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Comment by vec | Hacker News Reader

> Economically, sure, that's true. The immigrants take jobs from the labor supply.

That's not actually true, though. Every immigrant who comes here and becomes employed is, of course, filling a slot that is no longer available to a native-born citizen. However, he or she will also be one more person who needs to be fed, clothed, housed, entertained, protected, and supported. All of those create demand that adds up to substantially more than one job (about 1.2, to be exact [1]).

If there's one thing I'm taking away from this campaign and election, it's that people have big problems reasoning about systems where costs are acute and centralized and benefits are diffuse, even if on the whole they personally benefit substantially from those systems. This seems true for immigration, for climate change, for free trade, for healthcare reform.

[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w21123

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I'm sorry if this is a really stupid question but if each person, just by being alive and buying things, creates 1.2 jobs, then why do we still have unemployment?

Shouldn't everyone be able to have a job, even if it's not one they want to do? Is the problem just that they lack the qualifications for the jobs?

I don't know the answer to your question, but I don't think it's stupid. We should trust our sniff tests on these types of studies more often, especially when there is a potentially not-too-distant political, economic, or social consequence attached to the conclusion.

I personally think this is a common tactic by academics -- put out something that has a clearly false-as-phrased conclusion and then get lost in a maze of dense data and opaque language, come out disoriented, and make some conclusion like this that's pretty clearly invalid if you're willing to step away. The authors somehow convince themselves that the obvious conclusion is incorrect (often by redefining words) and then accuse anyone who dares to point out that the conclusion is a sham of being a luddite and anti-intellectual.

Are those 1.2 jobs all domestic? For each resident in the US, do we create 1.1 jobs in China and 0.1 jobs in the US? I honestly don't know this (and I don't want to look it up right now), so I'm not trying to make a counterargument. Just curious.

Well yes, people lose they jobs and have to seek new opportunities. And that's good in the larger scheme of thing.

Just let's not downplay the effect it can have to have to rethink the way you earn your livelihood, it's nothing short of a personal crisis. Some people have a really hard time adapting, others not so much. But that doesn't mean government should protect you from that.

> All of those create demand that adds up to substantially more than one job (about 1.2, to be exact [1]).

So, what would an opponent in good faith say against that? Is this a well known thing among Real Economists, which is just brushed under the rug when a politician wants to appeal to people with an anti-immigration policy? Or is there more to it?

It seems to be really low hanging fruit to explain that and have massive economic boons by increasing immigration, right? Or is that not the conclusion? Because what you said is really intuitive and some politician should be able to just easily use that. Why don't Clinton/Obama say that when explaining why they're letting illegal immigrants stay?

My guess (and this is only a guess) is that this is the power of anecdote. Within certain communities, everyone knows someone who lost their job or had their business close due to direct competition with someone being paid under the table illegally. Any politician who claimed that it was a good thing would read as so clearly out of touch with lived experience that it's not worth the trouble to look past the soundbite.

It's the same sort of difficult argument as globalization and free trade. It hits you somewhere very easy to notice, so you feel like you're worse off even while you're sitting on your brand new couch watching whatever you want on demand on your 60" TV and eating your steak dinner. Making the link that all those other good things are a result of the same policy requires a small but not automatic intellectual leap that a lot of people clearly aren't prepared to make if they feel like the initial assertion doesn't pass the smell test.

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