Wage Gap and Illegal Immigration

[From article]
There is a close long-term correlation between low-skill wages and illegal immigration. An influx of low-skilled labor drives down wages at the bottom of the income scale, aggravating the wage gap and social divisions, providing fodder for left wing demonization of the prosperous and successful.
The normal equilibrating capacity of a market economy is short circuited when the influx of low-skill illegal immigrants is nationwide. If American workers could easily escape to another country offering higher wages, then wages in the USA would quickly recover from a surge of immigrant workers, and employers would gain only a short-lived benefit. So, it might not be worth paying off politicians to import cheap labor from poor countries.
The Mariel Boatlift event provides a demonstration of this. Wages were hammered down in a local economy (Miami) by a flood of refugees and then recovered as workers scattered to surrounding areas with higher wages. The whole process took 10 years.
Miami Wages after the Mariel Boatlift
Harvard professor George J. Borjas has been called "America’s leading immigration economist" by BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal. The good professor recently surprised himself and outraged many of his pro-immigration colleagues with a study measuring the dive in wages for low-skill natives in Miami after the Mariel boatlift of 1980.
[. . .]



The Gap predictor works fairly well for the US as a whole because there is no foreign country where a low-skill worker can get enough of a pay raise to make it worth the move. So, the wages stay depressed for about 40 years, until the immigrant workers retire.
It is easy to say that immigrants can upgrade their schooling and training and thus reduce the surplus of low-skill labor. In practice, it is usually very difficult, especially while raising kids. For example, Senator Marco Rubio’s father spent his career mostly as a hotel bartender. He was also a street vendor, security guard, apartment building manager and crossing guard. Rubio’s mother worked as a maid and Kmart store clerk.
They stayed in low-skill jobs over their entire working careers. Their children did very well, however. If the children of immigrants do as well as the children of natives, then the depression of low-skill wages goes away unless more low-skill workers are brought into the country.
If the children and grandchildren of a large class of immigrants remain low-skill workers like their parents, then my simple Gap predictor no longer works and we are left with a persistent underclass of people who continue to cause a surplus of low-skill workers and thus continue to depress low-skill wages.
Unfortunately, this is the case for most of the illegal immigrants that are continuing to pour into the country.



Another Permanent Underclass?
If the illegals are allowed to stay, the effects will be dire, according to the findings of Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis. “Immigration to the United States … rarely changes one’s social status,” he concludes after extensive study and many published works. His recent book is about the tendency of descendants within a family to stay in the same social class as their ancestors.
[. . .]
But if current immigration policy is continued, the “United States is likely to soon have the unprecedented situation of fostering a semi-permanent underclass.” This lack of social mobility from one generation to the next is a result that no government uplift program has been able to erase, according to Clark’s study of government efforts in Sweden, the US, and elsewhere.
[. . .]
A society over-loaded with low-skill workers will have lower wages in that category until the surplus disappears, which in this case might be generations away.
I estimate that enforcing the law and deporting all illegals would raise real low-skill wages by about 20% to 40% within 6 years, providing immediate relief to the oppressed low-skill citizens of our country.
[. . .]



A more skilled population would increase the historical trend of economic growth in this country. We might even become the richest per capita country in the world.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/illegal_immigration_and_the_wage_gap.html

June 2, 2016
Illegal Immigration and the Wage Gap
By David Lee

Misguided Black Leadership Keeps Many Impoverished

[From article]
Following the Great Migration after the Civil War -- the journey of thousands of blacks to the North -- and beginning in the early 1910s, the Harlem Renaissance began to take form. From this movement sprung a successful Black community structure: the arts and institutions flourished, and a middle and upper-class of employees and business owners that had not existed before for the black community appeared.
Something started changing towards the end of the 1930s, though -- those middle and upper-class black men and women began to leave.
[. . .]
Following the Great Migration after the Civil War -- the journey of thousands of blacks to the North -- and beginning in the early 1910s, the Harlem Renaissance began to take form. From this movement sprung a successful Black community structure: the arts and institutions flourished, and a middle and upper-class of employees and business owners that had not existed before for the black community appeared.
Something started changing towards the end of the 1930s, though -- those middle and upper-class black men and women began to leave.
[. . .]
Instead of looking up to leaders who continue to foment strife, anger, and division, who interrupt speeches and chant for the death of police, why not these men and women who forging their own path, not content with their current station? Something tells me there is a reason few have heard these numbers -- anger and pessimism is easier, and being provocative gets better ratings.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/how_black_lives_emreallyem_matter.html

December 31, 2015
How Black Lives Really Matter
By F. F. Fiore

Asian American Students Held Back By Misguided Priorities

[From article]
This is a disturbing article in the New York Post that chronicles the story of achievement by Asian-American students – and the policies adopted by school districts across the couintry to limit their advancement.
The reason for the success of Asian-American kids is the total committment and encouragement by their parents to their education. But other parents believe that their kids are at a disadvantage because they don't take the time or make the same effort as Asian parents. So school districts are now taking a "holistic" approach that keeps Asian kids down.
Here in New York City, Asian-Americans make up 13 percent of students, yet they win more than half of the coveted places each year at the city’s selective public high schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.
What’s at play here? It’s not a difference in IQ; it’s parenting. That’s confirmed by a recent study by sociologists from City University of New York and the University of Michigan, which showed that parental oversight enabled Asian-American students to far outperform the others.
[. . .]
That formula is under fire at the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District in New Jersey. The district, which is 65 percent Asian, routinely produces seniors with perfect SAT scores, admissions to MIT and top prizes in international science competitions.
But many non-Asian parents are up in arms, complaining there’s too much pressure and their kids can’t compete. In response, this fall Superintendent David Aderhold apologized that school had become a “perpetual achievement machine.” Heaven forbid!
Aderhold canceled accelerated and enriched math courses for fourth and fifth grades, which were 90 percent Asian, and eliminated midterms and finals in high school.
Using a word that already strikes terror in the hearts of Asian parents, he said schools had to take a “holistic” approach. That’s the same euphemism Harvard uses to limit the number of Asians accepted and favor non-Asians.
[. . .]
Affirmative action programs at colleges already limits the number of Asians who can attend the best schools. Now high schools, under pressure from parents, want to limit the number of high-achieving Asian kids who enroll in the best schools and the toughest courses.
What's up with that? Are the parents of kids of other races lazy, or don't they love their kids as much? That's nonsense for the most part, although some parents probably fit that description. The key is a culture that celebrates achievement. I don't think you'll find too many "Participation Trophies" being handed out in Japan or China. In those countries, either you achieve or you're left behind.
The competition just to get into college in those two countries is far more cutthroat than in the U.S. The question is, rather than dumbing down our educational system, why not emulate Asian parents? The answer is that secondary education – except for some sports – has been trying to eliminate the very idea of competition, because it is believed that losing marks a student for life and leads to low self-esteem and other problems.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/12/despite_superior_achievement_asian_students_being_held_back.html

December 31, 2015
Despite superior achievement, Asian students being held back
By Rick Moran

Cambridge, MA Mayor Has a Plan to Improve The Schools

Mayor "introduced an Equity Action Plan for the Cambridge Public Schools that includes a set of 10 goals and accompanying strategies to increase equity in our schools." But he provides no details. Does any part of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report have a role in his plan? How about the findings of John J. Dilulio, Jr.?



http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20151021/NEWS/151028759

Guest Column: All students deserve an equitable education in Cambridge
By Mayor David Maher
Posted Oct. 21, 2015 at 1:37 PM
CAMBRIDGE CHronicle

Cambridge Achievement Gap

Cambridge politicians say, "it is necessary to focus directly on achievement" in the schools. One way to ensure "achievement" is by lowering standards. School officials and politicians can say that the teachers are doing their jobs. But when students are unable to read and add when they go to work this "achievement" is exposed a false. Some unpopular studies indicate that the absence of a father in the home has an enormous effect on student achievement. Cambridge officials will never address this issue due to the nature of the conformist party that rules Massachusetts. It is not politically correct to make single parents feel bad.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/1/committee-achievement-schools/?dsq=42649954#comment-42649954

Cambridge School Committee Examines Achievement Gap, School Assignments
By Rediet T. Abebe,
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Thursday, April 01, 2010

Cutting Off One's Nose to Spite One's face


"Berkeley’s 'progressive' educrats give us another perfect illustration of Diversity Uber Alles run amok. Because the government schools have failed to close the 'racial achievement gap,' they’ve proposed cutting science labs and teaching staff from the high school curriculum because those resources benefit too many white students."

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/01/11/liberal-racism-in-berkeley-cut-h-s-science-labs-for-diversitys-sake/

Liberal racism in Berkeley: Cut h.s. science labs for “diversity’s” sake
By Michelle Malkin
January 11, 2010 01:20 PM

Achievement Gap is Not Race Based


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503477.html

Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents.
By Patrick Welsh
Washington Post
Sunday, October 18, 2009

Public Schools Only?


Menckenlite May 4, 2009

Is "The achievement gap in education between white and minority students" as pronounced in private schools, as well as public schools?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528075

Racial Gap Persists In School Scores
Despite gains for whites and minorities, gap between the groups stays constant
Published On Friday, May 01, 2009 2:14 AM
By MONICA S. LIU
Harvard Crimson
Contributing Writer