At 05:30 PM 3/17/2004 -0800 Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>What do you mean by needs?
I mean that if we were suddenly to get rid of the millions of illegal
workers in the country, we would have a very difficult time finding
millions of people to work in construction, fruit and vegetable picking,
and janitorial/custodial services. This would, of course, be disastrous
for our economy. In addition, as you are well aware, our country badly
needs immigration to keep our population up as we hit the demographic bulge.
The reason we have ilegal immigration is because we have jobs that need to
be filled. As I have been fond of repeating lately, we have 61% of all
our adults over the age of 16 employed and an unemployment rate of only
5.6%. In addition, Dan has recently pointed out that since 1984 we have
been adding jobs to the economy far more quickly than we have been adding
workers.
I am personally very skeptical of proposals that we should permit
immigrants of certain skills but not of other skills. I had always
thought that the idea of government central planners picking and choosing
what sort of labor should be supplied in the economy had gone out of vogue
with the end of the Cold War. In my mind, isn't it far better to let the
*market* decide what sort of labor it needs, and to let people who can find
jobs to accept the employment that is offered to them?
I also find it difficult to believe that immigrants are a net burden on
social services. In general, immigrants are not elgible for welfare, and
those restrictions were tightened in 1996. Immigrants are generally not
elgible for things like Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment either.
Indeed, in general immigrants tend to have jobs and to the extent that we
can regularize that employment of the millions of illegal immigrants
already here, then can presumably become taxpayers as well. To the extent
that immigrants bring and produce children that need to be educated, I tend
to consider that an investment in our future tax base, and indeed, most
studies have found that second generation immigrants are very likely to be
net tax contributors.
An outstanding summary of the economics of immigration can be found here:
http://www.stls.frb.org/docs/publications/re/1997/d/re1997d3.pdf
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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