Immigration and how it effects US

I thought this was a really interesting video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265#

What are your thoughts? How do you feel about it?

 

Didn't watch the video, but going just by the title, immigration numbers mean nothing. Let me guess, he's gonna say how over a million people become citizens every year. Sounds like a lot, except for the fact a million people were coming in in 1906 too when our population was 1/5 of what it is now. Our "population consequence" of immigration is the fact both the US and Canada have a substantially less problem in terms of both financial and demographic issues of the aging baby boomers than Europe or Japan.

 

You need to watch the video... Even as late as 1945 immigration was only about 200k a year. Not a million. Thats just the top part of it. Eh, it is a 13 min vid...

 

please summarize for those of us on dialup

 

bluska- lol

Anyway, really interesting video... I always thought immigration laws (mostly illegal) were so harsh (like chaining women to beds while giving birth, than takng their babies away, assuming immigrants are illegal when they aren't, etc.), but I guess this is why...
I think it's good to give those in developing countries at least an oppurtunity for a more prosperous life, but it's such a small fraction of the impoverished...
I think we need to work on reducing the numbers of those in developing countries by educating the women.
Change starts with a girl...

 

Pretty good video, informative.

Synopsis:
Given the current trends American population will level off in the next 20-25 years, given current birth/death rates sans immigration numbers.
When you figure in the numbers from immigration American population numbers will have tripled within the same time frame.

The fact of allowing a million legal immigrants a year does absolutely nothing to help the impoverished people and countries from which they are coming from as those numbers increase at a rate of about 80 million a year.
Essentially America allowing immigration based on "humanitarian" principles is a fallacy and is actually doing nothing whatsoever to help those other countries but is having a very profound negative effect on America and it's resources.

Kind of like bailing water out of a sinking ship with a teaspoon, ain't gonna do jack-shit to help anyone.

 

It's not just the million immigrants a year but also their children born here that account for the rapid and almost exponential population growth in America. I agree 100% with the central message of the video;
Help them where they live so they have no need to immigrate to the U.S. That is a philosophy that makes a lot more sense than what is currently taking place.

 

Immigration was that low in 1945 aside from the war and depression because of the Immigration Act of 1923. Every immigration act in US history has had serious racist overtones in it, in the case of 1923 qutoas were established to severely limit the ability of anyone from Europe who wasn't from northern Protestant Europe to emigrate.(We had already dealt with the Chinese by completely outlawing all Chinese immigration decades earlier.) Before then for between 1885-1915 the US was taking in about a million immigrants a year. In fact here's some numbers, from the book Ellis Island by Pamela Reeves

1904 - 812,870
1905 - 1,026,499
1906 - 1,100,735
1907 - 1,285,349
1908 - 789,870
1909 - 751,786
1910 - 1,041,570
1911 - 878,587
1912 - 838,172
1913 - 1,197,892
1914 - 1,218,480

It then drops off substantially during WW1, picks back up into the 700-800,000 range then drops substantially again after the 1923 Immigration act.

The fact remains essentially every piece of anything that has ever limited immigration to the US has been racially or ethically motivated. The US wasn't in danger of collapsing from immigrants in 1923 and we're sure as hell not in danger of it now. The US and Canada's high immigration rates are among the main reason our financial situation in the not so distant future is considerably better than that of Europe/Japan.

*edit*
We're a nation built on immigration, it's be entirely hypocritical for us to tell people not to come here, we'll fix life over there. We can't fix the whole world any time remotely soon. Lives are improving drastically around the world, hundreds of millions of people now live a comfortable middle class lifestyle in places like China, India, ect, but that doesn't change the fact there's millions of people around the world who would like to emigrate, and have grown up with the concept of America, these are people who probably love the US more than a lot of people who are born here, if they want to give up citizenship in their homeland to come here and work, why not let them.

Not to mention this is actually what the immigration process currently involves:
http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad.jpg
vs just boatloads of people getting off, being checked for disease, then being told welcome to america.

*double edit*
Personally I find something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHdv9POgXYQ"]YouTube - US Citizenship Oath
quite beautiful.

 

since i don't believe in borders or countries i guess i don't necessarily believe in immigration either

i'll simply call it moving

sounds better, no? and i believe there is no "illegal" moving . . .

 

I can agree with much of what has been stated. But lets back up some, I do not believe The USA was allowing immigration number to increase to give third world countries a little relief from their population burden. I do believe it was largely ignored to counter high wages the average American was earning. Thus allowing a cheaper labor pool to compete in the job market, increasing the profits of business owners with the new-found work force.

I don't think the government realized the mass exodus to the US would affect the welfare system the way it did. Nor did investors care what the long term effects would be on the nation.

All I can see now is that they are trying to plug a leak which should have been done 10 years ago while Americans were voicing the lack of work. The fact is immigration was side stepped, the legal process was bypassed. Unaccounted for and cheap, they provided the labor and now everybody wants them to leave ?! They are here now, this is that new wave of immigration that replaces the old. Isn't it like the evolution of the state ?

The country won't move forward and embrace the new immigrants but instead vote against health care and propose stiffer immigration policies. Fighting against the very thing that they brought in to counter high wages. This is ridiculous.

The real question is how to get back into the international manufacturing market and what our role in all of this will be in the future.

 

Unrestricted immiration produces downward pressure on wages.

 

Unrestricted yes. But we haven't had unrestricted immigration since the early 1900's. Aside from that immigration generally helps wages in most groups, except ironically among immigrants and the very least skilled Americans.
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp255/

Or summed up more simply
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062002349.html
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/11/why-immigration-boosts-wages-and-not-just-in-california.html

 

I agree with those who disagree with the video. I think the washington post article from the above link explains it well, as do the other links.

If the labor force shrinks, we're in big trouble. Look at what's happening in Japan now as the birthrate drops and the labor force shrinks. The more people we have working, the higher the GDP, which is a good thing.

I had a whole rant here...but I decided not to post it because I don't want to insult anyone. I would just say that we should let immigrants in not because we are bleeding hearts or trying to help others, but because we are trying to help ourselves.

Read the articles by economists and the above links, rather than by people who may try to use "numbers" but are potentially full of fear and don't really have a command of economics.

Economics can be very unintuitive sometimes, so it's important to take a hard look. Anything that sounds really simple, is probably not the whole story.

 

letting immigrants in wont help us they just take our jobs and cause problems. if you live in los angeles or san diego youll better understand this.

 

And watch how quickly LA would come to a standstill if all the immigrants were kicked out.

 

Agreed. In fact it should be the core of U.S. foreign policy.

 

Sorry, I don't buy this platitude, that refuses to die. I live in California. I've tried , tried , & TRIED to hire citizens to do the work I needed done - sorting, processing, & packaging organic fruit. Pay rate was $10.75 an hour - during the 90's. I only ever got one U.S. born & raised kid to work there...he lasted 1/2 of 1 day.

It's not that U.S. jobs are being unfairly taken. The problem is Americans take prosperity for granted. Most coast through 12 years of school with minimal effort. Then whine when good-paying jobs don't just drop on them out of the blue sky. Spoiled rotten punks. That's the problem. And these are the good ol' days....

 

Send me a plane ticket and I'll do it as long as I get to eat some of the fruit too.

 

I could use a job, where in CA.?
I've sorted produce and picking out the nasty pieces. EWW, stinky. But that was at a food bank and I was doing it for free.

 

Sorry web entities. The company I referred to closed when the owners retired. But if you're really looking for work, you could do as the highly motivated foreign works do around here: Stand in the Home Depot parking lot holding a sign that sez something like: "Unemployed U.S. worker. Will do almost anything legal for $10/hour." I bet a lot of HD customers, who who would otherwise hire foreign workers, would hire you on the spot. Or, also as the foreign workers do, got to each and every business and hand them a resume, door-to-door, one after the other.

The day jobs are out there, if you put the effort out to find them. I live in an agricultural area with a significant Latino population. In the last couple of years I've seen maybe two WASP-looking workers out canvasing for work.

Too much hassle? To much pride to canvas? Welcome to the U.S. work force.

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