Byron York’s anti-immigration reform piece relies on at least three weak intellectual crutches:
- York assumes that immigration reform will import millions of immigrant workers for jobs that do not exist. In reality, immigration reform would allow more immigrant workers to come in response to job opportunities. Throughout American history, immigrants come when there are jobs for them and stop coming when there aren’t. Unemployment rates, economic growth rates, and employment growth in industries where immigrants tend to work are great predictors of immigrant flow. In the aftermath of the housing construction collapse and Great Recession, the number of unauthorized immigrants dropped, and the cross-border flow shrank to a level not seen in 40 years. Unauthorized immigrants don’t come when there aren’t jobs they can fill, and neither do legal workers. York doesn’t explain why that relationship would suddenly change.
- York ignores demand – the other half of the supply and demand model. Assuming that immigrants are just workers ignores their impacts on the demand side. When immigrants buy goods, services, rent or buy property, or start firms here, demand is stimulated. Immigrants, like the rest of us, are more than just workers in a labor market. We also consume what is produced by that market. Excluding the worker from the U.S. through immigration restrictions would also exclude the consumer. According to a University of Georgia study, Hispanic and Asian Americans have $1.9 trillion in annual purchasing power. Those groups of new Americans, mostly added in recent decades due to increases in immigrant and subsequent births, are more than just workers. Future immigrants will be more than just workers too.
- York relies on the lump of labor fallacy, implying that more immigrant workers somehow decrease the quantity of jobs available to American workers. Besides immigrants mainly coming when employment is available, stimulating employment creation once here, and creating firms– there are not a fixed number of jobs in the American economy. If there were a fixed number of jobs, then the large scale movement of women into the post-World War II labor force would have resulted in mass male unemployment. The opposite occurred.
The rest of Mr. York’s piece relies on anecdotes from a biased sample that refuses to deal with the arguments and evidence that support immigration reform.
