What these studies may indicate is that immigrants migrate to areas of higher economic activity, which would be more likely to have higher wages to begin with. The question is: would the wages be even higher without the immigration?

I love hoe people like to pretend we know things we can never know.

We don't know where wages would be without illegal immigration, because we have illegal immigrants. Ceteris Parabus does not apply to real life events, because in real life you can not control for every factor by the one being studied.

Why would we trust the same people who outright lied to us about NAFTA when it comes to illegal immigrants?

What charlie said. I am still amazed at how easily people who profess to analyze the political economy continue to conflate correlation with causation. What these studies really indicate is that people with a vested interest in illegal immigration (corporations) will continue to produce studies purporting to show its "benefits," and the PC Left will continue to parrot their pseudo-science. Imagine if we took Exxon's word about global warming!

I'm sympathetic to the argument Kate's making here, but I agree with the commenters who pointed out the correlation-causation distinction. Kate - does the study present evidence for the causal proposition you're supporting or is the alternate hypothesis (immigrants move to high-growth high-income areas) equally plausible?

Illegal immigrants don't drive down wages "just by appearing." Wages are driven down if employers manipulate them, and in turn wages in the market, downward.

It's a little naive to cite a "conservative" study stating that they don't when odds are pretty good that they do. How would a lower income citizen know this? Because it's only *one* of the many ways that employers maniplulate them.

If you want to have any credibility on the relationship between illegal immigration and wages, you need to go get some fuller context. Just saying "oh, it's false because employers posing as independent researchers say it is" doesn't work with *any* employee over the age of 24, irrespective of their position on what you're fond of calling "the brown people" (a reductive, essentializing term if ever there was one).

I'm going to play devil's advocate here, just because you don't want to go forth into the world with arguments that are easily attacked. There is a problem here with the direction of causation. It seems obvious that people with limited work skills are going to disproportionately migrate to states where there is a demand for their services and low-skilled jobs pay relatively well. These statistics do not suggest that a larger supply of low-skilled workers drives up their wages, they suggest that better wages for low-skilled workers attracts more of them.

Remember that new immigrants, by definition, don't have any local roots in the U.S. and will go where their prospects are best.

Yet another in the very long line of braindead posts from Kate Sheppard. You'd think someone would read the comments at the Ezra Klein link and then realize this wasn't a road worth going down.

See my comment at that link, and then someone get back to me with a *complete* list of all the costs of IllegalImmigration, financial and non-financial. For instance, put a price on all the PoliticalCorruption associated with IllegalImmigration. Put a price on the devaluation of USCitizenship. Put a price on giving foreign governments PoliticalPower inside the U.S. Then we can have a discussion about this issue and not just attempts to deceive.

Braindead? It's a blog, I'd caution against trying to read too much into someone intelligence by what they write here.

Hell, most of them aren't likely even being remotely honest. Does anyone think for a moment a study indicating the opposite of this would be getting play on this blog? Whatever info is actually involved, the only thing you'll find here is spin. If you're coming here to get informed, go look for a real source of information.

"Then we can have a discussion about this issue and not just attempts to deceive."

Stop. You'll drive yourself nuts. Kate Sheppard and her ilk are paid to stick their stilettos in the necks of working America.

By the way, have you seen Geraldine Ferraro's attempt today in the NY Times to justify any policy that will forward the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and the negative reaction it is receiving from the readership/ electorate?

Something tells me that the punditocracy has seen better days and an attempt to pursue some real investigative reporting is in Kate's future.

Whatever she finds, I'm sure it will be bracing just to witness the attempt.

while i applaud those for critically thinking, you are all still neglecting to talk about the driving forces for immigration are in the first place, forces that our government has created.

meanwhile, immigrants are a part of working america, something which the above comment seems to neglect.

Can I point something out that you seem to have missed??

Illegal immigration is ILLEGAL,

If you want to increase legal immigration then we should increase it.

I do have a dog in this fight.

I would love to have my wife join me here in AMERICA. It took the USCIS 4 months just to open the envelope with our application. I have no clue when they will get to our application but it looks like we will be apart for our first anniversary.

The discussion about causation is good, but could probably not be answered with available (or even imaginable) data.

The question progressives should be asking is whether any wage effects of migration are mitigated if the immigrants come with rights and a visa as opposed to coming with limited rights and a smuggler or labor broker. The answer there is easier to discern.

The debate in America isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about the level of immigration, which is mostly market driven (not policy driven).

The debate should be about how much of the immigration that is happening is happening through controlled, vetted, visa issuance protected by labor laws and how much occurs in the black market.

By and large, the GOP is selling one approach (make it hard to come legally then rail against the illegalities), the Dems are selling another, which I think is much more constructive for American-born and immigrant workers.

Andi, why don't you start arguing for people to come and lower your own standard of living, instead of someone else's?

It's not like we ever see the wealthy clamoring to increase their taxes to pay for pro-immigration proposals. It's not like they are ever willing to bargain (god forbid they ever have to give anything up to get anything, that would be so lower-class) to see these bills passed?

IF you want to help these people, pick your own damn pocket and give them your own job, stop trying to steal the money and livelihood of people who are dirt poor compared to you.

A) You don't know me from Adam or Eve, yet you assume much. Not always wise.

B) The point is not that I want or don't want them to come. They ARE coming. I'd rather they have rights and legal status than not. It sounds like you dissagree.

Once again Tapped seems to be missing the point regarding illegal immigrants and economics. The problem is not one of low wages but one of job scarcity.

Low wage workers are competing with illegal immigrants for a finite number of scarce jobs. If the illegal immigrants were not hired there would be a greater number of jobs available to those [American citizens] who most need them.

"meanwhile, immigrants are a part of working america, something which the above comment seems to neglect."

Well, but that all depends on how you *choose* to look at it, doesn't it? Some would say most are part of working Mexico as they haven't completely eviscerated the concept of "national citizenship" or official work visa policies. If you *choose* to eviscerate national citizenship or official work visa policies, I think you should at least be required to make an argument about it, just like anything else on which reasonable people will disagree.

By the way, most of these stiletto heeled little chickies scream bloody murder when someone tries to take away what *they* take to be *their* citizenship rights, like for example, the ever-notorious "right to choose," another item on which we never seem to hear a coherent argument.

With regard to "the brown people"-- we certainly know that lovely little doosie could only have originated with Dana Goldstein. It's going to be hard to keep one's head around here.

What about unemployment numbers? How many black men without a high school education are unemployed in cities such as LA, Houston, Chicago, etc.?

There is little incentive for US businesses even to consider hiring underclass blacks, especially men, when a much more pliant and cheaper supply of illegals is available. I’ve seen dozens of residential construction projects in Chicago in recent years and have very rarely seen a black man working on any of them. Ditto for other low-skill professions like restaurant work. Some would say that businesses can’t realistically be persuaded to hire black men—but they would be forced to look for other sources of labor if there were far fewer illegals around. If someone took an interest in hiring the black underclass (and at a decent wage), then the absurdly high incarceration rate would drop too. Jobs for black Americans from Watts or Woodlawn, before illegals from Oaxaca.

people still continue to throw out the term illegal. immigrants are not illegal. they are undocumented. they are undocumented because big business wants to be able to exploit them and not acknowledge labor laws. our country has been founded upon immigration. and it began, mind you, on illegal premises that led to a genocide on many different peoples. ever hear of native americans, the still neglected people of this nation. calling people "illegal" does not solve any problem. its important to remember what laws make them "illegal" in the first place. its late and i ranted.