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To illustrate the decline in intellectual standards in immigration discourse during the 21st Century here’s a New York Times editorial from February 2000 cautioning against amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Hasty Call for Amnesty
FEB. 22, 2000The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s call for the government to grant amnesty to an estimated six million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States and to eliminate most sanctions on employers who hire them in the future was a surprising turnabout. Until now, organized labor has fought hard to keep illegal workers from taking jobs from higher-paid union workers.
The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s proposal is attractive to many groups. Unions welcome the chance to go after a huge new pool of unorganized workers. Employers welcome the chance to hire cheap labor without fear of criminal liability. And illegal immigrants who have worked hard for years and raised families under harrowing circumstances would welcome access to medical care and other services denied to illegal aliens.
But the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s proposal should be rejected. Amnesty would undermine the integrity of the country’s immigration laws and would depress the wages of its lowest-paid native-born workers.
Back in 1986, Congress granted amnesty to an estimated three million illegal immigrants as part of a law that also promised to crack down on further illegal immigration by imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly violated the law. At that time, this page endorsed amnesty because it was tied to measures that promised to keep further rounds of illegal immigration in check. But 14 years later there are twice as many illegal workers, and employer sanctions are widely deemed a joke. Workers pretend to show employers proof of citizenship or work visas and employers pretend they do not know the proof is fake.
The primary problem with amnesties is that they beget more illegal immigration. Demographers trace the doubling of the number of Mexican immigrants since 1990 in part to the amnesty of the 1980’s. Amnesties signal foreign workers that American citizenship can be had by sneaking across the border, or staying beyond the term of one’s visa, and hiding out until Congress passes the next amnesty. The 1980’s amnesty also attracted a large flow of illegal relatives of those workers who became newly legal. All that is unfair to those who play by the immigration rules and wait years to gain legal admission.
It is also unfair to unskilled workers already in the United States. Between about 1980 and 1995, the gap between the wages of high school dropouts and all other workers widened substantially. Prof. George Borjas of Harvard estimates that almost half of this trend can be traced to immigration of unskilled workers. Illegal immigration of unskilled workers induced by another amnesty would make matters worse. The better course of action is to honor America’s proud tradition by continuing to welcome legal immigrants and find ways to punish employers who refuse to obey the law.
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Can anybody else post comments here? Or is there a glitch blocking you from posting comments on this post like a commenter on another post said.
If you can’t leave a comment here, please comment to that effect on a different post.
It seems like the glitch has resolved.
I think your readers will be interested in this: https://gborjas.org/
Prof. Borjas of Harvard has a brand new book on immigration.
If you can't leave a comment here, please comment to that effect on a different post.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Jim Christian, @Jim Christian
Until you posted your comment, there was a “page not found” message coming up when I tried to open the comments link.
But I'm seeing the article now, and seeing Rob's comment. Obviously, since I'm replying to it.
“We hate the media for its freedom” is no longer an over-the-top joke. Now it’s convenient shorthand.
Same here for the sidebar link, the front page link, and the teasers list link.
But I’m seeing the article now, and seeing Rob’s comment. Obviously, since I’m replying to it.
If you can't leave a comment here, please comment to that effect on a different post.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Jim Christian, @Jim Christian
Accessing this page earlier resulted in a “page not found” message. I couldn’t see the blog post or the comments.
Do the people who used to write those articles for NYT still work there (and have changed their colors), or have they left over the years?
The whole situation is so pathetic. Donald Trump in reality is a moderate, centrist, pragmatic Eisenhower Republican who is downright progressive on some issues such as gay rights and black issues (affirmative action). Yet in return for his intensive moderation he is branded as a Hitlerian monstrosity because the country has gone off the rails on a Marxist Crazy Train.
He’s about as anti-war as Dennis Kucinich, too– but this is either ignored, conflated with supposedly evil Putin, or simply overshadowed by the racial psychosis and avalanching sex kerfuffles.
He's about as anti-war as Dennis Kucinich, too-- but this is either ignored, conflated with supposedly evil Putin, or simply overshadowed by the racial psychosis and avalanching sex kerfuffles.Replies: @Maj. Kong, @guest
Demographic transformation is the Number One goal for the left. Anyone who threatens the ultimate success of the Cultural Marxist project receives an unremitting deluge of hate.
Cue Mr Peabody, Sherman, and the Wayback Machine.
Putting aside the influence of Carlos Slim, here’s one hypothesis I have for why places like the NYT have gotten so nutty on immigration: no one expects poor people to work any more. Back in 2000, after a decade of rising low-education wages and labor force participation and a lot of success moving welfare recipients into the workforce, it was realistic to note that all that would quickly be lost if you let in uncounted low-skilled immigrants. But now, there’s no such concern from liberals, and this gets expressed in a number of areas, most obviously in the approval (and applauding by the NYT) of $15 minimum wages in New York State, Oakland, and some other progressive-led cities. Now, there’s controversy over whether modest increases in the minimum wage have a disemployment effect (my read of the evidence is that the disemployment effect is much larger in the long term than the short term), but no economist seriously thinks that you can raise the minimum wage over the median wage of a city or state without disemployment. But the NYT just said “the evidence is clear!” in its editorial endorsing the increase, such that even Allen Krueger, whose original study is the one most often cited by people advocating a higher minimum wage, came on the OP-ED page to say he thought a $15 minimum wage was too high.
My point is that the NYT feels much more comfortable ignoring reality on a lot of issues that touch who works and who doesn’t, and my guess is that this is because they believe (maybe correctly) that we’re headed for a lower and lower labor force participation future in any case, and that pushing American poor people to work through public policy is a lost cause. (Nobody much talks about this, but if you do pass a bunch of superhigh minimum wages, it means that the political pressure to admit more illegal immigrants after any amnesty will become much stronger, since they will be the only ones who can be paid under the table without blowing the whistle on their employer.)
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-minimum-wage-and-illegal-immigration/
The key is likely enforcement of the law, and that may well depend on who is ruling the White House.Replies: @Nico
I would add that no one expects teenagers to work anymore. Lawn care and other entry level jobs used to be the province of teenagers, but now they are consumed with social media, etc., and these pages have anecdotes about kids that won't work anymore.
Also here is the rise of the machines; we have seemed to turn the corner, whereas mechanization used to free labor for other tasks; now those other tasks are becoming automated, and it is expedient to just pay marginally productive people to stay home.Replies: @Opinionator
They were executed
It’s possible that it can all be blamed on Salim. Think of the money he’d lose if the wall were built and illegals sent back
My point is that the NYT feels much more comfortable ignoring reality on a lot of issues that touch who works and who doesn't, and my guess is that this is because they believe (maybe correctly) that we're headed for a lower and lower labor force participation future in any case, and that pushing American poor people to work through public policy is a lost cause. (Nobody much talks about this, but if you do pass a bunch of superhigh minimum wages, it means that the political pressure to admit more illegal immigrants after any amnesty will become much stronger, since they will be the only ones who can be paid under the table without blowing the whistle on their employer.)Replies: @DCThrowback, @bomag
Your last point goes contra to our host’s 2014 1.6k word treatise on the subject, btw
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-minimum-wage-and-illegal-immigration/
The key is likely enforcement of the law, and that may well depend on who is ruling the White House.
I have no idea whether Unz's speculations about a higher minimum wage reducing illegal immigration are true (I suspect not, but let's suspend disbelief for a moment). I do know that if minimum wage were inversely proportional to immigration woes, France, which has with one of the highest nominal and PPP minimum wages in the world and certainly among OECD countries would have one of the least spectacular ongoing immigration stories around.
If you can't leave a comment here, please comment to that effect on a different post.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Jim Christian, @Jim Christian
I feel shadow-banned, like Adams on Twitter.
If you can't leave a comment here, please comment to that effect on a different post.Replies: @Rob McX, @Pseudonymic Handle, @Jim Christian, @Jim Christian
It works now, Steve-o.
Well the Times may have been somewhat more sensible back then, but they still liked to engage is emotion laden nonsense:
And illegal immigrants who have worked hard for years and raised families under harrowing circumstances would welcome access to medical care and other services denied to illegal aliens.
Harrowing circumstances!! I dunno, the illegals I see around here, and there are plenty, seem pretty darn un-harrowed. It’s almost like they’re just taking it easy, fully confident that nothing will ever disturb them. And the old, sad refrain about no access to medial care. Sure, sure. I guess Times editors don’t use emergency rooms or clinics.
Did George Bush break their collective brain or what?
There was a time (probably before you were born, Sailer, you’re younger than 90, right?) the NYT editorialized for lynching unlawful immigrants.
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-minimum-wage-and-illegal-immigration/
The key is likely enforcement of the law, and that may well depend on who is ruling the White House.Replies: @Nico
Immigration can be thought of in terms of one of a number of speciations. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration is useful for some arguments, but it also deflects attention from issues which have to do with too much versus modest immigration, skilled versus unskilled immigration and, perhaps more importantly, tribally and culturally proximate versus tribally and culturally remote immigration.
I have no idea whether Unz’s speculations about a higher minimum wage reducing illegal immigration are true (I suspect not, but let’s suspend disbelief for a moment). I do know that if minimum wage were inversely proportional to immigration woes, France, which has with one of the highest nominal and PPP minimum wages in the world and certainly among OECD countries would have one of the least spectacular ongoing immigration stories around.
Serial amnesty or open borders on the installment plan.
My point is that the NYT feels much more comfortable ignoring reality on a lot of issues that touch who works and who doesn't, and my guess is that this is because they believe (maybe correctly) that we're headed for a lower and lower labor force participation future in any case, and that pushing American poor people to work through public policy is a lost cause. (Nobody much talks about this, but if you do pass a bunch of superhigh minimum wages, it means that the political pressure to admit more illegal immigrants after any amnesty will become much stronger, since they will be the only ones who can be paid under the table without blowing the whistle on their employer.)Replies: @DCThrowback, @bomag
Good point.
I would add that no one expects teenagers to work anymore. Lawn care and other entry level jobs used to be the province of teenagers, but now they are consumed with social media, etc., and these pages have anecdotes about kids that won’t work anymore.
Also here is the rise of the machines; we have seemed to turn the corner, whereas mechanization used to free labor for other tasks; now those other tasks are becoming automated, and it is expedient to just pay marginally productive people to stay home.
We are unable to compete with hardworking, full-time illegal Mexicans and Central Americans.
I didn’t realize in 2000 that the Times was literally Hitler
He's about as anti-war as Dennis Kucinich, too-- but this is either ignored, conflated with supposedly evil Putin, or simply overshadowed by the racial psychosis and avalanching sex kerfuffles.Replies: @Maj. Kong, @guest
I wouldn’t say Eisenhower Republican, because in Progressiveland anything from 50+ years ago is by definition Hitler. More like Trump is a (Bill) Clinton Democrat, minus NAFTA and nationbuilding.
I would add that no one expects teenagers to work anymore. Lawn care and other entry level jobs used to be the province of teenagers, but now they are consumed with social media, etc., and these pages have anecdotes about kids that won't work anymore.
Also here is the rise of the machines; we have seemed to turn the corner, whereas mechanization used to free labor for other tasks; now those other tasks are becoming automated, and it is expedient to just pay marginally productive people to stay home.Replies: @Opinionator
I would add that no one expects teenagers to work anymore. Lawn care and other entry level jobs used to be the province of teenagers
We are unable to compete with hardworking, full-time illegal Mexicans and Central Americans.
Back when the NYT was Alt Right.
They were deplorables, and possibly irredeemables, so they deserved to be executed.
Actually, I’m pretty sure that the NYT has almost always been pro-immigrant/pro-amnesty for the last few decades, with that one particular editorial representing a momentary lapse.
I think what probably happened was that during the mid-1990s there was a national furor surrounding illegal immigration, especially after the landslide victory of Prop. 187 in November 1994, which occurred despite endless strident MSM articles and editorials on the other side. That made the NYT rather gun-shy, and they trimmed their political sails on the issue for the next few years, which stretched into early 2000.
I doubt that the financial involvement of Carlos Slim was much of a factor one way or the other.
I think what probably happened was that during the mid-1990s there was a national furor surrounding illegal immigration, especially after the landslide victory of Prop. 187 in November 1994, which occurred despite endless strident MSM articles and editorials on the other side. That made the NYT rather gun-shy, and they trimmed their political sails on the issue for the next few years, which stretched into early 2000.
I doubt that the financial involvement of Carlos Slim was much of a factor one way or the other.Replies: @Anonymous
Actually – I don’t think that illegal immigration was a big issue at that time either way (at least in a partisan way). What I mean is that illegal meant exactly what it implies. There was someone in the country who wasn’t here legally and they deserved to be deported. Illegal immigration wasn’t framed as a moral issue.
As of 9/11 the executive editor at NYT was a white man from Alabama (he was pretty liberal though). He was fired over accepting work from a black protégé that was flat out lies. (Or it might have been plagiarized, I can’t recall),
They had a white woman for a while, she was fired too (not sure of the circumstances).
Now they’ve got this Haitian guy and he’s completely obsessed with race.
This reminds me of Tony Blair and the Labour Party starting late 1990s. The saying of Labour was “we’ll rub their noses in diversity”. They thought they had imported a permanent voting bloc but Labour is now in really bad shape. Infighting within the party is hurting them, along with UK-specific concerns like that Scottish Independence Party.