Politics

Americans can’t find jobs due to labor shortage!

Mickey Kaus Columnist
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New Ricochet Podcast on Immigration: It’s 2 against 1, with me and Mark Krikorian discussing the current state of play with Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute. (Bolick and Jeb Bush coauthored Immigration Wars, which proposed a non-citizenship legalization for current illegal immigrants–an idea that seemed out of synch when the book was published but whose time seems to have come again).  The podcase is only 45 minutes. It’s civil. Weeds are gotten into, downs are drilled. Bolick holds up his end (he’s slick!). But his argument rests mainly on the notion that nothing could be worse than not passing a bill, because of the horrible labor shortage crisis currently afflicting the economy. Does that resonate with you? Do Americans get up in the morning and say to themselves, “Damn, this labor shortage!” Or does it seem like we have more workers than jobs? …

Update: If there are shortages for a discrete number of skilled occupations (e.g. programmers), or especially arduous (i.e. agricultural) jobs, the law could be adjusted to let in more immigrants to do those jobs, without a general precedent-setting legalization of all 11 million undocumented …

P.S.: Bolick argues that the Gang of 8 bill (passed by the Senate) would let in more skilled than unskilled workers. This Brookings analysis suggests that is not the case. H1-B (skilled) visas are increased but remain in the 100,000-200,000 annual range, while, for starters, a) all current (a million or so) undocumented agricultural workers get legalized and put on a fast track to citizenship and b) a new unskilled visa is created, the W visa, for up to 200,000 new workers a year, plus their dependents (who would also be eligible to work). …

Mickey Kaus