Jobs and Immigration

The labor force equals the sum of unemployed plus employed.  The unemployment rate equals the unemployed divided by the labor force.  If the labor force is increasing rapidly at the same jobs that workers aren't finding work, the unemployment rate will increase.  Does immigration add more to population than to employment?

Mr. Joe Guzzardi, has written an excellent blog post,

about how American Workers are displaced and advocates immigration reform.

Among other policy idea, he recommends suspending the open-door immigration policy by eliminating temporary visas to workers who will work in the ag area as a virtually free way of increasing domestic employment.  Mr. Guzzardi blogs here. 

 

I'm a big believer in Global-Price Factor Equalization. That is, if factors (land, labor, and capital) are free to move across borders, then prices and wages will be equal across borders.  In my view, immigration represents G-PF Equalization working.

In behavior economics, there's something called the endowment effect.  I think immigration issues heighten this effect.  Citizens born in the US think that they were endowed with ownership and want to protect their stake in the country.  Can a person really choose where they will be born?

Immigration brings all of the stereotypes to the surface.  In the end, I think, wages and prices will stabilize and immigration will dramatically decrease as their will be no incentive for factors to move.  How long this will take remains to be seen.