I'm in the Midwest, so once again i have a limited perspective on this one. I'm not living around a lot of illegal immigrants. Louis and his brothers are some of the only ones i know; also gives me limited perspective because they were raised here and act, dress, and live just like anyone else does.... Minus the fact that they all work 2 full time jobs, hustle blow, and live out of a garage reconstructed into a little house lol. The last times i was in southern California and Arizona to visit family though, I got a better taste of what it's actually like and i can honestly say that i don't blame people for wanting them gone. There's a difference between living with immigrants and being in an area where you become a minority as a citizen in your country. At that point you aren't living with them, you are putting up with them.
Doesn't that sound like the same argument that white people used to say about black people moving into their neighborhoods? And before that italians, jews, irish, ...
This is just a continuous cycle, when there is ever (throughout history) a wave of poor immigration (heck even wealthy immigrants are not always a welcome sight (just ask the indians), it is always met with anger and this type of reaction of get them out of here.
This is just issues of poverty, which coming here from another country with nothing, how can you expect them to?
It's a situation where the private benefit of a business is greater that the total benefit to society.
This was really the main point I wanted to discuss from that paragraph,
Not sure if that is going to work (did a quick graph in paint). This is showing the supply shift that represents the immigrants vs none, with immigrants you have a supply shift that drops both price while increasing quantity. The pink area is representing the added consumer surplus (much of which was taken away from what would have been the producer surplus, because the first pink trapazoid is the benefit that shifted from the producers to the consumers) that happens as the shift occurred. The Darker green is showing the added Producer surplus.
So without taking months to try to find enough actual data to put together numbers on how we all benefitted from the cheaper labor, we can assume that if nothing else that market is far better off for consumers due to the shift in supply, while suppliers would not make these changes if it did not benefit themselves, so realistically in this sector of the economy, everyone benefits from this.
And for the people that lost their jobs, it may sound cold, but the reality is that they could have out competed for those jobs, If a business was willing to break the law and pay a illegal immigrant under the table, they would not do the same for an American?
But even better I feel that we do things very half assed in our economy.
Why not use some that consumer surplus and move it to the people that lose their jobs in order to train them better and get into a career that is more specialized and can improve their lives.
That's our problem, we bitch about other people, when there is no reason to, when the steel companies moved out of Penn. everyone bitched, but the savings of steel for the entire nation would have been more than enough to pay off all those employees for a decade while they got trained up for a new career. But no we all feel miserable, and blame China, or Mexico. Those people who did nothing, and became a sore on our asses, could have been a new wave of nurses, accountants, ect. And the entire country still would have been better off for it through the money they saved with foreign steel.
This works well in the short run, but in the long run, as fatman pointed out... You will end up with low prices because of illegal immigrant workers up to a certain point, after that prices will plummit because the consumers don't have jobs anymore and can't afford to buy anything. At that point you end up with millions and millions of people getting paid 4.50 an hour with an unemployment rate of over 50% or whatever percentage of Americans work blue collar jobs and there is only poverty or rich.
See above! We are not going to advance as a country with building dog toys or tires like a lot of people like to believe. We need to get to the point where we are more nimble and educated by leaps and bounds again. We need to take those factory workers, construction, and all other laborers and turn the ones that are no longer needed to to others being able to do the job for a lower standard of living to become educated and well trained so they can become specialized workers.
That is one big thing I think will come from this recession, if you look at unemployment numbers being very high, but then peek at productivity, we are becoming more and more productive with far fewer people. It was because they were wasted resources, and really not doing too much to help production, and realistically more of a drag on the economy than any poor person could be.
What? I know as I was typing that I don't like it either, but now that I have thought about it that is true. If someone is not doing anything at work, it is costing that company much more money than it would take to pay a poor person welfare. And with larger companies it is very difficult to know who it is that is hurting your business on a productivity level, so they may fire someone far more productive hurting even more.
Anyway, that is just a random thought, but I think that logically it works out.
Back to what you were talking about sorry I ramble, leave for a while, come back type some more, so it can become a little jumpy when I type.
In the long run we will all be forced to become higher educated. There was a article on Intel where they were talking about how they make chips here in the states, and it came down to, I can have 50 people paid very low wages over there, or 1 person here. And the one person wins in productivity, because they are able to use the 70 million dollar machine at a far higher efficiency due to their education. So they make far more money by paying the American with special skills, and that is why they stay here.
The law is short sighted and was adopted for two main reasons other than to get the government to reform; reasons being criminal activity and economical crisis. Making them all legal might help the state of the economy a little bit, but i don't believe it will affect the crime.
I agree, and anything that comes from a panic position is usually not a good move. And as for crime, I agree it would not affect much, but it would be the start, this is a couple decades before it will be better for those people here, they need to get a foot hold first, then they can start to push more children into education on their end, and that is when they will be able to move away from the crime. See that crime is not due to them being illegal immigrants.
In Detroit, there is a huge problem with crime, but it has nothing to do with immigration, all these issues form from poverty and a black market that has no competition in the private sector because of stupid government laws.
Can you imagine how fast drug warlords would lose their asses if they were forced to compete with a 'Kraft' or 'McDonald's' for their market share? Crimes related to drug dealing would end before the ink dried on the bill allowing it.
If the illegal immigrants were all made legal and had to be paid at least minimum wage, they would be less desirable to employers.
Exactly.
More unemployed people could and would be willing to take some of those jobs (more, not all). Also, minimum wage isn't so hot anymore once you are a legal citizen and paying taxes if you know what i mean.
I am not a big fan of minimum wage laws, but I will say this, it really doesn't matter, min. wage laws are pretty much arbitrary and just make good sound bites. It is pretty much always set below the market clearing price.
It's a lot nicer when you put nothing in to the system and you can still reap the benefits of it. This being said, if the immigrant workers are less desirable to businesses, then the immigrants will replace the majority of the unemployed and lower class. Crime is not eliminated at all and if the borders are open or even limited, but allowing more people to come in freely, it is safe to say the crime will get worse. Especially as the war goes on in Northern Mexico.
See I know people love to say they take so much, but people usually don't like to go to the doctor unless they are in really bad shape. And at that point, I would disagree that we can assume they have not benefitted us enough to justify them using some services. Also remember that they don't have the same access if they are illegal to very important things like medicare/aid, social security, insurance, 401k's, ect. We have a LOT of benefits being citizens.
And for people that bitch about their kids getting an education, I have to laugh at them. These are people that are here and are not leaving (unless someone kicks them out) right? Why would you then not want their children to become as benefitial to us as possible? Look at the stats that link education to crime and wages and productivity, and think about how cheap of an option it is to have those kids in schools.
It's a double edged sword though, a lot of people are feeling more and more betrayed by the government and illegal immigrants because they have had their throats stepped on and were choked out of business literally for trying to play by the rules.
People should not place blame on others. Seriously the government is not actively trying to hurt peoples livelihoods. The trends that we are moving away from a hard industry economy to a educated service and high technology economy has been going on for decades. Just like I figured education didn't matter because I could go work for Ford, or go into construction, most other people from lower middle class did too and never did much to improve in a way that would make them marketable today. And that is why we are hurting.
There is every opportunity to get an education in this country, but people don't take advantage of it, and then turn and blame it on someone else who 'held them down'.
The only way to entice good behavior from a business is to provide incentives in a fasion that will effect their profits. aka, heavy fines. Owning a business use to be about providing jobs for citizens while trying to make what profit you can.
We disagree here too. Profits are why people own a business, they want to somehow make their own lives better, and the result of that is that they are helping others to get work. There is nothing wrong with Greed, it is what has driven us to the top economically.
And fines are a good at detouring bad behavior (risk vs reward kind of thinking), but to promote changes in positive directions takes more coaxing. If you are trying to get employers to hire poor people, which would you think work better:
1. Increase taxes on businesses that don't hire low income workers.
2. Lower taxes on businesses that hire low income workers.
In the end of the day, if the business didn't turn a huge profit that was alright because everyone went home with a paycheck and was able to put food on the table. Now owning a business is all about cost cutting and turning profit for investors. As the motives have changed and there is no more "good faith" business, laws must adapt.
I would say this is how it has always been, Vi would be able to go through this better, but all throughout history people have complained about businesses being greedy and only caring about profits, ect. It is just now we can all see it on TV, radio, and internet. So it really seems like a recent thing, but its not.
Our economy has always been so diverse because that is how this country has always been set up. Not to get into a founding fathers debate on this board, because a lot of these people have a hard on for them, but really they understood a stable economy has to be good to businesses, because they are really what drives stability in the society.
It is no coincidence that places with constrictive business laws, and high corruption barriers (very little corruption stopping businesses here in the US) are economically devastated and crime and poverty is high.
They were screwed the second contractors and realtors began overselling the middleclass into homes they couldn't truly afford while the economy was prosperous. Growth in a developed country must be sustainable, everyone should know that. Too many people tried to ride the wave while it was up not looking into the future and seeing that the growth wasn't sustainable. Too many people didn't care about their mortgages until they couldn't pay them anymore and they drowned.
No joke. I have to have a house at the moment, but really after this, I could care less to ever own a house again. A nice apartment in a good city sounds awesome to me. I want to always be able from here on out to be able to in the span of a year or so be able to drop or increase my standard of living so that I can have perfect mobility incase of future economic meltdowns.
So that I can take better advantage of these retractions!
It's small because there are too many that don't follow the rules. If there were no illegal immigrants in the country and things were under control, i think we would be more inclined to open the doors up a little bit more and set some quotas.
We (humans) are not a race that follows rules very well. Having strict migration rules just sounds pompous (and unrealistic) to me. How can we tell someone that they are not welcome? We have plenty of resources, and if they are coming here to make their lives better and going to work essentially 3 jobs (even if one is a drug dealer) how can we deny them when we have so many people that won't get out of their parents basements to even work one?
These people have found niches and provide services (illegally or not) for us, why deny the people that benefit from them?
Wow that turned into a book sorry, I am procrastinating doing my account reading.
right!!! 
