Is there any merit to opposing mass immigration for economic reasons?

submitted by [deleted] from self.debatealtright

From what I understand, nearly all studies have shown immigration to be a net benefit to the overall economy, and only high school drop outs experience a tiny reduction in average wages. Furthermore, a country like Japan that opposes most immigration is struggling economically due to a lack of labor.

Is this true? Should we only mention cultural/race arguments when opposing immigration?

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[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I have no idea what studies you've been reading that have somehow found that increasing supply of labour doesn't affect its price but they're obviously just shilling.

Here's a small collection of graphs showing what has happened since just the 70s, if you go back further to the 50s and 60s you could see the vast changes in union membership and such which are largely driven by immigration (diversity makes workplaces less unified, Amazon for example weaponises this), the capitalist take over of unions etc.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Ventured over to leftist space, here's the data they often cite to show that immigration DOESN'T hurt wages much:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w12497.pdf National Bureau of Economic Research paper on the effects immigration has on wages in the United States Study contends previous analyses on the relationship between immigration and wages falsely assumed perfect labor substitutability between immigrants and native workers of similar education levels, distorting results Research shows average American wage RISES due to immigration, both short-term and long-term Only native demographic whose wages drop are High School dropouts who suffer a decrease in wages of approximately ~2% short-term, alleviating to ~1.1% over time. Study finds new immigration does severely impact wages of prior immigrants, suggesting lack of substitutability with *natives. Overall, vast majority of American workers’ wages increase from immigration, High School dropouts (<10% of population) experience a slight decrease which alleviates with time (and there is evidence that immigration may increase native High School graduation rates, too).

https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.labeco.2014.05.002 Similar research to the above paper, except conducted on the French labor market. Findings are near-identical; immigration leads to across-the-board wage increases for all except a small minority of low-education native workers. Reaffirms conclusion that there is low substitutability between native workers and immigrant workers.

http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf Famous research on the Mariel Boatlift and the impact of a wave of Cuban immigrants (mostly low-skilled) on the economy of Miami. Research found essentially no impact on native wages, even for low-skilled workers, despite the Mariel Boatlift increasing Miami’s labor force by seven percent. Even former Cuban immigrants didn’t seem to be affected.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Nosetribe say everyone getting richer, then why grug can't afford cave but grug's father could?

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I linked this earlier, it's worth reading in full, re: Canada and the net economic effects of immigration. A person's net economic impact isn't simply their wage as they also consume social welfare benefits.

https://williamgairdner.ca/is-the-economy-a-good-reason-for-immigration/

To conclude: a recent study by economist Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University revealed that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in the year 2002 alone than they paid in taxes for that year! Grubel stated that this amount was more than the federal government contributed to health care in 2000-2001, and more than twice what it spent on defence.

Overall, vast majority of American workers’ wages increase from immigration, High School dropouts (<10% of population) experience a slight decrease which alleviates with time (and there is evidence that immigration may increase native High School graduation rates, too).

Would this have to do with changing standards to accommodate an influx of lower performing students?

Borjas' reply to Mariel boatlift

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/gborjas/files/ilrr2017.pdf

Given that at least 60% of the Marielitos were high school dropouts, this article specifically examines the wage impact for this low-skill group. This analysis overturns the prior finding that the Mariel boatlift did not affect Miami’s wage structure. The wage of high school dropouts in Miami dropped dramatically, by 10 to 30%, suggesting an elasticity of wages with respect to the number of workers between -0.5 and -1.5.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't care. If immigration from the Third World increased wages 3000% I still would be against it.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ok, but that's what I'm saying. You say "if" but is it best to abandon the economic argument or not?

[–]fukit 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

From what I understand, nearly all studies have shown immigration to be a net benefit to the overall economy, and only high school drop outs experience a tiny reduction in average wages.

I'm skeptical about this claim. It's obvious that there would be a ton of money poured into pro mass immigration "studies". The claim is total bullshit. Mass immigration clearly depresses wages up until you get to those with college degrees, who still dont really benefit from it because of the drain to social services, school system, infrastructure, the medical system etc. Not to mention the amount of money immigrants send outside of the country as opposed to homegrown Americans spending it all here.

There's really not a huge difference between a high school dropout and high school graduate in terms of the jobs they seek. Construction, trades, factory jobs, landscaping and other labor intensive jobs, and these are all jobs that have a large amount of immigrant labor, illegal or otherwise. I've done that kind of work and personally witnessed huge numbers of illegals and legal immigrants driving down wages and working conditions. The idea that white people wont do that kind of work is total nonsense.

Not to mention the children of illegals go on to take higher tier jobs, so you are not only screwing over people doing "low skilled" or labor intensive jobs, but you are screwing over their kids who have more competition for jobs, and the kind of immigrants America has been seeing for decades tend to have a lot of kids. Far more than Americans native to the country. Also poorer white Americans used to use these jobs in order to make a living and better themselves. Now it's extremely difficult. Then there is the environmental impact of flooding the country with tens of millions of new immigrants who have lots of kids.

There are many arguments against mass immigration that have nothing to do with race/culture, and Democrats used to make them regularly. Hell Bernie Sanders and Biden himself used to openly use these arguments against mass immigration. I would argue the non culture/race based arguments are even more powerful than the ones involving demographic change, at least in the US. The argument of ethnicity and race is a lot stronger in Europe where indigenous populations are being replaced by a hostile elite.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Scroll a bit and you'll see sources I provided in a post made a few minutes ago.

The basic idea is, immigration only lowers wages be a negligible amount for high school drop outs, but the overall growth in the economy due to immigration offsets the very small impact on wages for some people.

If this is true, we have to deal with it and stop holding on to a losing point.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's still bad for the state's finances.

[–]Nombre27 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

https://web.archive.org/web/20180709153441/https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-001-x/2007001/4064952-eng.htm

Abdurrahman Aydemir, a Statistics Canada researcher, and George Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, have found that a migration-induced shift of 10% in the supply of labour is associated with a 3% to 4% movement of wages in the opposite direction. International migration, in other words, raises a country’s wages whenever it decreases the size of its workforce; it lowers wages whenever the opposite is true.

Convoluted way of saying that immigration decreases wages. This is basic economics. Increased labor supply reduces bargaining power and thus average or median wages are reduced.

Even if a country needed a certain kind of labourer to address a shortage, an industry should first attempt for a specified time of recruiting locally and through increased wages as an incentive, and only after having done that should external sources of labor be pursued. Even then, there's no reason to give economic migrants citizenship or any form of political enfranchisement in their host country. Let them come work and then leave when their contract is done.

[–]AddledCorpse 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The fact that the economy has to constantly 'grow' is a lie about feeding the elites more consoomin.

Why must it perpetually grow? We can build a society of technology, healthy, elite humans without constantly feeding jwish folk our dollars at the top.

Secondly - why can't we internalize all/our jobs and create an economy and industrythat is run, payed for and benefitting our own people in our own lands?

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The fact that the economy has to constantly 'grow' is a lie about feeding the elites more consoomin.

Exactly. It's to distract the masses from the grotesque economic inequality that exists. If you divide the EU's entire GDP - which is the second biggest in the world by the way - there's more than enough for everyone on the continent. Of course that means that the plutocrats will have to give up their mansions, yachts, and private jets.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Increasing immigration is good for economy for the very simple and basic fact that you have more people doing stuff involving money in your country. The overall population and his growth is directly tied to the ability of the government of collecting more taxes. This is useful for a single purpose: building an extremely large army. That's because you are supposed to use the army against other countries, so you want it as big as possible regardless any other consideration. Otherwise, welfare etc will be tuned accordingly to the population, so here is were immigration is a no value or a negative values. It is also an extremely negative value for the wages, expecially working class' wages, because you are increasing the pool of the workforce, making it less scarce and then less valuable. That's economic 101.

You should note that in order to keep safe your country you just need nukes, not a massive army.

[–]JuliusCaesar225Nationalist + Socialist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Population size has nothing to do with having a good economy. You can have an extremely small country with a good economy and high living standards. All the supposed benefits of immigration on the economy are in reference to things that don't matter for the average citizen.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Good is a relative term. Let's say your population is X and can be taxed for Y amount, while potential immigrants are A and can potentially be taxed for B amount. Y+B is always more than Y, even if B is a tiny number. So if your goal is to boost the GDP in order to boost taxes in order to get a bigger army, immigration is good for economy. In basically every other realistic scenario is bad.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Your equation is ignoring the net social welfare costs of those immigrants, e.g. schools, roads, healthcare, etc.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

If you only care about the army, you can simply cut the welfare.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

What does that have to do with what I wrote? Are you replying to the wrong comment?

[–]NeoRail 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

He is implying that if the ruling elite only care about taxation and military spending, mass immigration works fine even if it has deeply corrosive effects on the rest of the economy and society.

[–]Rakean93Identitarian socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm not actually implying that. The ruling elite probably likes immigration for his negative effects, expecially the lower wages. That's beneficial for them. I said that immigration is useful IF you want, for whatever reasons, a bigger army. Speaking about USA, probably both are true: the elite wants lower wages and bigger army.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Increasing immigration is good for economy for the very simple and basic fact that you have more people doing stuff involving money in your country.

I wish more people understood this about GDP. The only thing it measures is how much money is being spent.

[–]Nombre27 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

GDP is the most useless metric ever and has been quite wrongfully conflated with economic health.

Broken window fallacy increases GDP but nothing of value has been gained.

[–]arainynightinskyrim 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Here's a thread about the cost of immigration in Denmark

https://saidit.net/s/debatealtright/comments/8prx/denmark_releases_statistics_on_the_net/

On average europeans migrants have positive net contribution while non europeans have a negative net contribution.

The exeptions are Indians, Chinese, Thai and Viet.

The curious result of indians might be because they mainly move to english speaking countries so I suspect that the ones in Denmark are not your average indians.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't care about economics when it comes to immigration.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Immigrants can use welfare. If you import a million people who barely pay any taxes but take out social benefits, you are creating new debt.

Furthermore, a country like Japan that opposes most immigration is struggling economically due to a lack of labor.

Japan is literally the 3rd richest country in the world. If that's struggling, sign me up.

[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This article is worth reading in full, re: Canada and the net economic effects of immigration

https://williamgairdner.ca/is-the-economy-a-good-reason-for-immigration/

To conclude: a recent study by economist Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University revealed that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in the year 2002 alone than they paid in taxes for that year! Grubel stated that this amount was more than the federal government contributed to health care in 2000-2001, and more than twice what it spent on defence.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks, I will add it to my list for later.

[–]fukit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I feel like upper and middle class Americans are almost delusional in their belief that mass immigration is good for the economy overall. It certainly benefits those at the top, especially the top 2%, at least in the short term, but for almost everyone else it's a net loss, and it's devastating for blue collar workers and their children.

No one who comes from a poor or working class environment and didnt just go right into college out of highschool believes this aside from maybe the very dumbest who just believes whatever they see on TV. Anyone with an above average IQ from that background intuitively knows or has personally seen how this argument has no basis in reality, regardless of what is claimed happens theoretically.

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think immigration is like diminishing returns.

When America was first founded, it was just 13 colonies with most of the continent being unexplored at the time. It made sense to bring in new people who could settle those new areas.

But after the 1900s, importing new people wasn't worth it. Hell, the U.S even passed laws in the 1920s that was meant to slow it down significantly.

The immigrants who arrive today, aren't going to build new roads, schools, hospitals etc. They're just here to compete against the already existing natives for the same resources. So in that effect, mass immigration is now a negative influence.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The thing about upper class people is that many of them don't even speak to anyone outside of their narrow social bubble, nor do they care about anything outside that bubble. Consequently, they take all of their information about the job market and the way the lower classes and immigrants live from TV. Their knowledge about immigrants tends to be restricted to TV catchphrases like "they came here because they believe in the American dream", "scientists, doctors, engineers" etc. etc.

[–]Fitter_HappierWhite Nationalist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

net benefit to the overall economy

You mean more people means more economic activity? Stop the presses.

So if 1 million people owned the US and the US GDP was $50,000,000,000 those people would be better off if there were 2 billion people, they all lived in studio apts above massage parlors, but the US GDP were 10 trillion dollars, they'd be better off?

[–]Nombre27 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This article is worth reading in full, re: Canada and the net economic effects of immigration

https://williamgairdner.ca/is-the-economy-a-good-reason-for-immigration/

To conclude: a recent study by economist Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University revealed that the 2.5 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1990 and 2002 received $18.3 billion more in government services and benefits in the year 2002 alone than they paid in taxes for that year! Grubel stated that this amount was more than the federal government contributed to health care in 2000-2001, and more than twice what it spent on defence.

[–]asterias 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Mass immigration is used by anyone who wants cheap labour instead of paying decent wages to his own people. So you end up with millions of pajeets and negroes sending back loads of money, because they don't have the same living expenses and taxes that state loads upon the backs of its own citizens. Instead, you have "refugees" who pay no taxes, they often live a dozen in a flat which is soon turned into ruins, they leave all kinds of debts behind because you can't go after them, and they often have a "second job" doing robberies and all kinds of crime.

At the same time, natives are obliged to accept the new, lower wages, and are often blackmailed with the usual "I don't need you because I can hire a few pajeets in your place".

Of course there are some who benefit from that. They are traitors and they deserve to have their daughters get married to pakis and go live in Pakistan.

As for the "net benefit to the overall economy", they have been saying this for years yet economy keeps going from bad to worse.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Fair enough, I think it's obvious that this is what's happening to some extent, but are their studies that capture how much money they're sending back?

[–]asterias 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You can visit any Western Union point and see what's going on. And making "official studies" about that is simply out of the question under the current climate because that would be considered "racist".

You can also visit any state owned hospital and see what is the majority of the patients. Meanwhile, natives have to jump through more and more hoops to have free medical care.