Immigration Wage Impact Debate

What a great point? No one is immigrating in this scenario it's just wage theft via market arbitrage

Immigrants everywhere are brought in to work for smaller wages than locals. What’s so new or unusual about this? The situation is unfortunate, of course. But the U.S. is not much different here. However, doing the same thing as everyone with less damage to economy (and therefore local working people, taxpayers, etc.) because of productivity is not necessarily such a bad thing. IMO, it should be much easier for productive people to enter any country than it is now. And it should be harder for non

Wealthy countries almost universally depend on immigrants in the low end of the job market. On the average, the people able and willing to migrate to another country are cheaper, better motivated, and more talented than the low end of the domestic labor pool. Without immigrants, the society would not work nearly as well and many things would be more expensive. While the US has not created sufficient legal pathways for immigration, everyone is willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration, a

This turned out to be quite an angry post, so a quick preface: All of this is a knee-jerk response to a single sentence in your post. So, you know, please take with a grain of salt, not personally, etc..I have to admit, it's a little bit depressing to see someone just use a straight-out lump of labor argument against immigration.I can deal with people who believe immigrants tend to be criminal and who are concerned for their family's safety - they're wrong, but they're

It’s funny how the HN hive mind is against H1-B visas and AI because they suppress their wages and take their jobs. However, the millions of unskilled illegal immigrants are a good thing, because they have that effect on the working class instead.Personally, I think we really need to take a hard look at all forms of immigration until average Americans can have good paying jobs, affordable housing, and affordable healthcare.

I'd disagree on the salaries drop. Imagine if poor immigrants weren't allowed in the US. Bathrooms wouldn't clean itself (maybe in Japan?). What would happen is that many more Americans would be working on entry-level jobs than currently: this is something hard to see because we take what we have for granted, and seeing what we wouldn't have is harder. Another point is that we produce just a couple of things our whole lives, but consume hundred of thousands. The more diverse

To any immigrants reading, remember that unions were instrumental in foreigners finding it hard to move to the US. Here are some opinions on you from HN users:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36511005> Artifactually (sic) increasing the supply of workers suppresses wages.Your existence will devalue their educationhttps

This removes the workers from their local economy, drains the value they have to offer and plops them back where they came from with a meager wage to show for it.Allowing people to immigrate to the US has the same effect.

The job market is not zero sum. Immigrants do not take jobs from locals or drive wages down. Why do you think immigrant-rich cities like NYC and SF have higher incomes and more robust job markets than places like rural WV with few immigrants? Millions of Americans work for companies founded by immigrants, or on projects started by immigrants. Millions of Americans work in offices that were only set up because companies wanted to take advantage of the concentration of talent in places like NY or

Your position is called a 'lump of labor fallacy' by economists. A job filled by an immigrant still creates demand in the local economy (for housing, food, etc.) which in turn leads to more job creation. It's not a one-dimensional tug of war between jobs and unemployment statistics.