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How big is immigration an issue on people's minds (USA and elsewhere)?

But...but...but...how can that be true? Trump says it is the immigrants fault. Trump is smart; he knows watering tumbleweed prevents wild fires.
 

That's a good, thorough report. The impact of mass immigration is complex and multifaceted. I'm glad to concede that there are many benefits to immigration, but also I counter that there are also many downsides to large scale illegal immigration. It is certainly sensible to have different views on this issue. I just wish to bury the myth that opposition to mass illegal immigration is based on ignorance or brainwashing.
 
Good link ^^^^
 
I will look. Prior to covid minimum wages in the US was $7-9. Now it is running $15+. The new number is what employers are hiring at and even at that they can't get workers. Inflation has offset some of that value.
 
Do you have a link to that ?

Nominal minimum wage has gone up in the UK, but employers have a variety of techniques for not paying it, so real minimum wage has probably not gone up so much.
Wages vary by industry and geography, but...
Fast food reality wages


federal minimum wage (still low)


Healthcare workers
 
Immigration rates in the US aren't even particularly high. People always talk like it's something abnormally massive but it's somewhere in the middle rungs among rich countries.

images - 2025-01-26T114630.888.jpeg
 
Clearly, you know nothing about living in the American southwest or rural white America.

I was replying on what I observe "elsewhere". You can reply on the southwest USA perhaps?
But even I can point out to you that in California, during the 1950-70s the larbour unions were major opponents of more immigration, as they recognized its consequences. Including a labour unions of agriculture workers led by a mexican-american, shose name unfortinately is gone from my memory now..
 
I was replying on what I observe "elsewhere". You can reply on the southwest USA perhaps?
But even I can point out to you that in California, during the 1950-70s the larbour unions were major opponents of more immigration, as they recognized its consequences. Including a labour unions of agriculture workers led by a mexican-american, shose name unfortinately is gone from my memory now..

I apologize that there is a racial slur in the title of the article.
 
I was replying on what I observe "elsewhere". You can reply on the southwest USA perhaps?
But even I can point out to you that in California, during the 1950-70s the larbour unions were major opponents of more immigration, as they recognized its consequences. Including a labour unions of agriculture workers led by a mexican-american, shose name unfortinately is gone from my memory now..
That was 50-60 years ago and the world and CA agriculture were different. Chavez had his goals for his union campaigns. His strikes were effective at the time. The population was different, politics were different, and the immigration issues were different. In the 1960s many college students boycotted CA lettuce.
 
It should be noted that the overwhelming consensus in "economic theory" has looked at exactly this question of whether immigrants drive up prices for various things and found the opposite:

You quote The Atlantic, really? That's the american The Economist. A liberal rag throughout. No, economists do not agree that immigration creates more demand and somehow improves the economy. Most will write papers claiming that because they feed at the hand of Capital one way or another. Making it as part of the manegarial class means obeing the powers above, acting as a good helper.

The debates over immigratuion are as old as labour unions. Have you perhaps never even read Marx's writings about the UK? He was an internationalist because he wasn't dumb. He saw, even then, and we're getting close to two centuries of history now, how capital used immigration (or internal migration) to weaken the position of labour. They would mover either the workers or the capital in order to break resistance to exploitantion. The internationalism among workers was necessary precisely because otherwise capital would successfully play workers againtys each other. But the roadman then called for workers organizing, unionized, to resist the power of the capitalists, and then collaborate across countries.

What happened in recent decades was the use of immigration as a way to get scamps, plain and simple. Cheap "foreign" labourers to breat the unions. That and the easwe of movement of capital itslef were their most successful weapons at winning the ongoing class war. Is the reason why liberals (the political arm of capitalism) are so enamoured of "freedom of movement" for capital and for people.

The effects of immigration anywhere are always completely contingent on existing political and social conditions. The current conditions thoughout the "west" are of liberalism in power, with its freedom of movement, frreedom to exploit whatever can be exploited. Under these conditions immigration strengtens the capital side in its logic of zero-sum class war against labout. It is no accident that they enshrined into law or into practice the "freedom of movement" for capital and labourers - it is because they can better increase the capital share of income that way. And indeed that is what has been happening.

That was 50-60 years ago and the world and CA agriculture were different. Chavez had his goals for his union campaigns. His strikes were effective at the time. The population was different, politics were different, and the immigration issues were different. In the 1960s many college students boycotted CA lettuce.

Chavez, that was the name. thanks.
As I said above, thinngs are contingent on conditions. For one, government then was not yet captuured by liberals with that "freedom of movement" weapon deployed. But ist potentiial was already recognized. By labour unions and by liberal politicians.

The golden era of US income equality and rising living standars among workers were the post-ww2 decades, were they not? Not, imo, coincidentally a period where these international flows were heavily regulated by the state.
 
No, economists do not agree that immigration creates more demand and somehow improves the economy.
If you cannot post reasonably current links (that are not just opinions) to support what you say, stop spamming your opinions.
 

That's from 1988 but it is thorough and objective.

Do Illegal Alien Workers Depress Wages and Worsen Working Conditions for Native or Legal Workers?

Our qualified answer to the above title question is that illegal workers do, in some cases, depress wages and worsen working conditions for native or legal workers who directly compete with them for jobs.
 
Immigration rates in the US aren't even particularly high. People always talk like it's something abnormally massive but it's somewhere in the middle rungs among rich countries.

View attachment 716531

Illegal immigration isn't really an issue I think Australasia and Canada gad 25% pop growth in 20 years. NZ pulled that off in 17 years.

Here if you have no visa or expired one you're risking deportation.
 
Immigration rates in the US aren't even particularly high. People always talk like it's something abnormally massive but it's somewhere in the middle rungs among rich countries.

View attachment 716531
It's not about the proportion. It's about where they come from. The anti-immigation folks don't even deny this.

PS: It's interesting Singapore is not in the list. I think the government might not release that data because it's an unpopular thing here too (it is getting a little overcrowded in recent years).
 
It's not about the proportion. It's about where they come from. The anti-immigation folks don't even deny this.
This is half correct. A problem with our current illegal immigration situation is that we are receiving large numbers of unskilled workers, who are depressing wages among all unskilled workers. They also compete for the same goods and services, driving up prices, and the influx is occurring more rapidly than home construction can take place, leading to increased rent and home prices. In general, unskilled workers are mostly only able to enter through a land border, most often from Mexico, either originally from Mexico or another Latin American country. Also in general, most coming from beyond the Americas must purchase a plane ticket and at the least have a visa in order to land, making it more likely that they are skilled workers or professional, and thus outside the scope of the current problem.
 
It's not about the proportion. It's about where they come from. The anti-immigation folks don't even deny this.

PS: It's interesting Singapore is not in the list. I think the government might not release that data because it's an unpopular thing here too (it is getting a little overcrowded in recent years).
Singapore isn't OECD so not in the chart, but the foreign born population there is about 46%. Of about 6 million, you've got a bit under 2 million non residents and another million residents born outside Singapore, about half a million of those born in Malaysia.
 
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It's not our responsibility to open our borders to the entire world. Let Mexico and Canada step up and take them, I'm done with the US being the only country who is supposed to take care of everyone.
This is what I was responding to. ^^^
It was legal back then.
Legality wasn't the issue.
 
You quote The Atlantic, really? That's the american The Economist. A liberal rag throughout. No, economists do not agree that immigration creates more demand and somehow improves the economy. Most will write papers claiming that because they feed at the hand of Capital one way or another. Making it as part of the manegarial class means obeing the powers above, acting as a good helper.
You may be correct about this much.

You may not be, too.

In either case, politically, there's little trust of academia on this matter from the right, and I'm not sure how much there is on the left, either.

Although I suspect it's largely derivative of value difference between academia and the general public, until the trust gap is erased, studies can be thrown around with very little political relevance. That group mostly talks to itself.
 
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