The cost of immigration

Greg Iwan writes many thoughtful letters to the Timescall. In the same spirit, I would like to refer him to the thoughts of Dr. Paul Krugman, Nobel prize economist, dispelling the idea that immigration is a net gain:

“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 lowskill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages.” (H-1B visas also reduce the wages of American engineers.)

“… Finally, the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. Mr. (Gordon) Hanson uses some estimates from the National Research Council to get a specific number, around 0.25 percent of GDP. 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 GDP.” (New York Times, March 27, 2006)

The net cost of immigrants by this percentage today is $68.4 billion, assuming the current GDP of $27.36 trillion.

My point is simply this: Thoughtful Americans need to stop saying, “Who will do the work nobody wants?” We need to understand that the bottom half of America has suffered from Democratic policies of defacto open borders, and the top half of America is doing very well thanks to the low wages paid to the bottom half. That, my dear friends, is why Trump supporters don’t care if he lies or does many other silly things.

The bottom half doesn’t care if the GDP goes up 0.25%. They simply want to burn down the house. This is democracy in action.

— Michael Mcneil, Mead