Robots Undercut the Case for More Immigrants

Immigration Reform: What problem are they solving?

Robots Undercut the Case for More Immigrants

Gus Ruelas/Reuters

David Frum | The Daily Beast

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With technology destroying jobs for humans, adding tens of millions of new immigrants to America will only deepen inequality and poverty.

Before we talk about immigration, let’s talk about robots. The next 10 years are expected to see a revolution in the application of Artificial Intelligence to every day tasks.

• Cars and trucks may soon drive themselves.

• New checkout machines will hugely reduce the need for retail clerks.

• The need for human labor in construction, meatpacking, and food preparation seems certain to contract.

• Most economists expect that the next decade will see downward pressure upon wages reach into the professions.

• what junior architects do will be robotized.

  • Ditto bookkeepers and accountants.

  • Ditto pharmacists.

  • Ditto lawyers.

But President Obama's most important policy proposal to Congress—the Schumer-Rubio immigration reform—would exacerbate the trends he deplores.

Immigration reform's most fundamentally means a massive new influx of low-wage workers.

• The United States already receives between 700,000 and 800,000 legal immigrants a year.

• Including the newly legalized, Schumer-Rubio will admit potentially 30 million lawful residents to the United States over the next decade, triple the admissions expected under current law.

• Many business leaders argue that the United States needs to attract more highly skilled immigrants.

• Schumer-Rubio will continue to hold the door widely open to the least skilled.

The foreign-born population of the United States is

• nearly twice as likely as the native-born to be poor.

• four times more likely not to have completed high school.

• 50 percent more likely to depend on a major social assistance program

More immigration therefore almost certainly would mean

• more poverty and intensified inequality even if all else held constant.

• still heavier downward pressure on wages

• even higher returns to capital investment and to unique skills

Schumer-Rubio will exert an even more extreme pro-poverty, pro-inequality effect.

• More immigrants mean more people who will need social assistance. Low-wage immigrants need Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits, Section 8 housing vouchers, and school lunches for their children.

Democrats and Republicans concerned by poverty and inequality—and who resist the social welfare measures necessitated by poverty and inequality—need to think harder about this question:

When they call for immigration reform, what problem are they solving? What kind of society are they building?

Read the whole story at The Daily Beast

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