Yesterday I posted a chart comparing illegal immigration to the number of job openings in the US. It was only for the past few years, and I thought you might be interested in a longer term look. Here it is:
Illegal immigration has roughly followed job prospects for the past two decades. The number of migrants went up during the expansion of the aughts; dropped along with the Great Recession; rose late in the subsequent expansion; and then skyrocketed following the pandemic when job openings also skyrocketed.
The period from 2011-18 is a modest anomaly: illegal immigration stayed flat while job openings were steadily increasing. But that pressure couldn't be contained forever. Starting around 2018—aside from a brief drop during the pandemic—illegal immigration punched through and rose like a rocket until it finally caught up with job demands.
None of this means that border policies literally have no effect. George Bush and Barack Obama emphasized tough border policies that pushed against the tailwinds of job growth. Donald Trump and Joe Biden mostly did the opposite. But push is all you can do. The pressure from American companies to hire cheap labor when the economy is good is always going to win eventually.
Therefore, the mass immigration is really just the catch-up supply meeting restored demand -- a direct result of Trump restricting immigration.
I had never seen this chart before. It is certainly a reasonable way of looking at one of the causes of immigration, and one that isn't presented explicitly in the news that I read.
I obviously need better news sources.
Thanks for expanding my knowledge.
"...The pressure from American companies to hire cheap labor when the economy is good is always going to win eventually."
I doubt you apply this logic to child labor laws. In fact American companies could easily be mostly prevented from hiring cheap illegal workers if there was a political consensus to do so.
And WHO exactly is withholding "consensus" on improvements to prevention? Why the FOTGOP of course: the "Funders Of The Grand Old Party". The FOTGOP -- which includes in particular agricultural interests who are home to the worst of the howling racists -- inSISTS that Republicans block any rationalization of the immigration system, because it would raise their costs and cut their profits.
So, R members of the Louse of Representatives prance around like Lippizaner Stallions claiming that a Wave of Blood Pollution is pouring over our borders, while what's happening is that cheap chicken choppers are being fed to Tyson Farms.
The biggest employers of undocumented labor aren't huge multinational corporations, but small businesses, often owned by other immigrants, like restaurants, nail salons, nurseries, nursing homes, farms, etc. These are the places where migrants know they can get jobs easily.
Of course what the Titans of Wall Street *do* like is that a large number of people willing to work for minimum wage, or less under the table, keeps wages down for all unskilled workers in the economy, which rebounds to the advantage of companies like McDonalds or Tyson.
Yes. And individuals hiring someone to do a job from mowing the lawn to remodeling the kitchen. The US could cut down on all this a lot, but it would take a level of regulation and enforcement Democrats and Republicans would both reject, if for completely different reasons.
The biggest illegal employers are Republicans: farmers, construction contractors, meatpackers, and golf course owners.
Yeah, child labor is still a thing and Kevin's point most certainly applies. And it's a thing because when the kids are undocumented and can't complain.
NPR: Amid a child labor crisis, U.S. state governments are loosening regulations
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis
LA Times: Opinion: Our failed immigration policy is causing a child labor epidemic in the U.S. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-26/immigration-policy-child-migrants-labor
Reuters: Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
I would have expected this with Mexican immigration but I am surprised that it remains the same with immigrants making the dangerous trek from Central and South America.
Yes, it is easy for northern Mexicans to go back and forth to work in the US when jobs are available. This is also seasonal. They may have information on specific jobs. But those who uproot from Venezuela, say, have different motivation - they are changing their whole lives.
The fact that US business hires illegal immigrants is obviously critical and potential immigrants must know that in a general way. But Kevin has not really proven anything with his partial correlation. As usual he covers only a limited time in the near past. How has this correlation looked since the start of major immigration around 1970?
And, more importantly, how did "this correlation" look when YOUR ancestors came from The Old Country? My guess is that they, like all of mine, came when there were no limits of any kind -- except scraping together the cost of steerage -- to immigration here.
One of mine was at Jamestown before 1618, beating even the earliest African Americans. He probably bid on a couple of them, though I don't know that to be true.
My latest line came in the 1840's from Ireland, so I'm 100% descended from folks who sashayed in without a care for the Migras. IOW, I have no standing to bitch about people wanting to come here regardless of "da roils". You probably don't either.
Yeah, it's pretty rich watching people whose ancestors came here to escape famine in Ireland or grinding poverty in southern Italy smearing their modern-day counterparts for doing the exact same thing. Not only that, the Irish and Italians were *not* considered "white", as in WASP, when they first arrived here -- they were filthy papist agitators and swarthy garlic-eaters who threatened the pure flower of Albion planted on these shores in previous centuries. In fact, it wasn't uncommon to call Italians the n-word in the 19th century.
Of course I think teaching the history of immigration to America is illegal in a lot of red states now, so no wonder people are so unself-aware about this stuff.
The aristocrats who led the Confederate armies completely dismissed their counterparts in the Union Army who came from Germany, Poland and especially Ireland as incompetent and unworthy.
The Union Army officers and troops knew this and took great pleasure in kicking the asses of the descendants of the Cavaliers.
"The pressure from American companies to hire cheap labor when the economy is good is always going to win eventually." Agreed, under the current US system the aforementioned is likely true.
Now in contrast, several western European countries, have biometric IDs, an accurate national ID database, and enforce fines (and potentially jail time for extreme cases) on employers who hire unauthorized labor.
Further, the biometric ID is needed to rent an apartment, open a bank account, access healthcare etc. Life without authorization is much more difficult in several European countries, especially when compared to a US sanctuary city such as NYC or Los Angeles.
Thus, for example Denmark, a rise in demand for labor does not result in a large increase in authorized workers.
Crossing the Mediterranean or Aegean is slightly more complicated than crossing the Rio Grande, but you make an important point. E-verify is easy to game without also requiring a biometric ID. All you need to do is steal/buy the SSN of someone authorized to work, hopefully who has the same or similar name as you, and submit that to E-verify and it clears you.
jte21 - while I agree with your comment on geography, let me raise two points
1. The trip from Venezuela etc is still not easy
2. The US could, following a European model, make it a material challenge for undocumented folks to work, and live, in the US. We select to not implement the necessary rules: the challenge is a policy choice versus a lack of knowledge on how to solve the problem.
3. The US sends fixed messages to the undocumented. There is nothing similar to a sanctuary city, or country, in Europe.
To call a seven year stretch which is not quite a third of the timeframe, and which runs contrary to the assertion, a “modest anomaly” is positively dizzying.
Interesting. This is clearly one factor. I suspect there are other threads that we in the US don't hear about related to bad conditions in Central America and South America and the Caribbean. No reason to leave paradise to come to the US regardless of the jobs.
In San Francisco there is a microscopic story of people coming from Honduras to deal drugs. It is a complicated story of poverty and gangs and extortion. If Honduras were cleaned up there would be no reason to leave.
Maybe because it's Washington, DC but the local media has gone into detail about the heartbreaking stories told by folks fleeing god awful situations in Central America. Mostly in this area we hear about immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. We need a "Marshall Plan" to clean up central America, we broke those countries in the last 250 years or so by meddling in their affairs time and time again. UGH.
They were inherently broken already by the Spanish conquest and rule. A modern economy can't work in a system of disorganization and corruption.
I've always said the answer to stopping illegal immigration is to 1) expand legal immigration; and 2) have meaningful (fines, loss of corporate protections, jail) for those who hire undocumented workers; and 3) actually enforce #2.
Migrants come here to work. Create legal work options for immigrants where the economy needs them, and eliminate jobs that are not approved and illegal immigration will collapse.
"...have meaningful (fines, loss of corporate protections, jail) for those who hire undocumented workers; ..."
The workers aren't undocumented for the most part but the documents they have are fake.
Real ID can fix that.
Because it worked with illegal drugs, right? Once we started enforcing the laws against illegal drug importation the market collapsed.
These are mostly economic migrants ineligible for asylum. Send them back or give them work visas.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Doesn't Texas claim to have at least 5 million jobs waiting for someone to fill? Yet they keep shipping people out of state.
Is there a problem with their logic here?
Probably not unrelated: in the last 5 years, wage gains at the lower end of the income scale were substantial relative to those at the higher levels. If immigration totals remain at 2020-2021 levels for a decade or two, I would expect that trend to continue.
This is not the first time Kevin has drawn a chart containing two lines, and then concluded there is a relationship between them. However, it isn't the most informative way to present the data. The best way would be to plot job openings on the x-axis, and border crossings on the Y-axis. This way, we could directly see the relationship. The current plot leaves too much room for subjective interpretation. There is a real risk that our perception of the relationship in the current plot is driven by the points on the chart's right, and they could very well be outliers. Hence, it is possible that the correct interpretation is that there is a relationship only when there are a lot of job openings.
The availability of jobs definitely is why migration from the south takes place. Texas and Florida bus migrants to the locations where employers need them. The voters who support this subsidized transportation think they own the libs but it is their taxes that pay for the transportation of this work force. The migration issue offers an opportunity for politicians to use border security as a policy to excite voters but they never use the issue to crack down on employers, which does not appeal to voters or campaign donors.
I think you are maybe overlooking the amount of advertising Trump did to encourage immigration. Constantly talking about how many people have crossed the border and gotten jobs is going to encourage people to make sure they aren't missing out.
Based on this, any immigration bill that does not have E-verify is a fraud.
I rarely disagree with Kevin but I think he needs to reconsider this one. rick_jones notes that the 2011-2018 anomaly comprises about 1/3 of the data. In 2006-2008 border encounters dropped even though job openings continued to rise. I could understand immigrants continuing to arrive based on the false impression that jobs were still available but find it hard to swallow that there was a collective prescience that openings were going to decline.
That jobs are a (or the) key factor does seem logical. If jobs are important, the availability of US jobs is only half of the equation.....you have to also consider job availability in their home country.
The voters who support this subsidized transportation think they own the libs but it is their taxes that pay for the transportation of this work force.
Yes let's "own the libs" by increasing the amount of immigrants spread out all over country. That'll show em!
I thought the wall was supposed to keep people out? Notice those "sanctuary cities" aren't sending people back.
To your point, the ebbs and flows may well depend on job openings but the bottom line is so long as the U.S rich in comparison to its immediate southern neighbors and contains such things as indoor plumbing, cops you don't need to grease constantly or be shot going to a labor meeting or just have the opportunity to run your own business and make some money (not guaranteed but certainly more so than back home), it's always attract immigrants from all over the world. Money, freedom and rule of law, that's a hell of a magnet for many people. They can't resist.
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