Friday, January 23, 2004

 
The Wages of Sin Fronteras

I should state first of all that the worst thing about most immigrants to the U.S. over the past few decades is *not* what effects they have on our labor market, but instead that the overwhelming(good word, that "overwhelming")majority(which excludes, of course, the "bananas," "potatoes," "oreos," and so forth, and for whom I have no little sympathy) have *defined themselves* as enemies of most Americans.
Any good news regarding employment statistics is welcome here, especially considering that it's an election year, but it's not clear how much good news there is yesterday's NRO piece "Which Wage Are We Going" by John E. Tamny. He cites Cato's Reynolds on the issue of employment and wages in "computer related jobs": "According to Reynolds there were roughly 2.6 million of them in 1999 at an average wage of $26.41 an hour. This compared to 2.77 million in 2002 at an average wage of $29.63 an hour." Alan Reynold's Jan 4, 2004 article "Exporting Tech Jobs to India?" doesn't give the source for those numbers, and neither Tamny nor he give any clue as to how many of those jobs are being filled by *native* workers.
Lawyers say that in court one should never ask a question about which you don't already have the answer, but the omission of the answer to the above, even if not readily available says something about the mind-set of those writers.
Other numbers hard to come by are those for "discouraged" tech workers, and the numbers of natives who were discouraged from majoring in tech fields in college by as result of being "crowded out" by foreign students and workers. (Once again, I wish to stress that foreign techies overall may be among the *least* harmful of immigrants.) A recent article on VDARE noted that Timothy McVeigh was aided by an unemployed native chemist, but what is even more horrible to contemplate is how many bright students, facing imported foreign competition have decided to become something *far* worse(shudder, tremble): LAWYERS. Yep, immigration does breed criminal, albeit "legal" behavior. -more about John Edwards later.