Making It Relatively Easy for Low-Skilled Immigrants to Work in the West Pushes Down Wages of Our Most Vulnerable Workers

This in turn causes political instability in the West. Many of today's politicians lose their easy jobs during elections because of this.

 

"However much we believe in immigration, we’re not going to welcome all 114 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced, not to mention perhaps one billion children globally who are estimated to suffer some kind of severe deprivation. We must settle for accepting a fraction of those eager to come, and determining that fraction is the political question before us, with many trade-offs to consider.

Immigration overall offers important benefits to the country, and employers and affluent people are particular winners: Immigrants reduce labor costs for people hiring gardeners or caregivers. But poor Americans can find themselves hurt by immigrant competition that puts downward pressure on their wages, although economists disagree on the magnitude of that impact.

I’m influenced in my thinking by a terrific book by my Times colleague David Leonhardt, “Ours Was the Shining Future,” which examined many studies on the impact of immigration on wages. 

Leonhardt concluded that immigration wasn’t the primary reason for income stagnation among low-education workers over the last half-century, but that it nonetheless was a significant secondary factor.

I think of a neighbor of mine, a surly seventh-grade dropout who in the 1970s was earning more than $20 an hour (around $150 an hour today). That job disappeared, and he later ended up in part-time and minimum wage positions and lost his home. He was hurt by many factors — the decline of unions, globalization and the impact of technology — but he was also outcompeted by immigrants with a well-earned reputation for hard work.

It’s often said that native-born Americans aren’t interested in the jobs that immigrants take, but that doesn’t tell the full story. Many native-born Americans may not be willing to toil in the fields or on a construction site for $12 an hour, but perhaps would be for $25 an hour.

At a time when so many working-class Americans are already falling behind, and then self-medicating and dying from drugs, alcohol and suicide, shouldn’t we be careful about inflicting even more pain on them through immigration policy?

Relatively recent immigrants may also be hurt by newer immigrants — which may help explain why Pew found that three-quarters of American Latinos believe that the increasing number of people seeking to enter the country via the southern border is a “major problem” or a “crisis.”

Some working-class voters feel betrayed by Democrats who pushed to open borders, and there may be an element of xenophobia or racism in this anger — but also an element of truth. The United States makes it difficult for foreign doctors to practice in America, protecting physicians from competition.

 But the United States makes it relatively easy for low-skilled immigrants to work here and push down wages of our most vulnerable workers." [1]

1. Why Biden Is Right to Curb Immigration: Nicholas Kristof.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jun 8, 2024.