Quote:
Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
But since the debate is about, in part, what immigration to make legal, you can't separate them either.
There are two aspects to the debate:
1) What immigration should be legal (i.e., whom do we let in, and in what circumstances/with what qualifications, etc.)
2) What we should do about illegal immigrants (i.e., how severe should the punishment be; what controls do we impose upon employers to help enforcement).
Krugman's point applies to question 1, as does RT's inquiry. We don't worry about intelligent, highly paid, white collar immigration despite the fact that it may displace some citizens from being employed. At the low end, blue-collar level, we do worry (apparently) about "taking american jobs". Why is that, and should we make that distinction?
And, once we've decided the first question, to what lengths do we want to go to enforce the rules?
Unfortunately, the debate on 2 seems heavily influenced by a disagreement on the resolution of question 1. So you can't really separate them either.
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I'm only separating them due to Ty's "culturual" comment. I think a large majority of Americans are comfortable with legal immigration, retardless of their home country. In other words, this is not a racism issue.
I think Krugman's point is that illegal immigration depresses low end wages, and that if we got rid of that as a labor source, wages in that bracket would have to rise, which could be good for low end workers (forget about any inflation arguments).
