Immigration and jobs.

• Author: Eielson, Olivia
• Position: Population AND ITS DISCONTENTS - Letter to the Editor

Many thanks for publishing Herman Daly's excellent article. I wonder, though, if Robert Ayres read it. Daly points out that industrialized countries could supply their own labor needs if all work paid a living wage with safe working conditions. Ayres assumes it's okay for America to offer jobs so ill-paid and unsafe that only the very desperate would take them. (Americans who refuse such jobs are "pampered.") Ayres also claims that immigrants "pay more in taxes than they get back in social services." This is highly debatable, and debated. For instance, the Summer 2004 issue of Californians for Population Stabilization's newsletter says, "How can an immigrant family in California, with two or three children and an average income of under $25,000 a year, be an economic asset when the annual cost of educating three children is $21,600--not counting free lunch and breakfast programs and after-school help, federal subsidies of state and county programs for immigrant health care, welfare, crime, incarceration, and housing, or the billions the feds give to private nonprofit groups for language assistance, rights litigation, and hundreds of special programs for indigent and disabled immigrants?"

There is also the price paid by workers in areas where immigrants compete for jobs...