All Things Political, vol. 3.2

What I'm talking about...

Well whadaya know? It seems someone's actually done a study of the effects of immigration on those lazy, whining, low-skilled workers. Long story short, the rise in undocumented workers in the last 20 years "generally 'explains' about 20 to 60 percent of the decline in wages, 25 percent of the decline in employment, and about 10 percent of the rise in incarceration rates among blacks with a high school education or less."

I suppose one could still argue that if those workers had been responsible enough to go to college, they'd be okay. Because college educations, like skills apparently, grow on trees. (Sidenote: I have about $300K worth of education and I can count my "skills" on one hand, with fingers to spare.) Still, I think there are some very reasonable (and important) questions to be asked about the effects of incorporating 12 million workers into the labor force at once. And it'd be nice if folks could ask those questions without being accused of xenophobia (see previous link) or bigotry.