Immigration Logic 101 requires us to believe that low-skill immigrants expand the U.S. economy (aggregate GDP growth) and make everyone in the U.S. richer (per-capita GDP growth).
We’re informed that the U.S. economy is growing or, at least, not shrinking.
We’re informed that, apparently contradicting the two items above, that the U.S. is becoming impoverished in immigrants (not as enriched by enrichers). “Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades” (New York Times):
An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center found that between January and June, the foreign-born population declined by nearly 1.5 million. … experts predict looming negative economic and demographic consequences for the United States if the trend persists. Immigrants are a critical work force in many sectors, and the country’s reliance on them is growing as more baby boomers retire.
Covering a somewhat longer time period and announced with a bit more color, DHS says that 2 million migrants are no longer among us:
If immigration makes us rich how is it possible that de-immigration doesn’t make us poor?
Related:
- “Private payrolls declined in September by 32,000 in key ADP report coming amid shutdown data blackout” (CNBC; we’d expect a decline in headcount, but shouldn’t it be much larger given the number of migrants who’ve decided to re-migrate?)
- official .gov web site regarding National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day (October 15 every year)
- a less colorful and more recent statistic from DHS:
> the country’s reliance on [immigrants] is growing as more baby boomers retire
Boomers were out in the fields picking avocados or working in the slaughterhouse? I’m quite uniformed, apparently. Maybe the boomers are eating more avacados and sirloin as they retire. Not sure.
We can look more closely at that quote from the New York Times (true, by definition, since the NYT is our source of truth). The first Boomers were introduced in 1946. The percentage of foreign-born residents of the US reached its modern low point of 4.8 percent circa 1966 (see https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/ ). So as of 1966, the vast majority of American jobs in all sectors were being done by native-born Americans (including some 20-year-old Boomers).
Separately, all of agriculture is about 5.5 percent of US GDP. If you assume that (1) native-born Americans can’t do anything productive in the agricultural sector, and (2) all foreign-born residents of the U.S. go back to where they came from, the U.S. GDP would shrink by only 5.5 percent (and our environment would be much cleaner without all of the agricultural runoff!). The US welfare state is about 30 percent of GDP (see this Washington Post article at https://archive.is/vUevz ). If migrants are consuming more than 1/6th of U.S. welfare state payments then their departure would actually be a net fiscal gain for the U.S. even if their departure meant that 100 percent of food needed to be imported.
Welcome to Immigration Logic 802: Seminar of the Strawman and Specious, irrefutable and wrong. The NYT didn’t offer any examples or evidence to support the original quote, just started into a slice of life of the “poor pitiful me” illegal aliens. Even if they had a “deep-dive” article on the topic, I’m sure I wouldn’t even bother to go through Google search to read it. (Why are they so horndog to have my throw-away email, how do they make money off that?)
> We’re informed that, apparently contradicting the two items above, that the U.S. is becoming impoverished in immigrants
I don’t feel “informed”. 🦜 I miss paper newspapers, which I can at least use as a toilet at the end of the day. This is the best I can do electronically. Squawk at you later.
Phil, I’m a bit of a dumb ass and I believe you have some background in mathematics, so wondering if you can walk me through some complex mathematics and make it really simple?
If avocado farmers or slaughterhouse owners (referenced above) lose employees for whatever reason and seem to have difficulty attracting new ones, what does the math of Supply-Demand for workers (yes, I know, this is economics too) tell us about what their response(s) as an industry will be going forward. And what does this mean for legal citizens of the U.S.?
DA: If we had an Econ 101 world, of course a reduction in the supply of labor would result in an increased wage being offered for workers. In the same Econ 101 world, though, if American labor gets too costly we’d have more imports. In my thought experiment, above, I assumed the open borders advocates’ position as true, i.e., that Americans are incompetent and unwilling to do any work. We need immigrants to rebuild bridges that native-born Americans built in the mostly-immigrant-free 1960s, for example, because today’s Americans are unwilling to work and incapable of doing difficult jobs. In the Econ 101 world in which imports aren’t restricted and slave labor isn’t available, we’d probably see already-mechanized crops (e.g., wheat) unchanged. We’d see fancier machines (robots?) introduced for crops that are currently labor-intensive and, where that wasn’t practical, a reduction in planting for those crops. (That opens a whole different discussion, actually. Many of the folks who say that AI and robots will be able to do almost all human jobs also say that we need open borders in order to get cheap workers.)
We don’t live in an Econ 101 world for agriculture, though, and there are already radical distortions. It’s illegal to import sugar beyond a government-set quota and, therefore, we import migrant labor to work sugar plantations in the U.S. rather than importing sugar. (Ron DeSantis is Big Sugar’s #1 enemy, incidentally, because he won’t let them pollute and disrupt Florida ecosystems as they’ve been accustomed to. Example: https://www.cato.org/commentary/big-sugar-floridas-bittersweet-red-tide )
Okay, Phil but as I said, I’m a bit of a dumb ass and so am confused by your comment about workers “unwilling” to do certain jobs like build a bridge (which my simple mind tells me can’t be imported). So what does MIT’s math department tell us will happen here if bridge builders have difficulty attracting workers?
DA: Part of the dogma of the Open Borders Religion is that Americans are unwilling and unable to do demanding work regardless of the wage offered. Econ 101, of course, says that if borders are closed and, thus, the labor supply is reduced, businesses will offer more money until the supply and demand curves intersect (so the bridge builders will eventually get workers, but they’ll have to pay more).
There isn’t any way to convince an Open Borders Religion adherent by citing Econ 101 or the Wikipedia article on supply-demand equilibrium because religious belief isn’t affected by rational argument.
> Ron DeSantis is Big Sugar’s #1 enemy
On the supply side, maybe. On the demand side, RFK is a contender:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/22/rfk-jr-sugar-poison-food-dyes
Corn sugar vs. cane sugar is another market manipulation. When I (5+ generation U.S. native) was raking leaves in my yard at the limits of my ability and willingness today, I could smell cigar coming from the house to the east, and marijuana to the west. Nicotine is arguably much more toxic (it’s used in insecticides) than THC. Tobacco is completely legal for adults in my state, marijuana is illegal. Why? Not enough immigrants that know how to harvest weed?
We can also borrow analogy from materials science:
> Inelastic material is defined as a type of material that does not return to its original shape after the removal of a load, exhibiting permanent deformation under stress.
Seems like the overwhelming stress of manipulation of the markets by laws and political influence has permanently deformed our country’s economy, and many brains to boot.
(Sorry I accused you of being a NYT commenter, DA, I was just kidding. To be fair, you are at least asking questions when you don’t know. There aren’t any dumb questions, only dumb NYT commenters’ answers. And, in reality, nobody really knows how any of this shit works except chaos experts and Phil.)
Phil, thanks. MIT’s mathematics department does god’s work.
NYT: “Immigrants are a critical work force in many sectors”
How about more immigrants to work in the US Journalism sector, specifically at the NYT.
@philg: “Americans are incompetent and unwilling to do any work. We need immigrants to rebuild bridges that native-born Americans built in the mostly-immigrant-free 1960s, for example, because today’s Americans are unwilling to work and incapable of doing difficult jobs.”
At this point, in 2025, many, many millions of those incompetent, incapable, and unwilling native-born Americans are the children and grandchildren of those post-1960s immigrants – they’ve become properly “Americanized.”