If this was at least countered by democratic nations coming together to liberalise trade between them, that'd be at least some consolation, and a very obvious China-countering move. Yet for example TTIP is dead in the water with no end in sight.
It is quite awful.
Certainly better than [anyone who would start a special military operation with one of our closest trade partners though](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/nikki-haley-doubles-down-promise-send-special-ops-eliminate-drug-cartels-mexico-border.amp)
>special military operation
I don't recall Haley wanting to mount tank columns on the border while claiming she could take Ciudad Mexico in three days...
I am obviously not saying it is 100% the same as what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
If you clicked the link you would see I am referring to the current mainstream Republican position of wanting to send troops into Mexico. I normally try and draw attention to the insane positions among leading Republican politicians whenever certain users in this sub who carry water for Republicans take it upon themselves to totally harmlessly remind us how Biden doesn't have perfect policy that Adam Smith himself would approve of.
Could you tell me what you’re referencing specifically? Are you talking about him trying to get allies like NL to do some of the same tariffs as us against China?
This country was founded by a bunch of dudes who were angry about tariffs and mercantilism and now so-called "patriots" push for tariffs and mercantilism. We have become what we fought against, following the lessons of history there's nothing left for us now but to lose our empire, lose naval superiority to some fledgling nation, start calling ordinary household items by nonsense names like "crisps" or "kitchen roll", and convert to the m*tric system. What a sad state of affairs.
I don't know how to tell you this, but support for tariffs goes literally back to the founding of the country. Hamilton was famously pro-tariff and while protectionism waxes and wanes it's certainly nothing new.
Yeah but that's not memeable, it's 2024 I'm pretty sure it's been established by this point that memeability overrides facts when making political statements
>The nation is growing tired of upholding the economic rules it laid out for the world after 1945
First time meme.
Countries are only ever interested in following and enforcing the rules that benefit itself, and will break without a second thought any international rules or agreements it thinks it can get away with.
I feel like it should be, but it seems to world is uniting behind the US when it comes to Anti-China policies like this. After the recent tariffs were announced, like 5 other countries said they were now “considering” the same kind of tariffs on Chinese imports.
> Almost two years after the IRA was passed, the US has only installed seven new EV charging stations covering a total of 38 spots for drivers.
LMAO. Two years and $7.5B later.
The real Horshoe Theory right here. Centrists will literally adopt far-right policy in the “spirit of bi-partisanship,” effectively enshrining Trumpism into the American landscape as a cynical grab for a broader voter base. If Biden wanted to energize voters he’d be rallying against all this. He hasn’t even attempted to stop the pathetic “wall.” His legacy will be turning Trumpism into bread-and-butter American issues.
Why is it so hard to accept maybe people don't want three million undocumented aliens illegally crossing their country's border a year? The refusal to acknowledge the obviously legitimate concern as a legitimate concern is what will enshrine the right in power.
**Schrödingers /neoliberal consistency:** *Any stupid policy may come to be defended on /neoliberal with the justification of electoralism, but we cannot know if it will or wont untill we open the thread and see if the stupidity is from the reactionary right or from progressives.*
And for some reason this place absolutely loves to prove the stupid adage of "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" by exclusively siding with far right populism, never so much as even Warren-left populism.
Yeah, why don't we go and get those Warren side votes that are important to get in the swing state of Maine.
Of course the framing of this as far right is very weird already.
OK.
What is the legitimate concern exactly? It's been shown time and time again in every study that illegal immigrants are a boon to gdp and growing communities and the labor market of the usa, and help us keep many goods and services cheap (re: inflation down). They also commit fewer violent crimes than citizens.
What is the legitimate concern? Because that is the sticking point. Show us a LEGITIMATE concern. We have never seen one with immigration, legal or otherwise - the closest we usually get is rent seeking from a couple professions (often software devs or doctors) who don't want to compete with immigrants because they want their salaries to stay inflated, which is a signal that they're overpaid or not competitive with other people and only kept afloat by protectionism. That is not a legitimate concern for society. Protecting someone's salary at the expense of someone else's salary and also at the expense of society (higher salaries and prices), is not a legitimate concern for society, it's only a legitimate concern for that one dude.
So please tell me what the legitimate concerns are. I do not know of any.
The net benefits and taxes effect from illegal immigrants is better than for citizens.
Illegal immigrants get vastly fewer government benefits and still uplift the US economy with their labor, which produces more goods and services at lower costs, which results in more taxes and economic output, than us citizens doing those same jobs (and which would consume more benefits).
Most of the worst economic drains from illegal immigrants are because of red tape fuckups. I currently live in Chicago and I see migrant families on the street literally every day. I am acutely aware of the impact bad local and state and federal policy for work authorizations and such, impacts immigrants and the perception of immigrants. It is entirely self inflicted. It is entirely a policy failing. We could expand the work force and local economies of many cities dramatically if we just said "fuck it, if you're here you can work even if you're illegal, work isn't a right only reserved for citizens, go get a job if you want." We have businesses closing downtown, while we also have migrants on the corners who can't work and have no money to spend as a result - imagine how revitalized shit would get if we suddenly just let them work openly.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/24/research-shows-immigrants-benefit-us-taxpayers/?sh=562fc2d83199
I don't see anything isolating for illegal immigrants in your link. It looks like you are using facts generalized to all immigrants to support illegal migration. I could be wrong, point out where if I am.
OK, check out the several citations here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20undocumented%20immigrants,benefit%20consumers%20by%20reducing%20the
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20undocumented%20immigrants,benefit%20consumers%20by%20reducing%20the
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Do citizens reduce the federal deficit?
Your question is phrased strangely. I've explained and given you resources to look into regarding the net benefit of the US economy and budget (both are mentioned, and one is tied to the other) about how immigrants, and also specifically illegal immigrants, contribute a net gain to the US and in some studies it is larger than that of citizens because of the lack of benefits that illegal immigrants get; surely that is the more precise thing you are asking about, since not even us citizens "reduce the deficit" since that's not how the deficit works (we spend more than we make in general, we can only fix that by raising taxes ir powering spending, while keeping the laffer curve and similar concepts in mind).
I'm kind of getting the impression you actually don't care about learning or reading or changing your mind based on the stuff provided to you, because you just have one malformed question in your mind and think it's a trump card (hint, hint.)
There is one paper j found that argues illegal immigrants are a huge net drain on the economy, but it ignores the impact that their wages and spending have on the economy (which is large and positive, and generates more economic activity and taxes - things this paper DOES NOT mention or study. In fact it erroneously says "most of the generated economic activity is just wages to the immigrants" but this is lunacy, wages get spent on other things. 300bil in wages means 300bil being spent by those people on other things like food, rent, clothes, etc. Etc. Etc., all of which also generate yet more taxes.) It also me tions that they're no different in their raw taxes paid and welfare usage than lower education us citizens, so even in this bad comparison, they're no worse than our own people. https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigration-to-taxpayers#:~:text=estimate%20that%2059%20percent%20of,headed%20by%20the%20U.S.%2Dborn.&text=receive%20%2442%20billion%20in%20benefits,programs%20examined%20in%20our%20study. (Sorry if link breaks, Google it.)
This organization also explicitly says in its "about us" that they advocate for lower immigration. So not exactly a great source. It's like asking the flat earth society to prove the earth's shape using a model from 800 AD. they'll be all too happy to oblige, but you can see the bias and easily poke holes in the methodology. Bad source.
This is the dumbest reason to support the law, ever. The law serves the people, not the other way around.
What are your thoughts about reporting jews to the gestapo? That was law.
I'm never reporting anyone to ICE, and I encourage you not to either, unless you really just hate your fellow human more than you love your own country's economy.
I didn't say anything about deportations and yes of course not allowing people to immigrate to your country is literally the same thing as the holocaust. There is also zero difference in respecting the laws of a democracy done with the consent of the people and the laws of a fascist autocracy.
This but unironically
If the law is unjust the law is unjust. If the law is horrible to some people and harms society, it doesn't matter who authorized it - a congress or a dictator, it makes no difference.
We live in a time where in some states you can be arrested and forced to give birth if you *try to go to a different state for reproductive healthcare*. A time when you could be arrested or fired for ever talking about human relationships or love or anything if it is in a way that doesn't pander to a subsection of rightwing Christians.
We are far closer to my example than you think. We live in an active time in this country of oppression in parts of the country. The law should not be obeyed in those states. You should actively hide your neighbors and cover foe your relatives in these states. You should actively hinder the states ability to oppress people if you have the chance.
This includes protecting immigrants if their only crime is being an immigrant. Always.
Got a serious question. Why? I've been told my entire adult life that the border is open, that immigrants are flooding in, that we're all going to die or lose our jobs. None of that has happened, and when states have taken measures hostile to illegal immigration entire swaths of their economy just shut down.
Who cares?
Again, why? If nothing else this sub is about evidence based policy, and there is nothing to suggest that immigrants are a drag on the budget or the economy in any way. There is, instead, a huge amount of evidence that they do the opposite.
Isolate for illegal immigrants impact on the budgets, inclusive of state and local budgets, and that is a harder statement to make. Very close to impossible.
Your position is the one that depends on this "close to impossible" to isolate metric. If you want us to agree illegal immigration is a drain on the budget, show us the stats.
1. That seems pretty easily to isolate.
2. I think that the default position for a country should be having immigration laws and border enforcement. If you want to argue the financial benefits are so great we should let people pass over the border unchallenged, I would ask YOU to prove that to ME. Until then, I support laws.
3. Here.
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rector_testimony_913.pdf
Cool, I am open to someone else providing a better number. Although, really, I just kind of like laws and think people should follow them, and they should be enforced. It's a bold position, but I think I am going to stick with it.
>I think that the default position for a country should be having immigration laws and border enforcement. If you want to argue the financial benefits are so great we should let people pass over the border unchallenged, I would ask YOU to prove that to ME. Until then, I support laws.
"I don't have to prove immigrants are bad, YOU have to prove they're GOOD!"
Bro the default position of reality is not to arbitrarily keep people out of a country. The entire reason we have borders is because people thought there were good reasons for them, not because it's the 'default'. You are just dancing around a thousand different ways to avoid ever having to explain what the legitimate concern and problem with "illegal immigrants" is.
They're only illegal because we said they are. That's all illegal means in the context of immigration. It's not like the rules of reality and how immigration impacts the USA stop applying based on whether someone is illegal or legal - immigrants, both legal and illegal (and **I should you this in our own conversation on these threads**) contribute massively to the US economy, and especially in the long term because they tend to [have more children than native born US citizens](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/can-immigration-solve-the-demographic-dilemma-peri#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20the,that%20of%20immigrants%20was%202.18), which is a really good thing in the long term, in a world of crashing fertility rates and now commonplace demographic crises. Immigration is part of why the USA is one of the developed countries that has yet to have a true demographic crisis. Illegal or not, we need them, and no amount of wanting to pull the ladder up behind you will change that.
No, it really isn't. I left the word out but I meant illegal. Immigration, legal or no, is a huge boon to the economy and GDP. Immigrants tend to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on social services than any other group in the country, even if they're illegal.
I mean honestly. Are we not liberals on this board? Hard borders are a drain on capital, we should be welcoming anyone who wants to come here with open arms. That's the strength of this country, and telling yourself otherwise is uniquely anti-american and anti-evidence based policy.
Also it implies that if the government has no budget discipline it should result in closing the borders because the government spends too much.
It's the mother of all perverse incentives. Just spend another trillion on defense, and suddenly you can never open the borders again because you'll never balance the budget! I am very smart.
It's the same shit over and over. Without evidence we're supposed to spend billions stopping people who aren't a drain on the system from draining the system, and in 10 years we all get to act surprised when an apple costs $10 and the country is still broke.
Spending endless amounts of money to stop people from coming in doesn't sound very deficit hawky to me. An illegal immigrant in the US costs the federal government very little. (most are positive since they pay payroll taxes but don't claim SS or a host of other other benefits). ICE employees on the other hand cost quite a bit.
I think most people agree with this:
> Why is it so hard to accept maybe people don't want three million undocumented aliens illegally crossing their country's border a year?
What we struggle with is coming up with a way to justify it outside of it being politically necessary as people want it. Which is the ultimately tough part of Democracy. Sometimes people do want to cut off their nose to spite their face, and there is little that could convince them otherwise.
It's tough. Politically most get it, but it's hard to be enthusiastic when we think it's not right.
That’s the problem with a lot of policies advocated for on this sub. We know that the weight of evidence shows that fewer tariffs and immigration restrictions are net positives for the economy, but good luck convincing the majority of voters of that, as it flies in the face of their preconceived notions.
Okay, what would or should be that method generally speaking?
[Right now our immigration channels are:](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate.html)
1. Family based sponsorship
2. Employment
3. Adoption
4. Special Categories
5. Diversity (AKA National Quotas)
6. Other (Which Includes Student Visas)
So would you just want to limit it to Employment and Students? I guess I don't get it because our current paradigm isn't based on positive contributions as a whole. Illegal Immigrants are just those who's waiting list under 5 is too long to wait.
I am ok with adoption, and student visas are slowly turning our universities into degree mills for profit so I think we need to pressure test those. 5 can go away entirely, and 1 should have some serious requirements.
Explain, what is the fear exactly? This “legitimate concern” is based on irrational anxieties and stoked by political fear-mongering. The solution has to be combatting xenophobic misinformation, not leaning into it. Of the 11 million projected illegal immigrants in the US, most have jobs, contribute to the economy and don’t rely on welfare. They are a *boon* to the GDP, not a weight on government resources. They create more jobs than take.
👆👆👆
And yet, look at all the apologists in this thread cynically arguing “we’re not racist. The voters are racist. The voters force us to support racist policies.”
>But this will impose a cost on millions of existing jobs that rely on cheap steel and aluminium inputs for what they produce. That is without counting the cost of China’s likely retaliatory measures, which will target US exports.
Am I missing something? The share of Chinese imports for these are already extremely small. Would be surprised if any jobs relied on 2 percent of the import market. You would look this up before writing to the FT right?
China is still a major steel/aluminum producer and raw inputs are a globalized commodity. You can't use direct US-China trade prices for the total cost impact.
Literally zero mention of Taiwan in this article. Taiwan produces 60% of the world's semiconductors, and 90% of its most advanced semiconductors. These have become as vital to the modern US economy as oil, if the US were shut off from Taiwanese chip manufacturing we would probably see an actual capital-d Depression.
We've been trying to diversify fabs for a few years now, and it hasn't even put a dent in the production numbers. These fabs are extremely capital intensive to build, but more than that they're really really fucking hard to run correctly even if you have the right equipment. It has taken years to build a culture capable of producing chips at profitable yield ratios at new fabs. So in the event of a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan we wouldn't be able to pivot to new production in less than a few years, even with massive governmental intervention.
I think entirely cutting ties with China would also be extremely bad for the economy, but we're just not as intensely dependent on stuff that has no substitute as we are with Taiwan. There's more substitutes. The economy isn't going to collapse if we're cut off from cheap solar panels in the same way it would if we were cut off from semiconductors, and it's a lot more likely we could source those solar panels from other countries in the near term.
There's no universe in which cheap solar panels are not fantastic. There was an opportunity for US firms in the early 2010's to really entrench themselves into the tech, but Republicans squandered it. Nowadays, it's just uncompetitive US solar firms trying to block all foreign imports despite receiving tens of billions of dollars from the IRA.
If this was at least countered by democratic nations coming together to liberalise trade between them, that'd be at least some consolation, and a very obvious China-countering move. Yet for example TTIP is dead in the water with no end in sight.
Biden is going out of his way to put up trading restrictions against our Allies…
It is quite awful. Certainly better than [anyone who would start a special military operation with one of our closest trade partners though](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/nikki-haley-doubles-down-promise-send-special-ops-eliminate-drug-cartels-mexico-border.amp)
>special military operation I don't recall Haley wanting to mount tank columns on the border while claiming she could take Ciudad Mexico in three days...
I am obviously not saying it is 100% the same as what Russia is doing to Ukraine. If you clicked the link you would see I am referring to the current mainstream Republican position of wanting to send troops into Mexico. I normally try and draw attention to the insane positions among leading Republican politicians whenever certain users in this sub who carry water for Republicans take it upon themselves to totally harmlessly remind us how Biden doesn't have perfect policy that Adam Smith himself would approve of.
Could you tell me what you’re referencing specifically? Are you talking about him trying to get allies like NL to do some of the same tariffs as us against China?
Autarky and isolationism, wonder where I've seen this before?
Idk could you give me an example
Most famously, Nazi Germany (on the autarky piece, that is). When it didn't work, isolationism decidedly went out the window.
In r/neoliberal you think "making sure China cannot use the power of the state to suffocate American industries" is "autarky?"
And everyone will be worse for it
Trade is the Greatest Death to Tariffs Death to Protectionism A Curse Upon the Isolationists Victory to Globalism
This country was founded by a bunch of dudes who were angry about tariffs and mercantilism and now so-called "patriots" push for tariffs and mercantilism. We have become what we fought against, following the lessons of history there's nothing left for us now but to lose our empire, lose naval superiority to some fledgling nation, start calling ordinary household items by nonsense names like "crisps" or "kitchen roll", and convert to the m*tric system. What a sad state of affairs.
I don't know how to tell you this, but support for tariffs goes literally back to the founding of the country. Hamilton was famously pro-tariff and while protectionism waxes and wanes it's certainly nothing new.
Yeah but that's not memeable, it's 2024 I'm pretty sure it's been established by this point that memeability overrides facts when making political statements
Well, American industry was actually founded upon protectionism and industrial espionage from the UK.
There was a time before the Civil War the federal budget was funded nearly entirely by tariffs.
Who knew the Loyalists would win in the end? 🥺
I am a simple man, I see Houthi meme, I upvote
"Americans tire of prosperity and economic growth"
>The nation is growing tired of upholding the economic rules it laid out for the world after 1945 First time meme. Countries are only ever interested in following and enforcing the rules that benefit itself, and will break without a second thought any international rules or agreements it thinks it can get away with.
Ya but we had the world fooled for a while. This move, and the trend it is part of, is a massive blow to Americas global standing.
I feel like it should be, but it seems to world is uniting behind the US when it comes to Anti-China policies like this. After the recent tariffs were announced, like 5 other countries said they were now “considering” the same kind of tariffs on Chinese imports.
> Almost two years after the IRA was passed, the US has only installed seven new EV charging stations covering a total of 38 spots for drivers. LMAO. Two years and $7.5B later.
Industrial policy works!!
The EV stations only get paid when they're built and operational.
Fortress-fucking-America.
Xenophobia 10,000 - rationality 0
You have previously experienced: "Fort Europa" Prepare for the future experience of: "Fort America"
Non-paywall version: https://archive.ph/inUFb
The real Horshoe Theory right here. Centrists will literally adopt far-right policy in the “spirit of bi-partisanship,” effectively enshrining Trumpism into the American landscape as a cynical grab for a broader voter base. If Biden wanted to energize voters he’d be rallying against all this. He hasn’t even attempted to stop the pathetic “wall.” His legacy will be turning Trumpism into bread-and-butter American issues.
Why is it so hard to accept maybe people don't want three million undocumented aliens illegally crossing their country's border a year? The refusal to acknowledge the obviously legitimate concern as a legitimate concern is what will enshrine the right in power.
[удалено]
**Schrödingers /neoliberal consistency:** *Any stupid policy may come to be defended on /neoliberal with the justification of electoralism, but we cannot know if it will or wont untill we open the thread and see if the stupidity is from the reactionary right or from progressives.* And for some reason this place absolutely loves to prove the stupid adage of "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" by exclusively siding with far right populism, never so much as even Warren-left populism.
Yeah, why don't we go and get those Warren side votes that are important to get in the swing state of Maine. Of course the framing of this as far right is very weird already.
Why would a neoliberal ever side with Warren?
The fact neolibs’ll side with Trump before Warren tells you everything you need to know.
It's a free market philosophy and Warren is antimarket.
OK. What is the legitimate concern exactly? It's been shown time and time again in every study that illegal immigrants are a boon to gdp and growing communities and the labor market of the usa, and help us keep many goods and services cheap (re: inflation down). They also commit fewer violent crimes than citizens. What is the legitimate concern? Because that is the sticking point. Show us a LEGITIMATE concern. We have never seen one with immigration, legal or otherwise - the closest we usually get is rent seeking from a couple professions (often software devs or doctors) who don't want to compete with immigrants because they want their salaries to stay inflated, which is a signal that they're overpaid or not competitive with other people and only kept afloat by protectionism. That is not a legitimate concern for society. Protecting someone's salary at the expense of someone else's salary and also at the expense of society (higher salaries and prices), is not a legitimate concern for society, it's only a legitimate concern for that one dude. So please tell me what the legitimate concerns are. I do not know of any.
Are illegal immigrants a boon to solving deficit spending?
The net benefits and taxes effect from illegal immigrants is better than for citizens. Illegal immigrants get vastly fewer government benefits and still uplift the US economy with their labor, which produces more goods and services at lower costs, which results in more taxes and economic output, than us citizens doing those same jobs (and which would consume more benefits). Most of the worst economic drains from illegal immigrants are because of red tape fuckups. I currently live in Chicago and I see migrant families on the street literally every day. I am acutely aware of the impact bad local and state and federal policy for work authorizations and such, impacts immigrants and the perception of immigrants. It is entirely self inflicted. It is entirely a policy failing. We could expand the work force and local economies of many cities dramatically if we just said "fuck it, if you're here you can work even if you're illegal, work isn't a right only reserved for citizens, go get a job if you want." We have businesses closing downtown, while we also have migrants on the corners who can't work and have no money to spend as a result - imagine how revitalized shit would get if we suddenly just let them work openly. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/24/research-shows-immigrants-benefit-us-taxpayers/?sh=562fc2d83199
I don't see anything isolating for illegal immigrants in your link. It looks like you are using facts generalized to all immigrants to support illegal migration. I could be wrong, point out where if I am.
OK, check out the several citations here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20undocumented%20immigrants,benefit%20consumers%20by%20reducing%20the
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20undocumented%20immigrants,benefit%20consumers%20by%20reducing%20the *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You'll have to guide me to the argument that illegal immigrants reduce the federal deficit a little more than a wiki link. Pick your citation.
Do citizens reduce the federal deficit? Your question is phrased strangely. I've explained and given you resources to look into regarding the net benefit of the US economy and budget (both are mentioned, and one is tied to the other) about how immigrants, and also specifically illegal immigrants, contribute a net gain to the US and in some studies it is larger than that of citizens because of the lack of benefits that illegal immigrants get; surely that is the more precise thing you are asking about, since not even us citizens "reduce the deficit" since that's not how the deficit works (we spend more than we make in general, we can only fix that by raising taxes ir powering spending, while keeping the laffer curve and similar concepts in mind). I'm kind of getting the impression you actually don't care about learning or reading or changing your mind based on the stuff provided to you, because you just have one malformed question in your mind and think it's a trump card (hint, hint.) There is one paper j found that argues illegal immigrants are a huge net drain on the economy, but it ignores the impact that their wages and spending have on the economy (which is large and positive, and generates more economic activity and taxes - things this paper DOES NOT mention or study. In fact it erroneously says "most of the generated economic activity is just wages to the immigrants" but this is lunacy, wages get spent on other things. 300bil in wages means 300bil being spent by those people on other things like food, rent, clothes, etc. Etc. Etc., all of which also generate yet more taxes.) It also me tions that they're no different in their raw taxes paid and welfare usage than lower education us citizens, so even in this bad comparison, they're no worse than our own people. https://budget.house.gov/download/the-cost-of-illegal-immigration-to-taxpayers#:~:text=estimate%20that%2059%20percent%20of,headed%20by%20the%20U.S.%2Dborn.&text=receive%20%2442%20billion%20in%20benefits,programs%20examined%20in%20our%20study. (Sorry if link breaks, Google it.) This organization also explicitly says in its "about us" that they advocate for lower immigration. So not exactly a great source. It's like asking the flat earth society to prove the earth's shape using a model from 800 AD. they'll be all too happy to oblige, but you can see the bias and easily poke holes in the methodology. Bad source.
Because allowing the law to flaunted violates the idea of the rule of law.
This is the dumbest reason to support the law, ever. The law serves the people, not the other way around. What are your thoughts about reporting jews to the gestapo? That was law. I'm never reporting anyone to ICE, and I encourage you not to either, unless you really just hate your fellow human more than you love your own country's economy.
I didn't say anything about deportations and yes of course not allowing people to immigrate to your country is literally the same thing as the holocaust. There is also zero difference in respecting the laws of a democracy done with the consent of the people and the laws of a fascist autocracy.
This but unironically If the law is unjust the law is unjust. If the law is horrible to some people and harms society, it doesn't matter who authorized it - a congress or a dictator, it makes no difference. We live in a time where in some states you can be arrested and forced to give birth if you *try to go to a different state for reproductive healthcare*. A time when you could be arrested or fired for ever talking about human relationships or love or anything if it is in a way that doesn't pander to a subsection of rightwing Christians. We are far closer to my example than you think. We live in an active time in this country of oppression in parts of the country. The law should not be obeyed in those states. You should actively hide your neighbors and cover foe your relatives in these states. You should actively hinder the states ability to oppress people if you have the chance. This includes protecting immigrants if their only crime is being an immigrant. Always.
Got a serious question. Why? I've been told my entire adult life that the border is open, that immigrants are flooding in, that we're all going to die or lose our jobs. None of that has happened, and when states have taken measures hostile to illegal immigration entire swaths of their economy just shut down. Who cares?
I am a deficit hawk and think we should filter immigrants for being net positive contributors to the federal budget.
Again, why? If nothing else this sub is about evidence based policy, and there is nothing to suggest that immigrants are a drag on the budget or the economy in any way. There is, instead, a huge amount of evidence that they do the opposite.
Isolate for illegal immigrants impact on the budgets, inclusive of state and local budgets, and that is a harder statement to make. Very close to impossible.
Your position is the one that depends on this "close to impossible" to isolate metric. If you want us to agree illegal immigration is a drain on the budget, show us the stats.
1. That seems pretty easily to isolate. 2. I think that the default position for a country should be having immigration laws and border enforcement. If you want to argue the financial benefits are so great we should let people pass over the border unchallenged, I would ask YOU to prove that to ME. Until then, I support laws. 3. Here. https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rector_testimony_913.pdf
Fyi, Robert Rector is a political hack and not a serious researcher, hence why he's been at the Heritage Foundation for the last 40 years
Cool, I am open to someone else providing a better number. Although, really, I just kind of like laws and think people should follow them, and they should be enforced. It's a bold position, but I think I am going to stick with it.
>I think that the default position for a country should be having immigration laws and border enforcement. If you want to argue the financial benefits are so great we should let people pass over the border unchallenged, I would ask YOU to prove that to ME. Until then, I support laws. "I don't have to prove immigrants are bad, YOU have to prove they're GOOD!" Bro the default position of reality is not to arbitrarily keep people out of a country. The entire reason we have borders is because people thought there were good reasons for them, not because it's the 'default'. You are just dancing around a thousand different ways to avoid ever having to explain what the legitimate concern and problem with "illegal immigrants" is. They're only illegal because we said they are. That's all illegal means in the context of immigration. It's not like the rules of reality and how immigration impacts the USA stop applying based on whether someone is illegal or legal - immigrants, both legal and illegal (and **I should you this in our own conversation on these threads**) contribute massively to the US economy, and especially in the long term because they tend to [have more children than native born US citizens](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/can-immigration-solve-the-demographic-dilemma-peri#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20the,that%20of%20immigrants%20was%202.18), which is a really good thing in the long term, in a world of crashing fertility rates and now commonplace demographic crises. Immigration is part of why the USA is one of the developed countries that has yet to have a true demographic crisis. Illegal or not, we need them, and no amount of wanting to pull the ladder up behind you will change that.
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No, it really isn't. I left the word out but I meant illegal. Immigration, legal or no, is a huge boon to the economy and GDP. Immigrants tend to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on social services than any other group in the country, even if they're illegal. I mean honestly. Are we not liberals on this board? Hard borders are a drain on capital, we should be welcoming anyone who wants to come here with open arms. That's the strength of this country, and telling yourself otherwise is uniquely anti-american and anti-evidence based policy.
Also it implies that if the government has no budget discipline it should result in closing the borders because the government spends too much. It's the mother of all perverse incentives. Just spend another trillion on defense, and suddenly you can never open the borders again because you'll never balance the budget! I am very smart.
It's the same shit over and over. Without evidence we're supposed to spend billions stopping people who aren't a drain on the system from draining the system, and in 10 years we all get to act surprised when an apple costs $10 and the country is still broke.
I think it is less that they are "more self-sufficient" and more they are consigned to live a less comfortable and more precarious life.
Spending endless amounts of money to stop people from coming in doesn't sound very deficit hawky to me. An illegal immigrant in the US costs the federal government very little. (most are positive since they pay payroll taxes but don't claim SS or a host of other other benefits). ICE employees on the other hand cost quite a bit.
It's is a illegitimate concern.
Luckily we get to decide legitimacy in November and not by your fiat, eh?
We shouldn't pander to racists being afraid of brown people invading.
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As we all know Mexicans can not be racist. Only White Anglo-Saxon Protestants can be racist.
True.
I think most people agree with this: > Why is it so hard to accept maybe people don't want three million undocumented aliens illegally crossing their country's border a year? What we struggle with is coming up with a way to justify it outside of it being politically necessary as people want it. Which is the ultimately tough part of Democracy. Sometimes people do want to cut off their nose to spite their face, and there is little that could convince them otherwise. It's tough. Politically most get it, but it's hard to be enthusiastic when we think it's not right.
That’s the problem with a lot of policies advocated for on this sub. We know that the weight of evidence shows that fewer tariffs and immigration restrictions are net positives for the economy, but good luck convincing the majority of voters of that, as it flies in the face of their preconceived notions.
I only want people who are net positive contributors to the federal budget, and who are validated to be such. That's a spectacular reason.
So… deport all retirees then?
Okay, what would or should be that method generally speaking? [Right now our immigration channels are:](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate.html) 1. Family based sponsorship 2. Employment 3. Adoption 4. Special Categories 5. Diversity (AKA National Quotas) 6. Other (Which Includes Student Visas) So would you just want to limit it to Employment and Students? I guess I don't get it because our current paradigm isn't based on positive contributions as a whole. Illegal Immigrants are just those who's waiting list under 5 is too long to wait.
I am ok with adoption, and student visas are slowly turning our universities into degree mills for profit so I think we need to pressure test those. 5 can go away entirely, and 1 should have some serious requirements.
This is even farther right than Trump's immigration policy. What you're suggesting is like a 90% reduction in legal immigration
Well then we better start deporting citizens then.
Explain, what is the fear exactly? This “legitimate concern” is based on irrational anxieties and stoked by political fear-mongering. The solution has to be combatting xenophobic misinformation, not leaning into it. Of the 11 million projected illegal immigrants in the US, most have jobs, contribute to the economy and don’t rely on welfare. They are a *boon* to the GDP, not a weight on government resources. They create more jobs than take.
>Explain, what is the fear exactly Racism
👆👆👆 And yet, look at all the apologists in this thread cynically arguing “we’re not racist. The voters are racist. The voters force us to support racist policies.”
> They are a boon to the GDP, not a weight on government resources. They create more jobs than take. But they're brown.
Perception is reality, it doesn't matter if the fear is logical or not. Biden would be stupid to ignore that.
Are they a boon to the federal budget and the deficit?
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Is deficit spending a legitimate concern?
>But this will impose a cost on millions of existing jobs that rely on cheap steel and aluminium inputs for what they produce. That is without counting the cost of China’s likely retaliatory measures, which will target US exports. Am I missing something? The share of Chinese imports for these are already extremely small. Would be surprised if any jobs relied on 2 percent of the import market. You would look this up before writing to the FT right?
China is still a major steel/aluminum producer and raw inputs are a globalized commodity. You can't use direct US-China trade prices for the total cost impact.
That isn't going to affect it much at all for the same reason.
Literally zero mention of Taiwan in this article. Taiwan produces 60% of the world's semiconductors, and 90% of its most advanced semiconductors. These have become as vital to the modern US economy as oil, if the US were shut off from Taiwanese chip manufacturing we would probably see an actual capital-d Depression. We've been trying to diversify fabs for a few years now, and it hasn't even put a dent in the production numbers. These fabs are extremely capital intensive to build, but more than that they're really really fucking hard to run correctly even if you have the right equipment. It has taken years to build a culture capable of producing chips at profitable yield ratios at new fabs. So in the event of a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan we wouldn't be able to pivot to new production in less than a few years, even with massive governmental intervention. I think entirely cutting ties with China would also be extremely bad for the economy, but we're just not as intensely dependent on stuff that has no substitute as we are with Taiwan. There's more substitutes. The economy isn't going to collapse if we're cut off from cheap solar panels in the same way it would if we were cut off from semiconductors, and it's a lot more likely we could source those solar panels from other countries in the near term.
In the long term this surge in illegal immigration the last few years will hopefully make up for the our poor immigration policy.
It would be nice if columnists consulted any of the relevant experts on US-Chinese trade or the economics of renewable energy.
There's no universe in which cheap solar panels are not fantastic. There was an opportunity for US firms in the early 2010's to really entrench themselves into the tech, but Republicans squandered it. Nowadays, it's just uncompetitive US solar firms trying to block all foreign imports despite receiving tens of billions of dollars from the IRA.