Discussion regarding Peter Irwin's "What's Behind the Wall" Talk

February 8, 2019. Peter Irwin presented "What's Behind The Wall?" Peter examined the preoccupation with a wall on our southern border, the rationale for its need and the underlying values at issue. 

Following Peter's talk, I (Ira Glickstein) made the first Comment from the Audience, commending him for a well-prepared and presented talk, but noting my disagreement with most of it.

The day after his presentation, Peter initiated an interactive email discussion with me and he has graciously given me permission to share his (and my) emails verbatim on this Blog. I hope others will chime in with your Comments by using the Comment feature of this Blog. advTHANKSance!

For clarity, Peter's email text is in BLUE, Ira's text is in RED.

PETER to IRA 2/09/2019

Hi Ira,

As a follow-up to your point yesterday, I'm curious - what would your immigrant cutoff be?  

In 2017, we had 44,410,000 immigrants living in US (about 14% of our population), according to our Census Bureau.  But 25 countries or territories had a higher immigrant share of their population according to the PEW Research Center.  According to a report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), our country had the highest number of asylum applications (33,000) in 2017.

Cheers,

Peter

IRA to PETER 2/11/2019

Peter: I’d admit about 1,000,000 immigrants per year. Mostly on the basis of some well-recognized benefit to the US (need for their capabilities), but also people related to law-abiding citizens and legal residents already here.

If there was a special emergency where the government of some country was discriminating against some minority group of people due to their religion, race, or economic status, I might temporarily go above 1,000,000 per year if that group of people had some special capabilities that would benefit the US.

When my grandparents immigrated here from Europe in the early 1900’s, they did so legally, passed health checks, had sponsors who were already here, etc. Also, they came at a time when the US needed workers, including non-college educated blue collar labor. Now, with industrialization increasingly automated, and, with artificial intelligence and computers increasingly able to duplicate most repetitive, rule-based, work, including much white collar labor, we no longer need much of that type of labor.

As I said in my comment after your talk, I enjoyed it, but did not agree with much of it.

Love, Ira

PETER to IRA 2/11/2019 3:00PM

Hi Ira,

Thanks for your reply. … 

I certainly agree that those who would predictably benefit our country should be admitted.  (Note that many legal and illegal immigrants from the south come here intending to link up with family members already here.)  But what should be the basis of our "benefit" prediction and your 1 million/yr limit?  There are many businesses in the US that depend upon cheap labor that few citizens are willing to do - e.g., picking crops, home-care for indigent.  An owner of a company recently told me that he could not find low-pay workers in his area and might lose his business (I recall the conversation but cannot recall the person or his business).  With unemployment so low, how many jobs that our able citizens would like to fill do you believe that illegal immigrants take away?  If your idea of those who would benefit our country envisions immigrants with higher education, won't such people compete with our educated citizens and cause unemployment among them?

Note that I did present your pragmatic argument in my talk:

Against Lady Liberty’s broad invitation, the practical argue - “What if everyone did?”  Should we have no limitation on immigration?  We cannot take in every sparrow fallen from a tree, every tired and poor person “yearning to breathe free.”  We would be over-run with immigrants, as we already are, and the character of our country would be changed.  We must control the rate of immigration and wall out those who would violate our laws by entering illegally. 

One other relevant issue is the increasing percentage of our population that is elderly and retired.  Absent an increase in procreation or immigration, we will have insufficient tax revenue to fund Social Security.  Increasing our national debt potentiates this problem, and the windfall in lower taxes and business profits going to the wealthiest will eventually have to be paid by our children and grandchildren.  Trump has enriched his billionaire friends at our expense.  Yet that misguided audience comment from the back focused on a few welfare dollars going to the poorest among us!  How easily attentions can be misdirected.

Best wishes,

Peter

IRA to PETER 2/12/2019 10:30AM

Peter: Before we continue this interesting conversation, I’d like your permission to post our emails, verbatim, on a Blog I created for The Villages Philosophy Club last September.  

That Blog, https://vilphil.blogspot.com/, has not had much use lately and I’ve been thinking of discontinuing it. However, a spirited, collegial conversation about a topic, immigration and border security,  that is quite current and important and controversial, could spark interest. 

Please reply with your permission. 

advTHANKSance 

Love, Ira 

PETER to IRA 2/12/2019 5:52PM

Go for it! 

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OK - THE COLLEGIAL DISCUSSION IS ON!

The text above is where we stand as of 2/12/2019.

I (Ira) plan to reply to Peter tomorrow and we'll go on from there. 

Meanwhile, others who wish to join in may scroll to the bottom of this Blog posting, click on the Comment hypertext, and post your reactions. Let's continue our high-level discussion!

Love (and respect) Ira

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IRA to PETER 2/12/2019 8:58PM

Peter:

THANKS for giving your permission for me to put our email discussion on this Blog https://vilphil.blogspot.com/ .  I have just done so.

In your recent email you say, in part:

“… There are many businesses in the US that depend upon cheap labor that few citizens are willing to do - e.g., picking crops, home-care for indigent.  An owner of a company recently told me that he could not find low-pay workers in his area and might lose his business (I recall the conversation but cannot recall the person or his business).  With unemployment so low, how many jobs that our able citizens would like to fill do you believe that illegal immigrants take away? …”

Indeed! A major benefit of increased undocumented immigration into the US (and Western Europe as well as other stable countries with booming economies) is what you call “cheap labor”. 

(However, I do not think our current 3.7% unemployment is what you call “so low”. It should be lower, perhaps 1-2%)

Who benefits from “cheap labor” immigrants? Well, businesses that deal in farming, home-care, and others that use lots of relatively low skilled labor, as well as the customers of those businesses who get good products and services at lower cost. 

For example, my wife and I live at Freedom Pointe Independent Living which uses lots of wonderful service-type labor, mostly recent immigrants as well as “minorities”. They prepare and serve our meals, clean our apartments, maintain our facilities, do  landscaping, and so on. I don’t think any of the service-labor at Freedom Pointe are actually undocumented, but the presence of undocumented and documented immigrants in Florida undoubtedly depresses the wages Freedom Pointe has to pay to our documented service workers. We love our servers who work very hard, very competently, very honestly, and lovingly. Our excellent cleaning lady, from South America, had to wait many years for her husband to legally join her in the US, which he did last year. He works two jobs. They have a son who is doing well at a local school. 

If not for these recent immigrants, American citizens would have to be hired at higher hourly pay, labor costs would rise, corporate profits would go down, we’d have to pay more, and the quality of our services might decline.  So, count me as a beneficiary, if only indirectly, from the 10 to 20 million undocumented people at work in the US, 99% of them honest, hard-working, loving people. 

But, who gets penalized? Well, American citizens who, for whatever reason, have limited qualifications, and can only do “cheap labor”-type jobs. And, we taxpayers are penalized because our taxes have to be used to subsidize low-skilled citizens and residents who can’t (or won’t) find jobs, as well as the policing required to keep the peace in the depressed, often violent neighborhoods where they are forced to live. Absent so many immigrants who work hard for low pay, and absent the undocumented who work hard for low pay because they are afraid to complain because they may be deported, companies would have to pay more and improve working conditions to attract American-citizen employees. It is great that “minority” workers now have the lowest unemployment levels in history, but wages are stagnant. They (African-Americans and Latino-Americans and others) are the real victims of excessive, undocumented, immigration.

You continue: “… If your idea of those who would benefit our country envisions immigrants with higher education, won't such people compete with our educated citizens and cause unemployment among them?...”  

Yes, of course immigrants with higher educations do compete with college-graduate American workers, and do depress our wages a bit.  I’m a retired engineer with a PhD who worked with quite a few first-generation immigrants, but I never had a problem getting and keeping my job and my good salary. Overall, highly-educated immigrants add value to our country, and work smart and hard. They are often good entrepreneurs, so I welcome them despite the small hit to my salary. 

The key point is that automation and artificial intelligence computer systems that cause unemployment among the low-skilled by replacing lots of blue-collar and white-collar jobs that involve repetitive work require more highly-educated engineers.

In the pretty-near future, more and more low-skill workers will be replaced by automation, driving up unemployment. At the same time, we will need more high-skill workers!

You mention “Lady Liberty's broad invitation”. Yes, the final chart in your fine  talk was a photo from the Statue of Liberty of the beautiful words of Emma Lazarus:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" [emphasis added]

As I pointed out in my Comment after your talk, those moving words end with “the golden door”.

Well, I’ve never seen a functional DOOR that was not firmly installed in a WALL of some type. 

Thus the “...  tired, … poor, … huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were intended, by Emma Lazarus, to pass through a GOLDEN DOOR in our BEAUTIFUL and SECURE WALL, and, if qualified, be legally admitted to what many of us believe to be the greatest country in the world, our experiment in a great free republic. I think, absent a special crisis, about 1,000,000 deserving people should  be welcomed thru that wall every year, to enhance and preserve our freedom.

Love, Ira 

PETER TO IRA 2/14/2019 11:25 PM

Greetings Ira,

With grandchildren visiting, I have little time to reply.  But you raise many points worth discussing, and I enjoy the engagement.

1.  Most economists think 4-5% is a reasonable expectation for unemployment.  Your suggestion that it should be 1-2% begs the question, Why?  Let's consider why some are unemployed and the consequences of near full employment.

• Who is unemployed - youths first joining the workforce, the incapacitated, the unfit, selective job seekers, those in training, those in transition between jobs, those who choose not to work (e.g., a parent who prefers to focus on child rearing, especially pre-school), etc.  Do you think these folks amount to no more than 2% of the unemployed?
• Near full employment prevents growth - career advancement requires some unemployed to replace employed.  Do you feel that people should be forced to take jobs below their skill level or jobs that do not afford them a living wage for their families or jobs that force both parents to work?  (Note that communism promises full employment but fails to provide motivation to perform better.)
• The more people at work, the more competition in hiring, the higher the wages, the greater the inflationary pressure that lowers everyone's income but causes special suffering among the poor.  Is there not an inflection point at which employment for the few left unemployed causes hardship for the majority by virtue of higher prices?

2.  Who gets penalized by "cheap labor" immigrants?  It is not clear to me that there are many unemployed citizens willing to take the sorts of jobs that undocumented (cheap labor) immigrants take - e.g., picking crops and home care for indigents.  Those citizens that do take such jobs often do not perform as well, both because they feel they deserve better employment or better pay and because they often do so in transition to better jobs.  Thus, they are transient and a headache to employers.  The undocumented cannot get better jobs without bringing themselves to the attention of ICE and risking deportation.  Thus, they are more reliable and devoted long-term employees, thankful that they can find work which they could not find in their home country.  They are often breadwinners sending back money to support a coterie of relatives in their home country.  Recognizing the position of these workers, employers often take advantage of them, not providing health insurance, not paying taxes, and demanding long work hours at a low wage for difficult jobs.  Begrudging such poor people the subsistence they have earned by evading authorities and undergoing risks and hardships that we never face reflects to me a lack of compassion.  They threaten no one.  Why not offer all illegal immigrants currently within our borders a path to citizenship?  They have suffered enough.  Why find them less deserved of empathy than those who, having the luck and special opportunity to be born in our country, did not prepare themselves for any better than the menial employment performed by illegal immigrants?  Is tribal loyalty of more import than the brotherhood of mankind?  And where is the concern for the far larger percentage of our countrymen being burdened by a national debt run up by the rich to enhance their own percentage of our GDP pie?  The question that is of far greater import to a sense of justice -- Who gets penalized by tax reductions benefiting the wealthy?

3.  If citizens want higher paying jobs and feel out-competed for low-paying jobs, will it not force them to better prepare for employment?  Will this not better adapt them for the higher technical skills that automation will require?  Ought we not focus on creating a more educated populace rather than on enabling the poor to take low-paying employment?

4.  The golden door is a metaphor for the promise of a valuable opportunity.  It is the opposite of a wall, which is a barrier to opportunity.  The Statue of Liberty invites all who seek opportunity to our shores.  Being born here, we have done nothing to earn this opportunity.  We have just been lucky.  Thus, it is incumbent upon us not to be selfish in preventing others from sharing in our good fortune.  We ought not be foolish in absorbing so many that the fundamental character of our nation is altered, which is the danger that Israel as a democracy faces simply by losing the procreation race within their borders, not to mention acceding to a "right of return" (a non-existent right not afforded any vanquished tribe or nation and certainly not due for those who protract a state of war and have a stated ambition to annihilate Israel as a state).  We do need to limit legal immigration and minimize illegal entry.  But we ought not be stingy in setting our limit.  I do not know how you arrive at 1 million per year and would be interested in a rational basis for deciding this limit.

Warm wishes,

Peter

IRA TO PETER 2/16/2019 5:01 PM

Peter: I too am enjoying this collegial email engagement with you, and I agree that visiting grandchildren take absolute priority over any political disagreement we may have!

Now that our conversation is online and I have notified members via my weekly email, I expect more Philosophy Club members will read our wise words and perhaps add their opinions at https://vilphil.blogspot.com/2019/02/discussion-regarding-peter-irwins-whats.html

1. Misunderstanding of US Unemployment Statistics: Your most recent email seems to me to conflict with my  understanding of who counts as “unemployed” in Official US statistics.

You write, in part:

“Who is unemployed - youths first joining the workforce, the incapacitated, the unfit, selective job seekers, those in training, those in transition between jobs, those who choose not to work (e.g., a parent who prefers to focus on child rearing, especially pre-school), etc.  Do you think these folks amount to no more than 2% of the unemployed?” [Emphasis added]

NONE OF THE PEOPLE IN CATEGORIES I’VE EMPHASIZED ABOVE ARE COUNTED AS UNEMPLOYED !!!

According  the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed) US Government website:

“People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.” [Emphasis added]

That website gives a  number of examples of people who are NOT counted as “unemployed” even though they do not have a job.

According to the Official US Government rules, the INCAPACITATED and UNFIT are NOT “currently available for work”! The same is true for those in TRAINING or who choose to focus on CHILD REARING!

Indeed, in bad economic times some people of working age may be unable to find a job and become so discouraged that they stop looking. They too are not Officially unemployed because they have NOT “actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks”.

Do you remember when, a year or two ago, the economy and job market ticked up, and some of the formerly discouraged job seekers started actively looking for work again, Official unemployment went UP a bit due to the increase in job seekers.

My wife and I had full-time jobs when we married, and, although from that time to the present there have been weeks, and months, and years, when one or both of us did not have a paycheck from a full-time job, NEITHER OF US HAVE EVER BEEN OFFICIALLY UNEMPLOYED!

For example, while employed in New Jersey I was hired for a job in in New York and it took a couple weeks to relocate. That transition period did NOT count as Official unemployment.

When our first child came along, my wife quit her full-time job to raise our baby. That did not count as Official unemployment because she was NOT “currently available for work” and NOT “actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks”.

She did not take a full-time job while our three children were young, but spent the time caring for them, and going back to college to earn her Masters in Computer Science. NONE of that time counted as Official unemployment!

She then got a full-time job at the College, and, a year later, at IBM.

After nearly two decades of full-time employment, my wife quit to help care for one of our adult daughters, who had become disabled. That did NOT count as Official unemployment because was NOT “currently available for work” and NOT “actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks”. And, of course, our disabled daughter was NOT Officially unemployed because she was NOT “currently available for work” and NOT “actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks”.

A couple decades ago, after we  both retired from full-time jobs, we were no longer available nor looking for work, so, like most Philosophy Club members we are NOT Officially unemployed!

BOTTOM LINE: Yes, I think 1-2% is a good goal for the Official unemployment rate. Your suggestion of 4-5% is unreasonable, IMHO.

2. Jobs American citizens are unwilling to take. You seem to think I (and other taxpayers) should have to pay to support people who refuse to take jobs that are somehow beneath their dignity (and that foreigners should be imported to fill those jobs you call “cheap labor”).

Well, pardon me, but I’ll be damned before I willing pay to support any able-bodied person of normal working age who would rather sponge off me (and you and everyone else in the Philosophy Club) than do an honest day’s work for a day’s pay.

You seem to be on the side of employers who love to have foreigners (both documented and undocumented) around to allow them to keep wages “cheap” and working conditions rough and profit off foreign “cheap labor”.

I’ll gladly pay to support our disabled, dislocated, unlucky citizens, but not a dime for the lazy, privileged picky people who refuse to work available, legal jobs.

And, who are the real victims of excessive immigration to satisfy “cheap labor” job needs? It is largely those American citizens who, for whatever reason, are qualified only for what you call “cheap  labor”  jobs. And these are proportionately more “African-Americans” and “Latino-Americans” than those of us who are called “White-Americans”.

Excessive immigration rewards the meanest and cheapest employers.

Reduced immigration and resultant shortage of labor will encourage employers to raise currently stagnant wages and improve working conditions.

3. Statue of Liberty “Golden Door” Metaphor?

You seem to believe Emma Lazarus was waxing metaphorical when she wrote those beautiful words displayed at the Statue of Liberty. Well, perhaps, but why was she so specific as to say ”Golden DOOR” rather than “Golden Opportunity” or ”Golden Opening” or “Golden secret entrance to the US” or some other image?

Nope, she knew we had to pick and choose among the “tired … poor … huddled masses” and be sure to admit only those who were healthy, had sponsors to assure they would not be a burden, and would be most likely to benefit our Country. 

My grandparents told me that when they were being processed through Ellis Island they saw some immigrants turned back for health reasons. Indeed, the steamship companies were required to take rejected immigrants back to Europe, and, for that reason, the steamship companies refused to take unqualified people to the US in the first place.

4. Number of Immigrants per Year.

You question my suggested limit of about 1,000,000 per year (with more to cover specific crisis situations). What would your limit be?

Love, Ira 

16 Feb 2019. Peter Irwin has informed me  that he prefers to self-publish his side of our discussion using the Comment feature of this Blog. Therefore, I invite everyone who has been following our discussion to scroll down to the Comments, click on the "Comments" hypertext, read what Peter and I (and others who may join the conversation) have to say, and post your own ideas. Love, Ira