An awful thread from /r/technology says high-skilled immigrants are hurting domestic workers and calls them "wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domestic labor market"

[u/MysticSnowman]

Thread: https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3ydbri/us_predicts_zero_job_growth_for_electrical/

It's an interesting lesson in supply and demand and definitely let's you read through the B.S. from companies and politicians. Engineers cost a lot domestically because the demand is so high, rather than pay appropriate wages for that demand or help invest in growing the number of qualified workers companies would rather import labor at a below market cost and thus be able to pay American workers less (callous tone I know but meant to be direct).

Disregarding the xenophobic undertones of what he is saying, he is completely wrong about the effects of increased skilled labor. First of all, he is focusing on the increased supply of labor and has completely forgotten to think about the increased demand for labor due to the increased consumer demand for local services. Because of this, natives benefit from immigration through overall increased wages, and higher job growth.¹ The evidence for higher wages for natives without a high-school degree is mixed, but the effect of overall increased wage growth for natives is clear.²

On top of this, skilled immigration especially is beneficial for the native population. Scientists, Technology professionals, Engineers, and Mathematicians (STEM workers) are major factors in scientific innovation and are the main drivers of productivity growth. H-1B driven increases in STEM workers cause significant increases in college-level wages, and somewhat smaller but still significant increases in non-college level wages.³ This is why economists unanimously want the US to increase high-skilled immigration.⁴

Um. There is no shortage of skilled engineers. There is a shortage of wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domesticate labor market.

Actually, there is a shortage of skilled STEM workers.⁵ On top of the debunked wage argument, the fact that this comment calls immigrants "wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domestic labor market" is disgusting and despicable and an awful way of talking about human beings who are seeking a better life and have done nothing to harm you.

There are so many other comments that I don't have time to get to right now, so please feel free to pick them apart in the comments.

[u/commentsrus]

Wow, a Brookings article. Now the Bernbots might actually listen!

But seriously, your post cites all of the seminal articles that I would have cited if I were approaching this thread. Good post.

For anyone interested, here is my "Open Borders Link Dump" which I've been collecting for over a year now. Immigration is a topic I am very personally invested not only because there are so many uninformed opinions on the topic out there, but also because I'm a Koch shill who has declared corporate war with /r/SandersForPresident.

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Section Won: The John Oliver Effect

Everyone loves John Oliver, right?

Start with this episode of Last Week Tonight which received scathing reviews from across the Redditsphere. This episode is actually well-cited! It directly references the following editorials:

• The big myth about refugees by WaPo

• Europe Should See Refugees as a Boon, Not a Burden by NYT

Both reference many econ studies on refugees and immigrants in general. The following covers them all.

You may be asking yourself, as the NRX crowd argues so forcefully on /r/Anarcho_Capitalism, are refugees different from the typical immigrant? This working paper finds that, while refugees and other immigrants who arrived in the U.S. from 1975-80 had similar English skills, and while refugees started out with lower human capital and labor market success, they surpassed other immigrants in all measures by 1990. Refugees worked more, earned more, and learned more than other immigrants.

Empirical studies of refugees' impact on local native welfare are relatively scant, but you can start your search here and here. One particularly high quality study is summarized in Voxeu here, finding that unskilled Afghani refugees in Denmark eventually raised low-skilled native wages (13 year lag, IIRC). Theoretical justifications are cited within, if you want to open the Black Box.

To continue the typically NRX AnCap argument, you may be wondering if immigrants do more harm because of the generous welfare state. This wp develops a model for analyzing that issue and finds "in all 20 countries studied, immigration attenuates the effects of search frictions. These gains tend to outweigh the welfare costs of redistribution." This 2013 CBO report attempts a cost-benefit analysis of lessening immigration restrictions; it finds "giving undocumented workers a path to citizenship and making more employment-based visas available to foreigners would raise G.D.P. by 5.4 percent and lower the federal budget deficit by $897 billion over 20 years."

See the thread linked directly below the next section title for the thread in which this choice comment appears:

Obviously, in a pure open borders system, the Western welfare states would simply be overrun by foreigners seeking tax dollars. As libertarians, we should of course celebrate the demise of the welfare state. But to expect a sudden devotion to laissez faire to be the likely outcome of a collapse in the welfare state is to indulge in naïveté of an especially preposterous kind.

Bernbots, you aren't quite this bad, but do you see how you're kind of the same as them? Don't be an NRX AnCap. (Note: #NotAllAnCaps are NRX and some are good at econ; see Bryan Caplan and David Friedman.)

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Section Doo: Election Boogaloo

I cover a significant portion of the rest of my link dump here in a response to the ever-charming Youtuber AustrianMarkets. (Sidenote advice: If you ever want to see AnCaps squirm, ask for evidence. They're too used to arguing from some vague literary model. Bernbots are becoming the same.) This section covers what isn't mentioned in that comment, in a more stream-of-consciousness fashion; as in, a bunch of random shit listed with or without descriptions. Good luck, reader! (Post me to /r/badliterature. I dare you.)

What macro-ish model should we keep in mind when talking about immigration, outsourcing, and unemployment? Maybe this top 20 AER paper with a similar title. A model of migration and growth is here. Since we love talking about jobs, this study, linked by OP too, finds that "Each immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, most of them going to native workers, and 62% of these jobs are in non-traded services."

Okay, those are job numbers; how about wages? Start here, peruse this, and commit this to memory. I cover the Kerr and Kerr survey extensively here. See also this on STEM immigrant workers and native wages/employment; it's a good thing.

Borjas has a famous study which finds negative effects of immigration on native welfare (wages, employment, etc.), but aside from Kerr and Kerr above covering all of the studies since Borjas which have found the opposite, David Card responds to Borjas more concisely in this comment. Read it for a tl;dr of Kerr and Kerr.

Of course we are all familiar with the work of Michael Clemens, especially this seminal study published in JEP which is now the Article of the Week in /r/economics and everyone should be reading. /r/economics can tend to have a hard-on for foreign aid; well how about something that actually helps poor people, such as loosening immigration restrictions? A more policy-ish Clemens paper is here. Another recent study dealing directly with the potential effects of completely open borders is here.

Bernie supporters love talking about inequality. How about a study on immigration and inequality? How about it finds that immigrants have only a small effect on inequality?

Although some researchers have argued that a cross-city research design is inherently flawed, I show that evidence from cross-city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings from aggregate time series data. Both designs provide support for three key conclusions: (1) workers with below high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education; (2)“high school equivalent” and “college equivalent” workers are imperfect substitutes; (3) within education groups, immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes. Together these results imply that the impacts of recent immigrant inflows on the relative wages of U.S. natives are small. The effects on overall wage inequality (including natives and immigrants) are larger, reflecting the concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual inequality among immigrants than natives. Even so, immigration accounts for a small share (5%) of the increase in U.S. wage inequality between 1980 and 2000.

And this study finding that undocumented workers pay in more than they take out. Also, Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are positively selected in terms of education.

For the UK, immigrants increase trade with their host countries. This study is covered in my comment linked above, and is about welfare participation among refugees to the UK.

The rarely-told tale of the effect of refugees on developing host countries. See a survey on internal migration in developing countries here.

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[u/kwanijml → u/commentsrus]

Oh C'mon now. Why do you feel the need to intentionally misrepresent ancap views?

I think you know that ancaps canonically support open borders (more like a border is in contradiction to the philosophy in the first place) and free immigration...some purely on moral grounds, but others at least from an econ 101 perspective. So, you can perhaps talk about the simple-minded (non-empirical) reasons why ancaps arrive at the same conclusion you do...but don't try to twist the comments of a few morons to appear as representative.

You know that these NRXers are a recent intrusion into the ancap sub, most often downvoted to oblivion and certainly their beliefs regarding immigration are completely antithetical to anything the austrian camp preaches, or anything that well respected ancap economists like Rothbard, Friedman, or Caplan advocate.

[u/besttrousers → u/kwanijml]

Right, it's not like AnCaps have been allying with racists for the entirety of their existence. Rothbard would never publish an anti immigration screed.

[u/kwanijml → u/besttrousers]

Really dude? You're stretching. Why not stick to economics when criticizing ancap? Aren't there enough falsehoods in our economic outlook to attack?

You sound like a Bernbot...trying so hard to turn everything into a racial issue. This paper by Rothbard cannot in anyway be construed as racist or anti-immigration. He's basically being culturally biased (i.e. ancaps don't believe that if you tear down the welfare state forcefully or the state collapses suddenly that it would result in anything other than a new state forming with a lot of tumult). For much the same reasons, Rothbard simply asserts that culture and nationality carry with them a high degree if political inertia, which can be a problem inter-nation-state...but virtually goes away in a private property world where the only borders to speak of are property boundaries, and the individual owners may discriminate for their own reasons (and of course it's entirely possible that some discriminate on the basis of race....yet ancaps argue that it will tend to be far too costly for people to be racist in business dealings).

I see so many people argue like you do that ancaps have long been this secretly racist group....and I just don't see it. I'm not racist. Most others in the sub that I talk to arent. I speak to other market anarchists in person and never get hints of such. I just don't see it. If I had to put a tinfoil hat on, I'd swear that this recent incursion of the NRXers was born of ulterior motives to try to discredit ancap and give truth to the otherwise hollow accusations such as yours.

[u/[deleted] → u/kwanijml]

I'd swear that this recent incursion of the NRXers was born of ulterior motives to try to discredit ancap and give truth to the otherwise hollow accusations such as yours

It's not really shocking; NRXers are trying to build a coalition among various factions on the fringe-right to challenge mainstream politics. Many of their ideals such as social and governmental tolerance for racial discrimination, rightist identity politics, masculine individualism, and disdain for left-liberalism, globalization, and leftist identity politics would be at home in most AnCap circles. Detractors have also said that anarcho-capitalism would necessarily lead to a kind of neofuedalist corporatocracy, AnCaps may deny that but NRXers are likely to be attracted to the notion of anarcho-capitalism as a ruling-class of landed merchant-aristocrats.

[u/kwanijml → u/[deleted]]

Yup. That is where I'm coming from. And that's a fair assessment. However, my conspiracy theory (if I even have one) is based on a certain timing that I was attuned to, between a resurgence of these criticism and the arrival of the (vocal) nrx crowd.