Astromang wrote:
Funny, you link to a chart that has **tut-tut** all to do with immigration and its affect on unemployment, then you go on some faulty logic by a graph that you post that since more illegals have been leaving the country and the unemployment has gone up, it can't be illegals are causing unemployment.
Are you daft? The chart proves your initial assumption incorrect. Immigration has been skyrocketing over the past few decades, yet unemployment has been stable. Why don't you care to explain that? Where are all these Americans that are being kicked out of the labor market due to immigration? Where are they? Dude, this is basic economics, let go of your xenophobic fallacies. Cheap labor coming from immigration (whether legal or illegal) increases the supply of labor, but it does not increase unemployment because the productivity coming from immigrants also increases the aggregate demand for labor. So tell me, if immigrants cause unemployment, why have unemployment rates only increased in response to recessions, and not immigration? You see hte labor market as a static pie, and thus the more people eating that pie, the less pie we have, as if the market were zero-sum. What you don't get is that the labor coming from immigrants makes the **tut-tut** pie larger.
As for your other statement, I like you call it "faulty logic" without any additional qualifiers. If your theory were correct, then we should have higher employment rates of U.S. citizens given the fact that there are fewer immigrants. Yet, as you can see by that graph, we had more immigrants in 2007 than we did in 2009, and yet since then, the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers skyrocketted.
Instead of doing something that takes half a brain to do, like look up an actual study on the effects of immigration on unskilled workers, you blather on with nonsense.
First off, you're switiching the issue; your initial comment was that that illegal immigration results in higher unemployment rates. I have demonstrated that to be not only illogical, but also empirically false. Now all of a sudden, you're only talking about "low skilled workers." Alright, lets talk about low skilled workers. Your study didn't prove anything, it made no established connection between immigration and unemployment rates--it looked at employment rates over a five-year period (!), stated how unemployment among low skill workers slightly increased while unemployment among illegal immigrants slightly decreased, and then assumed a connection. Now, if we actually refer to my earlier graph, we see that while the unemployment rate of low skilled workers is always more severe than the other classes, it follows the general trend of the unemployment rates of everyone else. And as you see can see, the unemployment of low skilled workers is generally always on a decline except during times of recession--this is inconsistent with the idea that immigrants dramatically effect the unemployment of the low skilled, for if that were the case, then unemployment should have a positive correlation with immigration. Immigration had been rising dramatically for over two decades, and yet during that time the unemployment rates of low skilled workers (while higher than the other classes) was falling for the most part, with the only exception being times of recession. Right now the rate of unemplyoment of low skilled works is higher than it has been in a long time, and yet immigration rates are falling.
It is certainly possible that the presence of illegal immigrants makes it harder for low-skilled workers to find employment; but frankly, that logic could equally be leveled against legal immigrants, automation, and **tut-tut** native birth rates. Furthermore, if you are seriously concerned about low-skilled unemployment, then you should be advocating for the elimination of the minimum wage, which probably does more to hurt low-skilled employment than anything by pricing out workers.
If you want studies on the issue, they are abound. Here is a report from Fact Check. I didn't think you needed an actual journal discussing the issue, because all of this boils down to basic economics. Questioning why immigrants do not "take jobs" is like asking why drinking a soda doesn't decrease GDP.
Also, you ignore the fact that we lose billions of dollars annually to these people not paying income or FICA taxes.
This is an argument that I can sympathize with. However, like all of your other arguments, you direct it at the wrong issue. Instead of directing blame at immigrants, you should be directing blame at the welfare state, which by the way, wastes a hell of a lot more money on American citizens than it does immigrants. You may contend that we waste billions of dollars on immigrants, but the fact is that we are wasting trillions of dollars on Americans, and we have a deficit to prove it. Besides, this contention of yours is not without controversey. And again, you ignore the fact that immigrants are a net benefit to the market by providing cheap demanded labor.
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