Legal Immigration Growth: An Economic and Global Perspective

[Leftfield]

I found this link on "digg" and watched it, so watch it here!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=numbersusa&hl=en


The overall concept is: to regulate legal immigration growth.

Economically, I would say that there is some regulated "growth rate" of optimality (positive or negative) for the influx of legal immigrants with huge talent vs. bringing in as many as we can. This directly relates with economic growth, and over-growth may cause a lot of intermediate-term problems.

Keynesian economic theory suggests that we have the optimal labor market of: aggregate demand, efficent wages, unemployment, etc...

So my question is, if we increase the size of our country and growth much faster than we are/were used to, being as "first-world" developed as we are, what are the real/assumed effects of this?

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Historically, since 1965 it has been on the rise, so what are the pros and cons from history?

- Pollution? (obvious)

- Cultural issues? (too much P.C. tolerance?)

- Social issues? (Xenophobia? Liberal law changing?)

- Economic issues? (Can't handle such growth, at this point in time?)

- Language issues? (What did you say? I speak English and English only!)

- Geographic issues? (A more three-dimension Tokyo like city becoming the norm on the East Coast?)

- Infrastrcutre issues? (Roads will die way too often, public transit must be a viable option = some political interests/business interests are lost)

- Political & Business Issues (Anti-Conservative behavior... the list can go on here...)

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Wouldn't the new influx of tax money to the government offset all of this in the long-run?

- So what are all the real factors and effects on such growth issue?

- What about the guest worker program with Mexico?

- Illegal Immigration, is this issue politically involved with this separate issue, or should it just be a separate issue?

This is an open-forum in which I wanted to get the ball rolling and hear all of your opinions, I think it is a global topic that this forum would like.

I graduated with Finance and International Business and bring a fairly global perspective to this topic; but if I get the full breadth:

Jack of all tradesmen, social science, english, history, psychology, economics, other business, engineering majors and other interested parties take on this, I think that this topic would develop exponentially quicker!

[Lee]

I want open borders, for people to come and go as they please. I might perhaps concede to a limited degree of border control, just to make sure people register with the local law enforcement agencies on the way in, but that's all.

A world where crates of bananas are impeded from going to where there is demand, is a world where the allocation of scarce resources is corrupted and everyone poorer for it. The same applies to labour.

[FranG]

This is a hot topic. Let me tackle this form the standpoint of depressed wages. Obviously when we increase the supply of labor, the price for wages will fall. As a result, in general, all current Americans will see a reduction in their living standards as a result of excess unchecked immigration. But giving your background in Finance and International Business, I know you would probably agree with this assessment, but render the issue much more complicated than that. And I agree that it is more complicated.

In the long run, on the positive side, immigration can lead to technological advances which will serve to increase the quantity/quality of output. Or it could reduce the cost of inputs. Both results would yield more money for businesses, which would in-turn get passed down to employees (hopefully). Governments will get to tax this excess revenue and the country will expand and prosper.

The other side of this is that we can be inefficient with how we put our inputs (workers) to use and get little in return. The result would be a reduction in the standard of living for current Americans. Our GDP may grow some, but not fast enough to support all the new immigrants. Needless to say, this can lead to many social problems. Governments then lose money and the corporations take over, kinda like 2006 USA.

That's just my two cents. I know it goes way deeper than this though.