
Adding up the cost of uncontrolled immigration - luu
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/harvards-george-j-borjas/
======
tomcam
Thank you, HN peeps. Nice to see the loyal opposition appear on HN once in a
while. I accept the site's left-of-center leanings, but it's heartwarming to
see a different perspective hit the front page every so often. Speaks well of
the mods and audience here.

~~~
saboot
Meanwhile the recent article on scaling back the house ethics committee is
flagged/dead..

~~~
ubernostrum
Well, that's "just politics". While immigration policy somehow is not.

But I bet if you suggested ruthlessly deporting anyone who overstays a student
visa or cheats on their visa to do a startup, you'd get a different response,
even though those things are just as illegal as the person working at Wal-Mart
without legal presence/permission to work.

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chillacy
It seems like an obvious result of the law of supply & demand that immigration
will drive the price of labor down for jobs which those immigrants do: more
(un-unionized) labor = lower wages.

~~~
setra
Followed by the cost of the government paying for their children (who will be
citizens), because they certainly won't be able to afford to take care of
several children on those low wage jobs. School, and welfare programs will add
up, even if the parents themselves don't get much. The average cost per
student in public school is $10,615 per year alone With Utah being on the low
end with $6,000 per year.

~~~
toomuchtodo
What's the cost to deport 11.1 million people? And is it more expensive to
deport them then to assimilate them into the workforce on a permanent basis?

Remember, the fertility rate drops when women are educated and their children
don't die; this would suggest state funded education and the continuation of
low income healthcare for children is the financially superior option to mass
deportations.

~~~
adiabatty
You don't need to deport people; make it tough to earn a living and they'll
move somewhere else — that's what brought them here in the first place.
Arizona cracked down on illegal aliens a while back and their intensive-
English courses enrollment dropped by 80,000 students. While intensive-English
course enrollment is an imperfect proxy for "illegal" (some illegals don't
need it anymore and some born here still do), this saved the state $350
million a year. Annual ER spending on noncitizens dropped from $167M to $106M.
And between '00 and '04, the annual cost to state prisons from incarcerating
noncitizen felons dropped 11% from $202M to $180M.

At least $416M saved, per year on average, and Arizona didn't deport anybody.

[https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/arizonas-e...](https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/arizonas-
experience-and-the-tale-it-tells/) (numbers quoted from the WSJ article quoted
near the end: ctrl-F for "Remember education?"

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woodruffw
Sure, let's add up the cost.

What is the cost of a human life? What is the cost of the welfare of children
whose only crime is _following their parents_ across a border?

I don't pose these questions to signal virtue, but to point out the absurdity
of assigning something like a cost function to something as natural as wanting
a better life for oneself or one's children.

It might very well be true that "uncontrolled" immigration has an impact on
the livelihoods of poorer Americans. Does this really imply that we should
hurt the former in favor of the latter instead of helping both?

~~~
Smutte
Depending on how and where you spend it, its about $7500 or more to save a
life.

[http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-
further-o...](http://www.givewell.org/giving101/Your-dollar-goes-further-
overseas)

~~~
woodruffw
But is that life _worth_ $7500? More seriously, is a life that costs _more_ to
save more valuable?

I think the answer to both of these is an unqualified 'no.'

~~~
Smutte
A life is a life. If one life costs 7500 to save and another costs 15000 they
are both still lives if you ask me. Should you spend 15000 to save one life or
7500*2 to save 2? If the one that costs 15000 is your child? Thats complicated
of course. But the numbers arent really. Again, 7500 or more. As long as you
have resources to share you can choose which life to save (or if you want to
spend it on a computer and time on HN and let them all perish).

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omegaworks
The article tries to paint both sides as adversarial and politically
entrenched when clearly the researchers themselves (when quoted) want to focus
on the data and the realities on the ground. I'm glad that it touches upon the
fact that immigration policy is more complicated and nuanced then it first
seems, with emergent behaviors that are reflected in more then just falling
wages.

>Borjas suggests requiring employers to use the E-Verify system to ensure
their workers aren’t in the country illegally, and otherwise supports a period
of “benign neglect” toward those already here: no deportation, but no amnesty
either, at least until the enforcement-first strategy proves successful.

I think a huge gap in the article is the write-off of labor rights under this
kind of "benign neglect" system. A policy that creates a second-tier system
naturally depresses wages for both immigrant and citizen laborers. If "benign
neglect" means that basic standards for workplace safety and the right to
assemble are not recognized and protected by the government, employers can use
this to perform wage arbitrage.

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dukoid
Employment of illegal immigrants is not illegal in the US?

~~~
WalterSear
It's roundly ignored, because dark foreignors are easier for politicians to
scape goat.

