Login
The California economy should serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation, showcasing the negative impact of illegal immigration combined with liberal social welfare programs that discourage citizens from working.
The ‘Californication’ of the United States would exacerbate illegal immigration, depress market-driven labor rates, expand welfare rolls, significantly raise taxes on those employed, and prompt the government to address the diminished standard of living by imposing an exorbitant minimum wage.
Increasing the labor pool through illegal immigration drives down wages. The most basic law of economics, supply and demand, states that when supply increases and demand remains the same, price goes down.
You need water to live, but water is cheap because there is a large supply. Gold and diamonds are less of a necessity for maintaining life, but they are expensive because there is a large demand and limited supply. If tomorrow a new goldmine was discovered which quadrupled the supply of gold, the price of gold would go down.
Illegal immigrants increase the supply of workers, which brings down the price of labor, i.e., the wage. And although it is true that illegal immigrants are concentrated in certain industries, the decline in wages affects all industries.
The industries with the highest percentage of illegal immigrants are construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and agricultural occupations. The Americans who were displaced from those industries went to work in other industries, increasing the quantity of labor and driving down wages.
Using California as an example of what some people want to do to the entire country: illegal immigrants comprise 9% of the population. The market wage for workers was low because of the large pool of immigrants.
The Democratic legislation addressed this issue by imposing a draconian minimum wage of $16 an hour for all workers and $20 for those working in fast food.
The state also has liberal unemployment and welfare rules. As market wages drop and unemployment or welfare benefits increase, people are disincentivized to continue working.
In many Democrat-led states, workers can earn more on benefits than they can working. And a minimum wage of $20 an hour will not fix this problem. Jobs like landscaping and construction used to pay more than $20 an hour.
And jobs in maintenance and janitorial services, while not the highest paid, used to have job security and benefits when they were done on the books, by legal workers.
The Americans who lost those career jobs to illegals cannot make up the lost income by flipping burgers. Removing the illegal immigrants from the labor force will cause the natural rate of wages in landscaping, construction, and maintenance to increase, motivating people to go back to work.
Not surprisingly, as a result of its socialist policies, California has the highest poverty rate in the country when the cost of living is considered (the supplemental poverty measure).
The high taxes, high minimum wage, and lack of law enforcement have caused a steady exodus of companies, resulting in rising unemployment. However, the minimum wage only applies to legal workers, not illegals, so many of the unemployed citizens were replaced by illegal immigrants.
And now, the taxpayers are paying for it in the form of unemployment or welfare benefits. However, the illegals do not pay taxes. So, the tax burden on each legal worker is increasing, which then disincentivizes people from working. And the circle goes on and on, spiraling steadily downward.
At the national level, Democrats in favor of illegal immigration claim that low unemployment rates in the US are proof that “we need illegal immigrants” to fill those jobs. However, this claim ignores the labor force participation rate, which took a nosedive in 2020 and has never returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The labor force participation rate refers to the percentage of the working-age population (usually defined as individuals aged 16 and older) who are either employed or actively seeking employment.
People who are on unemployment are still counted as being part of the labor force because they are allegedly looking for a job. Only those who give up or go on permanent welfare or benefits are no longer counted.
There are two important points here. By liberalizing unemployment benefits, increasing the amount and the duration of the payments, the Biden Administration gets to count these people as part of the labor force.
And yet, the labor force participation rate is declining. This brings us to the second point. The federal government spent $1.3 trillion on welfare programs in 2023. If social benefits were not plentiful, more people would remain in the workforce.
In California, the labor force participation rate has been trending steadily downward since 1989. Currently, only 62% of legal adults are part of California’s labor force. Meanwhile, California has one of the highest incidences of tax in the country.
It also has 28% of the total homeless population of the United States, with the number having increased by 40% over the past 5 years. In short, California is a mess of outcomes that could not happen in a free-market economy that enforced immigration laws and was tough on crime.
According to Pew Research, 87% of Democrat voters agree that illegal immigrants only do jobs Americans won’t do. This notion is completely false. The reality is, there is no job Americans won’t do if they are paid for it.
Removing the illegals and canceling the benefits programs will bring about an equilibrium between wages and labor force participation. Taxes could be cut, and the minimum wage for unskilled work could go back to a reasonable market rate.
People would be incentivized to work and to better themselves, while the burger-flipping jobs would revert to the high school and college students who previously held them.
The post Illegal Immigrants Do Jobs Americans Collecting Benefits Won’t Do appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
20180817-oc-pjk-1772_toned_42333313490
Corona Farmers Market in Queens, New York is one of the most dynamic and diverse farmers markets in the city and is steps off the subway and mass transit system for the city. USDA Photo by Preston Keres
Business-backed progressives are slamming Iowa's Republican politicians for passing a popular law that partly protects Americans from President Joe Biden's vast migration inflow.
The post Migration: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Protects Americans and Progressives Complain appeared first on Breitbart.
American Latino voters prefer former President Donald Trump's policies on migration over President Joe Biden's policies, according to an Ipsos poll released on April 9.
The post Poll: Trump Wins Latino Votes with Populist Pitch on Migration, Money, Crime appeared first on Breitbart.
Two of the biggest reasons the Democrats give as to why illegals are coming and why they should be granted asylum are climate change and “the chance at a better life“; essentially, because they want higher wages.
In the past, neither of those qualified you for asylum. You pretty much had to prove that you had been singled out for execution by a despotic government or had to be fleeing a real, verifiable crisis, not a made-up climate crisis.
If we allow everyone in who wants to earn more money, that would encompass most of the world’s population.
The US has the 8th highest GDP per capita in the world, behind some very small but rich countries: Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Norway, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Switzerland, which have a combined population of 37,600,000 people.
So basically, if wanting better economic opportunities was a legitimate reason to be granted asylum, all but 0.5% of the world’s population could claim that they would be richer living in the U.S. That means that over seven and a half billion people would qualify to come to the US if the criteria were that they could earn more money.
As for climate change, they are now using the term “climate migrants.” And to be fair, the climate probably is changing, but that doesn’t mean everyone should be applying for asylum. Ostensibly, the climate is changing everywhere, including the US, so coming to the U.S. wouldn’t help anyone escape climate change.
According to UN data, there has been a 1.8°C increase in temperature since 1951. Are people actually aware of such a small change? And why would it make them leave their home?
NASA data shows that sea level rises by 3.4 mm per year. To put that number in perspective, New York City streets are roughly 400 feet above sea level. At the current rate of sea-level rise, it will take 35,882.35 years for the sea to reach Broadway.
Of course, the climate crowd tells us that the rise is accelerating. It has doubled over the past thirty years. Assuming it doubles again over the next thirty, it will then be rising at a frightening rate of 6.8 mm per year. And it will reach Times Square in less than 17,941 years.
My goodness, won’t someone please think of the children’s great, great… 718 generations, great-grandchildren!
Illegal immigration has doubled over the past four years. Ostensibly, if climate change is the cause, then the effects must also have doubled or dramatically increased during that time.
One reason that is given is that Central America has been increasingly affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts, which have displaced populations and prompted migration to the United States.
Doing some digging, it turns out that there have always been hurricanes, floods, and droughts in Latin America. Hurricanes occur every year between June 1 through November 30.
In fact, in 1899, Hurricane San Ciriaco hit Puerto Rico, and it was the most destructive hurricane in the history of the Caribbean, with heavy rains lasting for 28 days. Of course, the title of the most destructive or strongest hurricane is debatable. Some experts say the Great Hurricane of 1780 was the most powerful.
And there are other hurricanes over the past two hundred years that qualify with the most rainfall, highest barometric pressure, most wind, most deaths, but the bottom line is, hurricanes have always happened. So, they cannot be the cause of illegal migration over the past four years.
Looking into drought, I found an article with scary pictures of dry, parched earth. And the text read, “Already this year, Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo reported their lowest levels of rainfall in 20 years during the November-to-March rainy season.”
This confirms that 21 years ago, there was a worse drought. Checking to see if it is actually raining less, I found this from the EPA: “Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.04 inches per decade.”
Therefore, we have established that there is more water and more heat. So, I wanted to check if there was also more food. And yes, crop yields across the globe, including in Latin America, have been trending steadily upward. So, claims that hunger caused by climate change drove illegal immigration over the past four years are illogical.
According to the UNHCR, “By 2050, climate change could force more than an estimated 216 million people to evacuate their homes, leaving their present lives and livelihoods behind, and move to safer areas.”
Here is the answer: People are fleeing their homes today, despite higher rainfall and increased agricultural yields, because they know that by 2050, every place on Earth that is not the United States will become uninhabitable.
There are two possible reasons why illegal immigration has doubled over the past four years. One possibility is that more people became aware of the fact that outside of the United States, the whole world will be uninhabitable.
The other possibility is that there are TikTok and other social media accounts telling people, “If you say climate change, they will let you in.”
The post Climate Change and Low Wages Not Grounds for Asylum appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
dsertification_des_terres
Racaille1950, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Vaunce News 