Pew Hispanic Study on immigration and jobs: what it really means

A new study from the Pew Hispanic Center's Rakesh Kochhar purports to show that the massive immigration over the past 15 years has had little effect on jobs. Needless to say, this gives a glimmer of hope to racial advocates and massive immigration supporters everywhere. But, a closer look shows that - as usual - they're wrong.

For instance, you could point out that the PHC is hardly "unbiased" as the WaPo's Kim Hart states. They're a racial advocacy group, for gosh sake (see the second comment here for bios of their two top advocates).

Or, you could be like Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University: "There's an age, gender and educational component to this story that this report does not address".

But, let's take the study at face value and listen closely to the words of the study's author:

"We cannot say with certainty that growth in the foreign population has hurt or helped American jobs."

If it's true that immigrants and illegal aliens haven't been taking jobs, they have contributed to economic growth. However, wouldn't one expect just a bit more?

Given all of the downsides of massive immigration - especially of the illegal variety - shouldn't each of us be getting a dividend of hundreds of dollars a month or something? Instead, even a racial advocacy group can't find a demonstrably large benefit from massive illegal immigration.

On the other hand, because of illegal immigration our entire political system has been compromised. Our representatives take money from companies that profit from illegal immigration and then spend their time trying to find workarounds for our laws rather than enforcing the current law. A foreign country is given free rein to claim part of our population as their own; they may have used proxies to stage demonstrations in our streets; they spread propaganda to students in U.S. schools; and they generally meddle in our internal politics. Our politicians try to devalue U.S. citizenship through bills such as the DREAM Act. And, illegal immigration leads to worker abuse, low safety standards, and border deaths.

On balance, is it really worth it?

Immigration · Sat, 08/12/2006 - 04:33 · · Importance: 1