Hacker News Reader

Comment by adjwilli | Hacker News Reader

And it doesn't mention civil rights or feminism either. There may be various cultural phenomenons that play a part in increasing the labor supply, but enforcing barriers to entry disregards the dignity of people. The fact is, if you want to be materially successful in life you have to compete (at least in some way) with everyone you share the Earth with. You can't stop immigration any more than you can stop oppressed people from wanting to be free. The point of the article is though to remind us educated NYTimes readers that while we might be sitting pretty, there are certain classes of society who are getting left behind.

View on HN

Curiously the media typically are against immigration of the professional classes, think doctors, lawyers, journalists, accountants, etc. but typically are in favor of uneducated immigration -now industry wants both because it makes the labor supply cheaper, activists typically only look after the uneducated immigrant pool and hardly care about fighting for immigrant professionals.

As an aside, Japan but not Britain does a "good" job at limiting immigration despite the great need for it within their economy. Their bet is that the pain to their economy is worth the stability of their society. I suppose we shall see who has the better answer an open economy like the UK or a closed labor economy like Japan.

Also, this not a phenomenon unique to rich western countries, south Africa, Nigeria, Kenya are also very keen on protecting their own labor markets from immigrant classes. There is a protectionist aspect but its not racial in nature. Look at the Mexican motto "Mexico for Mexicans" and how other Hispanics are unfavored in their economy. Imagine a European country having a similar motto...

They may be opposed to immigrants from the professional classes but they'll use them for a political agenda.

Every time there's a conversation about "is undocumented immigration good?" the response from the press is "without immigrants we wouldn't have Google!!"

The UK has quite a bit of immigration from other European nations. It is certainly not good at limiting them. Japan is stagnant economically and has a shrinking population. Not to mention the highest debt to gdp ratio in the world, and certainly no culture of innovation like Silicon valley, which is home to diverse and skilled immigrants.

My point was to contrast the diverging approaches of two successful island nations. One chooses to allow immigration, the other severely limits it. Curious about long term outcome and viability if the resulting economies.

The fact that lowering barriers to entry (by people unfortunate enough to be born black, female or foreign) is a normative good does not mean that an article should ignore them - they are still possible positive causes of low income workers "getting hammered".

If they are a primary cause, then the correct response is just to accept that good things may have tradeoffs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com