Fascinating Immigration Report (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown: for sale, rental, crime)

[Goinback2011]

A big influx of illegals is NOT good for an economy. Small business contractors replace American workers with lower paid illegals, keep the prices of services the same and funnel the extra money to themselves. All the money ends up at the top. The displaced Americans sit home watching TV and applying for disability while their wives go to work. Everyone else pays for the welfare benefits the illegals receive while the contractors get rich.

If your dream is to remake America into a south american banana republic, strive for more illegal immigration.

[BrianTH]

Economic studies have frequently identified the net benefits of immigration, particularly immigration for economic reasons. Which makes sense--if you are migrating for economic reasons, typically you have a reasonable plan in mind for how you are going to do something economically productive in your new location. And in fact the sort of person who would follow that path is likely to be less risk-averse than average, which also helps explain why immigrants tend to have relatively high rates of entrepreneurship. Immigrants also may bring with them new ideas, may have access to new sources of capital, and so forth.

Usually people who assume otherwise are committing some version of the lump of labor fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

On the other hand, I agree that illegal immigration specifically can lead to certain specific problems, including undercompensation, abusive workplaces, and so on. So one logical solution to many of the problems associated with illegal immigration, which would nonetheless preserve the economic benefits of immigration in general, is to make it a lot easier to immigrate legally.

[globalburgh]

Any migration, illegal or legal, is economically positive.

[Goinback2011]

I've lived in an area that had a big influx of illegals. What I documented is what happened. If you haven't lived it, you don't know.

[globalburgh]

I've lived it. I've studied it. A big influx of people, even if all of them are native born, can displace workers and depress wages. The math is pretty simple: 10 people for 1 job is a problem. Illegal has nothing to do with it.

[Goinback2011]

So how exactly do you conflate displaced workers and depressed wages into 'economically positive'?

If you lived it, you observed that welfare costs, such as healthcare, are socialized, while the profits are privatized by a small number of people benefitting from the lower labor costs of their employees. That translates into higher taxes and fewer jobs for legal American residents.

It results in a diminished middle class.

Just because you WISH that was a positive doesn't make it so.

[BrianTH]

Of course depending on the scenario, an illegal immigrant may be paying into public insurance programs without being able to collect benefits, precisely because of their illegal status. Generally, our public insurance programs typically benefit by adding healthy, non-old workers to the population mix.

However, to the extent the problem is that illegal immigrants reduce the relative bargaining power of labor, again the logical solution is to make less of them illegal.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

At a minimum a lack of international immigration is a red flag for population growth, because the native-born U.S. population is not self-sustaining.

There is also a good case to be made that overall, international immigration is good for economic development.

None of this is specific to any given country of origin, but I do think increasing percentages of foreign-born will go hand-in-hand with Pittsburgh's continued re-emergence as an economic development leader.

I will agree that educated immigrants can add be good for economic development, but not uneducated immigrants. Uneducated immigrants drive down wages for local low level workers. I think the booms and busts we've seen elsewhere is proof that high population influxes hurt economies in the long term. Pittsburgh's metro economy is relatively stable because our population growth is stable.

QUOTE=BrianTH;25855510]For the reasons discussed above, to the extent Pittsburgh's Hispanic-heritage population grows in coming decades, I suspect it will mostly NOT be through illegal immigration, and in fact will be dominated by native-born U.S. citizens.[/quote]
Well, native born US citizens aren't immigrants. They are Americans, which makes them irrelevant to this discussion.

Originally Posted by globalburgh

Any migration, illegal or legal, is economically positive.

Originally Posted by globalburgh

I've lived it. I've studied it. A big influx of people, even if all of them are native born, can displace workers and depress wages. The math is pretty simple: 10 people for 1 job is a problem. Illegal has nothing to do with it.

Care to contradict yourself again within two immediate posts? There's nothing positive about depressed wages and displaced workers!

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

However, to the extent the problem is that illegal immigrants reduce the relative bargaining power of labor, again the logical solution is to make less of them illegal.

It doesn't matter if they are legal or illegal. Uneducated immigrants drive down wages because they are willing to work for less money.

[Goinback2011]

There's nothing preventing Congress from passing legislation to increase the number of legal immigrants, Brianth. Except for their chances of reelection afterwards, of course.

What the majority of the electorate wants is enforcement of the immigration laws and a stable and small number of legal immigrants coming into the country. This is not unreasonable. It existed in America from 1925-1980.

But if you get your wish and there's a large influx of illegals into Pittsburgh, I'm hopping on the profit train this time, and keeping their wages for myself while allocating their welfare costs to you.