What do you mean by boosting ‘the economy’? GDP (PPP) per capita? Median wages? Labor productivity? A nebulous all-encompasing concept of a country’s production, distribution and trade? It’s not a meaningful term on its own, it’s usually just a rhetorical trick in mass media to make it sound like shareholders making more money is somehow good for the country.
I was not talking about the abstract grand scheme of things, like benefits from their diverse experiences and overall population benefits, I’m talking about the direct immediate effects on worker wages. Due to social circumstances, companies can, and often do, save wage costs by replacing local labor with immigrant labor they can underpay, and with the special case of illegal immigrants, even pay illegally small amounts. Immigration increases the reserve army of labor that compete for lower wages. This is happening in my workplace, actually, not with immigration but with outsourcing, the human resources department are replacing trained capable local workers with undertrained workers in countries with lower labor costs and regulations (e.g. India) purely to cut wage costs. But the principle is the same, outsourcing like this only applies to work capable of being done remotely (e.g. call centers, graphic design, tech work), for manual labor then immigration has a similar benefit to a business owner.
Once again, I’m not talking about whether immigration is beneficial, (and like I said, I believe it is) I’m talking about how immigration is used by the owning class to reduce wages and enrich themselves.
Except this is not true. Immigration does not depress wages. It boosts the economy.
What do you mean by boosting ‘the economy’? GDP (PPP) per capita? Median wages? Labor productivity? A nebulous all-encompasing concept of a country’s production, distribution and trade? It’s not a meaningful term on its own, it’s usually just a rhetorical trick in mass media to make it sound like shareholders making more money is somehow good for the country.
I was not talking about the abstract grand scheme of things, like benefits from their diverse experiences and overall population benefits, I’m talking about the direct immediate effects on worker wages. Due to social circumstances, companies can, and often do, save wage costs by replacing local labor with immigrant labor they can underpay, and with the special case of illegal immigrants, even pay illegally small amounts. Immigration increases the reserve army of labor that compete for lower wages. This is happening in my workplace, actually, not with immigration but with outsourcing, the human resources department are replacing trained capable local workers with undertrained workers in countries with lower labor costs and regulations (e.g. India) purely to cut wage costs. But the principle is the same, outsourcing like this only applies to work capable of being done remotely (e.g. call centers, graphic design, tech work), for manual labor then immigration has a similar benefit to a business owner.
Once again, I’m not talking about whether immigration is beneficial, (and like I said, I believe it is) I’m talking about how immigration is used by the owning class to reduce wages and enrich themselves.