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by toomuchtodo 999 days ago
Immigration flow must be governed by wage and employment metrics. Everyone fully employed at living wages? Open the spigot. Surplus domestic labor? Slowly close the spigot except for highly skilled workers (that you can prove are highly skilled an unattainable in the domestic market).

Otherwise, you're just driving down wages and boosting corporate/business profits with imported labor while exposing the government to domestic welfare program costs for unemployed and underemployed citizens.
1 comments
astrange 999 days ago
No, immigration increases wages in all circumstances economists have ever studied, because they increase demand more than supply. Even true for mass migrant incidents where you aren't selecting them for skill. It helps that we tend to not let their families work when they come over, although that's kind of bad.
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toomuchtodo 999 days ago
Please share a citation (or citations). 52 million Americans currently don't earn a living wage, forcing them to rely on social safety nets. Disingenuous to argue for more immigration when so many workers are already underpaid.

https://thehill.com/lobbying/4170972-15-an-hour-isnt-enough-...

https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/t...

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astrange 999 days ago
Yes, they don't earn a living wage because housing is too expensive; the issue is the "living" part. The nominal wage growth has actually been doing okay lately, by which I mean post-2019.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-immigration-doesnt-reduce-...

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toomuchtodo 999 days ago
And immigration fixes that housing pressure how? This is no different than queues and backpressure. If housing is too expensive for tens of millions of workers, and supply lags, why would you increase housing demand? You must destroy demand until supply catches up.
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astrange 999 days ago
Most of America doesn't have this housing pressure issue actually, only the top cities. And I believe you have the causation backwards; it's not "immigration would be bad because housing is rare" but rather "housing is expensive in California partly to keep immigrants out".

Some people say the immigrants will help because they'll contribute to construction. I think this is true but not an important point, and besides it probably annoys the construction unions to say it. Rather, immigrants can move to parts of the US that are cheap and starting to experience disinvestment, which is still most of it.

Besides that, housing isn't per-person, so if immigrants are more willing to live in families or have roommates it's less pressure than a lot of singles. And they pay taxes which you can use to build the housing.

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