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Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

When someone moves from the 3rd world to the US, their CO2 footprint grows enormously. Mass immigration is hugely disruptive to stable job and family formulation. It seems to be supported by mainly by two groups in the US, one that wants cheap exploitable labor, and one that wants to shift American politics by changing the demographics.

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If you want to prevent the formation of a pool of cheap exploitable immigrant labor, there are two ways. The best would be to prevent immigrants from entering, but that's impossible. The second best is to make sure that those who enter have the same freedoms and protections as native born workers, so that unscrupulous employers can't take advantage of them (house cleaners paid below minimum wage, H-1B tech employees paid under the table, chicken processing plants [0]).

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-in...

> The best would be to prevent immigrants from entering, but that's impossible.

'Impossible' is a very strong word for something many countries manage just fine. Unless you define 'prevent' as "no immigrant ever enters, even if only to be deported the next day".

But there's a third way - prosecute those unscrupulous employers. If only their lobbying money wasn't in the way...

Which countries manage just fine? Do those countries’ neighbors have substantially lower performing economies?

Europe has managed to significantly reduce the influx of immigrants from the middle east - as has Israel.

I'm sure there are a great many factors involved in the "reduction" (not prevention) than their own efforts. Examples being, those with opportunity already did so, the Syrian conflict winding down, or ISIS uprooted.

There’s also a third group, who believes that if someone’s country has become unlivable (e.g., Honduras today), the United States of America would be honored to have them.

/s/, descendant of Potato Famine Irish Immigrants

What quantity of people are you talking about exactly, and what price are you willing for poor black/Hispanic/white people with only high school degrees to pay in low-skilled labor competition, in order to assuage your racial guilt?

Do you have any idea what has happened to the wages for non-skilled labor since the 1970s? While you and I may have nice cushy jobs and live in nice houses, the largest employer in this country is Walmart. Most people in this country don't have college degrees. They are poor, and mass immigration has made them poorer, and continues to make them poorer.

A lot of the "Abolish ICE" support comes from people in highly gentrifying areas of the country, living in cities that are in the process of driving out their historic minority residents from their homes to go live in the Midwest, all to make way for wealthier white people. Not that this would be your situation, of course! But it can make that sort of person's cheap grace very cheap indeed.

I live in Washington, DC, where I own a house in a neighborhood that was ranked as the hottest market in the country a couple years ago. So, I’m one of those privileged coastal elites who lived in a highly gentrifying area.

That gentrifying neighborhood is also home to DC’s Central American diaspora. My daughter’s classmates’ families fled violence in Honduras and El Salvador (both in the 80s and now, with renewed unrest).

I’m also from rural Iowa, lived on a farm during the 80s farm crisis until my dad threw in the towel. I go back regularly. I have a very personal understanding of rural depopulation and economic stagnation.

Your accusation of cheap grace is indeed cheap. You want real grace? Love thy neighbor, every one of them. Do you have any idea what life is like in San Pedro Sula?

What do you want me to say? That you're going to heaven by taking the bread out of poor black people's mouths in order to help Hondurans? I don't think it works that way. You aren't making any personal sacrifice whatsoever here. You're just hectoring people about neighbor-loving while you get rich and they get poorer.

And if your interest in immigration is especially asylum law, I would be extremely worried about the people now deploying asylum fraud as a mass immigration wedge. It's going to wind up hurting the people who need it the most, and in fact already has.

I don't think 'mass immigration' is to blame for wage depression post-1970s, considering that era also consisted in the destruction of workers rights, unionization and considerable increase in corporate bargaining power.

This also ignore two other big parts of the picture: The fact that in the pre-1970s America still had historically high immigration with the same complaints you bring up now (that the 'dirty' Irish for example were poor, uneducated and a drain on society) just with different color slapped on top. New York was quite literally a city of immigrants.

And then you have automation, which means even if you were to completely stop all immigration would mean the loss of jobs as companies further reduce their bottom line.

I'm not a fan of this sort of historical revisionism where the history of immigration in the US is sort of paved over to make way for new fears of immigrants destroying the fabric of society somehow.

What makes Honduras/Guatemala/Salvador increasingly "unliveable" is (1) the flight of its most industrious people to the US, and (2) the resulting indebtedness of those smuggled to the gangs that smuggle them and arrange illegal, subminimum-wage, off-the-books employment for them.

Persistence of the status quo flow of illegal entrants would doom the Triangle countries forever.

I need a source on the disruption of stable jobs claim.

I support immigration because my ancestors were immigrants, and I believe others deserve the same opportunity.

I’m a third group: Americans that believe in freedom and liberty, that America is a free country, and that everyone regardless of their race, origin, or class can come here and pursue their happiness like the rest of us.

Wow, I’m surprised by the downvotes. I thought the American dream would be more accepted here. These principles used to be considered basic foundational ideology of the USA.

What is the numerical upper limit to your goodwill?

And what about the current citizens who are relatively poorer off because off high number of low skilled new immigrant arrivals? Does a nation not owe more to its current citizens?

I also worry about immigrants taking jobs from citizens. What’s the point of helping a new group of people get jobs if it means taking away jobs from other people. But it turns out that the new group of people actually creates more jobs than they take.

> When labor supply rises, Econ 101 says that wages fall, right? Wrong. The problem with this kind of approach is that it ignores the dynamic nature of the US economy.

Source: https://www.hoover.org/research/economic-effect-immigration

Immigration shouldn’t be about helping, but about letting people help themselves by being productive members of their new society

Certain sectors of the economy are experiencing shortages - of course that just means people are not willing to pay the price that citizens charge: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/A-catastrophic-trend...

Wonder how many nativists will end up cared for by immigrant caregivers

I read through your link, it's a cleverly written piece with very little to support its conclusions.

> Empirical studies of immigration’s effect on national economies confirm the general impact shown in the third chart. A review by David Card in 2007 concluded that “more than two decades of research on the local labor market impacts of immigration have reached a near consensus that increased immigration has a small but discernible negative effect on the relative (emphasis in original) wages of low-skilled native workers” but also a small, positive overall effect.

So in effect, more or less neutral, then?

> In the face of the reality that average wage levels are not negatively affected, one counterpoint is that the impact differs among skill levels (i.e., that low-skill migrants depress wages for native low-skill workers)

So that means, that low skill immigration which is the bigger chunk of all immigration, is at best neutral and most likely hurts wages? It is the high skill immigration which helps.

> National and even state economies are much more dynamic than simple theory

Just asserts a wishful thinking and concludes on this, doesn't really put any numbers to support this.

All of this from your own link.

I have done additional research, and I am reconsidering my opinion. It is always hard to adjust one’s position on charged topics. Your post’s tone did not make it easier. But I try hard not to be fair and objective, even when I don’t like it.

There isn’t a numerical upper limit. A job isn’t property that can be owned and stolen from you. You’re presenting a false dichotomy on top of a false premise. And it’s not goodwill, it’s a matter of principle and ethics.

An immigrant can’t take jobs from citizens, since jobs aren’t property owned by citizens. Jobs are trades (an agreement, a relationship) between two people. Do I really need to explain that a job isn’t an entitlement you get for being a citizen? I think you know this.

No matter how many immigrants come here, they can’t steal the fruits of your labor. Immigrants aren’t reaching into your bank account and taking your money.

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