Immigration

(I’m going to do a few posts on illegal immigration because it’s been bothering me lately. I’ll be doing them in parts though because lazy. So with out further comment I give you part one)

What’s with Lou Dobbs?

Is this man the most blatant racist in American media? I mean sure guys like Spike Lee and Kanye West work hard to spread their racist messages, but this guy is out of control. I don’t even have a TV, but everywhere I look I see this guy’s mug telling me how evil illegal immigrants are. He’s given us a detailed report on the conspiracy by the evil Mexican government to ship evil Mexicans over the border so evil companies can hire them and evil landlords can house them, only to have all the evil Mexicans evilly send all their evil money back to the evil Mexican lands so we can’t have any of it.

Dbackdad made a nice post about some of his experiences with some xenophobes a while back here. His post focused on the racial fears of the immigration issue. In these posts I’d like to focus on the financial issues with immigration, the tremendous “cost of illegal immigration” that Mr. Dobbs insists our own Government and big businesses are covering up.

The most popular claim by the anti-immigrant crowd seems to be that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs. This fear is based on the incorrect notion that there are a fixed number of jobs available. That if we increase the number of employees in a marketplace, the number of jobs available to other people will go down. This is completely untrue. In fact the opposite is true. All of the immigrants come here and instantly become consumers. They eat, they drive cars, they buy entertainment, and they live in houses and apartments. Each need they bring requires a workforce to satisfy it. In fact it is estimated that one job is created for every consumer in America. So the supposed jobs that are being stolen are being offset by the jobs they create at a rate of 1:1. And that’s assuming that every immigrant that crosses the border is working, which in the case of families with small children is obviously not true. So it’s easy to assume that immigrants actually produce more jobs than they “steal.”

Another popular claim is that illegals flood the market with cheap labor. To this I say, “Good!” Cheap labor means cheaper products and services for the end consumer. Cheaper labor also offsets the negative effects that our stupid minimum wage laws on our poor. The fact of the matter is there is not such thing as “cheap” labor. Labor is worth what employees and employers agree on.

Well that’s about it for now. Comment as needed. Rinse. Repeat.