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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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 Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2018 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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The uninformed leftmost fringe demands the Congress abolish ICE, but offers not even a suggestion about what agency should take over its absolutely vital assigned mission, defined as "to promote homeland security and public safety by enforcing U.S. federal criminal and civil laws concerning border control, customs, trade, and immigration.". This includes controlling human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorist entry, and any other illegal activities and people harmful to the U.S. and its citizens.
No one in their right mind would even suggest abolishing those functions, so what good does it do to rename the agency or assign its duties to another branch of Homeland Security or to the military? |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The Trump administration repeatedly makes two claims to justify its crackdown on immigrants and their families: Immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans; and immigrants cause increases in crime. Both of these statements are widely accepted in our country. U.S. Gallup polls indicate about twice as many people believe immigrants take away job opportunities as believe that they improve them. About five times as many people believe that immigrants make the crime situation worse. Both of these statements are myths.
Why do we believe that immigrants cause damage to our economy and our social fabric when careful investigation consistently reveals the opposite? The reason may lie in some psychological tricks that we play on ourselves.
Decades of data contradict the idea that immigrants create unemployment and lower wages for American laborers. One of the most relevant and compelling new studies appears in the current issue of the American Economic Review. The research studies effects from the termination of a guest-worker program that operated for two decades. Beginning in 1942, the Bracero program provided legal permits for nearly 500,000 Mexican workers to enter the United States for low-wage work, primarily in agriculture. The Johnson administration, believing that the program reduced domestic employment and wages, canceled it in 1964.
What the study finds, however, is that removing a half-million Mexican workers from the U.S. labor force yielded no improvement in U.S. employment or wages. Farms simply began to substitute more machine-intensive methods for the missing labor. Furthermore, any time workers leave an area, gains in employment for remaining workers taking these jobs is typically offset by the reduced demand for goods and services at local businesses.
Overall, immigration studies consistently show the net economic effect of migrants into communities is either negligible or slightly positive. The abrupt cancellation of the Bracero program provides insight into what the effects from the current immigrant crackdown are likely to be in the labor market: roughly zero.
A second myth is that immigrants increase crime rates. This belief is not new; in the early 20th century, Americans also believed that the new European immigrants were disproportionally prone to crime, a historical claim that has been debunked by recent research. Moreover, a National Academy of Sciences report recently concluded that virtually every academic study carried out over the past century on the question finds that crime rates have been substantially lower among immigrants than nonimmigrants in the United States.
The lower crime rates found among America’s immigrant community hold across ethnicity and language group. Despite President Trump’s focus on MS-13 and other gangs from Central America and Mexico, a 2015 study by researchers at UC Irvine concludes from U.S. Census data that “less educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent — more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign-born Mexican men, and five times greater than the 1.7 percent rate among foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men.”
Behavioral economics is beginning to understand that behind myths like these are psychological tricks related to the way we perceive our world.
The first of these psychological tricks is “confirmation bias.” Research has shown that we tend to accept data that confirms our prior-held beliefs, but reject data that conflicts with them. We also tend to search for information in places that are likely to validate our strongest beliefs. If you are suspicious of immigrants, you will subconsciously look for (and subsequently accept) information that confirms your inward suspicions — a rather scary thought.
Another of these tricks is “salience bias.” Jobs produced from immigration are less noticeable than job losses from immigrant competition. It is easy to identify an immigrant holding a job formerly held by a native-born worker, but it is hard to identify the hundreds of jobs created from the influx of immigrants into an area, or identify the jobs created by innovative immigrant entrepreneurs. The heinous felony committed by an immigrant makes the front page; that immigrants have low average crime rates unfortunately does not.
There are better ways to deal with widening economic disparities than draconian treatment of refugees and immigrants. The most important involve increasing economic opportunities for Americans negatively impacted by globalization and technological change. These include subsidizing vocational training, increasing scholarship opportunities for lower-income Americans, and increasing competitiveness in U.S. manufacturing. These will be more effective at making America great again than an immigration policy guided and perpetuated by myths.
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Bruce Wydick is professor of economics and international studies at the University of San Francisco and research affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.
Don't trouble me with facts, I've made up my mind. |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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| Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:50 am Post subject: |
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| mac wrote: | | Quote: | The Trump administration repeatedly makes two claims to justify its crackdown on immigrants and their families: Immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans; and immigrants cause increases in crime. Both of these statements are widely accepted in our country. U.S. Gallup polls indicate about twice as many people believe immigrants take away job opportunities as believe that they improve them. About five times as many people believe that immigrants make the crime situation worse. Both of these statements are myths.
Why do we believe that immigrants cause damage to our economy and our social fabric when careful investigation consistently reveals the opposite? The reason may lie in some psychological tricks that we play on ourselves.
Decades of data contradict the idea that immigrants create unemployment and lower wages for American laborers. One of the most relevant and compelling new studies appears in the current issue of the American Economic Review. The research studies effects from the termination of a guest-worker program that operated for two decades. Beginning in 1942, the Bracero program provided legal permits for nearly 500,000 Mexican workers to enter the United States for low-wage work, primarily in agriculture. The Johnson administration, believing that the program reduced domestic employment and wages, canceled it in 1964.
What the study finds, however, is that removing a half-million Mexican workers from the U.S. labor force yielded no improvement in U.S. employment or wages. Farms simply began to substitute more machine-intensive methods for the missing labor. Furthermore, any time workers leave an area, gains in employment for remaining workers taking these jobs is typically offset by the reduced demand for goods and services at local businesses.
Overall, immigration studies consistently show the net economic effect of migrants into communities is either negligible or slightly positive. The abrupt cancellation of the Bracero program provides insight into what the effects from the current immigrant crackdown are likely to be in the labor market: roughly zero.
A second myth is that immigrants increase crime rates. This belief is not new; in the early 20th century, Americans also believed that the new European immigrants were disproportionally prone to crime, a historical claim that has been debunked by recent research. Moreover, a National Academy of Sciences report recently concluded that virtually every academic study carried out over the past century on the question finds that crime rates have been substantially lower among immigrants than nonimmigrants in the United States.
The lower crime rates found among America’s immigrant community hold across ethnicity and language group. Despite President Trump’s focus on MS-13 and other gangs from Central America and Mexico, a 2015 study by researchers at UC Irvine concludes from U.S. Census data that “less educated native-born men age 18-39 had an incarceration rate of 10.7 percent — more than triple the 2.8 percent rate among foreign-born Mexican men, and five times greater than the 1.7 percent rate among foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men.”
Behavioral economics is beginning to understand that behind myths like these are psychological tricks related to the way we perceive our world.
The first of these psychological tricks is “confirmation bias.” Research has shown that we tend to accept data that confirms our prior-held beliefs, but reject data that conflicts with them. We also tend to search for information in places that are likely to validate our strongest beliefs. If you are suspicious of immigrants, you will subconsciously look for (and subsequently accept) information that confirms your inward suspicions — a rather scary thought.
Another of these tricks is “salience bias.” Jobs produced from immigration are less noticeable than job losses from immigrant competition. It is easy to identify an immigrant holding a job formerly held by a native-born worker, but it is hard to identify the hundreds of jobs created from the influx of immigrants into an area, or identify the jobs created by innovative immigrant entrepreneurs. The heinous felony committed by an immigrant makes the front page; that immigrants have low average crime rates unfortunately does not.
There are better ways to deal with widening economic disparities than draconian treatment of refugees and immigrants. The most important involve increasing economic opportunities for Americans negatively impacted by globalization and technological change. These include subsidizing vocational training, increasing scholarship opportunities for lower-income Americans, and increasing competitiveness in U.S. manufacturing. These will be more effective at making America great again than an immigration policy guided and perpetuated by myths.
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Bruce Wydick is professor of economics and international studies at the University of San Francisco and research affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.
Don't trouble me with facts, I've made up my mind. |
Illegal you fucking moron.. |
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wsurfer
Joined: 17 Aug 2000
Posts: 1635
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| Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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OK let's just remind ourselves of yet another wacky profane laced comment by the no other than mat-ty.
I am on the verge of being drunk, but I will wake up sober.
Mat-ty will wake up being just be the same ole mat-ty. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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Those who fail to understand root causes will always fail to find solutions. Immigration throughout the world is fueled by violence and climate change. According to Smithsonian magazine, in 2017 12 million fled violence and 19 more fled catastropic weather fueled by climate change. The military considers this the greatest threat to the US.
Immigrants have a lower crime rate that the average US citizen—much less Trump voters. |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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| Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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| mac wrote: | Those who fail to understand root causes will always fail to find solutions. Immigration throughout the world is fueled by violence and climate change. According to Smithsonian magazine, in 2017 12 million fled violence and 19 more fled catastropic weather fueled by climate change. The military considers this the greatest threat to the US.
Immigrants have a lower crime rate that the average US citizen—much less Trump voters. |
Again ILLEGAL you fucking moron. Illegals are ALL criminals by LAW. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 2:07 pm Post subject: |
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| mat-ty wrote: | | mac wrote: | Those who fail to understand root causes will always fail to find solutions. Immigration throughout the world is fueled by violence and climate change. According to Smithsonian magazine, in 2017 12 million fled violence and 19 more fled catastropic weather fueled by climate change. The military considers this the greatest threat to the US.
Immigrants have a lower crime rate that the average US citizen—much less Trump voters. |
Again ILLEGAL you fucking moron. Illegals are ALL criminals by LAW. |
Crossing the border without permission is a misdemeanor—the same as money laundering, racial discrimination in renting housing, campaign crimes, and many of the other Trump crimes. The difference for Matty? Melanin. |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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Funny. How many times has Trump committed or abetted money laundering? I guess you’d agree, there should be harsh consequences? Tar and feathers, or jail? |
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mat-ty
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 7850
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| Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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| mac wrote: |
Funny. How many times has Trump committed or abetted money laundering? I guess you’d agree, there should be harsh consequences? Tar and feathers, or jail? |
Tell me please, how many times? I know the left and clowns like you talk about a new crime everyday that Trump has committed but fail to offer any proof. Let me know when he is found guilty IN A COURT OF LAW to any of your daily claims. Until then you sound like a babbling fool. |
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