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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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If immigrants were coming in across all income levels in proportion to the host country, then it would be economically equal to births. But instead,:

Immigrants account for 19% of workers overall, but 32% of those in occupations with median earnings below $30,000 per year (compared with 16% in occupations paying more than $60,000 per year). Such government figures also presumably underreport the total impact of illegal immigration in the labor market’s lower-wage segments. Immigration has provided the margin between a labor market in which employers would feel constant pressure to find and retain workers—especially lower-wage ones—and the labor market as it has operated, in which they can offer the same low wages and poor conditions for decades on end.

https://americancompass.org/jobs-americans-would-do/

Yes. The article goes on, and notes

Maintaining the current immigration level, but skewing its composition toward workers who will compete in the labor market’s high-wage segments, will tend to strengthen worker power in the market’s low-wage segments even more quickly than would a policy of restricting immigration broadly.

This is not an argument against immigration — it's actually one for controlled immigration. I don't think that this is what Trump's current policies have in mind, though.

By the way, the main issue with high-wage segments is that they have entry control — you (probably, I think) need a degree in law, medicine, from a US school … in order to enter that segment. In other words, these segments have active import restrictions. Likewise, illegal immigration cannot happen into high-wage segments — you may get away with working illegally on a construction site, but as a registered medical doctor? No chance.