Solid article on immigration and wages in the US (it hurts american workers):

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216

There are two enormous issues I take with that article's reasoning, Kel.

Firstly, I despise its blinkered national perspective. According to a global perspective, and using the same arguments Borjas makes regarding the supply of labour, the exit of low-skilled workers from origin countries should improve the wages and conditions of workers in those countries.

Even if wages are subject to downward pressure from an increasing supply of low-skilled labour in the destination country, the newly arrived workers themselves are generally better off economically and often also in terms of safety and freedom than they were in their countries of origin.

Therefore the author's principal argument only makes any sense when considered solely within the borders of one country. But why would one look for an optimally just policy solution to what is, by definition, a transnational problem within such a frame? The answer is that you wouldn't, unless you were ideologically welded to the resulting unjust conclusions.

As a side note, it should be remembered that being low-skilled is not a human essence, it's a plastic quality. Every worker's skill base is constantly being altered by experience, on the job training and formal education. This article therefore deals less with the question of the qualities of workers, and more with the kinds of jobs that are available. As it is widely predicted that automation will drastically change the character of work in the next few decades with or without nett migration, and workplaces are already changing faster than ever before, the legitimacy of any argument concerning skills falls categorically into question.  

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Secondly, Borjas freely admits that his own data and analysis show that low-skilled immigration is a nett economic benefit to the destination country in the case of the US. File that away; immigration is a nett economic benefit, according to one of its opponents. 

However, Borjas cites immigration as a cause of increasing inequality because he finds that the greater profits secured from downward wage pressure in low-skilled sectors is unfairly distributed in the subsequent "carve up", enriching the American capitalist class and their elite professional workers.

He describes this as proving that immigration is "just another income redistribution program". But his argument describes a classic problem of political economy where two processes are in dialogue—the allocation of the costs of labour, and the allocation of the profits of production. His rhetoric only attacks the first of these processes, while assuming the second is fixed.

It is quite clear from Borjas's own premises that by a political address to the problem of the allocation of the profits of production, every American worker could secure economic benefit from migration. 

So one may assume that the optimal solution to the problem (as should be quite intuitive, given that the US has some of the poorest and least efficient public services, and the lowest overall rate of taxation with relation to GDP in the OECD) is probably to … use politics to redistribute wealth away from wealthy Americans, and to so-called "low-skilled" workers.

I should add that I don't even accept economistic arguments against freedom of human movement; but it does no harm when they're irreparably wrong and stupid.

If Borjas really has spent thirty years studying migration and this is the best writing he can come up with during a Presidential campaign, he should offer his job to a low-skilled migrant, who within a couple of years will certainly have mastered all his functions to a higher level than he has managed.

Changing the US visa system in a just way would mean looking at all sorts of things, including the country by country protocols which impose severe restrictions on many of the conflict zones created by US imperialism.

Ultimately we're talking about a global problem of a character similar to climate change and inextricably linked to economic justice under (uneven) globalisation—similar in the sense that it will requires an internationalist (or post-nationalist) politics to solve.

Having had these arguments many times over the past few years, I am heartily sick of hearing nationalists (many of whom, though not all, have a sideline in extremely odious racism) talk about immigration. They're much the same as the people who think if the smoke is blowing in the other direction the atmosphere will be fine. They are idiots.

Indeed. The difficulty is, however, that in our current system, land-rights are necessary, and to lose them is to become refugee, which is to become essentially ruined. Post-nationalist politics can only really work when those rights are explicitly not protected in the same manner (i.e. borders), which could lead to atrocity. Internationalism maintains the security of those rights, but moves slower and is determined by vastly unequal powers.

It's very hard to see the way forward without catastrophic loss.

Burnwinter wrote:

Secondly, Borjas freely admits that his own data and analysis show that low-skilled immigration is a nett economic benefit to the destination country in the case of the US. File that away; immigration is a nett economic benefit, according to one of its opponents. 

The cost or benefit of immigration is actually very simple. It depends on the immigrants' "social capital" and the welfare system of the receiving country. Lower skill immigration and extensive welfare systems increase costs, which is why immigration to the Nordic countries is a massive economic net cost, while it is a slight benefit to the US and UK. 

Colin Powell leaked email that many of you have probably seen by now put too good not to post. Things are heating up

Kel Varnsen wrote:

Burnwinter wrote:

Secondly, Borjas freely admits that his own data and analysis show that low-skilled immigration is a nett economic benefit to the destination country in the case of the US. File that away; immigration is a nett economic benefit, according to one of its opponents. 

The cost or benefit of immigration is actually very simple. It depends on the immigrants' "social capital" and the welfare system of the receiving country. Lower skill immigration and extensive welfare systems increase costs, which is why immigration to the Nordic countries is a massive economic net cost, while it is a slight benefit to the US and UK. 

"Massive"—we've been over the actual figures for Sweden before, and that's false. For instance even the most extreme alleged negative impacts to GDP were in no way comparable to the movements induced by global financial crisis. In any case you've completely ignored my first point. You and I, and all of us, are embedded in a transnational economic system within which you want to partition labour yet have commodities move freely. You can see the illogical struggle this presents in the negotiations regarding Brexit of the United Kingdom with the EU; that illogic is sustained entire at the European border. In the end, you're arguing on behalf of a grotesque instrument of injustice that will be regarded in the same light as historical slavery in time to come. 

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-18/turnbull-arrives-in-ny-to-speak-about-immigrations-at-un/7855728

Very true Burnsy. A contradiction illustrated quite well in this news article

With the recent polls for the first time there seems to me to be a reasonable path to a Trump victory without having to jump through too many hoops. If he can hold on to the states Romney pulled in 2012, which seems reasonable, North Carolina and Arizona being the closest calls, plus Iowa, Ohio, Nevada and Florida he'll be at 265. Then all he needs is a cheeky Colorado and he's in. The bookies are even offering 6/4 lines all over the place which seems like going overboard to me. But Trump seems to have a fair shot at it now.

I will not be able to take America seriously as a country if the people elect Trump.

They did elect Reagan in the past

we're not electing trump, but didn't you guys have Tony Abbott as prime minister?

jones wrote:

They did elect Reagan in the past

and he was no worse than any other conservative elected by western democracies (your maggie thatcher's etc and the host of them that australia has had in the past).

Yeah. Thatcher was a cunt but Reagan caused more damage domestically (because the US have like 6x the population) and in foreign affairs (economic and military) because of the US' and UK's respective standing in world politics. Also Reaganomics were more extreme than Thatcher's economic "reforms", even though the latter were highly ideological and counterproductive themselves

Depends if you're looking at the US resp. UK under their aegides or just themselves - I think Reagan wasn't as much hands-on as Thatcher but he wasn't the dumb cowboy type that he was painted as afterwards, even by his opponents. There are many leaked documents which showed that he was very much involved in the planning of US' covert OPs like Ethiopia Nicaragua the Taliban etc

I think Thatcher is regarded as more evil because she opted to destroy Socialism in her own country rather than abroad and didn't mind wilfully hurting the populace in the process. The biggest influx of cocaine and heroine to the US was under Reagan's eyes however, his deeds are simply not as much in the open as hers imo