Right Side of the Rainbow

In the fight to control our Nation’s borders, conservatives may have some new friends:

New economic research that pits native-born workers against low-skilled immigrants in a struggle for jobs and wages has fueled a rift between some of Washington’s most liberal lawmakers and their allies in economics and labor, who fear that the Democratic Party is pushing an immigration policy that forsakes the party’s working-class mainstay.

The quarrel comes as the Senate debates a proposal to bring millions of immigrants into the legal workforce. A growing body of economic research contends that the recent surge of foreign workers has depressed wages for low-skilled workers, especially for high school dropouts, and has even begun displacing native-born workers. That benefits employers, higher-income consumers and the economy at large, but it may exacerbate the problems of the working class.

“What immigration really does is redistribute wealth away from workers toward employers,” said George J. Borjas, an economist at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

[…]

… the work of Borjas and other economists is becoming a wedge in the Democratic Party. Citing Borjas’s work, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) denounced the Senate immigration bill yesterday, saying: “This is clearly a corporate strategy to keep wages low. It clearly will replace the jobs of American workers.”