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Originally Posted by Tiny
If a Trump Administration were actually able to deport 11 million illegal immigrants overnight, yes it would have a negative effect on inflation. I don't think they'd actually be able to do that though. His proposed tariffs would be a bigger inflation risk.
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I agree that the chances that they will deport that many people in the first year is unlikely. However I do think that the chilling effect on employment will be greater than most people realize. Just the fact that the government will be raiding businesses and the police will be actively looking for illegal immigrants will keep people from working, going to school, paying taxes and other actions that legally protected people take for granted.
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Originally Posted by Tiny
The solutions IMHO are enforcing the immigration laws, not letting cases drag on for years, and issuing a lot more temporary visas for foreign workers. I'd much prefer enforcing the law and temporary visas instead of what I think is your preferred solution, a series of amnesties now and in the future.
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I also agree. I’m not looking to start a new amnesty program in perpetuity. But the number of immigrants that have been working and living in the U.S. for more than a decade now should be granted the ability to gain citizenship if they can meet a minimum standard. However the number of eligible people who are allowed visas should both increase as well as be more equitably assigned.
Currently, no group of permanent immigrants (family-based and employment-based combined) from a single country can exceed seven percent of the total number of people immigrating to the United States in a single fiscal year.
https://www.americanimmigrationcounc...n-system-works
This artificial limit keeps immigrants who qualify for a visa in the queue for years waiting in their home countries until their place in line comes up. This means that if you wanted to immigrate from Mexico you would likely wait much longer than if you wanted to immigrate from Tuvalu.
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Originally Posted by Tiny
There's a lot of work that Americans don't want to do. There's a podcast on the Economist this week with an economist at George Mason University that highlights that. He points out that American kids are encouraged to go to college, not take jobs in construction. And as a result there's a shortage of construction workers. He says the majority of us benefit from the foreigners who work here, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Meatpacking jobs from your first link are another good illustration. The foreigners certainly benefit. They're making maybe 5X what they'd make in their home countries.
Especially when the unemployment rate is hovering around 4%, foreign workers make sense.
P.S. I just boosted two of your threads to three stars. Agree or disagree, they're good topics.
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By the way, tariffs are equivalent to sales taxes. A more regressive tax would be harder to find.
https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/glo...pital%20income.
The distributional effects of a tariff (the economic burden it places on households across income levels) tend to be regressive, burdening lower-income households more than higher-income households. Tariffs ultimately fall on the factors of production and reduce taxpayer labor and capital income. This occurs either by raising prices or reducing wage and capital income.
