Illegal Immigration: It's About Power.

trixare4kids said:

Go ahead and shoot the messenger if it makes you feel better, but I haven't found one incorrect point above.
I went through them one at a time. They all checked out as true.

Click to expand...

Yeah, because we all know we can trust your intellectual honesty when it comes to such things.</sarcasm>

Captain Adverse said:

Here is a video I ran across as a Prager U. advertisement before another YouTube video I wanted to watch came on.



Points of interest:

1. Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration, and fought to keep illegal Mexican Immigrants from entering the country due their negative effect on wages and jobs in the USA.

1a. He led a march in 1969 to protest hiring illegal immigrant produce pickers, he was flanked by Dem. Senator Walter Mondale and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

1b. Chavez organized union members and sent them into the desert to assault Mexican nationals trying to sneak across the border.

2. Until recently most Democrats agreed with Chavez, opposing unchecked immigration because it hurt American workers.

2a. A study by a Harvard economist found the the mass migration of Cuban refugees to Southern Florida in 1980 showed American workers with a H.S. education saw their wages fall by more than 30%.

2b. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown opposed letting Vietnamese refugees into California on the grounds the State already had enough poor people. Brown said "There is something a little strange about saying Let's bring in 500,000 more people, when we can't take care of the 1 million Californian's out of work." Senator Joe Biden agreed and introduced Federal legislation to curb the arrival of Vietnamese.

2c. Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union address "American's are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers."

2d. Paul Krugmen NYT Economist (2006) "Immigration reduces wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. We'll need to reduce the inflow of low skill immigrants, mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration."

2e. That same year Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and 23 other Senate Democrats voted for a fence along the Mexican border.

3. Twenty years after Bill Clinton's State of the Union message, his wife Hillary scolds American's for enforcing border controls.

The change accrording to the video is that American Democrats stopped caring about American workers and the middle class. Why?

A. One study from Yale shows there are 22 million illgeals in the USA now.
B. Democrats plan to give ALL of them citizenship. (See Dems. 2016 Party platform).
C. Studies show the overwhlming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
D. The biggest landslide in American Presidential history was only 17 million votes.

The payoff for Democrats? Permanent electoral majority for the foreseeable future.

That's the point, no matter what they tell you.

The above summarizes the video. So it may well be that all this support for illegal immigration rests more with a desire for long-term Democratic control over the Federal government and not so much concern for the immigrants themselves.

Click to expand...

Jesus Christ, what a load of horse shit.

You come across as somewhat of a smart guy, but you fully buy into some real garbage.

Crovax said:

Google is your friend or in your case your worst enemy

Yale, MIT study: 22 million, not 11 million, undocumented immigrants in US | TheHill

Click to expand...

TY for the link.

Captain Adverse said:

Here is a video I ran across as a Prager U. advertisement before another YouTube video I wanted to watch came on.



Points of interest:

1. Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration, and fought to keep illegal Mexican Immigrants from entering the country due their negative effect on wages and jobs in the USA.

1a. He led a march in 1969 to protest hiring illegal immigrant produce pickers, he was flanked by Dem. Senator Walter Mondale and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

1b. Chavez organized union members and sent them into the desert to assault Mexican nationals trying to sneak across the border.

2. Until recently most Democrats agreed with Chavez, opposing unchecked immigration because it hurt American workers.

2a. A study by a Harvard economist found the the mass migration of Cuban refugees to Southern Florida in 1980 showed American workers with a H.S. education saw their wages fall by more than 30%.

2b. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown opposed letting Vietnamese refugees into California on the grounds the State already had enough poor people. Brown said "There is something a little strange about saying Let's bring in 500,000 more people, when we can't take care of the 1 million Californian's out of work." Senator Joe Biden agreed and introduced Federal legislation to curb the arrival of Vietnamese.

2c. Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union address "American's are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers."

2d. Paul Krugmen NYT Economist (2006) "Immigration reduces wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. We'll need to reduce the inflow of low skill immigrants, mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration."

2e. That same year Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and 23 other Senate Democrats voted for a fence along the Mexican border.

3. Twenty years after Bill Clinton's State of the Union message, his wife Hillary scolds American's for enforcing border controls.

The change accrording to the video is that American Democrats stopped caring about American workers and the middle class. Why?

A. One study from Yale shows there are 22 million illgeals in the USA now.
B. Democrats plan to give ALL of them citizenship. (See Dems. 2016 Party platform).
C. Studies show the overwhlming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
D. The biggest landslide in American Presidential history was only 17 million votes.

The payoff for Democrats? Permanent electoral majority for the foreseeable future.

That's the point, no matter what they tell you.

The above summarizes the video. So it may well be that all this support for illegal immigration rests more with a desire for long-term Democratic control over the Federal government and not so much concern for the immigrants themselves.

Click to expand...

im for letting any number of migrants in and letting them have citizenship if they want it so long as they dont have a history of being violent criminals because i was raised around the idea that you should treat people like you would want to be treated i dont demand that they vote a certain way

it would not surprise me if politicians had selfish motives over it but i think your just framing it this way to try and make your political opponents look bad

blarg said:

im for letting any number of migrants in and letting them have citizenship if they want it so long as they dont have a history of being violent criminals because i was raised around the idea that you should treat people like you would want to be treated i dont demand that they vote a certain way

it would not surprise me if politicians had selfish motives over it but i think your just framing it this way to try and make your political opponents look bad

Click to expand...

If facts make them look bad then who's fault is that?

No matter what side of the aisle that you are on part of their job is to push forth their ideals as being "better" than the other sides ideals. One of the more common ways to do that is to show the records of the opposing side of where they have done 180's on policies.

As for the OP's points it could be taken one of two ways.

1: A power grab as suggested by the OP.
2: The 180 turn around could suggest that those people (where applicable) decided that they were wrong and that the new direction is the correction of the old one.

(note though that the two are not mutually exclusive)

Personally, I believe its number one more than number 2. All politicians want is more power for themselves and less power for the other side. The reasons for wanting that power, or at least more power than the other side, may vary, but in the end it is about the power.

truthatallcost said:

That took all of 45 seconds to find.

The 11 million figure was out of date for many years. After it was corrected, the popular response from liberals was 'who cares?', which just goes to show how complacent they are with bad data if it suits their purpose.

Click to expand...

I am not aware that the ~11M figure was shown to be out of date -- indeed, one of the more recent examinations of its accuracy was as recent as April 2017 -- nor has it, until you just above have so declared, come to my attention that anyone who matters said of that figure, "Who cares?"


Red:
Are you intimating that I have hypocritically elided my own compositional standards?

I should hope not for anyone, such as yourself, who's read enough of my posts to be familiar with my approach to argumentation and exposition is well aware that when I refer to someone's else's ideas, I hyperlink my text to the document from which the related idea or remarks come.

Often the references to which I link are studies; however, I don't read, or even become aware of, every study that gets published.

The OP-er watched the video s/he included in the OP and the study in question was either named and referred to in that video or it was merely referred to and not named.

• Be so the former, the OP-er, being of a mind to expressly note it himself, should have linked to it; however, not doing, one'd think he'd at least be prepared to provide a link to it if someone solicits it.
• Be so the latter, the OP-er, being of a mind to expressly note it himself, should have read the study to at least determine whether it's methodologically sound, sound/strong in "this" dimension and unsound/weak in "that" one, or unsound. (The reason for an OP-er's doing so being to prepare for any substantive refutations founded on of his/her conclusion's/assertion's reliance on the content of the referenced study's inadequacies.) There again, however, one's who's actually performed the due diligence of reading the study would not grouse over another's soliciting a link, bibliographical or titular exposition of the study in question. Such an OP-er would simply point the requester to the study and be done.
• Of course, it's possible the OP-er didn't read the study. One's not reading a study to which a celebrity refers, though not uncommon, exhibits a degree of dearth in one's intellectual rigor and sagacity (it's unsage/illogical to rely on something one's not read); however, the paucity isn't problematic unless and until one is of a mind to, as founding for one's own stances, wholly or in part rely on some or all of its findings. In any case, if one didn't read the material to which one referred, one need only say, "I didn't read it." Not having read a given text is a fine reason for not being able to point others to it.

This thread's OP-er claims that the section of the OP the refers to studies is still a summary of the video's points, yet, curiously, s/he doesn't label that section of the post in the manner used to label other points (points and subpoints labelled 1 to 3). Yet somehow readers are supposed to know that he's at that point still simply "parroting" what's in the video.

Mind you, I've made similar organizational errors in my compositions; however, I don't bitch about readers having draw the "wrong" vocal inference as a result of my having done so. This is, after all a public discussion board, not an scholarly/academic, governmental or business setting, so it's understandable that posters may not proofread their remarks carefully enough to excise such failing from their remarks. One gains nor loses much of merit for doing; thus folks don't bother. That said, one gains respect by displaying the integrity of recognizing one's compositional lapses (tonal, organizational, grammatical, etc.) and the impact they may have on readers' comprehension of one's prose, and thus aware, simply acknowledging and correcting for the oversight(s) and moving on.

I mean, really. Who'd chide another who says something like, "Yes, I wrote 'such and such' and I see how my doing so may have misled you. I shouldn't have phrased/organized it that way (omitted "XYZ") for my doing so inaccurately conveys (carries) a meaning/tone/implication I don't espouse and didn't intend to express. My bad. What I meant is...."?

The thing is that in response to my request for information, the OP-er asperses me for applying legitimate meaning to the organizational structure of his OP, presumably because I chided him for his referential incompleteness...nevermind that I requested info for only one of the at least three studies to which he referred in what organizationally appears to be his editorial remarks in his OP.

Kal'Stang said:

If facts make them look bad then who's fault is that?

No matter what side of the aisle that you are on part of their job is to push forth their ideals as being "better" than the other sides ideals. One of the more common ways to do that is to show the records of the opposing side of where they have done 180's on policies.

As for the OP's points it could be taken one of two ways.

1: A power grab as suggested by the OP.
2: The 180 turn around could suggest that those people (where applicable) decided that they were wrong and that the new direction is the correction of the old one.

(note though that the two are not mutually exclusive)

Personally, I believe its number one more than number 2. All politicians want is more power for themselves and less power for the other side. The reasons for wanting that power, or at least more power than the other side, may vary, but in the end it is about the power.

Click to expand...

probably some careful selection of facts at best

and if you say all politicians want power and make policy to get it then this is kida pointless and just means politicians are acting like politicians

and power still dosent seem to be the motivation for the voters

Captain Adverse said:

How droll of YOU to continue to fail to realize that I was summarizing the points in the Video. I think this may be the second time you've assumed I was making points when I was presenting a precis of the video points.

This is why it's so hard to present videos to some members...either they demand I tell them what the video contains, or they complain about ME "making points without (insert complaint here)" when I try to summarize.

Watch the video, or not. :shrug:

Click to expand...

Yes, I can tell you've, for whatever reason(s) you saw fit, provided a summary of the video. It was generous of you to do so.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn't summarize a video I include (or hyperlink to) in one of my posts, my doing so being even less likely in one of my OPs. I wouldn't because I tend to hew to the epistemological standards of composition and substantive written discourse/debate:

• Read others' research and analysis.
• Use it to form one's own ideas that avail themselves of and/or issue from others' research and analysis.
• Present one's own thoughts on the matter, including references (footnotes, hyperlinks, or endnotes) to others' ideas, findings, data, etc. that support one's own ideas.

Thus I present video content only to provide context to my own remarks or as support for one or more of them.

• 
  [*=1]An OP --> "Look at Me When I'm Talking To You"
  [*=1]A "regular" post --> Parallels Between Present Day USA and Fallen Empires -- In this post, I included a video at the end to support/illustrate the following statement: "The fall of the Roman Empire too offers multiple portents and analogues to our current status as the heirs to Western Civilization's leadership." The video's support for that assertion comes not from any single point, but from the multidimensionality and abundance of similarities.

One might wonder why I take that approach. The answer is simple: I have little to no will to be held to account for and defend ideas that aren't my own. If it be that someone else's words/ideas overlap mine, fine, I'll defend theirs to the extent of the congruence, but not beyond that.Your generosity notwithstanding, the summary is just that -- a modern variation of a middle schooler's book report supplemented by banal and tacit "I agree with the author" -- and not something having the insightful gravitas of a book review. Indeed, even the portion of your OP that one might, as I did but that you above depict as part of your video summary, construe as your own commentary also is trifling.

To wit, you declare Democrats' behavior as described in the video derives from, "Permanent electoral majority for the foreseeable future. That's the point, no matter what they tell you." Do you bother to support that assertion about Dems' motive? No; you merely declare it pontifically. Sure as you do so, in your next paragraph, your unsubstantiated yet puissantly put pronouncement piddles into subjunctivity: "It may well be that all this support for illegal immigration rests more with a desire for long-term Democratic control over the Federal government and not so much concern for the immigrants themselves."

Wow, not two sentences of "air" between "the declaratively hubristic surety of "it's so no matter others say" to "it may well be." There're many words that describe that, but for now I'll go with "rhetorically pusillanimous."




Red:
See post 32.

Captain Adverse said:

Here is a video I ran across as a Prager U. advertisement before another YouTube video I wanted to watch came on.



Points of interest:

1. Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration, and fought to keep illegal Mexican Immigrants from entering the country due their negative effect on wages and jobs in the USA.

1a. He led a march in 1969 to protest hiring illegal immigrant produce pickers, he was flanked by Dem. Senator Walter Mondale and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

1b. Chavez organized union members and sent them into the desert to assault Mexican nationals trying to sneak across the border.

2. Until recently most Democrats agreed with Chavez, opposing unchecked immigration because it hurt American workers.

2a. A study by a Harvard economist found the the mass migration of Cuban refugees to Southern Florida in 1980 showed American workers with a H.S. education saw their wages fall by more than 30%.

2b. After the fall of Saigon in 1975 Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown opposed letting Vietnamese refugees into California on the grounds the State already had enough poor people. Brown said "There is something a little strange about saying Let's bring in 500,000 more people, when we can't take care of the 1 million Californian's out of work." Senator Joe Biden agreed and introduced Federal legislation to curb the arrival of Vietnamese.

2c. Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union address "American's are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers."

2d. Paul Krugmen NYT Economist (2006) "Immigration reduces wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. We'll need to reduce the inflow of low skill immigrants, mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration."

2e. That same year Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and 23 other Senate Democrats voted for a fence along the Mexican border.

3. Twenty years after Bill Clinton's State of the Union message, his wife Hillary scolds American's for enforcing border controls.

The change accrording to the video is that American Democrats stopped caring about American workers and the middle class. Why?

A. One study from Yale shows there are 22 million illgeals in the USA now.
B. Democrats plan to give ALL of them citizenship. (See Dems. 2016 Party platform).
C. Studies show the overwhlming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
D. The biggest landslide in American Presidential history was only 17 million votes.

The payoff for Democrats? Permanent electoral majority for the foreseeable future.

That's the point, no matter what they tell you.

The above summarizes the video. So it may well be that all this support for illegal immigration rests more with a desire for long-term Democratic control over the Federal government and not so much concern for the immigrants themselves.

Click to expand...

1 is incorrect. Cesar Chavez never was opposed to immigrants.

What Chavez was opposed to is immigrant workers trucked in by the owners as scabs to break a strike.

1b is a total lie. Chavez never organized UFW union members to attack any non union workers.

all the other sections are pure bull****.

1751Texan said:

1 is incorrect. Cesar Chavez never was opposed to immigrants.

What Chavez was opposed to is immigrant workers trucked in by the owners as scabs to break a strike.

1b is a total lie. Chavez never organized UFW union members to attack any non union workers.

all the other sections are pure bull****.

Click to expand...

Really? Research is your friend:

For a significant period of his storied career as a labor organizer, Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration. He encouraged union members to join "wet lines" along the Arizona-Mexico border to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing into the U.S. He accused immigration agents at the border of letting in undocumented immigrants to undermine the labor efforts of Latino farmworkers.

Click to expand...

https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univisio...complex-history-immigration/story?id=19083496

In fact, Cesar Chavez believed ferociously in the border of the United States — because that border protected his union. So ferociously did he hold this view that the New York Times ran a story detailing an accusation that the union Chavez founded, the United Farm Workers, set up a 100 mile “wet line” to keep “wetbacks” and “illegals” — yes, all of those are Chavez’s words — out of the United States. So let’s go back in the time machine to the period when Chavez was rocketing to fame.

Click to expand...

https://spectator.org/59956_cesar-chavez-anti-immigration-his-union-core/

During the seven‐month strike, Mexican newspapers published many reports of alleged brutality against aliens by the U.F.W., but the allegations received little coverage in the United States. Interviews in the last week on both sides of the border confirmed that many Mexican aliens were beaten while attempting to approach the border during the strike...Asked in an interview about these allegations, Cesar Chavez acknowledged: “We had a ‘wet line;’ it cost us a lot of money, and we stopped a lot of illegals.

Click to expand...

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/07/...-root-in-farm-labor-struggle-charges-may.html

It does not matter that he denied violence along the wet lines, or that later under pressure from Chicano groups he changed his tune about illegal immigration, the information presented in the video IS TRUE.

Part I of VII (all endnotes are in Part VII)

Captain Adverse said:

A. One study from Yale shows there are 22 million illgeals in the USA now.
B. Democrats plan to give ALL of them citizenship. (See Dems. 2016 Party platform).
C. Studies show the overwhelming majority of first-time immigrant voters vote Democrat.
D. The biggest landslide in American Presidential history was only 17 million votes.

Click to expand...

Red:
Another member provided a link to the Yale study Mohammad M. Fazel-Zarandi et al (FZ) conducted, "The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States: Estimates based on demographic modeling with data from 1990 to 2016."

Introduction:
Carefully reading FZ's report, one finds several important qualities:

• A new theoretical illegal immigrant population estimation model underpinned FZ's research and analysis.
  • FZ's research merits publication for his methodology is a new tactical way to estimate the U.S. illegal immigrant population.
  • Instead of subtracting the legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population in the Census and American Community Survey (ACS) (aka the residual method (RM)), FZ begins with a widely accepted starting point of 3.5M extant illegal immigrants in 1990, and project their 2016 population by summing estimated number of migrants crossing the border illegally and annual visa overstays and reducing the sum by estimated emigrants, deaths, and legal status changes.
  • Their method innovation results from their use of new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data re: estimated illegal border crossings and visa overstays for recent years, data unavailable when demographers developed the residual method.
• FZ's method is unacceptably sensitive to errors in the underlying assumptions FZ have made in applying the theory undergirding it.
  • The behavioral assumptions FZ made sensitivity produces uncertainty ranges in the tens of millions, as contrasted with about a couple million for the RM.
    • The behavioral assumptions FZ made are materially errant in that they comport not with historically observed behavior.
    • FZ's predicates' divergence from observed behavior materially flaws both their estimate and the method used to arrive at them.
  • FZ's flawed assumptions are with regard to 1990 - 1999 illegal immigrant behavior.
    • Because of the way FZ's estimating model works, errors pertaining to "early" periods compound, becoming huge in later ones.
    • FZ errantly assumes 1990s era illegal border crossers were all first time crossers who didn't come and go and come back.
• The theory FZ used to form his method is sound; however, FZ's application of the theory is sophomorically inapt. That said, his work has demonstrated the viability of the theory, and for that he deserves the recognition he's obtained by having his report published.
• With fitting alterations, FZ's method, and the results it yields, may become valid for policy making, but right now, it's not "ready for prime time."

Methodological Assumptions and Their Impacts:
Both methods rely on key assumptions. The RM adds the number of people obtaining temporary visas or green cards each year and reduces this legal immigrant population based on mortality and emigration over time. Legal immigrant admissions and adjustments come from DHS' data; mortality and emigration rates are estimated accepted methods. Next, in subtracting the legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population appearing in the Census and ACS, demographers factor in assumptions about the share of U.S. immigrants captured in the Census or ACS data. Estimates of undercounts generated from small surveys range from 10% in the 2000 Census to as high as 20% in 2010.[SUP]1[/SUP] Unauthorized immigrants are, for a number of reasons, less likely than others to respond to Census Bureau surveys, thus necessitating the "non-capture"/uncertainty ranges applicable to the estimates given by the RM.

(continued due to character limit)

Part II of VII

FZ's method obviates the need for an undercount uncertainty range; however, the express range of FZ's estimates itself is huge, making the estimates themselves too uncertain for policy purposes. RM estimates, in contrast, tend to cluster more tightly. The estimates produced by Pew, DHS, and CMS often fall within 500K of each other, whereas the line chart FZ includes in his report provides an estimate range from 12M to 37M.

Accounting for an uncertainty range of 25M people is clearly useless for policy making with regard to a population that may not even include 25M people. Imagine trying to select a number of people eligible for DACA or trying to estimate the net economic impact of illegal immigrants when the estimated quantity of such persons must take into account an uncertainty range that may be greater than the actual quantity of illegal immigrants. Though but two illustrations, the two highlight the pragmatic absurdity of relying on FZ's estimates when designing or making policy....Yet FZ's method is precisely what Tucker Carlson, and presumably the OP-er would have us all use in analyzing and forming conclusions about policy re: illegal immigrants. Pure folly.

Another limitation to Fazel-Zarandi, Feinstein and Kaplan’s method is that the errors accumulate over time. Because their estimate of the unauthorized foreign-born population is built up from year to year by adding and subtracting entries and exits from the population, errors in earlier years are carried forward into later years. This does not pose a problem if the error is randomly distributed (i.e., producing a lower estimate in some years and higher in others). However, if the error is systematic, then what may appear to be a very small error during the early years of the estimation period can accumulate to a much larger error in later years. Fazel-Zarandi, Feinstein and Kaplan’s method does not build in any comparisons with external data sources such as a U.S. or Mexican Census, demographic estimate, or other benchmark, and the lack of benchmarks allows their estimates to increasingly diverge from others’ over time. In contrast, the residual method is partially recalibrated each time a new census is conducted. Each new census provides an updated, independent measure of the size of the foreign-born population, and importantly, the errors of earlier censuses do not have any direct or cumulative effect on the new estimates. This is similar to when the Census recalibrates its population estimates every ten years using decennial census counts; these recalibrations are then used to weight the ACS, Current Population Survey (CPS) and other data sources that the public uses.

Another limitation to FZ’s method is its errors compounding. Because their estimate of the unauthorized foreign-born population is built up from year to year by adding and subtracting entries and exits from the population, errors in earlier years are carried forward into later years. This does not pose a problem if the error is randomly distributed (i.e., producing a lower estimate in some years and higher in others). However, if the error is systematic, then what begins as a very small error during the early years of the estimation period accumulates to a much larger error in later years.

FZ’s method omits comparisons -- "sanity checks," if you will -- with exogenous data such as a U.S. or Mexican Census, demographic estimate, or another benchmark, thus permitting their estimates to diverge progressively from reality. In contrast, the RM is partially recalibrated each time a new census is conducted. Each new census provides an updated, independent measure of the size of the foreign-born population, and importantly, the errors of earlier censuses haven't any direct or cumulative impact on the new estimates. This is similar to when the Census recalibrates its population estimates every ten years using decennial census counts and, in turn, uses the recalibrations to weight the ACS, CPS and other data sources the public uses.

(continued due to character limit)

Part III of VII

FZ's growth rates (not "as of" population estimates) for post-2000 comport with the RM's implicit growth rate estimates for the same period. The consistency indicates the discrepancy between FZ's 2016 unauthorized population estimate and others’ derives from differences in estimates of growth of the population during the 1990s, for the FZ and RM methods both commence the 1990s with an estimate of 3.5M illegal immigrants.[SUP]2[/SUP]

By 200, however, FZ's estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population diverges considerably from leading estimates using the residual method: those by DHS and by Pew Research Center. FZ's so-called conservative estimate says the illegal population grew by 9.8M during the '90s, from 3.5M to 13.3M. For the same period, one sees materially lower RM-obtained figures: by 5.1M per Pew and 5.0M per DHS. In contrast, all three methods, FZ, DHS and Pew, yield relatively comparable growth figures, ranging from DHS' high of 3.6M and Pew's low of 2.6M. Thus the variance between FZ and RM accrues from the development of estimates up to 2000.

FZ's estimating method (results/estimates, if you prefer) imply the RM, from 1990 to 2000, suffers from high understatement/undercounting. FZ's conservative estimate for 2000 ~50% higher than estimates using RMs (13.3M versus 8.5M - 8.6M). FZ's mean estimate for 2000 is even higher, nearly 20M -- or more than double RM estimates, implying a huge undercount of unauthorized immigrants in the 2000 Census, even though RM estimates incorporate undercounts of unauthorized immigrants in the Census or ACS data, for example:

• DHS's estimate for 2014 includes 10.9M unauthorized immigrants counted in the ACS plus 1.2M who were not counted, for a total of 12.1 million and an undercount rate of 11%.

Given that the 2000 Census included roughly 7.7M illegal immigrants, FZ's conservative estimates imply the Census undercounted the unauthorized population by 42% [(13.3–7.7)/13.3], and FZ's average estimates imply an undercount of 62% [(20–7.6)/20], thus implying the Census missed 4.7M to 16.5M more unauthorized immigrants than previously assumed. FZ's 2010 estimates also imply coverage error rates nearly as high, ranging from 35% in their conservative estimate to 53% in their average estimate.

FZ's high undercount implication is furthermore implausible, even for the unauthorized population, because experiential research refutes it. To wit, following the 2000 Census, illegal immigrant population researchers found that only 10% of unauthorized Mexican migrants in Los Angeles said they did not answer the Census questionnaire. Too, Van Hook et al (VH) estimated U.S. Census coverage error by estimating the size of the Mexican foreign-born population from independent sources unlikely to undercount this group, namely birth and death records. VH also analyzed changes in Mexican Census data to gauge the size of Mexico’s "missing" population, most of whom moved to the U.S.[SUP]3[/SUP] VH found the 2000 U.S. Census missed ~15% of the entire Mexican-born population and =<26% of Mexican-born unauthorized immigrants; moreover, by 2010, coverage error for the entire Mexican-born population declined to about 4% and between 5%, and 7% among illegals, far below FZ's implied coverage-gap levels.

(continued due to character limit)

Part IV of VII

Readers may wonder how researchers determined the Census obtained such low coverage rates. The answer is that the official Census "hit rate" is 99.6%, which it obtains by engaging a veritable army of census-takers -- it's one of the few things that remains very manual, as well it should given the importance of counting as near to everyone as is possible -- who survey U.S. housing units[SUP]4[/SUP], thus overlooking very few units. Missing as many immigrants as FZ's estimates imply, the Census Bureau would have had to either misidentified as empty millions of housing units or missed millions of people "doubled up" within surveyed households. Insofar as census takers at least once visited every unit conceivably vacant unit/building, and immigrant households were observed to be more densely occupied than those of natives, it highly implausible that the Bureau could have missed 4.7M to 16.5M people in 2010.

Having shown why the RM's estimate is unlikely to be as errant as FZ's findings imply, and having shown FZ's post-2000 illegal immigrant population increase rates match those found by the RM, thus isolating FZ's error to pre-1990s behavioral assumption errors, FZ's variance's etiology needs identifying.

Simply put, FZ's error is found in the way they handled circular/repeat migration in the 1990s. Circular migration is entering the U.S., leaving and returning. FZ's methodology counts arrivals, but not departures. Thus were, say, I to enter and leave nine times, I'd count as nine entered illegal immigrants. FZ's estimating approach depends heavily on accurate counts of all entries and exits of unauthorized immigrants; if the estimated number of entries is correct but the corresponding estimate of exits is too low, population growth will be overestimated. (Repeat migration, though technically a different process from circular migration, as go FZ's tallying, it's not because it multiply counts one person who illegally enters the U.S. multiple times and disregards their departure.)

The '90s was a time when circular unauthorized migration and multiple crossings by the same individual within a year or two were common, which, during the 1990s and early 2000s, was common among the vast majority of border crossers, Mexicans. In 2000, ~2% of Border Patrol apprehensions (40K out of ~1.67M) were migrants from countries other than Mexico. Many unauthorized Mexican migrants came to the U.S. for periods of months or years to work, and then emigrated. Illegal borders crossers faced few consequences if they were caught, so though most were returned quickly to Mexico, they adopted the "Little Engine That Could" mindset regarding having been caught and repatriated.

Bi-national surveys of migrants in Mexico and the U.S. reported very high rates of circular migration during the '90s,[SUP]5[/SUP] which predates southern border management abetted by large Border Patrol manpower increases, fences and high-tech tracking tools. Starting with Operation Hold the Line in El Paso in 1993, the Border Patrol strengthened enforcement in more urbanized areas along the U.S.-Mexico border by deploying more officers, physical barriers, and technology to monitor border crossings. By the end of the 1990s it was substantially more difficult to cross than it had been earlier in the decade [See endnote 5, items 2 and 3]. After 2000, the Border Patrol began imposing "consequences" on apprehended migrants, for example:

• Prohibiting their future legal admission (of any sort),
• Prosecuting and federally sentencing them, and/or
• Repatriating them at remote, often dangerous entry points along the border.

By 2005, increased enforcement had led to a quadrupling of fees paid to smugglers since 1993, while substantially increasing the amount of time that unauthorized immigrants spent in the United States. Experts concluded that the new enforcement policies had broken the prior pattern of circular migration [See endnote 5, items 2 and 3]. Given circular/repeat migration's prevalence in the '90s and comparatively near non-existence after, models dependent on accurately distinguishing a migrant's comings and goings will inaptly estimate growth if the same such model be applied to the pre-2000s.

(continued due to character limit)

Part V of VII

Beyond mere basic inapt accounting for circular/repeat migration, the emigration rates FZ use estimate for the entire foreign-born population (total or from specific regions) of border crosses rather than solely for undocumented border crossers during the '90s, a group with much higher rates of return and circular migration.

To confirm the circular migration notion, one may use data from U. of Guadalajara and Princeton's binational Mexican Migration Project (MMP). The MMP tracked the character and behavior of documented and undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States starting in 1982. The MMP is an important and well-regarded source of information about circular migration patterns of undocumented border crossers from Mexico. The Russell Sage Foundation, for instance, describes the MMP as "the largest, most comprehensive, and reliable source of data on Mexican immigrants currently available."

Between 1982 and 2017, MMP’s annual surveys, which include return-to-Mexico reporting, interviewed over 27K households in 161 Mexican communities and over 1,000 households of Mexican immigrants in the U.S., thus making it possible to calculate rates of emigration to Mexico for householders -- generally adult males who were most likely to migrate -- and for all household members, including children of the head of household not presently residing with their parents.

The emigration rate to Mexico during migrants’ first year in the U.S. that FZ employ (40%) is similar to the MMP rate for all household members during the '90s (42%); however, MMP data revealed far higher emigration rates among Mexican immigrants who had been in the U.S. for longer periods of time than in the data FZ used. For example:

• MMP --> Emigration rate for those in the U.S. from 2 to 10 years was 20% for householders and 19% for all household members.
• FZ --> 4% for the same metric.

The variance results from the MMP recording and accounting for the circular migration patterns of all trips taken by unauthorized border crossers, including very short trips. Demographers VH's review of data sources and methods for estimating emigration of immigrants from the U.S. found that non-MMP sources omit the dynamics of short trips. It is important to account for return migration for all trips across the border because FZ’s model counts all trips as entries -- both those of circular migrants and more permanent U.S. residents.

What impact has the oversight on FZ's estimates? Using FZ's emigration rates and assumptions, the unauthorized immigrant population rises rapidly from 3.5M in 1990 to 13.3M by 2000, whereas using MMP's more representationally faithful emigration rates for border crossers (while continuing to use FZ’s rates for the visa overstays), the total unauthorized population increases to 8.2M in 2000 (using the emigration rate for all household members) or to 7.2M (using the rate for householders only). Adjusting FZ's model to accurately account for circular migration yields estimates slightly below the DHS estimate of 8.5M, assuming that 62% of unauthorized immigrants in 1990 were border crossers, and 38% were visa overstays.[SUP]6[/SUP]

Part VI of VII

Lastly, one might ask how reasonable are MMP's emigration rates. Consider the following...If emigration is as high as 40% in the first year, 19.4% in years 2 through 10, and 15.4% thereafter, this would imply 8.4% of all border crossers remain in the U.S. for more than 10 years. Such a scenario initially seems inconsistent with other research showing that the fraction of unauthorized immigrants remaining in the United States for at least 10 years ranges from 34% to 37% between 1995 and 2000. A less cursory examination, however, reveal there is no inherent inconsistency provided there is heterogeneity in emigration rates between circular migrants and long-term unauthorized residents.

To wit, imagine a scenario in which 100 new migrants arrive annually, 80% circular migrants and 20% settlers. Let’s say that the circular migrants emigrate at a rate of 25% per year, while the settlers emigrate at a rate of 2% per year. After many years, ~35–40% of the migrant population will have been in the country for 10 or more years. The circular migrants keep circulating so they make up the bulk of the people with less than 10 years in the country; however, the settlers stay, thus building up the population having U.S. residence of 10+ years. This is very similar to the situation seen in most college towns, where in- and out-migration rates are very high due to the annual circulation of college students, yet there remains a substantial long-term population composed of faculty, support staff, and town residents not connected with the college. More importantly, the variability in emigration rates between illegal circular migrants and illegal settlers comports with observed behavior and that reported to MMP and others by illegal migrants themselves.

Conclusion:
Taken in total, then, the preceding analysis shows FZ's illegal immigrant estimation model as by FZ applied is inordinately sensitive to data omissions and methodological oversights, both of which are extant in FZ's estimates of the current illegal immigrant population in the U.S. It shows too that by correcting for those oversights, FZ's model yields results materially similar to those obtained using the RM method extant prior to FZ's approach, FZ's thus corrected model producing estimates landing in between the two most commonly used and widely accepted estimates.

(continued due to character limit)

Part VIi of VII

Endnotes:

1. See the following:
   • Estimating the Eligible-to-Naturalize Population
   • Unauthorized Immigration to the United States: Annual Estimates and Components of Change, by State, 1990 to 2010
2. The 3.5M estimate resulted from the RM, which became widely accepted after the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) used it to estimate the number of unauthorized immigrants eligible to legalize their status as per the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The INS projected an eligible population of between 1.3M and 2.6M; 1.6M unauthorized immigrants came forward to legalize.
3. Illegal immigration causes problems for the "sending" and "receiving" nation. The "sender" is every bit as interested in accurately estimating its population of legals as is the "recipient" in estimating the illegals. They, like the U.S., face precisely the same policy making problem -- inefficient and/or inequitable use of resources -- when they haven't citizens whom they think they have, as does the recipient having folks it doesn't know it has. Accordingly, everyone has the same questions -- are they here and if so, how many are there -- thus everyone needs as accurate and precise (two different qualities of data/estimates) an estimate as can be had. Bad or unwieldy estimates abet no nation's ends.
4. "A few months ago I was trained for three days and offered five hours of work counting the homeless. Now, I am knocking (on) doors trying to find the people that have not returned their Census forms." (Source)
5. See the following:
   1. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration -- This is a book and the sections found at this link are the best I can do to give readers unpaid access to it; however, the portions provided are sufficient for the points made in this essay's body. (If II truly interests one, this is a book worth buying or renting.)
   2. The Changing Profile of Mexican Migrants to the United States: New Evidence from California and Mexico
   3. Controlling ‘Unwanted’ Immigration: Lessons from the United States, 1993–2004
6. The noted calculations apply MMP emigration rates only to border crossers and apply FZ's emigration rates to the visa-overstay population. Doing so highlights the theoretical legitimacy of FZ's approach while also validating the assertion that the flaw in FZ's model is its lack of provision for 1990s era circular migration.

End of post series

Why is it that people always say illegal immigration causes lower wages? How do they do that? What people really mean is that businesses use illegal immigrants as a source of cheap labor which allows them to undercut American workers. I agree it's about power. I just don't believe that illegal immigrants have more power than American businesses.

Carjosse said:

Doesn't change the fact their reputation is quite bad and known for making things up to make a political point. I think that is important for people to make their own decisions.

Click to expand...

So if a FACT comes from a right-wing source you will not accept it as a fact just because it came from a right-wing source?

That seems to be exactly what you are saying.

Say it ain't so.

Mach said:

So you're not debating you admit, you're simply posting propaganda videos and telling people to watch the propaganda. Maybe you should find a site called "Propaganda politics"? HOw about "talk out of your ass" politics, maybe as a backup.

It's customary to either take the position of the bull**** you're gonna post, or take the opposite position. Simply spamming a video from ****ing Tucker Partisan nutcase Carlson.

EVERYONE WATCH FOX NEWS!! HER"E S A LINK TO A FOX ANCHOR.
I'M NOT DEBATING IT, JUST SPAMMING!!!

Annoying isn't it.

Who are we here to debate? *crickets*. Tucker isn't here, so I suppose no one.

Click to expand...

LOL!

The debate.......should anyone be so silly as to try it.......would be against the premise stated.

You really don't get that?

Or are you just bereft of attack options?

:mrgreen:

MrWonka said:

Yeah, because we all know we can trust your intellectual honesty when it comes to such things.</sarcasm>

Click to expand...

Yeah, because we all know he has intellectual honesty and you don't.

Vox said:

LOL!The debate.......should anyone be so silly as to try it.......would be against the premise stated.You really don't get that?

Click to expand...

Fail.
A premise can debate? Which premise? You mean maybe try to debate the person who quoted all that bull****, Captain Adverse?

Captainadverse said:

I think this may be the second time you've assumed I was making points when I was presenting a precis of the video points.This is why it's so hard to present videos to some members...either they demand I tell them what the video contains, or they complain about ME "making points without (insert complaint here)" when I try to summarize.Watch the video, or not.

Click to expand...

Oops! Your bad. Looks like he won't even take the premise of the propaganda as his own claim, so he won't debate it either.

As I said, it's a propaganda post, nothing more.

Vox said:

So if a FACT comes from a right-wing source you will not accept it as a fact just because it came from a right-wing source?

That seems to be exactly what you are saying.

Say it ain't so.

Click to expand...

I will treat any statement coming from Prager U with suspicion is what it means.

MrPeanut said:

Why is it that people always say illegal immigration causes lower wages? How do they do that? What people really mean is that businesses use illegal immigrants as a source of cheap labor which allows them to undercut American workers. I agree it's about power. I just don't believe that illegal immigrants have more power than American businesses.

Click to expand...

Red:
People say that for a variety of reasons:

• Wages are nothing more than the price of labor. Basic laws of supply and demand show that supply increases, when demand remains unchanged, result in a lower equilibrium price.
  
  
  
• Who are the suppliers of labor? Workers.
  
  People grousing about illegal immigration's impact on wages implicitly, whether they realize it or not, assume/construe that employers are supplying job rather than workers supplying labor. That's a ridiculous assumption, of course, because workers don't purchase jobs from employers. What workers do is compete against one another to sell their labor to buyers, employers.
• People who make the claim about which you've asked assume citizens and legal residents, in trying to sell their labor, compete with illegal immigrants. Of course, they don't because citizen sellers of labor are unwilling to sell it at the rates would-be buyers of those particular types of labor are willing to pay.
• By the same token, however, citizen sellers of such labor are also unwilling to offer or unable to provide/perform types of labor for which buyers are willing to pay sums the citizen sellers are willing to accept.

Simply, put, the citizens griping about illegals depressing wages and/or "taking Americans' jobs" aren't even in (or willing to be in) the markets where be sold the types of labor illegal immigrants are willing to supply, yet they complain about the prices agreed to by buyers and sellers in those markets.

What those complainers aren't realizing is that the labor illegal immigrants sell is, by and large, undifferentiated and undifferentiable. In other words, the thing being sold is seen by buyers as a commodity, thus making the sellers "price takers." The complainers, to the extent they would like to sell their labor, have exactly the same choices sellers of other commodities have:

• Exit the market for the given type of labor and enter one for a different type of labor.
  • This is precisely what people do when they matriculate to college, trade school or some other training program, and it's what the citizen complainers refuse to do (or do ineffectively).
• Remain in the market for the given type of labor and accept the market price for the type of labor.
  • This is precisely what illegal immigrants do and it's what the citizen complainers refuse to do.