I his latest Wall Street Journal column Jason Riley lurches uncontrollably onto a point I have made for years here. People come here from abroad to work:
A Supreme Court ruling on Monday allows the Trump administration to start denying green cards to immigrants who might become economic burdens on society. The justices said nothing about the merits of any policy change, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t assess them. So do most immigrants come here to work or to go on the dole?
One way to answer that question is to look at where migrants settle after arriving here. If they are coming for Medicaid and food stamps, you might expect them to head to states with the most generous benefits, such as New York and California. Yet according to a Brookings Institution analysis of census data, between 2010 and 2018 the five states with the fastest-growing foreign-born populations were North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Delaware and Iowa. New York ranks near the top in the nation in Medicaid spending per beneficiary, and South Dakota is at the bottom end. Nevertheless, the immigrant population in New York grew by just 3.5% during this period, while South Dakota’s rose by 58.2%.
Another way to get at what draws immigrants to the U.S. is to look at their employment numbers. In 2018 the percentage of U.S. workers born outside the country reached its highest level since 1996, yet their unemployment rate was 3.5%, versus 4% for the native-born. And the labor participation rate for immigrants was slightly higher than the rate for workers born here, 65.7% to 62.3%. A common fear is that immigrants are displacing U.S. workers, but the U.S. is experiencing record low unemployment and there are still over a million more job openings in the country than there are people looking for work.
In addition to concerns about illegal border crossings, the White House is worried that too many poor migrants are entering the country lawfully and will overburden social programs. President Trump says he wants to attract foreign nationals who are higher-educated and less likely to turn to public assistance. To some extent, this is already happening, as you would expect in a country with relatively flexible labor markets. And as the needs of businesses and the economy at large have changed, so has the type of migrant seeking to build a new life here.
Illegal immigrants aren’t the only source of unskilled workers from abroad in the United States. Our entire system of legal immigration fosters them. In addition to refugees and asylum-seekers there’s the immigration lottery and sponsorship of relatives for immigration by legal immigrants.
I don’t have the concern about welfare freeloaders the Trump Administration apparently does but I am concerned about legal unskilled workers coming from abroad. It’s not 1883 any more. That we do not have a demand for such workers is obvious from the wage statistics—the wages of workers without high school diplomas or with less than a college education have been flat or declining for years.
We need a skills-based immigration system similar to those in the countries which we most closely resemble, e.g. Canada, Australia, and serious enforcement.
For domestics and groundskeepers, yes. America’s elites are never going to clean their own toilets or windows at their multiple estates.
They’ll never publicize their use of vulnerable immigrants for this either. They are hypocrites by necessity.
lets us not forget logistics, meatpacking, bed pan cleaners, produce pickers, security guards, background models for politicians, and the overriding need to keep wages low so that others may prosper.
We may not need a continuous supply of unskilled workers. But the politicians do, because these same workers (or in many cases loafers) can generally be reliably counted on to vote the right way. And if they don’t vote, someone can vote on their behalf.
See Dave. I told you before. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you can provide that shows immigrants come here to work. Conservatives think they are coming here to vote for Democrats and get welfare.
Agree with Grey about the hypocrites.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-two-undocumented-housekeepers-took-on-the-president–and-revealed-trumps-long-term-reliance-on-illegal-immigrants/2019/12/04/3dff5b5c-0a15-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html
Steve
Re. Trump: I’ve always wondered why his enemies don’t go after him on the illegals he certainly uses in the hospitality business. Could it be there are none who’s hands are clean?
They may come in as unskilled, but do they remain unskilled?
To the degree that they gain skills they increase the need for the unskilled to replace them as domestics.
With tongue only partly in cheek, if we can’t stem the flow, we should let it find it’s natural level. At a low enough wage, we could find use for domestics at our estate.
Carpenters, welders, plumbers, heavy equipment operators, construction workers, jobs in the health field, loggers, truck drivers, politics, manufacturing, low skilled does not equate to unable to learn.
No, we don’t need a continuous supply of unskilled workers. And even less do we need a continuous supply of future workers in need of potty training and education at taxpayer expense as long as we have a decent supply of potty-trained, educated and skilled workers who already know how to use a hammer. Those would nowadays mostly be Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Brazilians, Cubans Puerto Ricans and even Venezuelans. What we don’t need are more expensive Amerikan babies!
We’d pay very well here in Wisconsin for a few Latin Americans with few skills but snowblowing and mowing who can manage to buy an old pickup truck, especially nowadays when all the heavily-subsidized Amerikan teenagers are worthless for working.