[newmanships]

In regards to legal immigrants there seems to be frequent discussions on HN about H1B visas and their effects.

Here's an article talking about them. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-vi... (the direct link to the study is in there as well)

Edit: I should clarify - this isn't the only way to immigrate / cover all use cases, etc etc - just that in this & my first comment there does seem to be some wage suppression occurring in some forms related to various immigration.

[denzil_correa]

The parent comment also claims it is "artificial suppression". In fact, even if the H1B effects are said to be true - it seems the issue is not legal immigration but HOW the H1B visas are granted and to whom. This is entirely different than the implication of the parent comment which seems to suggest to halt immigration.

[newmanships]

(since I don't post much, not sure why I can't respond to your last comment)

However... what? > I could say the other way too. Immigration is not 100% uncontrolled, so it is controlled. However, what we do have is controlled immigration to a large degree and there are some uncontrolled immigration too. The ratio of controlled to uncontrolled is very high.

In 2015 1,051,031 people obtained lawful permanent residence (https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab...). Illegal immigrants are estimated at 1,201,000 for 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...). Is that really the definition of controlled? The "ratio" you stated is completely inaccurate.

The original person was talking about people working for less than minimum wage (because they are illegal immigrants), so do they suppress wages for those jobs? Yes.

[denzil_correa]

> In 2015 1,051,031 people obtained lawful permanent residence (https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab...). Illegal immigrants are estimated at 1,201,000 for 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...). Is that really the definition of controlled? The "ratio" you stated is completely inaccurate.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Permanent residents (the green card holders as per definition in your link) contain ONLY a subset of legal immigrants.

[newmanships]

Apples and oranges? Let's do some math. Refugees in 2015: 69,920. Asylum in 2015: 26,124. That gives you a total of 1,147,075... yes still less then illegal immiration. Adding naturalization (730,259) gives you 1,877,334, except naturalization is irrelevant in this because it includes people born outside of the states to American citizens & includes people that still live outside of the country (think children of military or expats) or people who have been permanent resident (living in the US already) for 3 years. Please do tell me all the other subset of legal immigrants. Maybe you're including the whopping 85,000 H1B visas or other temporary work visas for NON-immigrants?

Feel free to continue to ignoring evidence.

[denzil_correa]

> Maybe you're including the whopping 85,000 H1B visas or other temporary work visas for NON-immigrants?

Are you telling us that at a given point of time there are only 85,000 people in the US with H1B visas? In 2009, there are 650,000 H1B holders : 10 times the actual number [0]. J1 visa holders are about 300,000 per year [1]. Even the most conservative estimates makes this 1M legal residents apart from Green Card holders. Even the most conservative estimates, makes legal residents 2x the times the illegal residents. The actual number will be even higher.

Feel free to continue ignoring the evidence.

[0] http://cis.org/estimating-h1b-population-2-11

[1] https://j1visa.state.gov/basics/facts-and-figures/

[newmanships]

No the numbers I listed were entries of each type in 2015. That doesn't include ones from previous years. You said immigration was controlled. The fact that roughly the same amount of legal immigrants came into the country as illegal immigrants in the year 2015 shows this is not accurate.

With your logic we might as well just tally up all the legal immigrants that entered the country and all the people that have been naturalized since the country was founded.

[newmanships]

Parent comment also is only referring to low-wage jobs so I suppose the entire H1B thing is irrelevant to the discussion. Not sure what you're looking for... you asked for a source - seems clear that yes, wages for some groups are "artificially suppressed" by "uncontrolled immigration". Is immigration uncontrolled? Yes immigration is not 100% controlled, hence illegal immigrants are a thing. I suppose you could argue that wages are suppressed "naturally" because of uncontrolled immigration if you want to argue about semantics in order to ignore the research that does show wages are suppressed.

[denzil_correa]

> Parent comment also is only referring to low-wage jobs so I suppose the entire H1B thing is irrelevant to the discussion.

I'm not the one who mentioned H1B. I mentioned "legal immigrants".

> Is immigration uncontrolled? Yes immigration is not 100% controlled, hence illegal immigrants are a thing.

I could say the other way too. Immigration is not 100% uncontrolled, so it is controlled. However, what we do have is controlled immigration to a large degree and there are some uncontrolled immigration too. The ratio of controlled to uncontrolled is very high. So, I can not see how one can make the claim that immigration is uncontrolled to being with.

> Not sure what you're looking for... you asked for a source - seems clear that yes, wages for some groups are "artificially suppressed" by "uncontrolled immigration".

There is nothing to say that immigration is uncontrolled. Further, there is nothing to say that legal immigration suppresses (not lowers down) wages "artificially". The words used in the parent comment "uncontrolled", "artificially" and "suppress" have specific meanings which replaced by "illegal", "supply-demand" and "lowers down" change the impression of that statement.