« Get Lucky or Get Rich Trying | Main | Outsourcing Tutors »
LA Times Op-Ed on immigration
I am again writing with the excellent Daniel M. Rothschild. Read it here, registration is free and (relatively) simple. Excerpt:
Gianmarco Ottaviano of the University of Bologna and Giovanni Peri of the National Bureau of Economic Research have shown that immigrants and low-skilled American workers fulfill very different roles in the economy. For instance, 54% of tailors in the U.S. are foreign-born, compared with less than 1% of crane operators. A similar discrepancy exists between plaster-stucco masons (44% immigrant) and sewer-pipe cleaners (less than 1% foreign-born). Immigrants come to the United States with different skills, inclinations and ideas; they are not looking to simply copy the behavior of American workers.
Addendum: Here is a link without registration.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 15, 2006 at 01:05 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Illegal immigrants distort the economy in ways that simplistic analysis that treats illegals and legals as an undifferentiated mass doesn't capture. This analysis is purposely skewed to justify illegal immigration. Illegals have fewer skills and higher rates of criminality. The costs of crime and education and health care have to be factored in. It is indisputable that the availability of illegal labor retards automation and depresses the level of wages, thus impoverishing the economy. Compare the situation with illegal immigration to that which would prevail without illegal immigration, not to that which would be the case without illegal OR legal immigration. This article is intellectually dishonest.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at May 15, 2006 3:17:51 PM
Of course labor-market is not zero sum. That doesn’t mean it isn’t affected by immigration. There isn’t some perfect complimentarity scenario occurring. People’s choice of jobs isn’t unrelated to how immigration affects the job market. And nor are the gains and costs are hardly evenly distributed. Given the composition of the current market of illegal immigrants the negative impact tends to be on lower-wage workers and the benefits accrue to the most well off in society. Those in more skilled professions are able to use their greater political power to prevent immigrants from getting in to compete with them. And there is also a significant amount of externalization of costs for government services while the benefits accrue more specifically to those who are able to employ immigrants at lower wage, those who receive lower cost services to the extent such things are passed on, or are paid to service them.
I thought the juxtaposition of the your op-ed with today’s LA Time editorial on affordable housing was worth noting. You cited the Octavio-Peri study in your op-ed and that study counted the rise in housing prices as a benefit to natives from immigration. Natives own most houses and so they are the overwhelming beneficiaries of rising prices. Of course there is a corresponding cost to that real value that must comes from other people. Immigrants may disproportionately bear that cost but so do natives who don’t own real estate.
Unlike the job market, the housing market isn’t nearly so free. There are both real and regulatory constraints that keep the housing supply limited. When you couple that with the population increases that in the housing market with the worst affordability, California, that are almost all the result of immigrants and their offspring, you set the scenario for soaring prices. Add super low rates, an abandonment of the traditional loan standards and limitations in instruments, and the inevitable speculation in such a market and you get skyrocketing prices. This has created a giant divide in people economic lives depending on if you own real estate, own a lot of it, or own none. It is not a value that results from the creating something. It is merely asset inflation that distorts the economy and encourages bad behavior like our zero saving rate.
Finally the notion of the low earning immigrant saving our Social Security and Medicare system is wrong. If you count their tax payments against the benefits they will receive as the result of them, like you should in an honest accounting system, then the opposite is true. It merely pushes the problems with the system forward in time. Poor people on the whole do not pay for all the benefits they receive. They get them from higher earners pay that is more than what they receive in benefits.
Posted by: Jeff at May 15, 2006 4:15:29 PM
In december Bush signed legislation that would expand the number of border patrol agents by 10,000.
But in February when he announced his budget we discovered he had only funded an additional 210 border agents.
Now he wants to use the National Guard.
I wonder if he has figured out a way to use the Guard and keep the cost out of his budget -- another unfunded mandate for the states?
How can anyone take such a "flip-flopper" seriously?
Posted by: spencer at May 15, 2006 4:41:45 PM
Tyler writes:
"Of the 39 largest country-of-origin groups, the sons of 33 and the daughters of 32 of those groups have surpassed the educational levels of the children of natives."
Let me guess the name of one of those 6.5 countries: Could it by any chance be ... Mexico? And could the others be major sources of Hispanic illegal immigration like the El Salvador, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic?
The current debate is over _illegal_ immigration. By bringing up statistics about legal immigrants like this, and then not weighting them by quantity, you are just intentionally confusing the public.
And Card's study is dubious because it doesn't account for the enormous cost-of-living differences between places like LA and Pittsburgh. The Law of Supply and Demand doesn't get suspended in the case of immigration.
I know you have a strong emotional desire to Mexicanize America, but you are living in a fantasy world if you think more illegal immigration will make America more like the little Mexican villages with their indigenous arts and crafts that you love. Come out to Van Nuys and see the lumpenproletariat future that you are really helping impose on America.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at May 15, 2006 6:37:34 PM
Is tailoring low-skilled?
Posted by: Nancy Lebovitz at May 15, 2006 6:58:07 PM
Why do I get the impression that people would like to compare unrestricted illegal immigration against restricted legal immigration, as if we could wave a magic wand and stop crime. Maybe it would be better to say "Okay, Mexicans are coming to work in America whether we like it or not. Do we want the Mexicans that come to be law-breakers or law-abiders?"
Or to put it another way: when immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.
Posted by: Russell Nelson at May 18, 2006 12:01:16 AM
this is a strange debate.
there are concerns about the resource drain on public health systems caused by undocumented residents, but not about the resource drain on public health systems caused by paying 2x or 3x as much as we need to for health care in general.
there are concerns about workers flouting laws and encouraging crime, but almost a complete pass is given to employers who have used NAFTA to build a full-fledged labor black market. i wonder how many times larger is the value of this market compared to the drug trade. was this the secret intent of NAFTA? it's hard to believe that a change this large was accidental.
"maria" is 18. her english skills are limited. if she is a legal resident (with extensive exposure to english), much blame for her situation is placed on her teachers. if she is not a legal resident (with very little exposure to english), blame is placed on her. in any case great lengths are traveled to avoid assessing her environment as a cause. this is entertaining, because it seems to be the intention of this contradictory approach to undermine the idea of personal agency - to establish the idea that knowledge is given (or granted), not acquired.
also, apparently we have money to throw at making seriously-enforced physical or legal walls to protect the earning power of high school dropouts, but no money to give those people a better education and to keep the minimum wage somewhere above the water line.
thank you.
Posted by: hibiscus at May 18, 2006 2:12:04 PM
hibiscus, money is not the solution to the education problem. The expenditures per pupil have doubled, without corresponding improvement in performance. The main problems with the worst schools are not underfunding, but disruptive students and apathetic parents.
Posted by: TGGP at May 21, 2006 2:42:46 PM
i didn't say to throw money at the schools, i said to throw money at getting those people a better education. kid environment is as much an economic situation, a community situation, as it is about parent skills, parent energy, kid interest, school quality, etc.
overall per pupil spending is junk, whether or not you focus on just those kids who are "at risk" of dropping out. a school that spends tons of money on security and insurance and nothing on counseling, teacher:student ratio, tutoring - that's an expensive program, but it's also virtually identical to a jail. some things are well addressed through a school system and some things are impossible. my point was that we cut social programs that would keep those kids in school then throw a lot of them in jail and then use them to demonstrate the need for a wall on the border, as if anyone gave a fart.
Posted by: hibiscus at May 22, 2006 9:50:53 PM
aardig schoolmeisje ^^^ mieters nympho ^^^ coraggioso ragazze ^^^ indescrivibile bionde ^^^ frais serveuse trou du cul ^^^ chinoise esclave ^^^ chaud mman film ^^^ plus frais papa dix sept ^^^ ridicolo giovane anale fotti ^^^ celestiale infermiera azione ^^^ sentimental skolflicka dubbel rovpuling ^^^ elev kon i vantrummet ^^^ carino giovane inculate ^^^ divertente infermiera fotti ^^^ croupe nue analfick ^^^ anika nackt omasex ^^^ masturbating imu benzocaine ^^^ portto puulajit imaista ^^^ ubeskrivelig fillesak ^^^ koselig porno ^^^ omskjart orgasme ^^^ varm uvanlig mutter ^^^ synesthimatikos magoula agapi ^^^ prosinis magoula ^^^ le plus froid papa photographie ^^^ plus frais mere trente quatre ^^^ to pio drosero tolmiros pateroulis ^^^ zesto tolmiros pateroulis ^^^
Posted by: levan at Sep 8, 2006 4:38:04 AM
