There are a dozen folks from Ecuador and Guatemala picking the bushes clean. I talked to them.
-“So are you folks going to eat all those berries?”
-“No. We sell at farmers market.”
-“Where were you last year?”
-“Working”.
-“You have no work?”
-“I have no work for 6 weeks. We sell fruit for money to live”
How big a brown shoot is this? There is a social side that is impossible to quantify. A shot at the economics:
The press uses a number of 12mm illegals as of 2007. At that time the unemployment rate for these workers was near zero. (That fact is what kept them coming) Today that number around NYC is at least 50%. Around here the day rate was $100. Assume an average of $75 and a four-day workweek. These are conservative assumptions.
Well that number comes to $100 billion of lost wages. It also means that there are another 6mm workers who are unemployed versus two years ago. They are not in the headline numbers. If they were, the unemployment rate would be nearing 20%.
Where might this $100 bil. have gone?
These are small numbers in our big economy. However, this hidden drop in income is equivalent to nearly 1% of GDP. That extra 1% would come in handy. It is not going to happen.
Maynard Keynes would say that a drop in private consumption must be offset by an increase in public sector demand in order to re-establish economic expansion. Following that logic one could conclude that about a quarter of the existing stimulus plan is offset by the drag from unemployed illegal workers.
From that perspective it is a big deal, and I have no berries.
on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 20:36
#13571
Oh now you come to this? I have been beating this drum for two years. I don't live in bucolic upstate, and I pick the berries just outside of my beatdown Northeast former thriving little city. The only reason that we fixed up the five thousand boarded up units and opened up three hundred shuttered storefronts - ok you guessed it, Mr. Economics Man - the illegal aliens. I would love to live in an Ivory Tower and go on tv to talk about green shoots. Too bad that most of the shoots I saw around here were silver colored and leaden. It's amazing to me how long it takes for you smart folks to catch on. But I made my money, what little I have of it, fixing up the boarded up wrecks here. And it seems that I am just as smart as all of you genius economists. These 'illegal aliens' have kept us going the last ten years. Now what??
on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 00:11
#13723
Personally I'm a fan of immigrants. Bring them in, sign them up for taxes, and rock and roll. Where's the problem?
on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 05:46
#13821
I am a fan too. In the last 20 years I helped 6 of them become legal. I have no problem. They do though. More casualties.
on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 03:14
#13808
Immegrants are always usefull for a economy. They cost less, and thanks to that, we are able to do things that would otherwise cost to much. Beside that, they are also doing work I would never do, and neither does anybody who is born here. But mostly, they are employed in our luxery and as it seems we are in a crisis, we cut back on our luxery.
on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 22:13
#14838
It seems more than a little presumptive to derive 50% unemployment among immigrant labor from talking to the guys ripping off your berry patch... but the article is well written and the underlying point shines through.
on Sat, 07/25/2009 - 11:20
#15075
Importing poverty is one of the reason California is bankrupt. Illegal immigrants cost more than give to a state:
The High Cost of Cheap Labor
Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget
Executive Summary
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
on Sat, 07/25/2009 - 11:54
#15081
Also, I'll take issue to the 5 billion you stated they pay in taxes, perhaps 80% work on a cash basis as day labor, the ones who pay taxes working for corporations receive it all back with earned income tax credits. It has been calculated that Mexico receives between 25 and 45 billion annually in remittances, that is second to the oil revenues, and those monies leave the US economy.
And that is just the tip of the iecberg.