A North Carolina Reader Instructs The MSM On The COSTS Of Immigration.
04/28/2014
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Re: Patrick Cleburne’s posts on Renee Ellmers

From:  Tom Shuford [e-mail him]

Thanks to Patrick Cleburne for  staying on Ellmers. I got the letter below  in the  April 17 Raleigh paper. (Ellmers’s district borders Raleigh. )

My cousin lived the middle of the district, several hundred yards from a poultry slaughter house.  The odor was vaguely present always.

Tom Shuford: True economic impact

(Raleigh) News & Observer

April 17, 2014

A UNC-Chapel Hill study [PDF] found the economic impact of immigration on the North Carolina economy to be positive (“ Study: Migrants boost N.C. economy,” April 16 Business article). Positive for whom? Employers? Native-born workers? Each will experience a tight or glutted labor market very differently.

The article acknowledged, “The study doesn’t address whether immigrants take jobs away from the native-born or depress overall wages.” Is it not important to know this, given the choice confronting Congress, which is whether to give “a pathway to citizenship” – or other legal status – to an estimated 12 million illegal aliens, 410,000 in North Carolina? Moreover, the UNC study said nothing about the impact of illegal immigration. A cynic might suspect for political reasons.

By contrast, a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform focuses on illegal immigration, which “costs North Carolina about $578 for every household headed by a native-born or naturalized U.S. citizen.” (This is largely K-12 education costs for children of illegal aliens.) This is an “economic impact” a voter can understand.

See previous letters from Tom Shuford.

James Fulford writes: An earlier Patrick Cleburne post pointed to a study that got it right.  : The Economic and Social Implications of the Growing Latino Population in South Carolina . In what Cleburne called an “unusually fine piece of incisive reporting”, Noelle Phillips of South Carolina's The State published an article titled  Study links Hispanics, pay drop  August 31, 2007, which included this quote from the study’s author: "What we're doing here in South Carolina is importing cheap labor to our economy". So it is at least possible for an ordinary journalist to get this right, if it’s explained to them.

 

 

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