" Second, the Cato Institute and others argue that Social Security and Medicare should be included in welfare use rates, though somewhat amusingly, Cato’s own Poverty and Welfare Handbook explicitly excludes those programs because they are “more universal.” The Census Bureau correctly calls these programs “social insurance” and considers them distinct from welfare because one has to pay into them to receive benefits."
This strikes me as pretty misleading. What matters isn’t how the Census Bureau classifies programs for purposes of welfare-use statistics, but whether immigrants are a net fiscal burden relative to native-born citizens. For that question, excluding the two largest components of the modern welfare state—Social Security and Medicare—because they don’t meet a technical definition of “welfare,” and are instead labeled “social insurance,” is just a dodge.
It’s true that one must pay into Social Security to receive benefits, but that doesn’t make the program actuarially fair. Its benefit formula is explicitly progressive: lower-income workers receive substantially more in benefits relative to their contributions than higher-income workers do. Medicare is similar in spirit: it is not means-tested, but it is financed in large part through general revenues and provides benefits that have little relation to individual contributions.
If the question is whether immigrants impose a net fiscal cost, then what matters is taxes paid versus benefits received over the lifetime—not whether those benefits are classified as “welfare” or “social insurance.”
The problem with counting social security is that people will look at working-age lower-skilled migrants and count their (small) social security tax payments now and not count their larger future benefits because they lie outside the 10-year budget window. So counting them causes a bigger inaccuracy, not a correction.
This is part of a much bigger government accounting problem. A healthy low-income immigrant without too many children may be a net payer in the next 10 years, but not over their lifetime.
Totally fair point! It's not at all clear to me how all this shakes out, or what the best comparisons to make are. I just want to emphasize that the definitional point about "welfare" is a distraction.
I'm going to throw a couple more complication for you to consider. We keep bringing in piles of poorly educated, low skilled people, but don't bring in anywhere near the number of doctors, nurses and medical professionals need to tend to their health needs. This drive up the cost of both Medicare and Medicaid. So even when trying to count this other programs in the cost of immigration, very important metrics are left out.
I take that a step further, the fact that many of these immigrants are in the country illegally, mean they can be used and abused without the ability to turn to the states, the courts or unionize for protection. This in turn drives down the wages of, and pushes up the housing and healthcare costs of citizens and legal immigrants. This pushes even more people onto the welfare roles.
Meanwhile, everyone if flat out ignoring that rising wages is actually what creates the incentive for labor saving innovation. Just ponder how we can't find enough fruit pickers, or roofers, but tens of billions of dollars are being spent, not to figure out how to automate those jobs, but how to make self driving cars. Driving is one and the few blue collar occupations that require proof of legal status to get a license. So in all the area where illegal immigrants can be exploited, the incentives have become how to protect and increase the corruption, rather then how to reduce the labor needed.
great response and my thoughts exactly - why even post this article if we are withholding two of the largest pieces of the entire budget? you can make numbers look any which way when you start withholding gigantic pieces of the pie.
Just do the math on what the net fiscal impact is of a median Hispanic household over their total lifetime. It's not hard to do and it's bad. And that is an income that is too high to qualify for more of the big welfare programs! They simply don't pay enough taxes to fund our ordinary government spending (education, healthcare, retirement, etc).
Another thought is that those taxpayer dollars going to working immigrants are actually subsidizing their employers, who would otherwise be forced to pay higher wages if they hoped to fill available jobs. Especially since many of those jobs are not readily subject to automation.
What is the economic impact of low-skilled immigrants? How did blue state governors and mayors react when Texas was providing impoverished immigrants with free bus trips to blue cities? I don't recall them celebrating the great fiscal windfall they would reap.
Jensen Huang who founded the richest company in the world is far different from the guy in today's sob story in the NYT who with his wife is self deporting back to Mexico, mostly because they are afraid they'll get caught out for breaking many laws.
The general gist of this article is that highly skilled immigrants are a net plus, and those with very low skills are often a net loss. One can manipulate statistics however you want, but if you go to any place servicing low income people, you will hear very little English spoken.
My wife and most everyone in our social circle are immigrants, and every single one is here legally. None collect any type of social welfare, the kids all compete to get into the most prestigious colleges. Following the laws of the country that takes you in is very important, as is being a contributing member of society.
Ah I see. So the feds were justified in shooting him 10 times while he was unarmed and defenseless on the ground. Tim Walz said something mean, so of course they had to shoot a random unarmed US citizen, and then lie about it. Good theory. Wait til Newsom sends his masked thugs to hunt down some maga folk in flannel. Welcome to North Korea.
Tragically, for Mr Pretti, this isn't merely another maga culture war. They killed him. He's dead. Can you tell me why?
The only mob I saw was the mob of masked agents on top of a nurse wielding a cell phone. After removing the gun he never pulled, they plugged him 10 times in the back. Sorry Dan, video don't lie:). No whataboutism allowed for this thuggery.
It's called conformation bias. No matter what you see, it only confirms your bias. So you conveniently ignore the way Walz and Frey were whipping up the mobs to get you that video. You're just the useful idiot to them.
Again, there’s a confirmation bias in what you’re seeing in the video. The question of accountability on behalf of the agents is certainly up for debate, but the underlying issue here is the environment the agents are working under, created by this utter nonsense of due process and humanity denied - it’s just an absurd notion. Moreover, Pretti violated every CCW protocol in the books; rules that are designed to keep the holder alive in the event of possible engagement with law enforcement. Walz lied, you’re being less than honest with yourself and Pretti acted recklessly - a terrible and lethal combination.
Due process should have occurred at entry. Believe me, we are much nicer on illegal immigration than anywhere I've seen. Due process could take many decades, and that was the intent.
The constitution is pretty clear on due process. Obama deported more people than Don, though some quibble over definitional issues. Regardless, I don't recall any executions of citizens, masks, tactical costumes, roving patrols, occupying cities, or the administration openly lying about fellow citizens. I'm not sure what's more terrifying about Dons approach. The actual executions, or our government immediately lying about the victims. They knew we would know they were lying, but they did it anyway, to make a point.
There was a time self-described conservatives claimed to believe in federalism, the 2nd amendment, and opposition to the concentration of power in the federal government/executive. We were told the 2nd amendment was there so we could defend ourselves from a possible future tyrannical federal government. How quaint.
Don has revealed their true belief. They actually like state violence, as long as it's targeted at those they hate.
If this is truly the road we choose to go down, isn't it inevitable that the other tribe adopts the same tactics, but has a different list of those they hate?
I have to admit, I'm curious what term you would use for shooting an unarmed man in the back 10 times, followed immediately by lies from the state. Another day at the office?
I was musing. Based on the "new" rights newfound justification on the use of force by the state, clearly the Capitol police should have opened up on the insurrectionists on January 6th. They weren't merely being filmed, or yelled at, they were being beaten with confederate flagpoles... Instead, they did what professional forces are trained to do, de-escalate. ICE and CBP aren't making mistakes, they're following orders.
You simply can’t ignore what the mobs are doing to ordinary citizens as well. They are attacking hotels and scaring guests, they are protesting inside retail stores, they are accosting random people on the street because they look like ice agents, they have established checkpoints at intersections.
I must have missed the part in your discussion regarding the illegal immigrants who are using bogus papers to work. They pay state taxes, federal taxes, and into social security, knowing they will never be able to collect on these benefits, and it will all go to support US citizens. Boy that's really ripping off us citizens.
I'm no economist, but wouldn't clawing back some of the Billionaire tax breaks offset the cost of helping those evil immigrants? Nah…. probably better to foment class division among workers than strive for more income equality.
You're missing that constantly bringing in more cheap labor we drive down wages and push up the cost of housing, healthcare, and transportation. Pushing more American workers into having to rely on the government to make ends meet. Which in turn means we go after the rich for more taxes because the working class are artificially being kept below the point that they would be able to help shoulder the burden of taxes.
It's one giant ball of corruption. The sad part is that those economists you mention should be the ones pointing out that higher labor prices is what creates the incentive to invest more money into labor saving innovations. While turning a blind eye to illegal immigration only incentivizes more corruption, such as the rich spending more money lobbying our politician to do nothing to fix the broken system they are exploiting.
When did maga become concerned about corruption? I laughed out loud on that one:). The corruption y'all swallow from Don is breathtaking. Don's most prescient quote was: "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and I wouldn't lose any voters"... Keep on believin:)
You obvious disagree with everything written on "Commonplace". So why are you even here? Why sit around trolling people with middle school taunts, Karl? Does it make you feel bigger somehow? Are you getting paid?
What kind of pathetic life do you live that this is all you have to contribute to the world? What sad little ego makes someone spend their days hanging out in a comments section of a site they obviously disagree with, trying to prove they have the wits of a seventh grader?
I think this is the point where you predictable ask me if I would rather live in East Germany or some other nation at a point in time that is supposed to make me get all defensive. Which will it be this time? Will you go for something new to spice things up? Maybe this time you'll claim I would rather live in Cambodia under Pol Pot?
Well darn, I thought they were better than middle school:( I'll try harder.
I find it enlightening to hear the views of the self-styled "new" right, aka MAGA, even though your ideas are anything but new. Y'all are in charge of the entire federal government. You ARE the elite establishment, so it's important to understand where those in charge are coming from. It seems largely a forum of grievance and culture war tropes. A lotta complaints, a lotta folks upset the world has changed around them, forever casting about for someone to blame. Most seem willing to swallow Don's authoritarian moves, excusing virtually anything he does.
It's telling Don doesn't seek to enshrine anything in law to make change permanent, even his precious tariffs. Other than the BBB, which lines the pockets of his plutocrat buds while screwing the poor and putting him on a path to break his first term deficit record.
Oddly, even though the "new" right holds all the power, the policy wish list seems quite short. Other than railing against brown people, and passing bills to favor the rich, I don't detect much in the way of recommendations. That may be why you cotton to Oren, who plays kind of Winnie the Pooh in a tuxedo role, retrofitting an intellectual veneer on Don's insanity.
You didn't answer the question. If you think Oren is just a whiny baby, then why are you on his site?
Besides, if you weren't such a racist then you would be name checking authoritarian dictators like Robert Mugabe, Augusto Pinochet, and Muammar Gaddafi. Get with the multiculturalism Karl.
Yeah I answered. I want to see what the folks in charge think. You're the elite Dan, MAGA controls the entire government. The grievance is transitory. It's comforting to be reminded that this is just a grievance movement, similar to what we see globally. It's a transformative time that unsettles those who fear change. Y'all will weather it, hang in there!
I think it very unlikely immigrants will never collect social security. Once you gain legal status you qualify for SS and all past work contributions count towards your payment. There are also spousal benefits.
I'm not talking about legality or morality, just facts and numbers.
If you're going to base an argument on statistics, you need to include all of them and not cherry pick. I was just trying to fill in a few of the empty cells in his verbal spreadsheet.
I don’t think you were just neutrally filling in information. Your “boy that’s really ripping off citizens” comment implied that you think, in fact, that the payroll taxes illegal aliens have at while working illegally somehow even things out and in fact that citizens are unduly benefiting from illegal aliens. The way I see it, illegal aliens are taking jobs that rightfully should go to Americans and driving down wages, and committing various ID-theft type crimes in order to do so. Any tax money that is collected and not returned to them in benefits at most only partly makes up for this loss. If a thief steals $10 and gives $3 back, that’s not much of a point in his favor.
I always laugh a little when people compare the percentages to attempt to prove huge swaths of people are this or that (I'm especially reminded of the bogus 81% of Somalis are committing fraud in Minnesota).
Taking a closer look at the percentages, if the highest percent from SIPP graph in the article, if 59% of all immigrants (discounting households since it doesnt break it down further) were on welfare compared to the 37% of US born citizens (again assuming population for households), that would mean that at most immigrants make up 22% of the population on at least one welfare program.
This is why I prefer concrete numbers to percentages. Helps tell a clearer story in my opinion.
Why would we accept even 1% of immigrants collecting some form of welfare? Unless you think the goal of immigration is to relieve poverty in other countries, this doesn’t make any sense.
Even setting aside that this stat is only concerned with the head of the household, not whether dependants are citizens (so even this higher amount I'm sure is far lower), I will simply not be mad about people getting the money and/or resources they need just to survive. You can feel however you want, but these are people who are here, for whatever reason, just trying to feed themselves and their kids. I think you need to redirect whatever you're feeling at the people in charge or sitting in their third mansion when you feel like there's not enough to go around to those who desperately need it.
This is not what immigration is supposed to be, or was ever intended to be. It’s supposed to be a reciprocal relationship. We offer immigrants a better life and they respond by becoming productive, tax paying members of society. This should not be controversial. It’s common sense.
I support a moratorium on all immigration, legal as well, until the millions here assimilate. We have a population of 342 million people; surely whatever job you need done can be done by an American citizen. Of course, you may have to pay an actually honest wage.
Very interesting analysis. What is also shocking is that 37% of US born headed households receive welfare benefits. What a horrible commentary on the income inequality in our country. And this will only get worse under Trump.
You've actually got that backwards. The growing inequality is being driven by "free trade" and mass immigration. We allow the rich to exploit foreigners both at home and abroad, including polluting foreign lands in ways that would those same businessmen thrown in prison here in America. That's what's driving the growing inequality.
We've practically allowed the recreation of segregation with our lack of immigration enforcement. Including replacing the old KKK with the new woke mobs. The result is that more and more of modern America is starting the resemble the old south. With all the corruption and inequality that went with it.
I've spent the last thirty years in construction. Watching as one trade after another was taken over by illegals. All of whom aren't covered by workers comp or unemployment. Add in that I'm from Arkansas and quite familiar with all the nastiness that running a two tiered system creates. So I have all the proof you could ever need and then some.
The whole Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative ideologies that created the existing order is starting to collapse on all front. Yet, rather then come up with real reforms that would get control of immigration and change the rules so we quit rewarding non-allied nations for their corruption, you would rather try to belittle the opposition. Do you think that's actually going to work?
You think you can write off and belittle my years of experience and expertise in the construction industry. Do you think that will quell the growing frustrations that is driving our politics? It's not just on the political right that the center is collapsing. California is heading for wealth taxes. New Yorker's just elected a guy who wants the city to take over running grocery stores.
So what's your plan. We double down on free trade and mass immigration and that's supposed to bring down the debt and bring back world peace?
You are really something. Go back and read my original post. You want to argue with me about things I never said. I pointed out that it is sad that so many US born households are forced to collect benefits per the article. I then tied this to the fact that income inequality has grown dramatically over the last few decades. You then said I have it backwards (income inequality hasn’t grown?) and claimed lots of stuff including comparing a “woke mob” to the KKK. Where are the “woke mob” lynchings? I pointed out you didn’t provide proof (facts). Your years of experience in the construction business certainly give you insight into that part of the economy, but the rest of your commentary is from Fox or Newsmax and you assume I’m on the other side of these issues.
Inequality decreased slightly during Trump's first term due to the wage jump during covid (when many illegal immigrants left the country by the way). Disposable income is also probably doing a little better with the countrywide drop in rent.
"put downward pressure on wages, keeping more employees of all kinds on assistance programs"
This is not by accident, it is by design. Often referred to as the "Democrat Plantation", it was the overall -- if hidden -- agenda of LBJ's Great Society. Create and perpetuate a permanent underclass with lifetime dependency on government handouts. Handouts only guaranteed as long as the Democrat party is in power.
California is on the bleeding edge. The dwindling self-sufficient middle class is all but gone, leaving a handful of ultra-wealthy to feed the machine along with a growing proletariat who will "own nothing and be happy." If you do own property, there is more than a zero chance the government will burn it down and take your land.
The cruel irony is that this is exactly what they continually vote for.
Our family arrived in 1957 and at that time applying for or receiving ANY government benefits were grounds for deportation. You had to have a sponsor who was responsible to provide those benefits until you were naturalized.
Why do 37% of native born citizens receive "welfare?" Doesn't that seem ridiculously high? Is that due to politicians buying votes with taxpayer dollars?
40 years of depressed wages. Most people work. I think food stamps are the biggest program, the tax rebates too. Earned income tax credit, child tax credit, both given during negotiations for lower taxes at the high end.
What is missing from this analysis is an international comparison. Look at Denmark. If you are a non-citizen and try to access government benefits, the government will not let you. You have to qualify for benefits, even as a legal immigrant, and it can take up to 10 years to be treated equally to citizens. The rationale for these limits is simple; when you give money to immigrants, you are taking money away from citizens.
If the US had a Denmark-style program, every LEGAL immigrant could get health care, but they could not get any other benefit until they had worked for about 5 years. By the way, the 5-year mark also includes receiving educational benefits.
The welfare utilization data Camarota presents from the 2024 SIPP deserves serious attention—53% of immigrant households accessing at least one welfare program represents a genuine fiscal reality that policy makers cannot ignore. These costs are real, the programs are strained, and the distributional questions about who bears these burdens matter considerably. Any honest assessment of immigration policy must grapple with these numbers and the challenges they represent for both immigrants struggling to establish themselves economically and for native-born workers competing in the same labor markets.
Yet this analysis suffers from a familiar pattern: presenting costs in high resolution while rendering contributions invisible. Absent from this accounting are the payroll taxes immigrants pay into Social Security and Medicare (systems they often won't fully benefit from), the sales and property taxes funding state and local services, the business formation rates among immigrant entrepreneurs, and the consumer demand that sustains entire economic sectors. More fundamentally, the framework treats immigrants purely as economic units to be evaluated rather than as people whose children are Americans, the methodological choice to attribute U.S. citizens' benefits as "immigrant costs" reveals the analysis's ultimate purpose. When you exclude Social Security and Medicare (because they don't fit the "welfare" definition), dismiss the NAS study's mixed findings, and ignore wage effects research showing more complex dynamics than simple supply curves, you're not conducting neutral fiscal analysis. You're constructing a case for a predetermined conclusion: that less-educated immigration is categorically problematic. The costs are real and must be weighed, but this selective accounting cannot bear the weight of the policy prescriptions it supports.
All the modern economic jargon over illegal immigration is just attempts to gussy up the corruption. Setting legal immigration aside, bringing millions of foreigners that can be exploited only drives down wages and incentivizes corruption. Meanwhile rising wages are what incentivizes innovation.
I'm in construction in Texas, and I see this every day. In commercial construction, where it's much harder to get away with using illegal immigrants, almost all roofing is either metal or tile. In residential where you can still get away with using the illegals, roofing is still primarily asphalt shingles. The asphalt shingles are as labor intensive or even more so, but not anywhere near as durable. The only reason we keep doing it this way is that companies that invest in innovation would be put out of business by those hiring illegals then undercutting the competition's prices.
You can see this writ large with how tens of billions of dollar are going towards creating self driving cars rather then fruit picking machines. You can exploit illegal immigrants for farm labor but you have to be at least a legal resident to get a drivers license. This is also why the wealthy donors and our corrupt politicians keep the system broken. Legalize most of these people and they will climb down off those roofs and walk away from those farms.
Worst of all, assuming you did some type of amnesty without first proving that our laws really will be enforced going forward, all those businesses that were saving money by not providing workers comp or unemployment would just bid up the price of illegal immigrant labor yet again. Creating a massive pull factor and starting the cycle over again.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're identifying something crucial that gets buried in abstract economic debates: the real corruption is American employers choosing exploitation over innovation and fair wages.
Your construction example is damning, metal roofing innovation in commercial where enforcement exists, inferior asphalt shingles in residential where illegal labor can be exploited. The self-driving cars vs. fruit-picking machines comparison perfectly captures how selective enforcement distorts innovation incentives across the entire economy.
Here's what frustrates me about the current debate: they use selective welfare statistics and bogus crime data to demonize immigrants while completely ignoring the employer-side corruption you're witnessing daily. When companies undercutting competitors through illegal labor aren't paying proper payroll taxes, aren't carrying adequate insurance, aren't investing in safety or innovation, but the political narrative focuses on welfare costs and invented crime waves, that's not honest policy discussion. It's deliberate misdirection.
The construction company choosing exploitation over metal roofing innovation, the agricultural operation avoiding mechanization, these are choices made by Americans with power. But instead of confronting that corruption, we get fear-mongering designed to make immigrants themselves the problem.
Your amnesty concern is well-taken: legalization without genuine enforcement just resets the cycle. But that argues for confronting the American employers creating this market, not restricting immigration while leaving the exploitation incentives intact.
The costs are real. The innovation distortions are real. But using false crime narratives and selective welfare data to avoid discussing employer corruption isn't policy analysis, it's scapegoating.
There are lots of historical example of us getting stuck in corruption and then some coming along that forces change. Slavery, segregation, government micromanagement, overly generous and endless welfare program. This current round of corruption, which includes illegal, as well as mass immigration is also compounding the corruption that disconnecting trade from mutual defense and shared values has created. All of which has America and our allies hitting record levels of debt, having hollowed out our industrial bases, just when the boomers are hitting retirement and slowly beginning to draw down the big pile of money that we've all been using to paper over the cracks.
We've all been damned to live through interesting times. It's worth noting that once you start removing and blocking the corruption, things tend to improve quite rapidly. But to address one of your points, while we certainly need more worksite enforcement and higher penalties on employers that cheat, we still need to aggressively go after individual enforcement, at least a while yet. It will eventually become a waste of money to keep going after the long term illegals and then we can really discuss an amnesty for those willing to pay fines and accept that they will never be citizens.
The reason individual enforcement is very important is that there are literally endless ways to cheat. One of the reason residential is so bad is because homeowners don't report any of their costs to the IRS. In commercial, even getting the lawn mowed will need a 1099 form. Then there are plenty of ways for illegals to set up flee markets and make money either on goods brought in from China or stolen goods.
It's not for nothing that parts of America are starting to look a lot like the old south. Likewise it's not for nothing that growing numbers of people, particularly the young are starting to demand socialism. So either more economist, businessmen, and politicians are going to start being a lot more honest about the costs of illegal immigration, or they are going to find the country drifting further towards much higher taxes on the rich and a lot more socialistic policies winning at the ballot box. Kind of appeals to the history buff inside of me, but then again, I'm about 15 years from retirement so I hope we work through it quickly.
I appreciate you engaging seriously with the underlying dynamics rather than retreating to talking points. You're right that we're at a genuine inflection point where multiple forms of corruption have compounded, exploitative labor markets, offshoring without strategic consideration, fiscal trajectories colliding with demographic reality. And your observation about the political consequences is dead on: when people experience a rigged system, they don't carefully distinguish between market failures and government failures, they just demand someone break the game board.
Your point about individual enforcement is well-taken and more nuanced than I initially credited. The residential construction example is particularly illuminating, when homeowners themselves participate in the under-the-table economy, worksite enforcement alone won't cut it. The flee market networks, the cash economies, the endless creativity of evasion, you're right that this requires pressure from multiple angles, at least initially, to break the equilibrium.
Where I think we genuinely converge: the current system's biggest victims are people playing by the rules. The contractor who invests in training and safety equipment gets undercut by the one hiring exploitable labor. The worker who could command decent wages faces suppressed competition. The immigrant who waits years in legal channels watches others simply walk across. And increasingly, young people looking at housing costs, wage stagnation, and their parents' generation pulling up ladders conclude the whole system is corrupt, because substantial parts of it actually are.
Your historical examples are apt. Each of those systems slavery, segregation, regulatory capture, created beneficiary classes with strong incentives to preserve the status quo while externalizing costs onto everyone else. The current immigration/offshoring/debt complex has similar dynamics: certain industries profit enormously from exploitable labor and externalized costs while working-class communities bear the wage suppression, fiscal strain, and social disruption.
But here's what I need to emphasize: these are serious policy discussions that deserve actual debate, but they can't happen in a climate where immigrants are demonized as criminal savages murdering the country. That's not accidental rhetoric. It's deliberately convenient for the exploiters you're identifying.
When the debate becomes about invented crime waves and welfare statistics stripped of context, we never get to the conversation you and I are having about employer enforcement, innovation incentives, worksite penalties, sequencing of legalization, or trade policy. The construction companies profiting from exploitation, the agricultural operations avoiding mechanization, the entire business model built on selective law enforcement, they're perfectly happy to have the debate focused on scary immigrant criminals rather than American employer corruption.
Here's where I remain concerned about the restrictionist-only approach: if we dramatically reduce immigration without confronting employer incentives and enforcement structures, we risk either (1) those same exploitation dynamics finding new populations, or (2) rapid offshoring of remaining industries, or (3) inflation shocks without adjustment time. None of which actually fixes the corruption, it just relocates it.
But you're making me reconsider the sequencing. Maybe the political economy requires demonstrating serious enforcement first, including individual enforcement that breaks the current equilibrium, before comprehensive reform becomes credible. If people believe the system will just recreate exploitation under new categories, they'll oppose any pathway to legal status, however sensible economically.
The socialism point is crucial and underdiscussed. When young people see housing costs driven by speculation, wages suppressed by exploitable labor, healthcare costs inflated by cartels, education costs exploded by bloat, retirement security evaporating, and then hear lectures about "market efficiency", of course they conclude capitalism itself is broken. They're not wrong that the system is rigged; they're just misdiagnosing which parts are market failures versus which are corruption and selective enforcement.
Your 15-year timeline matters here. We probably have one, maybe two election cycles to demonstrate that rules will actually be enforced and corruption confronted before the political center collapses entirely. The young socialists and the MAGA populists agree the system is rigged, they just disagree about remedies. If the remaining defenders of market economics and rule of law don't start honestly confronting the corruption you're describing rather than hiding behind false crime narratives and selective statistics, they'll lose the argument by default.
So here's where I think we might actually agree: (1) aggressive enforcement is necessary to break current equilibria, including individual enforcement until the system resets, (2) employer penalties need to make exploitation unprofitable, not just illegal, (3) eventual pathways to legal status only make sense after demonstrating enforcement credibility, (4) trade policy needs rethinking when it creates incentives to offshore rather than innovate, and (5) if we can't have honest conversations because the debate is poisoned with demonization designed to protect exploiters, none of these policy solutions will ever be implemented.
The false crime narratives and selective welfare data aren't just wrong, they're functional. They deflect from the real issues you're witnessing daily and prevent exactly the honest policy conversation about enforcement, innovation, and rule of law that might actually threaten the corrupt equilibrium.
I want to leave this on a positive note but yet point one more thing out for you to ponder. There is a reason we're having this discussion where we're having it. We both know that the mainstream media is pretty much garbage. When it is not ideological nitwit reporters, it's corporate stooges yammering on and trying to force out narrative rather than informative journalism or debate. But have you really internalized that?
A couple quit examples would be the whole "good people on both sides" cherry picked quote that is still referenced to claim Trump praised the white supremist. Despite the fact that he had clearly stated just before that line that he condemned those groups. Then there was the time he said "MS 13 gang members were animals" but the new media spun it to make it sound like he said all immigrants were animals.
I point those out because Joe Rogan did a great interview with JD Vance where Vance openly talked about sitting with political donors who said they didn't want immigration fixed because they knew it was saving them money on labor. But the chance of the mainstream media running that clip over and over again are basically zero. I include outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal.
I'll hammer this home by pointing out that I used to have a subscription to the Washington Post until they got TDS when Trump ran the first time. They openly bragged about assigning 21 reporters to look through every business deal he had ever done. The problem was that they assigned 0 reporters to look into the Clinton Global Initiative, which was in the news for having to refile multiple years of its taxes.
I had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal right up until Trump was re-elected and every article, no matter what the subject, turned into another anti tariff screed. It got so bad it reminded me of the old jokes about how to tell the difference between a fundamentalist and a zealot. A fundamentalist can't change his mind. A zealot can't change the subject.
Those talks and debates you wish were taking place, are in fact taking place. But they certainly won't be reported in the corporate owned media. Those serious conversations are happening in places like Commonplace.org, but not coming from all those big money supported think tanks like the CATO institute.
Not to pick on CATO but they are famous for pumping out warnings for how a minimum wage hike will spur employers to automate, but flat our refuse to entertain that argument in reverse when pumping out articles about all the supposed benefits of ignoring illegal immigration.
But as I said, I want to leave this on a positive note. So here goes. Less than 30% of the population believe anything coming from the mainstream media. That's even more true of the younger generations. Podcasters are increasingly where people are getting their information from. Long form interviews are some of the most watched podcasts. Long form interviews are the complete opposite of the politics that has developed over the last thirty years. So more and more people today have learned to tune out all these poll tested sound bites, but you'll never hear that from the mainstream media.
WaPo just laid off 300 reporters. The main stream media is predictably claiming that it was because we the people don't want real news. I know why and when I cancelled my subscription. It was when they switched from real news to ideological nitwits.
A median Hispanic family earns around $70,000 a year. Let us model that family over a lifetime (from birth, working age, and death). We will use a two adult two child model of the household (or two lifetime individuals).
Counting only individual entitlements (education/daycare, medical insurance subsidies, and retirement benefits) each of the individuals in this household has a net fiscal DEFICIT of around $1M. If we include an even per capita assessment of non-entitlement government expenses (infrastructure, policing, military) then it rises to over $1.5M per member.
That is conservative. Its higher in blue states with higher social spending.
And that's someone making $70,000 a year! No medicaid. No snap. No cash welfare. Just mediocre below average earnings, progressive taxation, and a bloated government budget.
Let's keep our eye on the ball as Don's authoritarian project marches forward. There was a bigger story out of Minneapolis recently as masked federal agents gunned down unarmed citizens (aka "domestic terrorists" according to our government) under the guise of rounding up violent brown criminals. Plus the UAE sheikh crypto corruption caper that the WSJ broke. A half billion "investment" into World Liberty and presto!-a cool $187 mill directly in Don's pocket, $31 mill in Witcoff's pocket, followed by the chip deal, a deal that had been held up given concern over potential transfers to China. Commonplace might muster a thought?
"More than half of immigrant-headed households use at least one welfare program today. The reason is simply that a large share of immigrants have modest levels of education, and their resulting low incomes allow them to qualify for aid."
This a) is not necessarily "illegal" and b) does show that even these immigrants do not contribute more to the rest of us than not. If it IS illegal, that could be enforced and if enforcement means that some immigrants self deport, that's an efficient outcome.
" Second, the Cato Institute and others argue that Social Security and Medicare should be included in welfare use rates, though somewhat amusingly, Cato’s own Poverty and Welfare Handbook explicitly excludes those programs because they are “more universal.” The Census Bureau correctly calls these programs “social insurance” and considers them distinct from welfare because one has to pay into them to receive benefits."
This strikes me as pretty misleading. What matters isn’t how the Census Bureau classifies programs for purposes of welfare-use statistics, but whether immigrants are a net fiscal burden relative to native-born citizens. For that question, excluding the two largest components of the modern welfare state—Social Security and Medicare—because they don’t meet a technical definition of “welfare,” and are instead labeled “social insurance,” is just a dodge.
It’s true that one must pay into Social Security to receive benefits, but that doesn’t make the program actuarially fair. Its benefit formula is explicitly progressive: lower-income workers receive substantially more in benefits relative to their contributions than higher-income workers do. Medicare is similar in spirit: it is not means-tested, but it is financed in large part through general revenues and provides benefits that have little relation to individual contributions.
If the question is whether immigrants impose a net fiscal cost, then what matters is taxes paid versus benefits received over the lifetime—not whether those benefits are classified as “welfare” or “social insurance.”
The problem with counting social security is that people will look at working-age lower-skilled migrants and count their (small) social security tax payments now and not count their larger future benefits because they lie outside the 10-year budget window. So counting them causes a bigger inaccuracy, not a correction.
This is part of a much bigger government accounting problem. A healthy low-income immigrant without too many children may be a net payer in the next 10 years, but not over their lifetime.
Totally fair point! It's not at all clear to me how all this shakes out, or what the best comparisons to make are. I just want to emphasize that the definitional point about "welfare" is a distraction.
I'm going to throw a couple more complication for you to consider. We keep bringing in piles of poorly educated, low skilled people, but don't bring in anywhere near the number of doctors, nurses and medical professionals need to tend to their health needs. This drive up the cost of both Medicare and Medicaid. So even when trying to count this other programs in the cost of immigration, very important metrics are left out.
I take that a step further, the fact that many of these immigrants are in the country illegally, mean they can be used and abused without the ability to turn to the states, the courts or unionize for protection. This in turn drives down the wages of, and pushes up the housing and healthcare costs of citizens and legal immigrants. This pushes even more people onto the welfare roles.
Meanwhile, everyone if flat out ignoring that rising wages is actually what creates the incentive for labor saving innovation. Just ponder how we can't find enough fruit pickers, or roofers, but tens of billions of dollars are being spent, not to figure out how to automate those jobs, but how to make self driving cars. Driving is one and the few blue collar occupations that require proof of legal status to get a license. So in all the area where illegal immigrants can be exploited, the incentives have become how to protect and increase the corruption, rather then how to reduce the labor needed.
But that raises the question of whether those benefits will actually be paid. Some reform of the program is going to be necessary.
great response and my thoughts exactly - why even post this article if we are withholding two of the largest pieces of the entire budget? you can make numbers look any which way when you start withholding gigantic pieces of the pie.
Just do the math on what the net fiscal impact is of a median Hispanic household over their total lifetime. It's not hard to do and it's bad. And that is an income that is too high to qualify for more of the big welfare programs! They simply don't pay enough taxes to fund our ordinary government spending (education, healthcare, retirement, etc).
Another thought is that those taxpayer dollars going to working immigrants are actually subsidizing their employers, who would otherwise be forced to pay higher wages if they hoped to fill available jobs. Especially since many of those jobs are not readily subject to automation.
https://lokirobotics.co/ automation for low end physical jobs is probably under ten years away
What is the economic impact of low-skilled immigrants? How did blue state governors and mayors react when Texas was providing impoverished immigrants with free bus trips to blue cities? I don't recall them celebrating the great fiscal windfall they would reap.
This is an utterly disingenuous comment, right? You can't be serious?
Jensen Huang who founded the richest company in the world is far different from the guy in today's sob story in the NYT who with his wife is self deporting back to Mexico, mostly because they are afraid they'll get caught out for breaking many laws.
The general gist of this article is that highly skilled immigrants are a net plus, and those with very low skills are often a net loss. One can manipulate statistics however you want, but if you go to any place servicing low income people, you will hear very little English spoken.
My wife and most everyone in our social circle are immigrants, and every single one is here legally. None collect any type of social welfare, the kids all compete to get into the most prestigious colleges. Following the laws of the country that takes you in is very important, as is being a contributing member of society.
But, why the cruelty and lack of due process? Can't we merely treat our fellow humans as, humans? Or, is the cruelty the point?
The cruelty is result of Democrats whipping up mobs to protect their corruption.
Ah I see. So the feds were justified in shooting him 10 times while he was unarmed and defenseless on the ground. Tim Walz said something mean, so of course they had to shoot a random unarmed US citizen, and then lie about it. Good theory. Wait til Newsom sends his masked thugs to hunt down some maga folk in flannel. Welcome to North Korea.
Tragically, for Mr Pretti, this isn't merely another maga culture war. They killed him. He's dead. Can you tell me why?
The only mob I saw was the mob of masked agents on top of a nurse wielding a cell phone. After removing the gun he never pulled, they plugged him 10 times in the back. Sorry Dan, video don't lie:). No whataboutism allowed for this thuggery.
It's called conformation bias. No matter what you see, it only confirms your bias. So you conveniently ignore the way Walz and Frey were whipping up the mobs to get you that video. You're just the useful idiot to them.
Again, there’s a confirmation bias in what you’re seeing in the video. The question of accountability on behalf of the agents is certainly up for debate, but the underlying issue here is the environment the agents are working under, created by this utter nonsense of due process and humanity denied - it’s just an absurd notion. Moreover, Pretti violated every CCW protocol in the books; rules that are designed to keep the holder alive in the event of possible engagement with law enforcement. Walz lied, you’re being less than honest with yourself and Pretti acted recklessly - a terrible and lethal combination.
Due process should have occurred at entry. Believe me, we are much nicer on illegal immigration than anywhere I've seen. Due process could take many decades, and that was the intent.
The constitution is pretty clear on due process. Obama deported more people than Don, though some quibble over definitional issues. Regardless, I don't recall any executions of citizens, masks, tactical costumes, roving patrols, occupying cities, or the administration openly lying about fellow citizens. I'm not sure what's more terrifying about Dons approach. The actual executions, or our government immediately lying about the victims. They knew we would know they were lying, but they did it anyway, to make a point.
There was a time self-described conservatives claimed to believe in federalism, the 2nd amendment, and opposition to the concentration of power in the federal government/executive. We were told the 2nd amendment was there so we could defend ourselves from a possible future tyrannical federal government. How quaint.
Don has revealed their true belief. They actually like state violence, as long as it's targeted at those they hate.
If this is truly the road we choose to go down, isn't it inevitable that the other tribe adopts the same tactics, but has a different list of those they hate?
Good luck America.
I'm sorry Karl but crazy talk simply doesn't impress me. Might go over well on Bluesky but not with me. Executions blah blah blah.
I have to admit, I'm curious what term you would use for shooting an unarmed man in the back 10 times, followed immediately by lies from the state. Another day at the office?
I'm sorry I don't interact with some folks, good luck to you.
Case closed. Thank you.
I was musing. Based on the "new" rights newfound justification on the use of force by the state, clearly the Capitol police should have opened up on the insurrectionists on January 6th. They weren't merely being filmed, or yelled at, they were being beaten with confederate flagpoles... Instead, they did what professional forces are trained to do, de-escalate. ICE and CBP aren't making mistakes, they're following orders.
You simply can’t ignore what the mobs are doing to ordinary citizens as well. They are attacking hotels and scaring guests, they are protesting inside retail stores, they are accosting random people on the street because they look like ice agents, they have established checkpoints at intersections.
I must have missed the part in your discussion regarding the illegal immigrants who are using bogus papers to work. They pay state taxes, federal taxes, and into social security, knowing they will never be able to collect on these benefits, and it will all go to support US citizens. Boy that's really ripping off us citizens.
I'm no economist, but wouldn't clawing back some of the Billionaire tax breaks offset the cost of helping those evil immigrants? Nah…. probably better to foment class division among workers than strive for more income equality.
You're missing that constantly bringing in more cheap labor we drive down wages and push up the cost of housing, healthcare, and transportation. Pushing more American workers into having to rely on the government to make ends meet. Which in turn means we go after the rich for more taxes because the working class are artificially being kept below the point that they would be able to help shoulder the burden of taxes.
It's one giant ball of corruption. The sad part is that those economists you mention should be the ones pointing out that higher labor prices is what creates the incentive to invest more money into labor saving innovations. While turning a blind eye to illegal immigration only incentivizes more corruption, such as the rich spending more money lobbying our politician to do nothing to fix the broken system they are exploiting.
When did maga become concerned about corruption? I laughed out loud on that one:). The corruption y'all swallow from Don is breathtaking. Don's most prescient quote was: "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and I wouldn't lose any voters"... Keep on believin:)
You obvious disagree with everything written on "Commonplace". So why are you even here? Why sit around trolling people with middle school taunts, Karl? Does it make you feel bigger somehow? Are you getting paid?
What kind of pathetic life do you live that this is all you have to contribute to the world? What sad little ego makes someone spend their days hanging out in a comments section of a site they obviously disagree with, trying to prove they have the wits of a seventh grader?
I think this is the point where you predictable ask me if I would rather live in East Germany or some other nation at a point in time that is supposed to make me get all defensive. Which will it be this time? Will you go for something new to spice things up? Maybe this time you'll claim I would rather live in Cambodia under Pol Pot?
Well darn, I thought they were better than middle school:( I'll try harder.
I find it enlightening to hear the views of the self-styled "new" right, aka MAGA, even though your ideas are anything but new. Y'all are in charge of the entire federal government. You ARE the elite establishment, so it's important to understand where those in charge are coming from. It seems largely a forum of grievance and culture war tropes. A lotta complaints, a lotta folks upset the world has changed around them, forever casting about for someone to blame. Most seem willing to swallow Don's authoritarian moves, excusing virtually anything he does.
It's telling Don doesn't seek to enshrine anything in law to make change permanent, even his precious tariffs. Other than the BBB, which lines the pockets of his plutocrat buds while screwing the poor and putting him on a path to break his first term deficit record.
Oddly, even though the "new" right holds all the power, the policy wish list seems quite short. Other than railing against brown people, and passing bills to favor the rich, I don't detect much in the way of recommendations. That may be why you cotton to Oren, who plays kind of Winnie the Pooh in a tuxedo role, retrofitting an intellectual veneer on Don's insanity.
Enjoy your Saturday Dan.
You didn't answer the question. If you think Oren is just a whiny baby, then why are you on his site?
Besides, if you weren't such a racist then you would be name checking authoritarian dictators like Robert Mugabe, Augusto Pinochet, and Muammar Gaddafi. Get with the multiculturalism Karl.
Yeah I answered. I want to see what the folks in charge think. You're the elite Dan, MAGA controls the entire government. The grievance is transitory. It's comforting to be reminded that this is just a grievance movement, similar to what we see globally. It's a transformative time that unsettles those who fear change. Y'all will weather it, hang in there!
So identity theft and committing federal crimes.
I think it very unlikely immigrants will never collect social security. Once you gain legal status you qualify for SS and all past work contributions count towards your payment. There are also spousal benefits.
So your argument is that it is bad that people who commit crimes in order to work illegally don’t get the full benefit of their crimes?
Ryre,
I'm not talking about legality or morality, just facts and numbers.
If you're going to base an argument on statistics, you need to include all of them and not cherry pick. I was just trying to fill in a few of the empty cells in his verbal spreadsheet.
I don’t think you were just neutrally filling in information. Your “boy that’s really ripping off citizens” comment implied that you think, in fact, that the payroll taxes illegal aliens have at while working illegally somehow even things out and in fact that citizens are unduly benefiting from illegal aliens. The way I see it, illegal aliens are taking jobs that rightfully should go to Americans and driving down wages, and committing various ID-theft type crimes in order to do so. Any tax money that is collected and not returned to them in benefits at most only partly makes up for this loss. If a thief steals $10 and gives $3 back, that’s not much of a point in his favor.
I always laugh a little when people compare the percentages to attempt to prove huge swaths of people are this or that (I'm especially reminded of the bogus 81% of Somalis are committing fraud in Minnesota).
Taking a closer look at the percentages, if the highest percent from SIPP graph in the article, if 59% of all immigrants (discounting households since it doesnt break it down further) were on welfare compared to the 37% of US born citizens (again assuming population for households), that would mean that at most immigrants make up 22% of the population on at least one welfare program.
This is why I prefer concrete numbers to percentages. Helps tell a clearer story in my opinion.
Why would we accept even 1% of immigrants collecting some form of welfare? Unless you think the goal of immigration is to relieve poverty in other countries, this doesn’t make any sense.
Even setting aside that this stat is only concerned with the head of the household, not whether dependants are citizens (so even this higher amount I'm sure is far lower), I will simply not be mad about people getting the money and/or resources they need just to survive. You can feel however you want, but these are people who are here, for whatever reason, just trying to feed themselves and their kids. I think you need to redirect whatever you're feeling at the people in charge or sitting in their third mansion when you feel like there's not enough to go around to those who desperately need it.
This is not what immigration is supposed to be, or was ever intended to be. It’s supposed to be a reciprocal relationship. We offer immigrants a better life and they respond by becoming productive, tax paying members of society. This should not be controversial. It’s common sense.
I support a moratorium on all immigration, legal as well, until the millions here assimilate. We have a population of 342 million people; surely whatever job you need done can be done by an American citizen. Of course, you may have to pay an actually honest wage.
Very interesting analysis. What is also shocking is that 37% of US born headed households receive welfare benefits. What a horrible commentary on the income inequality in our country. And this will only get worse under Trump.
You've actually got that backwards. The growing inequality is being driven by "free trade" and mass immigration. We allow the rich to exploit foreigners both at home and abroad, including polluting foreign lands in ways that would those same businessmen thrown in prison here in America. That's what's driving the growing inequality.
We've practically allowed the recreation of segregation with our lack of immigration enforcement. Including replacing the old KKK with the new woke mobs. The result is that more and more of modern America is starting the resemble the old south. With all the corruption and inequality that went with it.
That’s a whole lot of claims without a shred of proof.
I've spent the last thirty years in construction. Watching as one trade after another was taken over by illegals. All of whom aren't covered by workers comp or unemployment. Add in that I'm from Arkansas and quite familiar with all the nastiness that running a two tiered system creates. So I have all the proof you could ever need and then some.
You make wide global claims from your limited experience and perspective. That is anecdotal and not proof.
The whole Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative ideologies that created the existing order is starting to collapse on all front. Yet, rather then come up with real reforms that would get control of immigration and change the rules so we quit rewarding non-allied nations for their corruption, you would rather try to belittle the opposition. Do you think that's actually going to work?
You think you can write off and belittle my years of experience and expertise in the construction industry. Do you think that will quell the growing frustrations that is driving our politics? It's not just on the political right that the center is collapsing. California is heading for wealth taxes. New Yorker's just elected a guy who wants the city to take over running grocery stores.
So what's your plan. We double down on free trade and mass immigration and that's supposed to bring down the debt and bring back world peace?
You are really something. Go back and read my original post. You want to argue with me about things I never said. I pointed out that it is sad that so many US born households are forced to collect benefits per the article. I then tied this to the fact that income inequality has grown dramatically over the last few decades. You then said I have it backwards (income inequality hasn’t grown?) and claimed lots of stuff including comparing a “woke mob” to the KKK. Where are the “woke mob” lynchings? I pointed out you didn’t provide proof (facts). Your years of experience in the construction business certainly give you insight into that part of the economy, but the rest of your commentary is from Fox or Newsmax and you assume I’m on the other side of these issues.
Inequality decreased slightly during Trump's first term due to the wage jump during covid (when many illegal immigrants left the country by the way). Disposable income is also probably doing a little better with the countrywide drop in rent.
What country wide drop in rent?
"put downward pressure on wages, keeping more employees of all kinds on assistance programs"
This is not by accident, it is by design. Often referred to as the "Democrat Plantation", it was the overall -- if hidden -- agenda of LBJ's Great Society. Create and perpetuate a permanent underclass with lifetime dependency on government handouts. Handouts only guaranteed as long as the Democrat party is in power.
California is on the bleeding edge. The dwindling self-sufficient middle class is all but gone, leaving a handful of ultra-wealthy to feed the machine along with a growing proletariat who will "own nothing and be happy." If you do own property, there is more than a zero chance the government will burn it down and take your land.
The cruel irony is that this is exactly what they continually vote for.
So you clearly oppose the "new" rights BBB, which transferred massive wealth from workin stiffs to the plutocrats?
Our family arrived in 1957 and at that time applying for or receiving ANY government benefits were grounds for deportation. You had to have a sponsor who was responsible to provide those benefits until you were naturalized.
Why do 37% of native born citizens receive "welfare?" Doesn't that seem ridiculously high? Is that due to politicians buying votes with taxpayer dollars?
40 years of depressed wages. Most people work. I think food stamps are the biggest program, the tax rebates too. Earned income tax credit, child tax credit, both given during negotiations for lower taxes at the high end.
What is missing from this analysis is an international comparison. Look at Denmark. If you are a non-citizen and try to access government benefits, the government will not let you. You have to qualify for benefits, even as a legal immigrant, and it can take up to 10 years to be treated equally to citizens. The rationale for these limits is simple; when you give money to immigrants, you are taking money away from citizens.
If the US had a Denmark-style program, every LEGAL immigrant could get health care, but they could not get any other benefit until they had worked for about 5 years. By the way, the 5-year mark also includes receiving educational benefits.
The welfare utilization data Camarota presents from the 2024 SIPP deserves serious attention—53% of immigrant households accessing at least one welfare program represents a genuine fiscal reality that policy makers cannot ignore. These costs are real, the programs are strained, and the distributional questions about who bears these burdens matter considerably. Any honest assessment of immigration policy must grapple with these numbers and the challenges they represent for both immigrants struggling to establish themselves economically and for native-born workers competing in the same labor markets.
Yet this analysis suffers from a familiar pattern: presenting costs in high resolution while rendering contributions invisible. Absent from this accounting are the payroll taxes immigrants pay into Social Security and Medicare (systems they often won't fully benefit from), the sales and property taxes funding state and local services, the business formation rates among immigrant entrepreneurs, and the consumer demand that sustains entire economic sectors. More fundamentally, the framework treats immigrants purely as economic units to be evaluated rather than as people whose children are Americans, the methodological choice to attribute U.S. citizens' benefits as "immigrant costs" reveals the analysis's ultimate purpose. When you exclude Social Security and Medicare (because they don't fit the "welfare" definition), dismiss the NAS study's mixed findings, and ignore wage effects research showing more complex dynamics than simple supply curves, you're not conducting neutral fiscal analysis. You're constructing a case for a predetermined conclusion: that less-educated immigration is categorically problematic. The costs are real and must be weighed, but this selective accounting cannot bear the weight of the policy prescriptions it supports.
All the modern economic jargon over illegal immigration is just attempts to gussy up the corruption. Setting legal immigration aside, bringing millions of foreigners that can be exploited only drives down wages and incentivizes corruption. Meanwhile rising wages are what incentivizes innovation.
I'm in construction in Texas, and I see this every day. In commercial construction, where it's much harder to get away with using illegal immigrants, almost all roofing is either metal or tile. In residential where you can still get away with using the illegals, roofing is still primarily asphalt shingles. The asphalt shingles are as labor intensive or even more so, but not anywhere near as durable. The only reason we keep doing it this way is that companies that invest in innovation would be put out of business by those hiring illegals then undercutting the competition's prices.
You can see this writ large with how tens of billions of dollar are going towards creating self driving cars rather then fruit picking machines. You can exploit illegal immigrants for farm labor but you have to be at least a legal resident to get a drivers license. This is also why the wealthy donors and our corrupt politicians keep the system broken. Legalize most of these people and they will climb down off those roofs and walk away from those farms.
Worst of all, assuming you did some type of amnesty without first proving that our laws really will be enforced going forward, all those businesses that were saving money by not providing workers comp or unemployment would just bid up the price of illegal immigrant labor yet again. Creating a massive pull factor and starting the cycle over again.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're identifying something crucial that gets buried in abstract economic debates: the real corruption is American employers choosing exploitation over innovation and fair wages.
Your construction example is damning, metal roofing innovation in commercial where enforcement exists, inferior asphalt shingles in residential where illegal labor can be exploited. The self-driving cars vs. fruit-picking machines comparison perfectly captures how selective enforcement distorts innovation incentives across the entire economy.
Here's what frustrates me about the current debate: they use selective welfare statistics and bogus crime data to demonize immigrants while completely ignoring the employer-side corruption you're witnessing daily. When companies undercutting competitors through illegal labor aren't paying proper payroll taxes, aren't carrying adequate insurance, aren't investing in safety or innovation, but the political narrative focuses on welfare costs and invented crime waves, that's not honest policy discussion. It's deliberate misdirection.
The construction company choosing exploitation over metal roofing innovation, the agricultural operation avoiding mechanization, these are choices made by Americans with power. But instead of confronting that corruption, we get fear-mongering designed to make immigrants themselves the problem.
Your amnesty concern is well-taken: legalization without genuine enforcement just resets the cycle. But that argues for confronting the American employers creating this market, not restricting immigration while leaving the exploitation incentives intact.
The costs are real. The innovation distortions are real. But using false crime narratives and selective welfare data to avoid discussing employer corruption isn't policy analysis, it's scapegoating.
There are lots of historical example of us getting stuck in corruption and then some coming along that forces change. Slavery, segregation, government micromanagement, overly generous and endless welfare program. This current round of corruption, which includes illegal, as well as mass immigration is also compounding the corruption that disconnecting trade from mutual defense and shared values has created. All of which has America and our allies hitting record levels of debt, having hollowed out our industrial bases, just when the boomers are hitting retirement and slowly beginning to draw down the big pile of money that we've all been using to paper over the cracks.
We've all been damned to live through interesting times. It's worth noting that once you start removing and blocking the corruption, things tend to improve quite rapidly. But to address one of your points, while we certainly need more worksite enforcement and higher penalties on employers that cheat, we still need to aggressively go after individual enforcement, at least a while yet. It will eventually become a waste of money to keep going after the long term illegals and then we can really discuss an amnesty for those willing to pay fines and accept that they will never be citizens.
The reason individual enforcement is very important is that there are literally endless ways to cheat. One of the reason residential is so bad is because homeowners don't report any of their costs to the IRS. In commercial, even getting the lawn mowed will need a 1099 form. Then there are plenty of ways for illegals to set up flee markets and make money either on goods brought in from China or stolen goods.
It's not for nothing that parts of America are starting to look a lot like the old south. Likewise it's not for nothing that growing numbers of people, particularly the young are starting to demand socialism. So either more economist, businessmen, and politicians are going to start being a lot more honest about the costs of illegal immigration, or they are going to find the country drifting further towards much higher taxes on the rich and a lot more socialistic policies winning at the ballot box. Kind of appeals to the history buff inside of me, but then again, I'm about 15 years from retirement so I hope we work through it quickly.
These are interesting times!
I appreciate you engaging seriously with the underlying dynamics rather than retreating to talking points. You're right that we're at a genuine inflection point where multiple forms of corruption have compounded, exploitative labor markets, offshoring without strategic consideration, fiscal trajectories colliding with demographic reality. And your observation about the political consequences is dead on: when people experience a rigged system, they don't carefully distinguish between market failures and government failures, they just demand someone break the game board.
Your point about individual enforcement is well-taken and more nuanced than I initially credited. The residential construction example is particularly illuminating, when homeowners themselves participate in the under-the-table economy, worksite enforcement alone won't cut it. The flee market networks, the cash economies, the endless creativity of evasion, you're right that this requires pressure from multiple angles, at least initially, to break the equilibrium.
Where I think we genuinely converge: the current system's biggest victims are people playing by the rules. The contractor who invests in training and safety equipment gets undercut by the one hiring exploitable labor. The worker who could command decent wages faces suppressed competition. The immigrant who waits years in legal channels watches others simply walk across. And increasingly, young people looking at housing costs, wage stagnation, and their parents' generation pulling up ladders conclude the whole system is corrupt, because substantial parts of it actually are.
Your historical examples are apt. Each of those systems slavery, segregation, regulatory capture, created beneficiary classes with strong incentives to preserve the status quo while externalizing costs onto everyone else. The current immigration/offshoring/debt complex has similar dynamics: certain industries profit enormously from exploitable labor and externalized costs while working-class communities bear the wage suppression, fiscal strain, and social disruption.
But here's what I need to emphasize: these are serious policy discussions that deserve actual debate, but they can't happen in a climate where immigrants are demonized as criminal savages murdering the country. That's not accidental rhetoric. It's deliberately convenient for the exploiters you're identifying.
When the debate becomes about invented crime waves and welfare statistics stripped of context, we never get to the conversation you and I are having about employer enforcement, innovation incentives, worksite penalties, sequencing of legalization, or trade policy. The construction companies profiting from exploitation, the agricultural operations avoiding mechanization, the entire business model built on selective law enforcement, they're perfectly happy to have the debate focused on scary immigrant criminals rather than American employer corruption.
Here's where I remain concerned about the restrictionist-only approach: if we dramatically reduce immigration without confronting employer incentives and enforcement structures, we risk either (1) those same exploitation dynamics finding new populations, or (2) rapid offshoring of remaining industries, or (3) inflation shocks without adjustment time. None of which actually fixes the corruption, it just relocates it.
But you're making me reconsider the sequencing. Maybe the political economy requires demonstrating serious enforcement first, including individual enforcement that breaks the current equilibrium, before comprehensive reform becomes credible. If people believe the system will just recreate exploitation under new categories, they'll oppose any pathway to legal status, however sensible economically.
The socialism point is crucial and underdiscussed. When young people see housing costs driven by speculation, wages suppressed by exploitable labor, healthcare costs inflated by cartels, education costs exploded by bloat, retirement security evaporating, and then hear lectures about "market efficiency", of course they conclude capitalism itself is broken. They're not wrong that the system is rigged; they're just misdiagnosing which parts are market failures versus which are corruption and selective enforcement.
Your 15-year timeline matters here. We probably have one, maybe two election cycles to demonstrate that rules will actually be enforced and corruption confronted before the political center collapses entirely. The young socialists and the MAGA populists agree the system is rigged, they just disagree about remedies. If the remaining defenders of market economics and rule of law don't start honestly confronting the corruption you're describing rather than hiding behind false crime narratives and selective statistics, they'll lose the argument by default.
So here's where I think we might actually agree: (1) aggressive enforcement is necessary to break current equilibria, including individual enforcement until the system resets, (2) employer penalties need to make exploitation unprofitable, not just illegal, (3) eventual pathways to legal status only make sense after demonstrating enforcement credibility, (4) trade policy needs rethinking when it creates incentives to offshore rather than innovate, and (5) if we can't have honest conversations because the debate is poisoned with demonization designed to protect exploiters, none of these policy solutions will ever be implemented.
The false crime narratives and selective welfare data aren't just wrong, they're functional. They deflect from the real issues you're witnessing daily and prevent exactly the honest policy conversation about enforcement, innovation, and rule of law that might actually threaten the corrupt equilibrium.
I want to leave this on a positive note but yet point one more thing out for you to ponder. There is a reason we're having this discussion where we're having it. We both know that the mainstream media is pretty much garbage. When it is not ideological nitwit reporters, it's corporate stooges yammering on and trying to force out narrative rather than informative journalism or debate. But have you really internalized that?
A couple quit examples would be the whole "good people on both sides" cherry picked quote that is still referenced to claim Trump praised the white supremist. Despite the fact that he had clearly stated just before that line that he condemned those groups. Then there was the time he said "MS 13 gang members were animals" but the new media spun it to make it sound like he said all immigrants were animals.
I point those out because Joe Rogan did a great interview with JD Vance where Vance openly talked about sitting with political donors who said they didn't want immigration fixed because they knew it was saving them money on labor. But the chance of the mainstream media running that clip over and over again are basically zero. I include outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal.
I'll hammer this home by pointing out that I used to have a subscription to the Washington Post until they got TDS when Trump ran the first time. They openly bragged about assigning 21 reporters to look through every business deal he had ever done. The problem was that they assigned 0 reporters to look into the Clinton Global Initiative, which was in the news for having to refile multiple years of its taxes.
I had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal right up until Trump was re-elected and every article, no matter what the subject, turned into another anti tariff screed. It got so bad it reminded me of the old jokes about how to tell the difference between a fundamentalist and a zealot. A fundamentalist can't change his mind. A zealot can't change the subject.
Those talks and debates you wish were taking place, are in fact taking place. But they certainly won't be reported in the corporate owned media. Those serious conversations are happening in places like Commonplace.org, but not coming from all those big money supported think tanks like the CATO institute.
Not to pick on CATO but they are famous for pumping out warnings for how a minimum wage hike will spur employers to automate, but flat our refuse to entertain that argument in reverse when pumping out articles about all the supposed benefits of ignoring illegal immigration.
But as I said, I want to leave this on a positive note. So here goes. Less than 30% of the population believe anything coming from the mainstream media. That's even more true of the younger generations. Podcasters are increasingly where people are getting their information from. Long form interviews are some of the most watched podcasts. Long form interviews are the complete opposite of the politics that has developed over the last thirty years. So more and more people today have learned to tune out all these poll tested sound bites, but you'll never hear that from the mainstream media.
WaPo just laid off 300 reporters. The main stream media is predictably claiming that it was because we the people don't want real news. I know why and when I cancelled my subscription. It was when they switched from real news to ideological nitwits.
Awesome, take care.
Here is simple math.
A median Hispanic family earns around $70,000 a year. Let us model that family over a lifetime (from birth, working age, and death). We will use a two adult two child model of the household (or two lifetime individuals).
Counting only individual entitlements (education/daycare, medical insurance subsidies, and retirement benefits) each of the individuals in this household has a net fiscal DEFICIT of around $1M. If we include an even per capita assessment of non-entitlement government expenses (infrastructure, policing, military) then it rises to over $1.5M per member.
That is conservative. Its higher in blue states with higher social spending.
And that's someone making $70,000 a year! No medicaid. No snap. No cash welfare. Just mediocre below average earnings, progressive taxation, and a bloated government budget.
Let's keep our eye on the ball as Don's authoritarian project marches forward. There was a bigger story out of Minneapolis recently as masked federal agents gunned down unarmed citizens (aka "domestic terrorists" according to our government) under the guise of rounding up violent brown criminals. Plus the UAE sheikh crypto corruption caper that the WSJ broke. A half billion "investment" into World Liberty and presto!-a cool $187 mill directly in Don's pocket, $31 mill in Witcoff's pocket, followed by the chip deal, a deal that had been held up given concern over potential transfers to China. Commonplace might muster a thought?
Good luck America.
"More than half of immigrant-headed households use at least one welfare program today. The reason is simply that a large share of immigrants have modest levels of education, and their resulting low incomes allow them to qualify for aid."
This a) is not necessarily "illegal" and b) does show that even these immigrants do not contribute more to the rest of us than not. If it IS illegal, that could be enforced and if enforcement means that some immigrants self deport, that's an efficient outcome.