Is the number of jobs fixed? Since the 1950’s, the number of American workers has tripled as women have come into the workforce and the population has grown organically, and via legal and illegal immigration. If the number of jobs was fixed, we’d have massive unemployment.
New workers take jobs, yes; but they spend their money on products and services and create new jobs.
Human capital is poorly deployed in most countries where immigrants come from. For example; if you take a Haitian out of Haiti and put him in the United States, his output and income will go up 10X.
This adds to world GDP (Gross Domestic Product – the total value of all goods and services produced). The country that these immigrants go to is the one who benefits from this increased economic activity.
In industrialized countries where the living is easy, people have less babies and populations slowly go down, and the economy struggles as a result. Immigration is a way to keep the population rising and the economy growing with more producers and more consumers.
Wow! Never thought of it that way.I guess my belief of “they are taking our job” is from my parents and grand parents ! Got to watch those belief s 🙂
I am all for immigration as long as people do it through legal channels and will contribute to our society and not just reap the benefits.
Best blog I read. Real world advise. People centered. Get something that helps to build necessary structure and culture in my business. Thank you.
I agree with your statements as long as they enter through legal channels, and assimilate to our culture. Multiculturalism is destroying our country and our economy.
SO GOOD! That’s the difference between a “scarcity” mentality and an “abundance” mentality. And an abundance mentality is like jet fuel for an entrepreneurial mentality.
By far one of the most intelligent opinions I have read on the subject. I will be disseminating it widely.
This is a grossly simplistic view of immigration.
Legal immigrants often do not work at wages comparable to their domestic counterparts – IT is a great example of this. Hiring immigrants rather than training our youth to come into these fields only punts the issue of job sustainability down the road and solves the “today” issue of putting a body in a seat.
Immigrants who do assimilate and consume products and services are creating a positive effect on their local economies. Immigrants who do not often save that money for investment elsewhere or send money home to their countries.
I’m all for bringing in immigrants slowly to supplement the workforce, but we also need to do something to help all of the Americans who are out of work. Despite these rosy numbers coming from the administration, the number of folks who could be working and are not is a lot closer to 10%, not 5%. The DOL labor figures (U6) support this and I think those numbers are low as well.
Thank you Larry. Very well articulated, rational thought to counter balance political grandstanding.
Your view point is accurate –
The immigrants that people grand stand about are doing essentials jobs in our economy- the reality is that American citizens dont want these jobs- they like to point the finger at the illegals taking jobs away but no one want to go out and do labor for minimum wage – farm workers, fast food employees , construction labor. Our high standard of living and the “right ” to live the good life takes those jobs off the table for most americans. I hear it ( and see it ) all the time – “id rather sit home and watch TV than work for less than $20 hour…
PEOPLE who want to earn , to get ahead and to better them selves go to work – they work hard , save money and look for opportunities to advance and while doing all that they are spending money in our economy – thats what built this country – we were all immigrants not that long ago
Your view is true if and only if things in the economy remain the same. However what is happening is that major manufacturing companies are moving to countries where the labor force is significantly cheaper, China, Mexico etc. Mfg, agriculture, are the basis of the economic ladder. We must maintain these core elements in order to grow our economy. Retail, hotels, insurance are all service jobs that exist only because we have the basic mfg, agriculture jobs which take raw materials and produce something. If we continue to loose our basic raw material producing jobs our economy will not grow, it will start to stagnate, then slowly erode and we will not need new immigrants as there won’t be enough new jobs.
My Grandparents were immigrants, but they came through legally. If people do not come in this way, they are breaking the law of the land. Otherwise come on in, America was built by hard working immigrants!!!