Slick Marketing By The Treason Lobbies

By John Derbyshire

05/06/2013

Business Insider has a more-than-usually sophisticated presentation on “why America needs to bust through narrow-minded objections and reform immigration right now.” The thing even includes some of George Borjas’s data (Slide 24).

I don’t think there’s a single one of the arguments presented in these 60 slides that we haven’t refuted here on VDARE.com a dozen times over.

And while the graphs and charts are neat, the chain of argument is leaky. Nice form, shoddy content.

Look at slides 20-21-22, for example.

• Slide 20: "Employing undocumented workers gives firms a competitive advantage."

Neat graph showing percent of illegal workers for various business sectors across time, 1990-2006.

OK; though one tries to suppress thoughts like “ignoring environmental regulations gives firms a competitive advantage,” or “not paying taxes gives firms a competitive advantage” …

• Slide 21: “As a result, it’s common for businesses to rely on undocumented workers.”

Another neat graph showing percent of businesses using illegal labor, for various business sectors across time, 1990-2006.

Right, got that. So?

• Slide 22: “It’s important to gauge the impact that this has on ‘native’ workers. While some immigration opponents argue that Mexican immigrants are taking American jobs, in states where Mexican immigrants are a large portion of the population they did not gain jobs lost by Americans during the recession.”

A histogram showing “Change in the U.S. employment” vs. “Change in the Mexican immigrant employment” for California, Taxes. Illinois, Arizona, and “Other states.”

OK, but … What happened to the illegals? Does “Mexican immigrant employment” include them, or not? If you don’t tell us this, how are we supposed to connect this slide with the previous two?

Again, how does Slide 25 (presented with no definition of “residual wage variance” — an economics term of art so abstruse Google has no heading for it) show the thing it purports to show? Why might it not be the case that immigration is driving down wages for both “college equivalents” (computer programmers) and “high school equivalents” (construction workers)?

And what does Slide 60 have to do with immigration?

Perhaps Business Insider could have their PowerPoint jockey work up a companion piece: "Here’s Why We Have To Enforce The Immigration Laws."

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