Monday, April 03, 2006

huh?: Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work - New York Times

ok, maybe it's because i haven't had my first sip of coffee yet but i'm having a difficult time figuring out the argument from the guy at the conservative think tank if:

illegal immigrants only take up a tiny fraction of our workforce and aren't really taking jobs from citizens but do depress wages for less-educated african americans, therefore...

i'm confused.

Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work - New York Times

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I was confused too -- but I guess what I like about that is that there is no easy answer. Immigration is a complicated issue. One of the things that I really thought was interesting about the article was that it brought up something that has only been hinted at in other articles and that is that there might be some frustration on the part of african americans that immigrants *may* take jobs away from them. I think that is something that would be a really interesting issue to investigate further. I'm not sure if this is true or not; I can see different arguments.

Also, I think that a take home message was that the jobs that illegal immigrants tend to take are low-pay, low-benefit jobs. Interestingly, one suggestion was to raise the pay and provide benefits -- but then the author also noted that our economy depends on having such low wage jobs (yet as another article noted, nowhere in the US can a full-time worker who makes minimum wage afford a one-bedroom apartment).

So what I like about this is that there is no one answer -- raising minimum wage won't solve things, giving low wage workers better wages in general wouldn't (but perhaps unionizing and having better benefits at least might), deporting the immigrants won't solve anything, and clearly immigrants are not the problem (those percentages of illegal immigrants in low wage jobs were suprisigly low to me -- all the republican rhetoric would have me believe that they have invaded the job market at epidemic proportions).

Anonymous said...

Well, the guy at the conservative think tank is really, really concerned about the wages of African-Americans, since he's really, really concerned about African-Americans. As is the Republican Party. Why are you still voting Democrat? Don't you know they're just keeping you there? They want you to have victim status? The Republicans won't take you for granted. Look! We have Alan Keyes! For serious, African-Americans. We're the party of Lincoln! You should be voting for us forever and ever and ever.

Delia Christina said...

shrinky, yeah, me too.

i mean on the surface it looks like the conservative study actually contradicts what sensenbrenner and guys like jim oberweis (who ran for the gubernatorial primary) are saying. how does that jibe?

alan keyes. groan. he makes al sharpton look statesman-like.