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> These illegal immigrants take jobs away from Americans.

Eh, this argument gets trotted out a lot, but it isn't exactly clear-cut. The economy isn't a zero-sum game.

Sure, illegal immigrants do show up and undercut some jobs. Some percentage of people will find themselves working at a lower wage, or lose their job and need to find a new one.

But plenty of other people will find their business increased, higher wages, more profit, etc. All these immigrants require services and commodities too, and have to buy them from somewhere. They need to buy groceries, get hair-cuts, purchase mattresses, buy cars. Illegal or not, they contribute to the economy too.

Planet Money did a good piece on the cuban migrations to Miami in the 80's. It was the perfect microcosm to study the phenomenon: many immigrants, contained geographical region, etc.

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/01/444912593/when-cuban-migrants-...

Money quote at the top of the episode:

    SMITH: So 80,000 refugees came to Miami, and there was no effect on the economy?

    CARD: You couldn't detect any strong evidence of an effect one way or the other.

    SMITH: No effect, not on wages, not on unemployment rates. Card says this is 
    because there is not a fixed number of jobs in an economy. When a bunch of new 
    people come, yes, they get jobs. But they also start buying stuff, getting haircuts, 
    going to the grocery store, which means you need more barbers and more grocers. That 
    creates more jobs.

>zero-sum game

This meme is making it's rounds these days.

>Sure, illegal immigrants do show up and undercut some jobs. Some percentage of people will find themselves working at a lower wage, or lose their job and need to find a new one.

Right? No big deal!

>But plenty of other people will find their business increased

2/2 = 1

>have to buy them from somewhere

Was money created at some point? They took or undercut a job, and are spending money that...the other employee who they undercut or took their job from would have also spent...?

I'm sorry if I'm dense...either I'm missing some fundamental pieces of your argument or there isn't much logic to it.

> I'm missing some fundamental pieces of your argument

Yes: economics.

We're more prosperous than we were 100 years ago, with far more people.

So we have 1,000 jobs filled by 1,000 people and they all have paychecks.

We add an extra 1,000 people so we have 2,000 people and 1,000 jobs. 1,000 of those people are unemployed and have no money.

Somehow this benefits our economy because those 1,000 unemployed people without jobs are going to buy things.

Sorry I don't understand "economics."

> Sorry I don't understand "economics."

I would suggest reading this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Economics

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

Paul Graham also has a good article: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

There are number of good books on the subject. Tim Harford has some pretty approachable books that are aimed at a general audience. Perhaps others have further suggestions.

As a consideration to others, strongly arguing something you have little understanding of lowers the signal to noise ratio of this site, and might be avoided.

The number of jobs wouldn't remain static. The number of jobs would naturally increase to support the increased density of people. Also, some (hopefully large) fraction of the newly unemployed will find employment elsewhere. Few people get fired from their only job and they say "welp, guess I'm unemployed for life".

Also, 1000 of those jobs are presumably lost because the new workers are willing to work at a lower rate. That leads to two situations:

- The product/service they are creating will be cheaper (e.g. cheaper commodities out of China, cheaper fruit harvesting by migrant workers, etc). The average person spends less of their paycheck on these purchases, which means they obtain more value for less money. Or purchase more things using the same amount of money as before.

- The owner of the business pockets more profit by employing cheaper labor but keeping prices the same. This segues into the idea of "trickle down" or "supply side" economy, where the owner employs more people, expands business, invests more capital etc because they are now spending less on salaries. Not saying I agree with this analysis, but it's at least one viewpoint :)

The 1000 new people also need to buy goods and services, this increases demand, which requires the producers of goods and services to scale up their production and hire more employees.

Money is not a fixed thing, it's debt created by producing something that someone else values. Rather than a personal IOU we all agree to use money as a common means of exchange. Economic health is not the fixed amount of cash that everyone has, but by how many times it changes hands. Poor people who are living paycheck to paycheck are therefore the best contributors to the economy per dollar earned.

Your scenario that 1000 people show up and the jobs remains fixed is nonsensical, the number of jobs is very much correlated to how many people there are. This is somewhat abstracted away by globalization, but it still has to work itself out in the end.

>The 1000 new people also need to buy goods and services

How do people without jobs, and therefore without money, pay for goods and services?

You'd be surprised at the resourcefulness of a person faced with the threat of starvation.

Money isn't created per se, but value is.

This is what people mean when they say economies aren't zero sum. The total value of the economy increases due to greater production (driven by an influx of labor and increased demand), leading to more potential jobs and higher wages.

How do people who are unemployed create tangible demand?

You should read the links I shared with you to further your understanding of the situation. There are not a fixed number of jobs to go around. Otherwise, how do you explain that from 1900 to present, both our population, number of jobs, and GDP have grown quite a bit?

Actually, greater production is a combination of capital and labor. The Industrial Revolution was from capital investment in machinery that mechanized clothing production for example.

It is wrong for Americans to have their jobs replaced by people who are in this country illegally. It really is as simple as that. People who are in this county illegally shouldn't be able to work at any job according to the law.

Meanwhile, the people who have been unfairly unemployed because of these illegal immigrants and not fortunate enough to have their jobs protected from illegal immigrants by state licensure requirements, are suffering as are their families.

There are many societal costs when people are unemployed including many medical issues from alcohol and other drug abuse and from children not growing up in a stable environment, something society has to deal with for years to come with increased crime.

Illegal immigrants don't have to remain out of the country forever, they simply have to apply for a Visa like every other person who came to this country legally (except of course, Native Americans and Blacks who were brought here as slaves).

So here's the problem. Actually, a couple of them:

You can have a "papers, please!" kind of country, or you can have some level of illegal immigration and work. You can't get rid of all illegals without becoming a very, very different kind of place.

That said, you do want to try and minimize people living in the shadows. The best way to do that is to make legal immigration cheap and easy, which is currently the exact opposite of what we do in the US. It's basically impossible for most Mexicans to move here unless they already have family. This has all kinds of benefits: 1) people will be more likely to go home because they know they can easily come back 2) they are less likely to be exploited by shady employers 3) it really separates out the people who want to just come and work from people involved in various kinds of illegal and harmful activities.

The number of legal immigrants has risen from 9 million in 1970 (less than 5% of the population) to 43 million today (about 14%), so I'm not certain what one means about it not being easy to immigrate. It is certainly easier than it was.

By comparison, the UK which voted for BrExit largely because of the mass influx of immigration from Eastern European countries with labor that competed with British working class for jobs had 0.9 million 20 years ago (about 1.5% of the population) to 3.3 million today (about 5%).

Thus, our legal immigration is about 1 in 7 compared with an increase to 1 in 20 in the UK.

Our immigrants also mostly compete with working class trades not protected by licensure and other working class jobs.

Israel has built a security fence, while not perfect, has certainly decreased the amount of terrorism. I have been there many times and am familiar with the situation. They also have fences around Gaza and separating the border with Lebanon. These fences do work.

There should also be some sort of electronic verification system for jobs that goes beyond using illegal SSN's or someone else's SSN. There should also be very large fines for employing someone illegally.

Americans deserve to have their jobs and wage rates protected from illegal immigrants and those who hire them. It is so very, very unfair to them and children to let this happen.

As things are, thanks to NAFTA and increased trade with China working class jobs are being exported to outside the nation. In addition, other working class jobs are being replaced by automation.

We owe it to Americans to help protect their jobs from illegal immigrants, who are here because they are breaking our law.

> I'm not certain what one means about it not being easy to immigrate

That demonstrates willful ignorance of the situation:

http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/02/22/172622...

Doing things the legal way is basically impossible for many, many people. We should make it simple and easy for law-abiding people to come and work in the US.

> Doing things the legal way is basically impossible for many, many people.

But, many, many people, do immigrate to America legally each year. People from all over the globe immigrate to America. Since 1970 there has been a steady growth of immigrants from 9 million or less than 5% of the population to 43 million (legal) immigrants or about 14% of the population.

It might require years, but that what other people from other countries do.

Also, there are other countries besides the US. Many people immigrate to Canada for example.

Going by the GP's logic, the massive influx of women into the workforce in the 60's - 90's should have been a disaster.

Let's hope they don't figure out what having more than 2 children per couple might do to the economy according to their zero sum logic...

The research on the so-called "Mariel boatlift" in the 80's was done back in 1990 and has since been disputed:

> Most recently this has centred on a dispute between two economists, David Card at the University of California, Berkeley, and George Borjas, at Harvard University, over the effect of an unexpected surge in Cuban migrants to Miami in 1980 (the so-called “Mariel boatlift”). In 1990 Mr Card found this influx had no effect on the wages of low-skilled workers in Miami; Mr Borjas has now revisited the analysis, and claims that wages of high-school dropouts in fact fell substantially.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21705699-who-are...

Interesting! I'll give this a read-through tonight, thanks for the link :)

Yep, no problem! I also thought it quite interesting which is why I remembered this specific tidbit.

It is clear that illegal immigrants take jobs away from Americans. Ask carpenters and bricklayers who have been replaced by illegal immigrants because they don't have state licenses for their jobs as opposed to plumbers and electricians who do.

If a trade is not protected by licensure, then it is quite possible it will be replaced by illegal immigrants.

> These illegal immigrants take jobs away from Americans.

Respectfully: that is simply not how labor works.

'Illegal immigrants' may flood the job market with workers that are willing (or forced) to take lower pay than most Americans, work longer hours than most Americans, or deal with more hardships than most Americans - but it is the employers role to decide whether they'd rather take on the risk of employing undocumented workers than fixing these conditions. If an employer says "eff it, I'm willing to turn a blind eye and break the law if it means slightly less money spent on wages" - they're the ones at fault.

I'm trying to point out what might seem obvious: focusing on the immigrants here may feel satisfying, but if the employers are not compelled to ameliorate their behavior, then deporting every last immigrant won't change the situation.

It is illegal to hire illegal immigrants but those laws need enforcing. It is the job of The Executive (President Obama) to enforce the laws passed by Congress. But Obama is trying to legislate in place of Congress to allow illegal immigrants to not only remain in the country, but to work here as well.

There was a recent Supreme Court case about the issue which left in place a lower court opinion stating that Obama did not have the right to do what he did.

Thus, while you are correct, it is a systems issue of our federal government refusing to do the job according to The Constitution and enforce the law that leads to the suffering of many Americans who have lost jobs to illegal immigrants.

Framing anti-illegal immigration as "anti-immigrant" and "anti-mexican" is classic Democrat double-speak.

The idea of not wanting new citizens to enter the work force when our current citizens cannot find work is labeled as xenophobic.

Any ideas on why this double-speak is being promoted is labeled as a conspiracy theory.

No to discuss this directly, but Donald Trump himself often conflates immigrant and illegal immigrant in his speeches, mixing statistics from these sets. This was evident in his RNC speech and a number of other speeches. The line is being blurred on both sides.

I mean, Trump has also talked about banning legal muslim immigration from places like Syria; does that not count as anti-immigration?

What really drives me crazy is some parts of the left that treat borders as wishful and not as the ultimate expression of sovereignty paid in blood so a nation can exist. So that is the problem that I have with the illegal-ness of them. The economic benefit or loss is irrelevant.

Only invading armies have the "right" to cross a border without permission.