“But in any case, adding “and besides, they’re stealing our jobs” undercuts the whole pretense.
Furthermore, the claim was, as I said, junk economics. The idea that there are a fixed number of jobs, so that if a foreign-born worker takes a job he or she takes it away from a native-born worker, is completely at odds with everything we know about how the economy works. Hearing it from a conservative is especially surreal.
The truth is that letting the Dreamers work legally helps the U.S. economy; pushing them out or into the shadows is bad for everyone except racists.
To understand why, you need to realize that America, like other advanced economies, is facing a double-barreled demographic challenge thanks to declining fertility.
On one side, an aging population means fewer workers paying taxes to support Social Security and Medicare. Demography is the main reason long-run forecasts suggest problems for Social Security, and an important reason for concerns about Medicare. Driving out young workers who will pay into the system for many decades is a way to make these problems worse.
On the other side, declining growth in the working-age population reduces the returns to private investment, increasing the risk of prolonged slumps like the one that followed the 2008 financial crisis.
It’s not an accident that Japan, which has low fertility and is deeply hostile to immigration, began experiencing persistent deflation and stagnation a decade before the rest of the world. Destroying DACA makes America more like Japan. Why would we want to do that?”
I struggle with this issue, but I have enormous respect for Paul Krugman, and I can’t find fault with his arguments or facts. I would like more proof that these people are not taking jobs from Americans, but the prooofs are from macro economics, and not always, but mostsly. When some of us were laid off in the recession of 2008, it might have been because we were older. We were often replaced by younger workers. It is in the next 50 years that all of Kruman’s arguments make sense. In the next 30 years, we are in danger of copying the deadly deflation of Japan.
Here is a comment I endorse:
The historical record shows that Republican Presidents and Republican policies consistently have long-term deleterious economic effects: see Bush-Cheney’s 2001 – 2009 Reign of Error for a refresher course on Republican economic catastrophe.
A Moody’s Analytics analysis of Trump’s proposed economic policies last year showed that removing all undocumented immigrants from the labor force would trigger an economic recession within one year.
University of California – Davis economist Giovanni Peri says ending DACA would bring a net loss in productivity, given that the U.S. economy is close to full employment.
The CATO Institute estimated that ending DACA would reduce tax revenue by nearly $280 billion over a decade.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center estimated that deporting DACA-eligible individuals would reduce Social Security and Medicare tax revenue by $24.6 billion over a decade.
The Center for American Progress estimated that that the loss of all DACA-eligible workers would reduce US GDP by $433 billion over the next 10 years.
The proposed elimination of DACA is great for Making America Hate Again…and horrible for Making America Great Again.
But Greed Over People demands mindless White Spite to drive it over yet another Republican cliff.
