WhipperSnapper
Lifer
- Oct 30, 2004
- 11,442
- 32
- 91
FALSE.
You are only looking at front-end costs while completely ignoring the less-visible and less-direct back-end costs.
Your standard of living is, in actuality, probably NOT better than it would be without the illegal aliens (and global labor arbitrage in general--also foreign outsourcing and H-1B and L-1 visas) in various ways. Sure, the costs of some goods and services are less expensive on the front-end and that is visible to you, but have you ever considered the invisible back-end costs?
When we bring in masses of impoverished immigrants (or ship manufacturing to China or import foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas to work often college-education-requiring knowledge-based jobs) we are displacing American labor and putting downward pressure on wages. This creates a host of very expensive problems such as unemployment and underemployment for Americans. Also, we have to pay for the cost of any government welfare, health care, education, housing, and criminal justice costs that the illegals and their children may receive (or impose) over and above whatever pittance they pay in taxes. (Since they don't earn much they cannot possibly pay enough in taxes to cover their consumption of government services.)
What does this mean? It means that mass immigration (and foreign outsourcing and H-1B and L-1 visas) carries with it a horde of invisible back-end expenses that we have to pay for. Do you pay taxes? Your taxes are higher (or at least your tax revenue isn't being spent on other things that might benefit you) because your tax money is going to pay for (1) the cost of any government welfare, health care, education, housing, and criminal justice costs the illegals and their families might consume or impose, and (2) the costs of providing welfare, health care, education, housing, and resultant increased criminal justice costs for poor unemployed and underemployed Americans (those filthy little people who might otherwise work the jobs the illegals do or the ones that were sent to China and India or filled by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas).
When an American ends up unemployed or underemployed or earning a poverty wage as a result of Global Labor Arbitrage, who do you think pays for it? You do! We all do!
Aside from the taxes we pay to help America's poor (and poor immigrants), there are other back-end costs as well. What about the non-economic social costs of having mass poverty--dysfunctional families and increased crime, etc.? Do you really want to live in a society with a high poverty rate?
Have you noticed that over time, more and more Americans think it is important to go to college and that thus you might have more people competing to do your job and offering to do it for lower wages? Have you ever wondered what kinds of pressures drive people to do that? Almost every aspect of our nation's economy is interconnected to other aspects in some sort of a way. When we sent our jobs to India, China, and Mexico, people flocked to whatever decent employment fields remained, increasing the competition in those fields and driving down wages. You might think that you benefit in the form of higher purchasing power (at least in the short term) but the real beneficiaries of this huge increase in the supply of labor is the wealthy class--the people who own the businesses and the capital. Because the supply of labor increased relative to the demand, the price point, wages, decreased. That is to say, the amount of a worker's contribution to the act of production he receives as income decreases--employers (the wealthy class) can keep a higher percentage of it in the form of profits.
There is another very invisible back-end costs that few Americans recognize. These other back-end costs are Malthusian in nature (ever heard of Thomas Malthus?) By having mass immigration, our nation is engaging in population explosion. Right now the United States is the world's third most populated country (right behind those middle class bastions of India and China--great company to be in, huh?) and if current trends continue our population will explode to 420-450 million people by 2050.
A higher population has several very negative effects--several invisible back-end costs that affect our standard of living and quality of life and even front-end prices for goods and services. I will point out a few of them.
(1) Increased pollution. More people = more pollution and a greater strain on our environment. When we have more people, more people drive automobiles which means that we burn more fossil fuels and create more smog and pump more carbon dioxide into the environment. We also expel more human waste into the environment. We also produce more trash. We also have to burn more coal for electricity which leads to more acid rain.
(2) Higher population density. Are forests, open space, and wilderness areas a value to you? When we have more people we have less of it. What about the price of real estate ("they ain't makin' land no more")? Having more people means a higher demand for real estate which ultimately means we have less land and living space available per person. Do you really want to live like a sardine, crammed into a tiny apartment? Do you want to live like the people do in China?
(3) Increased cost for resources. (Have you noticed that the price of gasoline and other energy resources has increased over the past decade and ever wondered why?) More people means you have more people consuming our nation's limited amount of resources. Energy resources, clean freshwater, clean air, lumber, fish, high quality arable land, etc., only exist in finite, limited quantities. More people means that there will be a higher demand for these resources. When the demand increases relative to the supply of a resource, the cost for that resource must increase. So--you are paying for mass immigration in the form of higher prices for food, energy resources, and other resources you might consume.
So, you see, when we look at this issue holistically, mass immigration is not a benefit to us. Rather, it impoverishes us in numerous ways. It may lower prices for some goods and services a little bit on the front-end but it imposes a horde of invisible back-end costs on us. It's possible that someone who has a secure upper-middle class job or who is wealthy could benefit from it in the short term, but that benefit comes at the expense of the well-being of other Americans and future generations.
I think the number of violent criminals (those who didn't commit crimes for economic reasons), dedicated bums, and crack baby machines is probably much less than 100 million. It might not be bad idea if we could boot them out of the country, perhaps in exchange for hard-working immigrants, but it would set a dangerous precedent and put everyone's citizenship at risk to some extent.
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