Summary: Trump serves a common and vital role in US politics, introducing popular issues that the elites of both parties suppress. Such as immigration. Here are some of the numbers that show why many Americans worry about the high rate of immigration (but not our elites, who love the cheap workers and politically passive voters). {1st of 2 posts today.}
Cui bono from the recovery?
This graph and the accompanying analysis from the ECRI shows that the employment to population ratio (E/P) for those with less than a high school diploma (orange line) hit bottom in 2011. Since then it has regained almost two-thirds of the losses in the great recession. But the E/P ratio for high school and college graduates (90% of adults; purple line) has not recovered since the recessionary losses. The new jobs have gone to the least educated — and so the lowest-paid — workers.
Who are those low education workers that are getting jobs?
- 12,419,000 jobs created.
- 3,824,000 of those went to foreign-born (31% of total).
- 8,595,000 went to native-born (69% of total).
- Result: foreign born workers (15% of all workers) got 31% of the new jobs.
Foreign born workers are a diverse lot. Some have lived in the US 60 years; some just arrived. Some have PhD’s; some lack high school degrees. The median weekly earnings for full-time foreign-born workers is only 81% of that for native-born workers (per the CPS). The gains by low-wage foreign-born workers are probably strongest for recent immigrants, but we don’t have the data to see that.
Here we see one of the sources of our discontent, as immigration helps keeping US wages low, especially for workers at the bottom of the ladder. More broadly, the rosy jobs numbers don’t well reflect the experience of many Americans. Nor do the record profits of corporations, nor the lavish pay of their senior managers.
For more about causes of our discontent see “Income Stagnation in 2014 Shows the Economy Is Not Working for Most Families” by Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis at the Economic Policy Institute.
The coming rebellion against Immigration
America absorbed high rates of immigration during the rapid growth of the 19thC, with the frontier (mostly conquests from Mexico and Native Americans) providing a safety value. Growth slowed for many reasons after the “closing of the frontier” around 1890. Per capita real US GDP has grown at roughly 2%/year since 1870. But in the 17 years before 1924 growth was only 1.2%/yr.
Popular pressure grew to restrict immigration. As a result we got the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907 to limit immigration from Japan, the Immigration Act of 1917, the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924. The Great Depression brought even sterner measures by administrative decree: a drastic reduction of immigration and the forced repatriation of Mexican workers.
The post-WWII boom plus low rates of immigration created the middle class, and eventually allowed our elites to slowly open the borders. Wages stagnated as the number of foreign born workers rose after 1970 (other factors contributed, of course). Worse, since 1999 per capita GDP growth slowed to roughly 1%/year. Just as we’re repeating the Gilded Age (wealth and power concentrating in the 1%), we’re repeating the growth in social tensions from immigration of the early 20th C.
Elites smile at the pressure immigrants put on wages (including high-tech workers) and at the influx of poor and politically passive subjects (much of the southwest is regressing back to a client-patron political system). Both parties hope to capture them.
Slowly opposition has arisen to this open almost open borders policy, one of the core policies of our ruling elites. Immigrants pose an economic threat to many Americans. Many consider them a threat to American culture.
Until the 2008 crash and the great recession, the bipartisan consensus on open borders kept debate about this on the political fringes. Economic stress forced some action to limit illegal immigration. Now Trump has brought it into the center ring of public debate. How much support will immigration restrictions get from other politicians and the public? How strongly will our elites resist? We can only guess at how this will play out, and the results.
Polls about immigration
A substantial fraction of Americans object to this remaking of America. The polls vary quite bit, and with results that appear to depend on the wording of the question. But there is a core of approximately one-third unhappy about current levels of immigration, and a larger fraction opposed to large flows of illegal immigration. See the polls here, and Gallup’s here.
Once again it takes an outsider to give a voice to a group of disenfranchised voters. Watch our political gurus squirm as this challenge by the proles to their patrons’ power!
- The Donald Trump revolution, dismissed as all revolts are in the beginning.
- The numbers about immigration that fuel Trump’s campaign.
- Donald Trump leads us back to the future, to the dark days of US history.
- A New America arises, perhaps with Trump as its first leader.
- Look to the Left to see the force powering Trump and Carson.
For More Information
This excellent Pew report says that roughly 11 million of the 40 million immigrants are illegals (also see this larger report). See these reports about the jobs taken by immigrants, carefully tweaked arrangements of the facts by partisan. This debate was re-ignited by “All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants” by Karen Zeigler and Steven A. Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies, June 2014. The good liberals at Factcheck replied with “All U.S. Jobs Did Not Go to Immigrants“.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See The Donald Trump revolution, dismissed as all revolts are in the beginning. Also see all posts about immigration, especially these…
- Migration from the south into America: new people, new foods, new political systems.
- America’s elites reluctantly impose a client-patron system.
- Immigration as a reverse election: our leaders get a new people.
- Look at immigration policy to see our government respond to its masters.
- Europe’s elites use immigration to reshape it.
- Recommended: Torching Utopia: Sweden tries mass immigration.