Saturday, April 02, 2005

The working class bears the immigration burden

It's the working class that bears most of the cost of absorbing new immigrants, whether it be in France, the United States or Malaysia, but the middle class dominates the debate, forging an alliance in its favor across the political spectrum - liberals who want to be multicultural, and conservatives who argue for the free market and open borders. Two new academic reports challenge the conventional wisdom that immigration is an unalloyed good for the economies of developed societies. George Borjas, a Harvard professor of economics, has published a study for the Center of Immigration Studies in which he argues that when immigration increases the supply of workers, the earnings of native-born workers fall significantly. A parallel study by two professors of economics at Columbia University, Donald Davis and David Weinstein, shows that the net loss for native-born Americans is $70 billion a year and increases as the immigrant population grows.

3 Comments:

At April 03, 2005 4:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kifaya:
It does indeed lower the wages, however it also makes those wages worth me. Allow me to explian. Lets say farmer X needs 4 field workers. workers near his farm charge 10 dollars an hour while forigen workers will do it for 5 dollars. so while this cuts natives wages it also cuts the cost of their product(since the farmer can sell it at a lower price and remain competitve) and it also insures he wont be out done by a forigen market.this insures the nativse for a longer period of time

 
At April 03, 2005 4:48 PM, Blogger felix said...

The labor unions are supposed to respresent the workers in their country. Right?
So how come most labor unions don't care about illegal immigration?

 
At April 03, 2005 8:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Which is why the UK Tories won't do anything about immigration. Their rich business supporters need a pool of cheap immigrant labour to drive their costs down. The Tories talk tough on immigration to get working-class votes then, once elected, they quietly forget their promises.

 

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