A word on the one-sided analysis of
Toddsterpatriot ‘s “economic” comments. First of all, not
everything he says is wrong. But while some employers may be forced to raise wages in a few industries to attract small numbers of U.S. born citizens to take jobs of present undocumented immigrant workers, there are other terrible results that would follow from “deporting 10 million illegals.” Most obviously,
Toddsterpatriot does not mention that there would also be resulting higher prices!
We already are — at present — dealing with serious inflation and worker shortages. As labor costs go up, especially for agricultural products picked and packaged here, not only will prices paid for these commodities have to rise, but foreign competition will export more foreign equivalents to the U.S. and foreign producers will take overseas markets away from U.S. exporters. Many service industries, like senior care and the hospitality industry, will also have big problems. Quite likely many small farms and businesses will close. Yes, that is another side of an “economic” analysis.
Of course, rather than simply try to adopt police measures to “deport 10 million illegals” for whom ready replacements are not available — [shall we open our prisons and have more chain gang labor work for private agribusiness?] — there is a much more humane and economically effective measure: pass legislation to provide a road to citizenship for workers and their families living here productively for many years, while weeding out criminal elements and imposing stricter measures to prevent employment of illegal workers not in amnesty programs. Of course Republicans (since Reagan) have turned against all new “amnesty” legislation — a word nowadays considered “taboo.”
Born in the U.S. citizens are not even able to reproduce themselves, so to hold our population level or grow it at all, and to remain competitive economically, we need immigration, which brings not only hard-working manual workers, but hard-working entrepreneurs and small business people and many highly educated technical and scientific workers, doctors and nurses, etc.
Of course having a whole class of millions of undocumented workers and their families is intolerable. It is a set-up for them to be exploitated, and over time it also leads naturally to the growth of an immigrant criminal underclass, drug dealing, addiction and crime — which spoiled or lazy or naive ordinary Americans easily fall victim to as well.
The question of how to resolve our historically deep-rooted illegal immigration problem is in fact
not directly but only very indirectly related to the larger evolution of our economy and tax system that allowed for the growth of new billionaire and multi-billionaire elites with immense political power. Almost all of our billionaires escape paying taxes on their (combined) taxable & non-taxable income at rates even janitors and secretaries in their offices pay. Many billionaires have utilized write offs and loopholes to pay
no taxes at all even on their supposedly “taxable” income.
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.
www.propublica.org
