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I was on one of these busses that was filled with migrants sometime around the beginning of the year. The bus was traveling from San Antonio to Dallas. It was a normal Greyhound bus, and I had purchased a ticket. When I got to the bus station, there was some kind of (possibly Christian) charity group distributing boxed lunches. Most passenger wore stickers on their chests listing their names and final destinations.
I talked a bit to the guy sitting next to me (I speak Spanish). I'll call him L. L was from Venezuela, but had been living the past few years in Ecuador. He had a wife and 2 kids remaining in South America. He'd crossed north through Central America and then Mexico through some combination of foot, car, and rail. Finally, he'd arrived at the US border a few days prior. He proceeded to cross-over around Laredo, TX, then surrendered himself to American immigration agents. L was detained for a few days in some kind of immigration facility, then discharged to the streets with an (online) court date for a year in the future. Someone told L he should proceed to some kind of homeless shelter, so that's what he did. He stayed there for a few days, and then someone came and offered him (and other migrants) a free, 1-way bus ticket to the American city of their choosing. L chose Indianapolis, because he had some relatives living there. Some days later, he was escorted into a shuttle with other migrants, transported by shuttle to the Laredo bus station, handed a stack of bus tickets (there's no direct route from Laredo to Indianapolis!), and encouraged to board the bus. His first stop was San Antonio. L told me he'd worked as an auto mechanic before, and that he hoped to find similar work in Indianapolis, but that he was willing to work at any kind of job.
A few points:
Reading this I wish L the best of luck in making a successful life in the USA. Economic migrants (of all stripes) are one of the few groups for whom their version of the American Dream is still a possibility.
That's the equivalent of "I met a poor person who genuinely needed a car, and the US budget is obviously able to handle giving out a car, so we should buy cars for every poor person who needs a car."
Even if the immigrant isn't a criminal and can get a job at a reasonable salary, the problem is the country only has resources for a limited number of immigrants. Because the drain on resources is distributed as a zillion dust specks, if you peer at any specific example it will always seem like that particular example couldn't possibly drain enough resources to matter, no matter where you put the limit. But cumulatively, doing that ends up meaning completely open borders and no limit at all.
Or in other words, the sympathy for the individual immigrant is a concentrated benefit, while the drain on resources is a distributed harm, so it's always going to look like we should add just one more immigrant because we don't balance concentrated benefits and distributed harms very well.
I fail to see how this type of immigrant is a resource drain at almost any scale. He's hungry and eager to work, has a skill, is willing to learn english (which I'll take as signaling the desire to assimilate). The job market is tight. Where's the downside? Yes at some point we don't need more workers but we're several million workers short of that at the moment.
Perhaps in a more perfect world we'd have an elaborate visa system like Canada to only let in the immigrants like this. But in some respects the journey he made was the elaborate filter, and seems to be doing a somewhat decent job. I trust the government to do almost nothing properly, so maybe a difficult journey works just as well in practice as letting the government pick immigrants.
The downside is the (alleged) corrosion of social fabric and other intangibles. On a purely material level, working age immigrants with useful skills are pretty much a free lunch.
Only if they pay enough taxes to cover their use of government services. Which if they have kids they very likely don't.
a) workers create value for society beyond what they pay in tax to the government.
b) their children are also going to grow up to be taxpayers, so if you're going to consider the cost of their education you also have to consider the benefits of their labor.
c) the specific scenario mentioned above is a man alone (yes, he has a family he has ambitions to bring to the US, but they're not in the country and drawing benefits, and if they do that's going to be another working adult)
Ah, that wonderful abstraction, "society". Show me, if I'm the guy having to pay all the taxes to pay for their kid's schools and playgrounds and free lunches and whatever, how that value gets to me?
Or they'll be welfare recipients. But I think it's better to consider this on a current cash basis, the future being notoriously hard to predict.
If society is too abstract, substitute "L's employer and customers".
L becomes an auto-mechanic, lowering the cost of auto-mechanic services by $0.01, saving you $0.25 over the next 20 years and more than offsetting the $0.10 you paid for his child's education. L also contributes to aggregate demand as a consumer, raising demand for your labor and causing your salary to rise $0.005.
2nd gen Hispanic immigrants have earnings significantly higher than their parents.
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