Aliens & Laws

Jumping Fish
Jumping Ship

The Lexington of the latest The Economist made an important point about the indirect impact of terrorism on America. Migration of brains into America has slowed, tourist has become rather fed-up with security checks that comes with a vacation in America and even conferences have moved away from there as a result of the hassle brought about by security restrictions. Perhaps improving the ‘service quality’ of border customs would improve the situation.

The interesting phenomena raised in the article is that giving illegal workers legal status will help reduce their competition with the American workers.

American blue-collar workers fear that Mexican immigrants will undercut their wages. Mr Hinojosa-Ojeda says they won’t if they are legal. The fear of deportation makes illegal workers accept worse conditions, he finds. Once legal, they demand higher wages, and no longer drag down those of the native-born.

The report on the economic benefits of immigration reform is available from Center for American Progress. The idea fits into conventional wisdom about making choices between alternatives. Removing the option of getting deported would naturally help raise the expectations of the foreign workers and make it harder for them to compete with those native-born.

2 Comments

  1. I wanted to review this article but looks like you got to it first :/

    But really, going slightly off-tangent, it makes me wonder how border officials can treat people so nastily and get away with it, I suspect it is an attempt to intimidate would-be criminals? Though they will probably need to post these officials at the origin airports for any intimidation to be of any use.

  2. Haha, too bad. Anyways, you can still write one if your ideas don’t overlap with mine. I seriously doubt hardcore criminals would be intimidated by nasty border officials. Haha…

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