ABC Baits and Switches

More Misinformation from the Media:

While the economic impact of today’s actions remains unclear, several economic experts told ABC News that the U.S. economy and workforce would be a “disaster” without immigrants. If all immigrants were just to disappear from the U.S. workforce tomorrow, that would have a tremendous impact on the economy,” said Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, an economic research tank based in Washington, D.C.

David Kallick, the director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute, said Americans should not be fearful that immigration is stealing jobs from them. “It may seem surprising, but study after study has shown that immigration actually improves wages for U.S. workers. . . . Kallick added that studies he has done found that where there is economic growth, there’s immigration, and where there’s not much economic growth, there’s not much immigration. – Without Immigration, the U.S. Economy Would Be a Disaster, Experts Say, Avianne Tan, ABC News, 2/16/17.

Fact Check: This article employs the deceptive tactic of bait and switch. It “baits” with an accurate statement, and then “switches” by substituting an inaccurate statement—while suggesting that both are equally valid.

The first statement is true. If all immigrants, who are now about 14 percent of our population, vanished tomorrow, the shock of their absence would dislocate the economy—at least for a time. But what exactly is the point of this observation? No one even remotely suggests that legal immigrants—three quarters of all immigrants—should leave. Many in fact are American citizens. Nor does anyone seriously suggest that we round up all illegal aliens and ship them all back at once. The appropriate policy is to tighten enforcement so that most will return home on their own—a gradual process which will avoid economic dislocation.

But to say that we would not want immigrants living here to “disappear” in no way implies that we should continue admitting immigrants at the record-breaking that we are now—which is the inaccurate part of this bait and switch. The article goes on to cite a supposed “expert” who claims that “study after study” proves that unending mass immigration benefits American workers by raising wages.

With respect to these studies, an article in The Atlantic pointed out that they are no better than the assumptions they rest on—and those assumptions don’t necessarily coincide with reality. If immigration does indeed raise wages—an idea certainly at odds with the economic law of supply and demand—then how does one explain that American wages in constant dollars have stagnated since 1970 when the current wave of mass immigration began to surge?

Also, if mass immigration is so wonderfully enriching, as it proponents claim, then why has the number of middle class Americans so significantly shrunk since 1970? Another measure to consider is the state of California which has by numbers and percentage more immigrants than any other state in the union. Surely then it would illustrate the enriching powers of immigration during the past five decades. But no, to the contrary, it has shifted from a prosperous middle-class state to one increasing shifting to a Third World economic paradigm: A small number of well-to-do people at the top and lots of not so well-to-dos at the bottom.

Today we have to deal with the consequences of past immigration, but we should learn from those consequences with respect to our future immigration policy.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here