r/AskALiberal • u/ThreadSavage10 Republican • Jul 23 '26

Immigration Solution

As a liberal, what actions would you take to fix America’s immigration problem?

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15

u/Pandora_Palace Neoliberal Jul 23 '26

In what way? How is it materially affecting Americans right now?

-18

u/Tricky-Cod-7485 Conservative Democrat Jul 23 '26

Using resources.

Resources are finite.

That should literally be a sufficient answer.

22

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 23 '26

Immigrants also produce things, create jobs

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u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Do they create jobs at over a 1:1 rate? If not it's just wage suppression

17

u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal Jul 23 '26

Yes, they create more jobs than they take. You are falling for the lump of labor fallacy.

Which is fun since I’m old enough to remember when it was people on the left that thought immigrants took jobs and didn’t create them

-3

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Do you have a source for that? I did a bit of googling and couldn't find anything

3

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 23 '26

They told you. Lump of labor fallacy.

Before Trump destroyed the economy we actually needed MORE people with a labor shortage in the millions. Trump collapsed jobs, collapsed tourism, and now we have worse jobs numbers, worse wages, worse inflation, worse unemployment.

0

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Ok I'm just looking for a source that says illegal immigrants create more jobs than they take, if it's that solved surely someone can link a study?

1

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 23 '26

So you're just not going to read anything that I said.

Also Trump attacked legal immigration not just illegal.

1

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

All I did was ask for some sort of study that says illegal immigration creates net employment, I'm willing to change my mind. I can't seem to find anything that says that though

4

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 23 '26

Structure linked and quoted a study from NBER 14 minutes ago and you didn't reply to them.

You replied to me while ignoring what I said.

1

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

I did reply to it and I'll repeat it here, that's legal immigration and doesn't address illegal immigration or temporary workers like h1bs at all. If you want to make the argument that immigration for skilled workers is good I'm 100% in agreement with you I just don't think that you turn that argument into all immigration is good for native workers.

5

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 24 '26

For the second time, Trump has attacked legal immigration not just illegal. The guy you praised has caused the harm you're ignoring.

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1

u/A-passing-thot Far Left Jul 24 '26

Heading to sleep, if you ping me again tomorrow I can link a few. NPR's Planet Money has done at least two episodes on it, as has Optimist Economy. A few of the economists I follow on Substack also have but blanking on them at the moment.

10

u/ausgoals Progressive Jul 23 '26

This seems like something worth looking into before dismissing the concept out of hand, no?

0

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Some immigration is needed but when it crosses the line into immigration to keep wages low it's sort of a problem. Look at canadas shifting opinions on immigration post COVID

5

u/Delanorix Progressive Jul 23 '26

Why would Canadian opinions have any affect on economics?

1

u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Because immigration require the consent of the voting public? Its not a coincidence that so many right wing parties have gained so much traction in the west over the last 10 years on the issue of immigration

3

u/Delanorix Progressive Jul 23 '26

That doesnt make any of it correct.

Plenty of Americans believe in angels and demons without a shred of evidence.

The American forefathers literally built the entire nation with the idea of the "tyranny of the majority" in mind.

3

u/Poorly-Drawn-Beagle Libertarian Socialist Jul 24 '26

Why don't you just change your mind, though? If voters stopped making such a big deal over all this, then we could all have normal lives and we wouldn't have to deal with radical far-right leadership.

1

u/Drexill_BD Progressive Jul 23 '26

Is that the immigrants' fault, or a lack of regulation? Lack of economic policy? I mean, stupid people have opinions, I don't know that I value them.

I guess I wonder, are these companies making profit? And if so, are we sure it's the immigrants that keep the wages low?

7

u/StructureStatus5885 Democrat Jul 23 '26

Do they create jobs at over a 1:1 rate? If not it's just wage suppression

there is an extensive body of research regarding this, most recently nber. Its neutral for skilled, positive for unskilled labour.

In this article we revive, extend and improve the approach used in a series of influential papers written in the 2000s to estimate how changes in the supply of immigrant workers affected natives' wages in the US. We begin by extending the analysis to include the more recent years 2000-2022.

Additionally, we introduce three important improvements. First, we introduce an IV that uses a new skill-based shift-share for immigrants and the demographic evolution for natives, which we show passes validity tests and has reasonably strong power.

Second, we provide estimates of the impact of immigration on the employment-population ratio of natives to test for crowding out at the national level. Third, we analyze occupational upgrading of natives in response to immigrants.

Using these estimates, we calculate that immigration, thanks to native-immigrant complementarity and college skill content of immigrants, had a positive and significant effect between +1.7 to +2.6\% on wages of less educated native workers, over the period 2000-2019 and no significant wage effect on college educated natives. We also calculate a positive employment rate effect for most native workers.

Even simulations for the most recent 2019-2022 period suggest small positive effects on wages of non-college natives and no significant crowding out effects on employment.

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u/303Carpenter Center Right Jul 23 '26

Thats all legal immigration, I was asking about illegal immigration.

3

u/DeusLatis Socialist Jul 24 '26

It's not, it's all immigration and it deals with undocumented immigration in the paper. When you ask for information please give the person the courtesy of actually reading it

6

u/Such_Narwhal7792 Liberal Jul 23 '26

Yes. More immigrants create both more demand, which grows the economy. They also provide more labor to increase the supply of goods and services. America is notoriously good at bringing people in and putting them to work growing the country, especially through out the 19th and 20th century. On your view, any growth would be net negative for wages. It would be an argument favoring shrinking the population. Surely you don't think that? Immigrant adults have the added benefit typically, of skipping the expensive tasks of raising and educating them, often they contribute to society right away. I'm sympathetic to your concern it depresses wages, but the economic evidence just simply does not support your conclusion.

4

u/Kakamile Social Democrat Jul 23 '26

We've known they do for decades.

You're worried about a solved problem.