Sunday's Required Reading

The NY Times Sunday Magazine will have a fascinating piece by Roger Lowenstein on the economics behind the illegal immigration debate.  Its a Borjas v. Card smackdown!

Dead Tree readers are so far ahead of the curve here, the rest of you will never catch up.  But check here, and eventually the Times website will have it.  [Here we go.]

Comments

[Jake]

Should we assume that you contribute financially to a company that distributes classified national security information?

[ed]

Hmmmmm.

Shall I assume that the NYT didn't include *all* aspects of this issue and only included those portions that conforms to the NYT's official position on illegal aliens?

[Extraneus]

OT, and more power to anyone who reads the Times, but since it ain't Sunday yet, this might be of interest in the meantime.

[SteveMG]

might be of interest in the meantime

Thermidor, blog-style?

Not sure how that will look but it's going to be, er, interesting to watch.

SMG

[Mark H.]

I'm not willing to be as harsh as Jake is in regards to the choice others make in reading or not. And while it'd probably be better if they were ignored totally, I do understand the thinking that a few souls need to read them to keep their feet in the fire.

Personally though, I'll never click another link that leads to the NYTs, thus garnering them ad revenue, and I'll certainly never again plunk down cash for a hard copy at the newsstand.

[JJ]

Heh, well, someone needs to consider the many economic sides of immigration, if only simply for a change -- so it's nice to see a little spotlight there.

The Times is the great Left-Brained thinking pub. Can't see the forest, even when trying to.

[Tom Maguire]

Should we assume that you contribute financially to a company that distributes classified national security information?

I am a mole hoping to contribute to their dry-rot from within, starting by mixing their metaphors.

[Bob]

OT But speaking of ">http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20060709-122651-1637r.htm>"dry-rot" ( careful this may be hard to take so early in the morning )

I guess Hillary's brother is counting on his sister to hand out the next round of pardons!

[Jane]

That gave me that old "icky" feeling that I had in the olden days of Clinton's brand of justice.

[Jane]

That gave me that old "icky" feeling that I had in the olden days of Clinton's brand of justice.

[Jane]

Maybe not that icky. Sorry for the now triple post.

[retire05]

OK, so some of you think that linking to the article is somehow boosting the readership of the NYTs, I see no indication that the publication is going out of business anytime soon. But one can always hope.
What I do find is that the author takes in only one aspect of the economic affect that illegal immigration has on the nation; that of wages. What he touches on, ever so slightly, is the economic impact on the tax base.
Nowhere does he discuss the fact that the illegals (especially the unskilled from Mexico) if legalized will then become eligible (legally) for the social services available to all low wage earners such as public housing, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, utility bill subsidities. Nor does he discuss that the newly made legal immigrant will then be in line for a income redistribution practice called the Earned Income Tax credit that gives a low income family of four up to $4,000.00 back in an IRS tax return (over and above what they paid into the system) that has been taken from a higher income earning family in the form of income tax.
If one is to look at the effect that illegal immigration has on the economy, then one must look at ALL effects on that economy, not just the effect it has on wages. To do any less is dishonest. A clear example of the "true" cost of illegal immigration requires one to go no farther than my own state of Texas that spent $4.7 BILLION last year alone on illegals over and above the contributions they made to the state tax coffers.
And while the author mentions that Mississippi has had relatively little impact from illegals (being the poorest state in the nation) he is probably using numbers from 2004 or 2005 where the illegal population was roughly 8,000 in July of 2005. Since Katrina, that number has jumped to roughly 100,000 according to the newspaper in Jackson, MS.
While the author tries to give the impression of being fair and balanced (if that is possible for someone who writes for the NYTs) certain small digs such as those levied at the border watchers make it apparent, almost immediately, where this reporter stands.
The article was interesting but was still a puff piece that, in true NYTs fashion, gave just enough information to acheive what the author wanted, to let us know that illegal immigration is not all that bad and can be, in certain areas, considered to be a good thing.
Perhaps when he is replaced by an illegal who is equally as educated, equally as glib and can write an equally lengthy article but for a lot less money, he will then want to give, as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story.