Hey, 17992.  It’s 17891 here.  I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting at in your post, but I’ll respond with my best guesses.

If your first sentence is meant to imply that day labor is harmless to the economy, let me direct you to the administrator of Holy Cross hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, or to the administrators of countless hospitals across the country, in serious financial trouble due to the influx of illegal-immigrant patients who can’t pay their bills.  The “cheap citizen” that you reference is sticking the taxpayer with his day laborer’s medical and other living expenses.  The laborer’s “all-in” wage is much, much higher than you contemplate.

Regarding educated immigrants who contribute to the economy, I would love to bring in as many as modern means of transportation would allow.  (How about offering work visas to more West African college graduates?  I’ll take in every last one of them!)  But the vast majority of our immigrants are unskilled, and thus a net drain on the economy.  This is not your great-grandpa’s U.S. job market.  Welcoming unlimited numbers of unskilled workers into an economy that is increasingly knowledge-based is a recipe for disaster.

Regarding your point about immigrant children getting an education and contributing to the economy, the children of unskilled laborers (whether immigrant or otherwise) underachieve in schools and in the workforce.  We have an obligation to address this problem, but to spread scarce educational resources across ever larger numbers of unskilled immigrants’ children does not help the children of the poor people already here.  Your preferred policy hurts the children of blacks and native-born Hispanics.  Bravo to you.

In response to 17891- 

I get it is not immigrants you are afraid ...You know the ones standing on the corner - waiting for one God fearing but cheap citizen to pick them up and help them with the chores back home. 

Wait or is it the educated one who contribute to our ecomony, by starting business - the numbers to large to count.

Or worse - real scary here - their children who will grow up and get an education and contribute to our economy.

My what is this world coming to

When they do a study correlating wage trends with illegal immigration trends, I’ll take another look to see if they have figured out what is going on in this country.

The best outcome I have seen to date is contained in the following from the LA Times:

AFL-CIO to Back Day Laborers
The union group will try to help the workers improve their wages and working conditions.
By Molly Selvin, Times Staff Writer
August 10, 2006

The nation’s largest union federation, targeting a segment of the country’s growing immigrant workforce, announced Wednesday that it had agreed to work with a large day laborer organization to improve wages and working conditions.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-daylabor10aug10,1,4169046.story?coll=la-headlines-business

1. How is opposition to illegal immigration “xenophobia”?

2. If you scroll to the first page you’ll see the comments of Andrew Sum; perhaps the study is a bit flawed, no?

3. Even if the study were accurate, who would benefit from promoting it? (Hint: corporations that employ illegal labor in order to bust unions, corrupt banks that profit from illegal immigration, politicians who receive money from corrupt corporations that profit from illegal immigration, the corrupt Mexican oligarchy, etc. etc.)

4. No study has ever shown even a fairly large benefit from illegal immigration. On the other hand, there are all the downsides: political corruption, worker abuse, giving the Mexican government political power inside the U.S., devaluing U.S. citizenship, and on and on and on. On balance, is it worth it?

Wow, the Pew Hispanic Center finds that immigration (which is predominantly Hispanic) does not hurt the economy.  Can I write an analysis of my own ethnic group, too?  I promise to be unbiased—you can take my word for it!

In case you think that the Hispanic Center is not run by Hispanics, check out the two top dogs on the masthead:

Roberto Suro, Director
Born in the United States of parents from Puerto Rico and Ecuador, Suro has more than 25 years of experience researching and writing about Latinos, most recently for The Washington Post. He also worked as a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine and The New York Times in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Suro is author of Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America (Knopf, 1998, Vintage, 1999).

Gabriel Escobar, Associate Director for Publications
Escobar has more than 20 years experience as a journalist. Prior to joining the Pew Hispanic Center, he was a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor at The Washington Post. Escobar was born in Colombia and grew up in New York City.

There are other Center staffers who are not Hispanic.  But I doubt they like to get on the boss’ wrong side.  What do you think?

Truthdig should have dug a little deeper beneath this particular headline.  Some “neutron bomb.”  Poof.