Immigration Insults

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline blog is ticked off at “having my intelligence or my character insulted,” by accusations of nativism or political advantage in his considerations of the Immigration Bill.

I’m even more insulted by the lack of competent analyses of impacts and costs that proponents and crafters of the Bill have failed to provide. Without that, those trying to prudently and fairly consider the Bill are left adrift and subject to anecdotal or emotional appeals. What data there is is mostly inferential, but not directly tied to the Bill.

Hopefully, the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis, not due until after most of the debate and votes on amendments has occurred, will help clarify. But, until then, we do have to rely upon what we have.

I’ve pointed out the studied negative effects on Blacks and other low-skill citizens from low-skill immigrants. I’ve pointed out the negative effects on our own values from undue exploitation of some guest-workers.

What about the impacts on those citizens who are more advantaged?

A study published yesterday compares the effects of immigration in Canada, where there is more of a tilt toward screening in the educated and skilled, compared to the U.S.

Immigration has depressed wages in both Canada and the U.S., but has also reduced wage inequality in this country, while widening the gap in the U.S.

Those are the key findings of a Statistics Canada study released Friday which found that a significantly higher proportion of immigrants to Canada than the U.S. are highly educated, increasing the supply of such workers, but lowering their earnings.

Immigration was a factor in a seven-per-cent drop in real wages of highly educated workers in Canada between 1980 and 2000, the report said.

Low-skilled workers in Canada have also gained relative to high-skilled workers, because the share of low-skilled workers in the labour force has declined, it said.

While the earnings gap between high school dropouts and university educated workers increased to nearly 45 per cent from 38 per cent in Canada over the past two decades, in the absence of immigration that gap would have widened to nearly 50 per cent, it calculated.

In the U.S., however, immigrant labour is concentrated among low-skilled workers depressing their wages, and less so of highly-skilled workers, which served to magnify growth in US wage inequality, the report said.

In 2001, about four in 10 individuals with more than an undergraduate university degree were immigrants in Canada compared to only two in 10 in the U.S., it noted….

A 10-per-cent change in the labour supply due to immigration resulted in a three-to-four-per-cent change in earnings in the opposite direction, it found.

Mexico, however, lost workers to emigration. And, as a result, wages there went up.

"Mexico provides a mirror image of the impact of emigration in a source country," the report said.

Between 1980 and 2000, immigration increased the male labour force by 13.2 per cent in Canada and 11.1 per cent in the U.S., while Mexico experienced a 14.6-per-cent loss.

David Frum comments at National Review: “Do you suppose there would be equal enthusiasm for open immigration in the upper reaches of American life if it were our standard of living that was being squeezed?” From across the political spectrum, Matthew Yglesias at Atlantic Online wonders, “Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the rationale for doing away with the EB-1 "alien of extraordinary ability" visa, as the immigration compromise seems to. Are we worried that the immigration of foreign rock stars, CEOs, and nobel prize winners is going to unduly depress the wages of our home grown superstars?”

The richest and most successful citizens may be insulated, and benefit from cheaper labor in their businesses and around the house, and properly point out that the Immigration Bill does not sufficiently tilt toward the highly skilled or those skills more needed.

The middle-class is more impacted in job insecurity and salaries by high-skill immigrants, while also benefiting from cheaper gardeners, cleaners and nannies, as well as from generalized economic growth engendered from importing highly skilled inventors and entrepreneurs.

In short, there are inevitable consequences for all of us from the Immigration Bill. It seems to me that our poorest are most negatively impacted. Further, we may not be doing Mexico a favor by extracting those who could press for reforms there, and add their vigor to its economy.

My economic preference, based on higher predictable contributions and lower direct costs, is for more of a tilt toward the skilled and educated from abroad. My emotional empathy is strong for the opportunities for the less advantaged to excel here and their progeny to advance. However, in a modern economy that has less need or routes for advancement for the low-skilled than early in the 1900’s, importing a disproportionate number of such is of less benefit to our economy or to them, and at tremendous budgetary costs that crowd out other needs and, via increased taxes, may depress our future growth and jobs engine.