Monday, October 17, 2011

Immigration: Reality Strikes Liberals Again

If you haven't seen it yet, my latest article is up at Big Hollywood (Click Me).

Sometimes it’s amazing how daft leftists can be. We spent more money than we could afford and now we’re broke? How did that happen?! We tax rich people and they send their money overseas. Nobody could have seen that coming!! We let criminals out of jail and somehow the crime rate soars?! How? Now liberals have discovered that massive immigration depresses wages. Ya think?

While Britain’s Labour Party was in power between 1997 and 2010, they threw open the immigration doors to let pretty much anyone who wanted into Britain into the country. Part of this had to do with new European Union rules which allowed free movement from Eastern Europe and part of it was leftist political correctness which sought to de-British Britain.

To give you a sense of how open the doors got, consider these figures:

● Between 1980-1991, the UK lost an average of 42,000 people each year.
● Between 1992-1995, the UK gained 9,200 immigrants per year.
● Between 1996 and 2010, under Labor, the UK gained 178,000 per year.
A couple weeks ago, a report was released, which had been commissioned by Labor when it was in power and then suppressed, because Labour didn’t like its conclusions. In fact, they ran around telling the public the exact opposite of what the report found. But now the truth has come out.

According to this report, this wave of immigrants flooding Britain depressed British wage and “undercut” British workers. You don’t say?! It was so bad in fact, the Labour Party has had to admit Labour “got it wrong” on immigration and concedes this “had a big effect on people in Britain.” Great. . . now explain why you kept lying about it?

But can they seriously claim they had no idea this would happen? Assume you make widgets and you need a new worker. In Room A, there are two potential employees. . . they look surly. In Room B, there are 500 potential employees. Do you think you will end up paying more if you hire from Room A or Room B? It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Yet, somehow it was never obvious to liberals that flooding Britain with workers, i.e. turning Britain’s labor market from Room A into Room B, would have a negative effect on the workers already in the country? How stupid do you need to be not to see that coming? Oh, that’s right, liberals don’t think about the future, they assume there are no unintended consequences.

Britain has shown that the consequence of importing a ton of labor are very clear. It will increase the competition for jobs, which will result in wages being depressed because there are more people bidding for the same number of jobs.

Now let's look at America. We are letting people in at three times the rate the British were when they “got it wrong”. . . we are letting enough people into this country every year to populate Denver, Colorado. That’s unsustainable.

The Democrats support this because they think these immigrants will vote Democrat, which will overcome the white flight their party has experienced. But what do they think the effect will be on the wages of blacks, Hispanics and uneducated whites.... the very groups the Democrats claim to want to help? The fools currently squatting outside Wall Street want this too (check out Bev’s article on their list of demands). Those idiots want both (1) a hike in wages and (2) open borders. But of course, those are contradictory demands because once you open the borders, wages will crash. Not surprisingly, Big Business wants this too because it keeps their costs down.

Talk about an unholy alliance!

I'm all for immigration, but there need to be limits. Clearly, three times the British level is too much.

27 comments:

Unknown said...

Andrew: Well done. We can learn a great deal from Britain's failed open borders policy (and at least they had the "citizens of the former empire" argument to support their foolishness and willful blindness).

I don't know if Congress and the idiot in the White House will take your position to heart, but tomorrow afternoon I'll talk about how the Golden State will do anything to avoid learning the lessons of history. I hope and pray that your viewpoint will prevail at the national level.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Sadly, I think you and I know the answer to those questions. Our "leaders" don't get it... don't want to get it. And California is run by the worst of the worst.

BUT, the public has definitely woken up to these issues and I wonder if change will be forced upon our "leaders" whether they want it or not?

T-Rav said...

It's amazing how liberals will believe anything to keep from accepting the truth. This weekend I was arguing with a liberal who claimed that TOTUS had managed to lower unemployment and create more full-time jobs with the stimulus, which is obviously a lie from beginning to end, but he and others cling to it like a drowning man to a life preserver. And, of course, very few are willing to admit that a total open-borders policy has negative consequences, or that having a large and growing Muslim underclass might not be a good thing. I think it's just easier for a lot of these people to hold on to their vision of what the world ought to be, rather than embrace reality.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, It's hard to say what drives their thinking.... actually, thinking is the wrong word. They are repeaters. They are told something by the authorities and they believe it. They never stop to ask if it's true or even if it is true. They also never stop to see the contradiction in what they are told, which is why they can believe things like "it is wrong to discriminate" at the same time they believe "we should discriminate to help that guy." They compartmentalize their beliefs.

Your friend was told the stimulus would create jobs. He was told this is a fact. He internalized that. Now, for him, it is a proven fact that the stimulus did create jobs because that's what the stimulus was supposed to do. the fact there's no evidence of more jobs is irrelevant to him because that's not part of the thought process which proved to him that the stimulus created jobs. In other words, in his mind, you're talking about something else.

I've seen this all before many times when arguing with liberals. They are idiots.

Unknown said...

Andrew: So right. And ignoring the unwashed masses of the Occupy movement and concentrating on the Tea Party, we know why our "leaders" hate the Tea Party so much. The grass roots, ordinary citizen-inspired Tea Party played the major role in waking other American citizens up, and that scares the political elite half to death.

rlaWTX said...

Similarly:
a cousin (who I keep on fb just to see what the lefties are "thinking") just posted a link to a petition for a "real economic stimulus and jobs plan" - just "forgive student loan debt".
My response: 'I am paying my own way through grad school - does that mean that I should just get a check? People make choices that have consequences.'

I am waiting for [1] her head to explode or [2] to be ignored entirely.

AndrewPrice said...

Lawhawk, Agreed. But as usual, they are pretending that they can't tell the difference. It's like bad theater or wrestling when the referee pretends he doesn't see or understand what is going on even though everyone in the audience knows he knows what's happening. That what it feels like listening to these supposedly smart people go on the Sunday talk shows and pretend they don't understand what the Tea Party people really want or that they can't tell the difference between the millions of Tea Party people and the handful of dirty rich kids sleeping in NYC right now.

AndrewPrice said...

rlaWTX, Odds are her head will explode and then she'll be outraged that anyone needs to pay for college at all. The idea that she has choices will probably never make it through her ultra-thick, reflective liberal cranium.... it's impervious to unfriendly ideas.

DUQ said...

We're letting people in at three time the rate Britain did when the British left admits they made a mistake and yet no one thinks this is a problem? Thanks for the article Andrew, I haven't heard about this anywhere.

Game Master Rob Adams said...

No no! I think we SHOULD follow Britain's policies. We SHOULD have an open door and we should put in a giant roundabout so that they come in and go right back to Mexico before they get to their destination. We could learn SO MUCH from the English!

AndrewPrice said...

You're welcome DUQ. It's an important issue. For one thing, it's really bad for a middle class that is getting squeezed. For another, it's bad for our country as a whole. And finally, it's something people like minorities should start to realize -- the democrats are not their friends!

AndrewPrice said...

ACG, Good idea! LOL! Maybe we could do the same thing for our politicians, put a giant roundabout at the gates to DC? :)

CrispyRice said...

Question - when you say we are letting in people at 3x the British rate -- is that the legal or illegal or a combined rate?

On a related note, I'm sick of hearing the "jobs American won't do" cr*p. Really? How do you know? "Well, people won't pay $4 for lettuce!" Really? Try us! You don't know that because it's never been tried. And if lettuce was so prohibitively expensive if we paid a "livable" wage to pick it, then maybe forcing us to pay it might inspire some inventor to find a better way to do it!!!!! ARGH!!!

The illegal immigration not only artificially drives down wages, but it stifle innovation.

AndrewPrice said...

Crispy, That is legal and illegal averaged over the past ten years. And by rate, I mean as a % of the population, not just three times the number of people Britain lets in. We're letting in close to 2 million a year.

I agree entirely on the "Americans won't do it" garbage. There is no reason to believe Americans won't do it. Moreover, they aren't just bringing people in for the unskilled manual labor jobs, they are hiring these people for the jobs that teens, minorities and unskilled whites have traditionally taken. And now they're branching out to skilled labor and even white collar. Welders, factory workers, etc. etc. Silicon valley has been pushing to bringing in programmers and engineers on the fake basis that they "can't find the people they need here." Wall Street got into the act in 2008.

AndrewPrice said...

P.S. Crispy, Here's an article I did on the abuse of the guest worker program. Wall Street had literally just laid off tens of thousands of people and simultaneously went to Washington to argue that they couldn't find anyone to hire in the US, so they wanted to bring in bankers from China and India. Unbelievable!

Here's the link: LINK

Ed said...

Excellent article Andrew. I like immigrants and I think America should welcome people, but the numbers they are letting in now are insane. We should close the door for a few years and let the people who are hear integrate.

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks Ed. I don't even think we need that, but we need to drastically cut back on the number of people we let in. How can we justify letting in a new Denver every year? Especially when the country had ZERO job growth between 2000-2010?

CrispyRice said...

Wow, Andrew, just wow. But of course, if they can pay other people less, why wouldn't they? That's simply good business... assuming you get the same quality workers in those fields.

Thanks on the clarification of your numbers. :) I don't know what the solution is. I don't want to stop immigration -- if people dream of a better life and want to come here and work and live under American ideals, then I say welcome! But at the same time, I had no idea the numbers were this big, either. Interesting.

AndrewPrice said...

Crispy, You're welcome. I think that's the big secret our government keeps. It publishes the number, but you never hear it reported. I think if people knew we were letting in more than 2 million people a year, they would freak out. This is another instance of our leaders simply lying to us and trying to hide the truth because it suits them and they don't care what the peons think.

In terms of what to do, I don't believing in stopping immigration either, but we need to cut it by at least half and give the people who are already here time to integrate. It doesn't help them either that so many new people are imported each year to take their jobs either.

In terms of the business plan, it is a solid business plan to keep costs down. But it's horrible for the country because of all the collateral damage -- social services costs, schools being flooded, wages depressed for everyone else.... just to help a handful of very rich businesses that just don't want to pay their workers what the market currently demands.

DUQ said...

Andrew, That was exactly my thought, that this would be bad mainly for the middle class because it would keep their wages down and unlike the poor, they can't rely on the safety net.

StanH said...

Legal immigration yes, illegal “NO!” Really that simple.

T-Rav said...

Andrew, he ain't my friend, but that's very accurate otherwise. I also think it's too hard for a lot of them to operate in a world without the certainty provided by liberalism and related beliefs. Which is just another way of saying that the Left is a collection of secular religions, and is no more "rationalist" than its caricature of conservatism.

AndrewPrice said...

DUQ, That's true. the middle class would be hurt the worst, though the odds of the working poor ever moving up go way down because the jobs they are likely qualified for will never see an increase in wages because of the constant influx of new workers.

AndrewPrice said...

Stan, I generally agree with that, except we are currently taking in too many legals as well. We need to reduce immigration over all for some period of time because it's just too many people and we need to let those who are hear work their way into society before we add another couple million each year behind them.

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, That's a good point. Liberalism is effectively an easy way to deal with the world. It makes everything simple, it doesn't require liberals to actually have a world view -- as compared to an issue by issue knee-jerk opinion. AND it's a great way to sooth the conscience because it's crawling with the belief that bad things happen to good people because bad people are out there causing them -- rather than having to accept the fact that life isn't always perfect or that we make our own problems.

Ed said...

The zero job growth just makes this even worse. How can you let anyone in to the country when there aren't even jobs for the people born here?

AndrewPrice said...

Ed, It makes the problem even worse.

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