant H1b visa holders. Need to know facts first.
17
@Margo do you have stats for this? I'm genuinely curious.
6
In manufacturing, companies have been hurting for employees for years.
While this sector may not be one that relies heavily upon immigration for its workers - because the need is for workers with specific skills - the sector's problems point out another of Trump's ill-advised notions.
Trump keeps declaring that he's bringing manufacturing back to the US. But if manufacturing cannot find the employees it needs at present, how does onshoring more manufacturing make any sense?
The insistence that ramping up more manufacturing will solve the country's problems is as faulty as the insistence that immigrants are problems to be eliminated. It's just another demonstration of Trump's ignorance and disastrous instincts.
America needs immigrants, for so many reasons.
@Elizabeth
We could support educational programs in which manufacturers work with community colleges to continually teach workers new skills.
2
@ann From talking to small business owners, I don't think the issue is lack of skills, unless you consider "showing up on time and not on drugs" a skill.
2
@ann
Ann, good thought. Many manufacturers do work with their local community colleges - funding scholarships, donating equipment and offering apprenticeships.
1
The US economy runs on immigrant labor. From the high end Doctoral Candidates, computer coders, to nurses aids, construction workers, meat packers, cooks, landscape workers to farm laborers. Take these away and we are in serious trouble. Trump has whipped up anti-immigrant fever among his base as a way to keep them in line. The result is that the US is increasingly viewed as a country that is hostile to immigrants both legal & skilled or undocumented. This is going to hurt our economy.
We used to have a system that worked for immigration, it was abandoned which resulted in our current mess. This is a problem that has been kicked down the road by both sides for years. That bill is now coming due.
9
I find this continuous American agony over immigration mildly amusing. It is clear to anyone with eyes in their head that you need progressive immigration policies to enable your country to grow and prosper. There are countless studies from various reputable sources which prove that immigration is a net gain for the receiving nation. The article indicates that the US added 595,000 immigrants last year, out of a population of 323 million. My country of Canada admits 350,000 per year, in a population of 36 million. Almost every immigrant brings a great motivation to succeed, high education and valuable skills. These factors are what makes a great society. I personally have never met an immigrant on unemployment insurance or welfare but have met countless numbers as doctors, lawyers, university professors and business owners. They made a conscious decision to come here and are fully motivated to succeed, and greatly appreciate the opportunity to become Canadians. Canada has not spent a dime in the preparation of these people, but when they arrive in Toronto with a university degree and high skills, they add millions of dollars worth to the Canadian balance sheet. A good example of the remarkable talents of immigrants is to view the personal details of the people who died on Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 in January. Most were immigrants to Canada or students studying in Canadian universities. America is greatly limiting itself with this xenophobic policy.
25
@Robert Chaloux
The issue here, always, is illegal immigration versus legal immigration.
As for Canada, hopefully you’ll be able to turn your immigrants into ‘Canadians.’
Sadly, 260 years after the conquest of French forces on the Plains of Abraham, many in Canada seem to look at the conquered francophones as somehow less than fully-Canadian.
2
EGD in California,
I can assure you the immigrants fully integrate and become citizens. Canada has the highest level of naturalization in the world.
And another thing, I am a Francophone Canadian who has lived all over Canada (as an Army Officer) and have never felt less of a citizen than my fellow countrymen. I think it’s time for you to come up for a visit and see for yourself.
3
@Robert Chaloux
Trump would like the United States to use a merit-based system for picking immigrants similar to the one you have in Canada.
It is current United States policy to award two-thirds of our annual green cards to foreigners who have one or more relatives who already live here. All that matters to get a green card is kinship, regardless of the foreigner's level of education, skills, fluency in English, or overall ability to assimilate.
This policy allows a great many foreigners with little education, no skills, no ability to speak English, and little overall ability to assimilate to move here legally. And then, once here, they are allowed to legally petition to legally bring in their own equally uneducated relatives.
Trump would like to change our policy such that the majority of green cards would be awarded according to the foreigner's merits, just as Canada does. Kinship would be considered, but it would not be the only consideration.
2
Outside of immigration, the US birth rate is on a downward trend. People are having less children and starting families later in life. Nothing unique about that, it's been going in pretty much all developed countries.
The trend might be good ecologically but if you're planning for a retirement in which social security is a significant component of your income. Plan again. The demographic squeeze from falling birth rates coupled with reduced immigration means a much smaller proportion of the population will be responsible for funding the SS payments of retirees. I do not want to inflict that possibly severe and unsustainable burden on our children and grandchildren. How about you?
5
The US has become a less attractive country to move to in the last few years. Many Americans like to differentiate between legal and "illegal" (not my preferred term) immigrants, and how they really appreciate the former. The reality is that to the average American an immigrant is an immigrant, and they either assume they came following the legal channels or they didn't, and their interactions with these immigrants will match their assumptions. Immigrants from non-Western European countries (often assumed to be undocumented) are still victims of xenophobia and racism, regardless of how they came here. There is NO way to tell by just looking at a person whether they're an immigrant or not, let alone what type of immigrant they are. People coming here looking for low-income jobs may have a different motivation and may be willing to endure a certain degree of racism if the overall situation is better than the one they are leaving. But, if you are a highly educated worker, who is likely to have a decent income in your country of origin, or in a different country with less racism, why come here? No one deserves to be treated in racist or xenophobic ways, but if, as a country, you can't even be decent to the people you supposedly really want in the country, then how do you expect anyone to come?
14
Very timely and informative. It’s amazing how Trump sets goals then contradicts them with policies that damage the country:
1. Immigration restrictions slow GDP growth, which he said would be 4-6%, but hasn’t topped 3% for a full year. If GDP is $1 trillion less in a decade, that’s an $8,000 income hit per family on average.
2. Tax cuts increase budget deficits, which he pledged to eliminate.
3. His trade wars caused a manufacturing recession, with minimal job creation in manufacturing in 2019.
4. His tariffs are taxes on Americans, which offset much of his individual income tax cuts, costing households an estimated $1,200 in 2020 (CBO).
5. His promise to cover everyone with good health insurance ended up with ACA sabotage costing 2-3 million their insurance so far.
I guess Fareed Zakaria was right when he said Trump sometimes contradicts himself in the same sentence.
25
As an American Ex-Pat living in Germany, can they make the case for me to come home (besides the obvious friends and family)?
- Here I can choose which specialist I want to go see; there is no one “out of network” (unless it’s a doctor that only sees private insurance patients)
- My child won’t have to do armed shoot drills when he/she goes to school. Gun violence is not an issue here compared to the U.S.
- There’s no need to organize a go fund me for medical bills cause it’s covered more or less
- I pay 300€/month for two children’s preschool in a great facility
- If my company were to have to downsize, I know that the benefits offered here would be much more generous compared to there
- I get 6 weeks paid vacation plus sick leave on top; including additional sick days to take care of my kids if they need it
- The quality of my kid’s education doesn’t depend as much as to the wealth of myself or my neighborhood
...should I go on?
I agree with the other reader. Let the people resources get scarce and force the companies to start offering more pay and better benefits for more of their workers; not just the C-Suite executives.
180
@KT
I’ve lived in Germany too in the early-80s (Berlin - fantastic city!).
Great country, love the public transport, couldn’t stand their obsession with rules and order.
My wife was raised on the wrong side of the wall. We both agree that Europe has its plusses but there’s waaaayyyy too much history there (with still more to be made). We feel much better on this side of the Atlantic.
2
@KT What is described here by KT, is what Bernie Sanders wants for us in the US. It is social democracy, as in most of Western Europe, Canada, Australia etc. All these countries are democratic and have capitalist free market economies. Let's think about it and vote accordingly.
8
@KT
How I envy you! But it would be difficult to leave the Bay Area for Europe (or anywhere else in the world). No so for many people who can't afford it. Go Bernie!
2
"If that’s the case, the United States’ economic fate will hinge on population growth."
So that means I don't get any wealthier but I get to deal with more traffic, more pollution, more sprawl and higher housing costs. No thanks.
The United States is a Country, not a business park. It is a Country with sovereignty and responsibilities to its citizenry that trump the endless pursuit of economic growth. Environmental protection and care for our indigent citizens come to mind.
I believe it is now time to cut immigration so as to allow for those here now to mix and assimilate and to forge the new American Identity and live up to our national motto - E Pluribus Unum - Of Many Become One.
10
@Dan, historically isolationism doesn't have a good track record.
2
@Dan, good, sensible points.
2
Sure immigrants are "critical to expanding the labor pool", but "do we need to expand the labor pool?" is the real question. I don't think we do. Automation is eliminating jobs and as wages rise it will eliminate even more and I think wages should be allowed to rise some to help the working class, which ultimately makes the whole country stronger economically.
16
Can someone help explain how un-documented immigrantion
helps poor Americans, those that are un-employed, those who work for minimum wage.
If you showed up at work and a qualified but un-documented
immigrant now had your position, how would you feel ?
Companies that flout the immigration laws either through
misuse of H1-B work visas, or knowingly hiring un-documented
workers only harm American citizens.
Things will never improve for poor American citizens when companies can and will hire and pay undocumented workers
under the table.
35
@John Brown it was a tactic of union busting that started in the 1980s.
9
@John Brown
This the question that I keep on asking: How many people do you know whom have actually lost their job to an illegal immigration? I thought so. No one I know has actually lost a job to an illegal immigrant.
3
@Banjokat Surely you can read about the issues with the Chicago Cloverhill Bakery and the illegal immigrants that displaced American workers? Its better documented than most of these situations.
2
"We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth." What's the point of economic growth if it requires population growth? Bigger GDP may not be a boon if it's distributed to a bigger population. In fact population decline may well increase per capita wealth, such as housing, measured in actual goods as distinct from dollars. Worse, a call to grow population is also a call to accelerate climate change.
6
@Speede, this is the problem with our current form of capitalism. The need for constant growth to avoid collapse. We need to find a new path.
3
We have a lot of people in prison in the US. There is a source of labor right there. Instead of warehousing the non violent, free them and make them work. On that note, I've noticed that the auto support and meat processing industry here in southern Michigan seem to be relaxing their hiring standards by opening up jobs to ex felons. Turnover is a problem too. Makes you wonder how much rehabilitation is actually going on inside our prisons. You know, like preparing young men getting out and functioning in a paying job. Off on a tangent a bit, but just some observations.
5
Zero rehabilitation is happening. It’s purely punitive.
1
@Steve, we already do use prison labor. Our prison system is not particularly good at rehabilitation.
1
Why would a middle class person from other developed countries in the world ever want to take a downgrade by immigrating to the United States?
35
@Chris
Liberty.
The dignity of not being a state dependent.
(‘Progressives’ will never understand...)
1
@EGD
The number of USAmericans who have "liberty" and "dignity" has dropped significantly in the past few decades.
8
@EGD, oh please. Your entire existence is subsidized by the State. The US is not more free than many other countries by plenty of metrics, incarceration rates being the most obvious.
4
As others have pointed out, a smaller labor pool under Trump's policies will increase wages for the working class.
Immigrants largely come to us one of three ways: family-based migration, employment-based migration, or as refugees. Trump and Stephen Miller want to reduce family-based and refugee migration and increase employment-based migration. Well, if you do that, you are expanding the higher-skilled labor pool, which will lower wages for the middle and higher classes. But hey, it's good for business, so that's all that matters, right?
4
@Justin Trump and Miller don’t want any migration - period. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t been closely following the actions of this administration
10
Why a top Republican said this
Employers who want to keep wages down are desperate for immigrants. And they finance the Republican Party
Immigration , as Krugman has pointed out, lowers wages of the lower classes of Americans.
From Notes on Immigration
"First, the benefits of immigration to the population already here are small. "
"My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand: we’re talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages"
Paul Krugman NY Times 2006
Working Americans had stagnant wages for 2 decades . They had enough. But the elites keep pushing immigration
And thirdly, immigration does cost money. that could be spend otherwise. To cite Krugman , again
"Finally, the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. Mr. Hanson uses some estimates from the National Research Council to get a specific number, around 0.25 percent of G.D.P. Again, I think that you’d be hard pressed to find any set of assumptions under which Mexican immigrants are a net fiscal plus, but equally hard pressed to make the burden more than a fraction of a percent of G.D.P."
Paul Krugman 2006
9
@LArs, and outsourcing labor to foreign countries and automation as well.
I'm pro-immigration but this article is silly. GDP per capital is what's important, not top line GDP. Why do we need pure growth overall? We don't, we need growth per person.
24
@Adam F As the population ages and isn't replaced, it doesn't change: whether you're talking about overall GDP or GDP per capita, they both go down.
3
There are "good" immigrants and then there are "not so good" immigrants. There are too many immigrants of the second type that - as in those who live off the state, as in those who fail to assimilate, as in those who come here illegally!
5
@JePense Assimilation is a generational process. Non-Native speakers of English may never be fluent. Their children probably will be, and the grandchildren may struggle to learn their grandparents’ language. As for other aspects of assimilation, why is that desirable? I am glad to live in a place where there are a variety of cuisines, music, growing interest in soccer, etc. Not everyone needs and wants to eat meat and potatoes, spend Sunday morning in church and Sunday afternoon watching American football. Vive l’ difference!
9
@Lawyermom - you may have that desire (I respect that), but others may not like that and you should respect that choice - especially with regard to illegal immigration.
3
@JePense
The current so-called "good" immigrants' ancestors were regarded as "not so good" immigrants. Early Italian, Irish, German and Jewish immigrants were victims of xenophobia and discrimination.
The hateful and ignorant terms used to describe those previous immigrants are the same ones used towards todays newcomers. The earlier immigrants managed to assimilate as will the current crop of immigrants.
2
Notice the call for help will go to the British diaspora. They're the white kind of people for Trump's America.
5
@D.A.Oh
Funny that you actually think Britain is still white.
3
Now that the Coronavirus is on our horizon, why is Mick Mulvaney begging for immigrants in England? "We are desperate, desperate for more people"? Does his boss and his boss's eminence grise Stephen Miller agree with him?
Will the threat of a pandemic virus slow the flow of refugees to the U.S.? Will the market continue to tank today? Will "high-skilled immigrants" make it to our shores during this global crisis? "Get used to it", Mick?
2
Well we better try to encourage all those Danes, Sweeds, etc to come to America ‘cause it looks like what Trump wants is lots of workers provided they are white and christian. Face it- that is what the administration’s policy is all about. We’re hiring- but be white & christian.
8
And something like a Social Democrat, aka Democratic Socialist?
Any which way you try to slice and dice the Trump Administration’s position, it does not make sense... because basically it is founded on an irrational premise: racism.
Stephen Miller must be forced to pick his own crops and slaughter his own meat. I could make a joke right here about the self-admitted loner Miller, but I’ll refrain,
5
Is there any better display of a county's failure to cherish, promote and value its own citizens than crying for more immigrants to fill the labor pool?
6
So you're just figuring this out, Mick?
Immigrants have been fueling the U.S. economy since the beginning. They take low-level jobs, work hard and educate their kids to "move up."
Just guessing but, from the sound of your name, your ancestors came from Ireland and probably started at the lowest rung.
9
With the Trump administration stuck hiring a college senior for a top post, I can see why mulvaneys so desperate.
6
Trump wants immigrants, as long as they're White. From countries like Norway. (As if.) I read recently that he's going to be closing the US to any new immigrants from Africa. Hmmm. No Hispanics. No Blacks. No, our immigration system isn't racist.
5
Hard to believe someone in the White House said this.
I wonder whether this "administration" has any idea how many of us would NOT be here if it were not for our immigrant forebears. Let's have a show of hands! *raises hand*
7
Ceaseless population growth is unsustainable. It’s literally impossible for any given population: humans, pigeons, rabbits, etc. if your economic growth plan requires an impossibility, you might need a new plan.
17
Immigration policy should provide the right balance. We won't get much productivity improvement if labor stays cheap. Why invest in labor saving equipment and methods if labor is cheaper? We won't pay employees more if there is a plentiful supply of cheaper labor. We won't end up with enough STEM graduates and nurses etc. if the wages paid are lower than required to make our kids work harder in school.
It makes no sense to have so many immigrants that we depress wages and ensure our dependency on immigrants forever, while paying entitlements to large parts of our existing population too poorly educated or motivated to fill the open jobs. Balance. Balance. Balance. And all immigration should be legal with enough enforcement at the border and the interior to get employers to color inside the lines.
11
There is no talent shortage in real sense in vast majority of cases. The companies are desperate for cheaper labour and unwilling to pay market wages to the qualified employees and experts while maximizing profits and other benefits for the major shareholders and top executives.
Vast majority of the imported workers in corporate America and, worse, in academia are very mediocre or below. But suitable for mundane routines jobs in clerical and technician duties. American corporate sector, including academic institutions/Univs, need to take some responsibility to develop qualified manpower than always relying in cheaper and more easily exploitable workers from abroad, mostly form poor, corrupt, lawless developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
11
@Bonku The article is saying the exact opposite. There ARE talent shortages in vital industries, like the mushroom industry mentioned above. These are jobs that many Americans don't take, but they still need to be filled. Unemployment is low, yet these jobs still need to be filled. Who are these workers that you foresee magically filling these positions?
Also, just curious, do you personally know the "vast majority" of imported workers in corporate America and academia, or are you just making a harmful generalization based on your own personal opinions and prejudices?
3
@Grace. I worked in that line and know the reality.
There are two broad categories here-
1) Farm labour and other hard manual jobs: US is addicted to cheaper food and it spend the lowest (about 6% of income) among all countries among both developed and developing ones in food. And it's vestige of slavery era politics. To produce that very cheap food, they need dirt cheap farm labor. The wages in farming sector is the lowest and most farmers in the US hardly consider family labour while calculating production cost. And yet, more than 50% of US farming families earn less than $10,000/yr.
Big corporations (only handful- less than 10) control more than 75% of US food& feed supply and they need cheaper labour from Mexico and never want to regularise the process, giving them legal status or decent wages (and they do that not out of love or humanity) but profit maximization.
US need to legally mandate a living wages and regularise immigration for farm labors.
2) White collar jobs: As per credible data, about 96% of jobs we do are very routine and can be done by most high school students with some training. Massive influx of foreign students, mostly from very corrupt but rich families in Asia/Africa/LatAm is a good source that both Univ and companies love, while even middle class Americans ill afford to buy degrees for its kids.
Moreover, there is a huge glut of underemployed and unemployed American graduates and PhD holders all over the country.
2
@Bonku I work in high tech and if it weren't for immigrants, specifically from India and other Asian countries, we wouldn't have enough talent. In fact we don't. This is an obvious failure of our education system. College advisors continue to mislead undergraduates and now we have a huge shortage.
This problem is not limited to low wage jobs. It's everywhere.
1
I don’t think the GOP’s push for reducing immigration is going to follow policies that will encourage increase productivity or preparation for long-term economic contraction. Their plan seems to be to increase the fertility rate for American women by limiting access to birth control, contraceptives and abortion.
I can’t wait to see what other ideas they have in mind to pressure women who don’t want to have kids into becoming mothers. They sure don’t want to incentivize childbirth with better access to health care, paid maternity leave and childcare.
5
It’s really just common sense and rudimentary knowledge of society. Neither of which Trump possesses.
Migrant farm workers for as long as I can remember have been minorities, mostly Hispanic. They work long, hard, backbreaking hours. Hours most Americans wouldn’t work. Construction has become a lot Hispanic workers also. Again, hard work which many Americans don’t want to do. Talk to people who own businesses like these. They can’t find good workers. Americans shuffle around at half speed checking their cell phones every two minutes. I’ve seen it repeatedly just by observation.
Trump, however, spends his days inside, except for golf, and has no clue about what is going on in the outside world. Others have done his work for him which he has taken credit for. Why people listen to a word he says is beyond me.
7
"To produce more goods and services, businesses need either more workers or better efficiency." And that is certainly the goal: to maximize GDP. Not quality of life for existing Americans or raising the wages of the poor or anything like that.
Yes, immigrants "grow the economy." Most of the new production is consumed by the immigrants themselves. We are not short of workers: labor-force participation is still well below where it has been historically. Millions of prime working-age people have dropped out. A tight labor market can--is already starting to--lure them back in.
Immigrants are a net drain on government budgets and mean more crowded roads and schools, higher housing prices, and lower wages, especially for lower-skilled workers including previous generations of immigrants and African-Americans.
But yeah, let's have more immigrants, "grow the economy," and get this country up to 700 million people or so. Forget tent cities, bring on the shantytowns.
12
I admit that voting GOP is a good way to curb immigration, particularly of skilled and highly educated workers. I mean, who would want to live in a country where 40% of people think electing Trump is a good idea?
314
Based on the number of H1B applicants and other “skilled” visas, enough to destroy job opportunities for citizens.
7
Mulvaney better watch it or Trump will fire him for going against the anti-immigrant dictates of Stephen Miller. But when it comes to farm workers he is correct. According to the government's own statistics, more than 40% of American farmers have been unable to obtain all the workers they need to grow and harvest their main crop.
16
@Christy, yeah, that farming wouldn't be so profitable if farmers were only allowed to own as much as each could personally farm individually without hired help.
“The U.S. economy, I think, will undergo a transition in which growth will slow down, society will age, and the economic dynamism will slow[.”]
More evidence that Mark Twain was right: Humans can’t tell the difference between good news and bad news.
19
The striking thing about the comment so far is the mostly have little to do with the actual information included in the article. Basically they show fear and loathing on the American border; sometimes, frankly, to the point of irrationality.
Don't worry about the people trying to get into the country; worry about some of the ones already here.
11
This is cherry-picking in the worst way.... The kind of "Can you name the President of Afghanistan?" gotcha question that cheapens primary debates from food fight to something even worse.
OF COURSE, we all recognize - or should - that there are 2 arguments/narratives re immigration:
1) Morality - I put it first, but I suspect that puts me in a minority, even in the US, in 2020.... SHOULD PEOPLE have "freedom of movement?" Should EVERYBODY on earth have more than a theoretical right to try to better themselves?
As someone whose mother was not born in the US, I cannot (and will not and SHOULD NOT) forget for a second where I would be (literally) had Trumpism been the order of the day back then.
Of course, as "wits" point out, unless you're Indian, the same applies to you, but it's kind of obvious that both the argument and its relevance pales after a couple of generations.
2) ECONOMICS - We have to recognize that there's a temptation to treat immigration almost like something seemingly far removed - meal-planning. "Wanna eat out tonight? Where? ... Should we splurge on a steak at home?" etc.
The US *could* pass laws/enact rules to give an MD "automatic entry." Or - as is now done - "invite" many thousands of Mexicans to help California farmers.
And the "disses" - should we bar illiterates? Single mothers? etc.
Nobody - probably not even DJT - would argue that there is *NO* value in immigration. Taking Mike's remark out of context is just slipshod, gotcha journalism.
3
Immigrants have been America’s secret sauce for generations. Those with the grit and optimism to leave their homes to start new lives are unique. Even persons born abroad and in the most desperate situations rarely make the choice to leave.
Trump’s xenophobic anti-immigration policy is destroying much what kept America in a state of constant renewal, fresh energy and innovation. Many of those I most respect and learn from are immigrants or children of immigrants.
The thought of relying for our future on a stagnant population led by Trump and his rally goers is deeply disturbing.
7
He said legal immigration. So it means a higher level of education and work experience. Sorry liberals, it doesn’t mean anybody who wants to move to the US.
5
There is no good reason that low skill people shouldn’t be able to immigrate to the US legally. We clearly need low skill workers for agriculture and other areas as well. The reasons typically given for not allowing low-skill immigrants are the same reasons given in the past for not allowing Irish or Italian immigrants, and I suspect that many of the people expressing those reasons are descended from Irish or Italian ancestors.
2
@Shamrock
But why would anyone with a high level of education want to be in the U.S.? They can have far better lives in numerous other countries.
4
A Times article earlier this week described Trump coming to CA and making a big show of taking water away from our Delta smelt and giving it to our red-state farmers. This is the other side of the coin-there are not enough natural resources for endless immigration. I personally welcome a slower economy, and less immigration, if it means we can save endangered species and slow climate change. I do not care if Mick Mulvaney and his cronies make less money off the backs of illegal immigrants because of it. Time to drop our population and deal with the outcomes.
10
The reality-based community has known that immigration benefits the North American economy for four hundred years.
But notice it was only "at a private event last week" that Republican Mick Mulvaney could whisper truth and facts.
In public, though, Grand Old Propaganda remains the divisive, destructive, 'fear and loathing' order of the Republican day.
Let's have some real immigration reform, as several leading Democrats have proposed, instead of building a nonsensical wall with stolen federal funds.
Let's stop catering to lazy right-wing white nativism that tends to not want to work as hard or think as hard as America's immigrant community.
November 3 2020
D to go forward; R for reverse.
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@Socrates There might be some Native Americans that disagree about the benefits of immigration.
Also, without their wall, what would Coloradans do?
2
@Socrates -- There may also be plenty of Americans who balk at importing skilled, educated immigrants to literally take jobs from Americans, as has happened with the H1-B program. And how many Americans want to subsidize low wage labor, legal or not, with healthcare, education, welfare and means-tested benefits. You really think that the big furor over Trump's attempts to prevent legal immigrants from using welfare and means-tested benefits convinces people that immigrants are a "contribution"?
4
we need citizens, period
3
Evangelicals also need immigrants. All churchgoers in West Kendall, here in Miami, are immigrants. The Smiths, Wessons or Joneses, ae hard to find. Amen.
2
It’s a shame he cannot convince his boss of that. More shameful when confronting trump, he cowers down. What good is it if he only speaks truth when outside the WH?
4
This could well be Mulvaney’s swan song — but I’m glad he sank it — whether it’s because of his incautiousness or stupidity.
As a famously vacuous former president said:
“Great job, Mickey”
3
Expand the already flooded labor pool to keep wages down?
Ridiculous!
9
Comparing illegal low skilled uneducated immigrants and highly skilled educated legal immigrants is like comparing horseshoes and hand grenades.
They have next to nothing in common
5
@John
Steve Jobs’ natural father was a Syrian immigrant, who worked in a coffee shop. Children of these low skilled immigrants can do great things.
2
This measure of endless “economic growth” is literally unsustainable.
When I was first learning about the world as a child, the population was three billion. Now it’s eight billion and rising fast. Climate change, deforestation and other environmental devastation is literally starting to render major areas of our planet uninhabitable. And should I mention global pandemics? We should be going all out to fight population growth by encouraging higher education levels and the use of birth control all over the world. Of course, our Republican Party is doing the exact opposite.
It’s time for measures of economic health that are sustainable, based on a more equitable division of wealth and quality of life, not the endless growth of a GDP total that a President can crow over in a press release.
10
I know of one immigrant who overstayed their Visa, worked cash jobs and depended on Medicaid for first few years. Ten years later they pay more in taxes than the medium household income, has hired ten people and looking for twenty more this year... Those would be NYC jobs. There is also the statically significant brain drain that supplies a good deal of California's tech industry. Immigration is great but so is internal migration. Mulvaney or Trumps are doing just fine either way. And Texas or Arizona, immigrants everywhere. Competition is American, complaining is latent communism.
3
My friend tried to overstay a visa in Norway, and register her kid for school. They were deported with a laugh at their audacity.
7
Folks are quick to mention "legal" immigration. How exactly did America absorb European immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s (remember we excluded most Asians during that that time)? Lots of folks from Europe just showed up on a boat and started working. We killed lots of Indians so these folks could have land to live on. These immigrants, legal and illegal, had more rights than Native Americans and African-Americans. Now folks want to impose detailed rules their descendants never had to abide by.
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@Owen
Last sentence, I think you meant ancestors.
1
@Owen
Those people were sent to sweatshops and mines and had no safety net. If they died at 40 of a treatable disease, they died at 40 and no one cared.
You want to go back to that? Think that was a fun time to be alive?
3
I think it all depends upon supply side versus demand side policies.
See graph 2 at Bit.ly/EPI-study
From 1945 to 1972 median wage grew in lock step with GNP (100%). Since 72 the median wage has been flat even tho GNP grew another 150% with 90% of the gains flowing to the <1% (essentially $10 trillion flowing to <10k families a year or $1+billion per family)
Pre 72 we had demand side bias policies.
Post 72 we've had supply side bias policies.
The source of demand is wages. If wages goes up, demand goes up, production goes up to meet demand.
Supply side bias means wage suppression, thus the flat wage rate and shrinking ROI (too much supply too little demand).
These policies are not efficacious all of the time, they fail after they hit their saturation point. We had demand side saturation in the 1970s (stagflation) and we've had supply side saturation since 1998 (low flation, low ROI, investment bubbles). More wage suppression does little to move the economy forward.
The way to suppress wages is move factories off shore & import more labor.
During Obama years, while he was creating 10+million jobs, we also imported LEGALLY 10+ million people (importing a city the size of Chicago in the course of a decade). Presumably some of those people need jobs to eat live etc...
9
We want more wealth, or at least, more happiness, for each person, not an economy that's bigger because it has more people in it. Growth for its own sake gets us more pollution and sprawl and overburdened infrastructure. Our population can't increase forever like an infinite Ponzi scheme.
7
Joshua Johnson this morning, on 1A, was reviewing our current immigration, refugee and asylum policies, which is good, because frankly, seems to me the media has not explained exactly what these currently are and traditionally have been.
I know that I really don't know.
I know no one at all favors open borders. I know we have an intense vetting system, but this is an area of fog and non-knowledge. Messaging would be helpful. How about some special reports and programming that takes a bead of wisdom from Mark Thompson—Make It Plain. Simplify. Correct misconceptions. Would be much needed and appreciated. Thank you.
4
There are many factors here:
1. The population growth in other countries is slowing, and they have fewer workers who want to come here. They might also try to hang onto their highly skilled workers to improve their own economy.
2. Many US workers avoid certain areas because they think employers prefer immigrants. If their were no H1Bs, the wages in info tech would be higher, and many more students would study computer science in college.
3. Our present system is bad. We give preference to relatives of existing immigrants, and get people who are neither agricultural laborers or highly skilled technologist, who compete for jobs that already have plenty of applicants.
My suggestions:
1. import agricultural workers to do specific tasks for a limited period, like they do in Canada. They don't get paid until they leave.
2. Admit genuine highly skilled workers, with graduate degrees from reputable universities - just being some sort of techie is not enough. An easier path for foreign doctors might help lower health care costs in the US.
11
@Jonathan How will those workers pay for food, lodging, transportation, healthcare, etc. if they aren’t paid until they leave?
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@Katrin - There was an article in the NY Times a couple of years ago about how Canada does it, so I am relying on that. As far as I recall, they got housing and some sort of living allowance while they were in Canada, but had to collect their pay from a bank in Mexico when they returned.
5
@Katrin Undoubtedly Jonathan sees that as their problem to solve, not his responsibility.
1
Immigrants have always been essential to American expansion. They are generally refugees from nations with a poor economic and political outlook and are ecstatic to come to the US. They often take the low paying jobs that American citizens are not interested in and thus perform a great service to the economy. Some years ago when Rick Santorum was interested in running for President he quoted a department of labor report that immigrants were taking the unskilled jobs away from Americans. Unless the nation thinks that low paying unskilled jobs are adequate for current US citizens we should encourage immigration.
1
When it comes to immigration economists always suspend the law of "supply and demand". More workers lowers wages - no matter what the skill level. More people increases the demand for housing (just look at Californian a super over populated state asking for more people). And yes it is a zero sum game. The long term decline of the standard of living of the working class in this country bears this out. Of course, capital and capitalists have done fine in the era of mass immigration - no surprise there.
15
What jobs do unemployed Americans want that are being done by immigrant labor? Are Americans desperate to work in agriculture, meat processing, poultry, dairy, landscaping, manual labor,...? That is where most immigrants work.
We've had a lot of natural disasters that have damaged housing and infrastructure, are native born Americans flocking to these areas to rebuild? No. Children of Americans in the farming areas of the nation are leaving for the cities and there are abandoned farms in many "farming" communities.
Trump did, on one occasion, say that he does want immigrants, but only from nations where there is so little melanin in the population that most humans are blond, with blue eyes. Those are the people that will come here to rebuild, farm, work in our food processing, and service industries. Yeah-Right!
8
@George N. Wells Maybe you have never heard of guest worker programs. Of course that would mean getting to the bottom of removing people arriving and remaining here illegally, you up for that?
2
@George N. Wells
"We've had a lot of natural disasters that have damaged housing and infrastructure, are native born Americans flocking to these areas to rebuild? No. "
Actually most of the cleanup and utility work is done by Americans coming in from other areas. Rebuilding less so because it is more long term and most construction workers are already illegal immigrants, but the issue you don't address is that all those jobs would pay better if there were not so many illegal workers and then Americans would be more likely to do them.
3
“We are desperate, desperate for more people,”
I can't imagine you're THAT desperate Mick.
I think we WILL be desperate when all the boomers who have tanked this country's global economic prospects and reputation continue to retire en mass and strain a system they've systematically helped to dismantle themselves.
I have little sympathy for the Trumpers who continue to vote against their own self-interest who will turn right around ask my tax dollars to pay for their retirement. High-earning states like NY should not be subsidizing states who champion gutting their own systems because it gets them votes.
13
“.we will be desperate when the boomers..have bankrupted.”
Really? The Boomers also built the economy through high tech innovation. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave us the personal computer and smart phones. They also championed and rights and women’s rights and started the environmental movement .
Your comments are ageist.
3
I’m desperate to fight climate change and I’m desperate that no right wing Trump repeat happens. I’m willing to sacrifice some economic growth and some immigration to achieve that.
22
This country has become what it is because of immigrants. Self selection means that those who are ambitious, independent, hard working, brave want to move for opportunity. We are very short sighted these days to not see this. And Miller and Trump see only skin color, so they are even more short sighted.
69
@Tricia
Those who are desperate *have* to move for opportunities. There, fixed that for you.
1
If US economic growth is driven by population and productivity increases, then we could hypothesize that in response to slower population growth, there will be more innovation to increase productivity. Done well, that would be an environmental win plus could add more higher skilled, higher paying jobs.
This concept of we need immigration to grow is lazy thinking, and a liberal economic view of what worked in the past must be always true. Let’s remember that economists said the US could off-shore all the low skilled jobs but keep and grow the high skilled ones. That didn’t happen, and the effect on some Americans has been devastating.
7
What does global population growth have to to do with US immigration and the US long-term economy?
1
The US has not needed mass immigration since the end of the 19th century. Before that, European immigrants, with some African slaves, were taking over and filling up vast amounts of land from native Americans and some Spanish. But immigration was severely limited from the early 20th century until about 1970. This period of low immigration was a very prosperous time, and the US became the dominant world power, while inequality was reduced.
Immigrants do expand the economy, providing both labor and demand, but because they accept lower wages than inhabitants the amount of demand provided by the immigrants is less and overall wage levels are kept low. Some do benefit from immigration: aside from the immigrants themselves, employers can get higher profits from lower wages and increased numbers of customer, and upper-income people who do not compete for jobs benefit from lower prices. The overall effect of mass low-wage immigration is reduced GDP/capita and increasing inequality. The situation would be different if there were meaningful minimum wage laws or if immigrants joined strong unions, but of course use of immigrants is a union-busting technique.
Some people claim that immigration is beneficial in every way simply as an irrational reaction to Trump's obvious racial xenophobia and deliberately cruel measures, but much of the support for an essentially open-borders position comes from the monetary interests of high-income people
44
@skeptonomist When World War I broke out in 1914, nearly a quarter of the US population had either been born in Germany, or had at least 1 parent who was born in Germany. Most of them were still around between the 1920s and 1970s, the years of prosperity that you describe. Are you really saying they had nothing to do with it? And that's only German-Americans, not counting any other immigrant group.
I believe that everyone should have the same opportunities that my ancestors (and likely yours too) had. They should be able to come here, to escape persecution and seek a better life through the sweat of their brows. None of us would be Americans today, if our ancestors had not done that exact thing. What gives us any right whatsoever to deny that opportunity to others?
7
@skeptonomist Rick Mulvaney of course speaks for the employer class, who want to keep wages low. If there were really a labor shortage, wages would be rising much faster than they are. Trump's racially xenophobic position, designed to get votes from working class whites, was one reason he was strongly opposed at first by the Republican establishment, and this difference is likely to lead to further chaos in the administration.
6
Growing more slowly would be a good thing. The population growth from 200 million US residents in 1967 to 330 million today has been large. The country is well on its way to 400 million by 2050. This increase in population driven by immigration has resulted in 10's of millions of acres of natural land lost to development, crowded roads, less quiet areas.
Housing is a major problem in the USA. The cost of the land component of a house was 20 % in 1960 and is now 40 %. The taking up of natural land to put housing on it has driven up the cost. It is no wonder housing is so expensive, with so much demand for land with a growing population.
Slow growing for the future would be better for the environment. Mr Mulvaney should consider all facets of the effects of immigration, not just year over year metrics on economic growth. Less immigration would be much better.
22
Immigration has been weaponized by Trump and by the left. Trump, Steven Miller and others in his administration demonize poor latin immigrants and play on the fear of Americans. The Democrats are no different calling for the end of ICE and decriminalizing illegal immigration (~50 Hous Dems sponsored the "New Way Forward Act") which is tantamount to open borders. We are facing a demographic collapse in the US with fertility rates dropping to 30 year lows. The US will simply not produce enough young workers to support the economy (1.77 births per couple vs 2.1 for a sustainable population). Trump's immigration plan is not inherently wrong (scoring immigrants based on the needs of the economy). Unfortunately, both parties choose to politicize the argument for votes. Trump appeals to the disenfranchised working class whites and blacks and the Dem's appeal to the growing Latino poulation. Neither party is serious about legislation and instead uses their respective positions for political vote getting. It treats immigrants and the economy as sideshows
12
You want to support boomers’ benefits when they continue retiring in huge numbers? Then you need more people in the labor force than we have now. Simple math.
386
@Manville Smith
Yes, but the labor pool they supplement matters. If their pay is low, their contributions to medicare and social security is low as well. So a higher paying skilled work force is important, while a low skilled work force hurts us in the long run
46
@John It's not just their contribution to social security and medicare. It's making the US more competitive by producing goods and services at a lesser cost. For example, up to 70% of farmwork is done by the undocumented. Without these people, we would have less production and exports, and even here, our less costly food bill frees more money to spend on other needs. The ripple effects are more than just social security and medicare. Also remember, these people pay these taxes but don't end up collecting on the other end. You will not have highly paid immigrants working in fields, taking care of kids and elders, working in dangerous food processing jobs, washing dishes, cleaning homes etc.
23
@Manville Smith
Not necessarily. What you need is an increase in total wages less than The cutoff wage ($117k or something). Whether that happens due to more workers making the same $ or the same workers making more $ it has the same effect.
6
A job pays more if they are less likely to find a replacement quickly. Unskilled jobs have a low barrier of entry, so it stands to reason that a larger labor pool will result in a decrease in pay.
Mass immigration is great for business and the economy, but the benefits are at the expense of the working class.
If you want to increase working class wages, you want a smaller labor pool.
161
@Chase Boyd I see the lines of natural born citizens ready to pick strawberries all day long. NOT
71
@Chase Boyd They want nearly free labor to do the dirty work. That's where Mulvaney is coming from...and that's the root of looking the other way with immigration. They want the labor of immigrants but not to help them establish themselves on the path to citizenship.
68
@Chase Boyd It is more complicated than that. If you have unlimited supply of labor without safeguards like minimum wages, safe working conditions yes, you are right.
However if you do it wisely with regulations you will always need immigrants whether legal or illegal.
18
Is old-fashioned full-tilt growth good?
The whole approach to the world, not just economics narrowly defined, needs to be rethought in the light of climate change.
And a necessary start is with the idea unlimited mass immigration in a country with too many people.
26
@Airborne
We need to have an economic system that doesn't rely on constant growth to be successful. Where we can produce what we need and get the goods to who wants them without population growth to fuel the system.
1
Well this is good news. The Turkish economy and all of Europe will experience a boost in average earnings. Good for them. I knew that flood of refugees from Syria was a good thing.
2
@Shamrock Germany has had very strong wage/economic growth in recent years, concurrent with the refugee crisis. Given its low birth rates, immigrants are the only reason Germany is still growing and Europe's unchallenged economic powerhouse.
5
@Osito the reason they are still growing is they have a captive market in the EU
they export a lot to the EU they dont worry about trade deficit and currency de/valuation.
so while they are growing, the rest of the EU is not
I think it's a good thing that population growth is slowing in America. We should do whatever we can to see that it happens in poor and third-world countries as well.
84
@Sue We do. We accept many third world country people as immigrants, both legal and otherwise, thus bringing down their population but we could provide more support for family planning in those countries. On the other hand, mushrooms, yech.
2
I accept the economy growing more slowly in exchange for taking immigration off the politics table.
Helps with climate change too.
52
@djt. Net global population doesn’t change due to immigration. Climate change is the whole globe. However, since Americans do have a much larger carbon footprint than others, you may be right.
4
Climate change is Global don't you know. It matters not where the people live.
@Sue Average American carbon footprint is 10x the carbon footprint of someone in India or Africa. It does make a difference. Even someone moving from Europe who adopts US habits will double their footprint. The only immigrants to the US that will cause a reduction in emissions is someone moving from Australia or Canada. And I don't see them lining up to get in.
6
All of this "private" disagreement Mick Mulvaney is having with Trump makes me think he wants out.
23