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Hmmmm.

This?

How about this?

Or this?

Every illegal immigrant may not commit every singly offense against the US, but a large number are committing crimes and offenses and causing problems.

And that doesn't address the various scams they run, like insurance fraud. (also here or here or here).

Please note: that bls statistic only refers to the demand side of the equation. To see the whole picture, you also have to consider the supply side. India has 4X the US population, and India alone is cranking out 495,000 BSCS graduates every year.

Furthermore, according the BLS:

"As with other information technology jobs, outsourcing of software development to other countries may temper somewhat employment growth of computer software engineers. Firms may look to cut costs by shifting operations to foreign countries with lower prevailing wages and highly educated workers."

Also, I have to wonder where the BLS gets it's information:

"According to Robert Half Technology, starting salaries for software engineers in software development ranged from $66,500 to $99,750 in 2007. For network engineers, starting salaries ranged from $65,750 to $90,250."

Robert Half! Asking Robert Half if it's a good time to go into IT is like asking Century 21 if it's a good to sell your home.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm

Here are some more numbers:

"H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship with Economic Need"

According to a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies: the number of H-1B visas approved in the computers and engineering fields greatly exceeds any reasonable number reflected by economic demand.

http://www.cis.org/node/222

"High Tech Industry Laying Off American Workers While Seeking Huge Increase in Guest Workers"

"Currently, the Department of Labor estimates that there are about 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S. In addition, the slowing economy has led to a loss of jobs across the board including in IT. The Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reports that Colorado -- the state with the third highest concentration of IT workers -- has lost 47,200 technology jobs since 2001."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_may08nl02

Gains in US high tech employment more than offset by off-shore worker visas

"According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about 300,000 jobs, but during the period in question, a probable 669,681 H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

IT job security plummets five times faster than nationwide average

"Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

Studies Indicate IT Labor Shortage is a Myth

"These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload

This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw

Anyone who was around during the dot-com era remembers how it was H-1b limits that caused the crash of that wonderful era. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Labor costs are around 5% of the cost of an item.

82,188 were murdered in the United States in the years ranging from 2001-2006. 2,883 have been kill on US soil since on 2001. Because those 2,883 got more media attention than those 82,188, we have to surrender our privacy to overreacting government. The irony is that none of this will work actually stop terrorists. If they can't keep 3.7 million illegal aliens out of this country entering since 2000, they certainly can't keep a hand full of terrorists from crossing illegally and not reporting a thing. Statistics tell a different story. I question my government's priorities and their methods.

The last time I checked, the US accepts 1.2 million legal immigrants a year.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/back101.html

Exactly how many immigrants does the US have to accept to make you happy?

Europe is being overwhelmed by immigrants who have no interest in assimilating, and are bringing their failed cultures with them.

As to the Mexican War, if the "Native Americans" are so awesome, why isn't Mexico the economic powerhouse of the world?

Just another failed culture, sending it's most productive people to the US.

In fact, there is no wage skyrocketing in the US. Immigration, in fact, hurts American wages : http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back504.html

The study of the trends in the earnings of native workers over the 1960-2000 period indicates that immigration has indeed harmed their economic opportunities. The effect on wages, however, differs across education groups and race groups. For example, the immigrant influx that entered the country between 1980 and 2000 lowered the wage by 7.4 percent for high school dropouts, by 3.6 percent for college graduates, and by around 2 percent for both high school graduates and workers with some college. Of course, the impact is much larger for some specific experience groups within each educational category. Similarly, although this immigrant influx lowered the wages of white native workers by 3.5 percent, it lowered the wage of native-born blacks by 4.5 percent, and of native-born Hispanics by 5 percent.

You are right, this has been studied. IT and EE H-1Bs on average earn significantly less than people employed in the same occupations. This is true even when you control for geographic locations and occupation cathegories (as narrow as the OES survey will allow). Here is a link to the only such study that I am aware of:

http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305.html

While a quick search of statistics is easy to find, here are some quick ones (the second bases solely on factual statistics):

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
http://immigrationcounters.com/

I'd bet that most of the posters on here that are FOR illegal immigration don't live on the west coast, and have barely started to even notice a problem. Being in CA, I see it every day, first hand. Come here and look around. It's not a nice sight. Can you speak Spanish? I hope so, because you'll need it here.

And I call bullshit on your illogical "reasoning" of them not taking up public services. Do you realize how many are here, and how many children per family they are creating? When they can't pay for themselves, and then have children...who do you think pays for them? And in 5-10 years when they huge numbers of recent anchor babies are old enough to have children, that number multiples exponentially. Some of you really don't get it, do you!?
This isn't racist or hatred, it's realizing that you can't do everything for everyone.

Highly educated Indians no longer want to move to the USA because they like India just fine

US Immigrants from India...
1990: 448,6088
2000: 1,018,393

http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back1203.html#tab le3

While I agree that there always has to be someone at the bottom, I disgree vehemently that somehow economics is always a zero-sum game. It is not. If you have two countries, both with the same basic distribution of wealth (e.g., the top 1% is 10x as wealthy as the bottom 1% in both cases), then in the country with the higher average per capita GDP, everyone -- including the "poor" people -- will have a higher quality of life. (At least in economics terms -- we can argue all day about whether having a dishwasher and a TV really make you "happier" or not.)

So you'll always have 'poor people,' but what it means to be poor changes based on the average quality of life of the society. In some places in Africa, being 'poor' might mean starving to death. In the U.S., being poor might mean not having health insurance, or riding the bus instead of owning a car. I can almost guarantee you that the poverty level in the U.S. would be a king's ransom in Sudan.

Whether immigrants create more in costs than they create in economic output is arguable; it's a tough question to answer because so much of what illegal immigrants do isn't documented or measured. We know pretty solidly that they consume more in public services than they pay in taxes (there are lots of studies, although you don't have to be Adam Smith to look at the budgets of many municipal and state governments in areas with large populations of illegal immigrants to figure that out), at least on the local and state levels.

The net effect of this is that the government is basically subsidizing the labor costs of the industries (principally agriculture) that employ illegal immigrants. And in doing so, we are reducing the demand for replacement technologies.

There was a time when people thought slavery was necessary, because no one could conceive of a way to pick cotton except by hand. Obviously, they were wrong; after slavery was abolished and the cost of labor increased, the demand for a cotton-harvesting machine increased as well. Now, most cotton is harvested mechanically. The same job that might have once been done by slaves, or later by paid sharecroppers, is now done by a very small number of highly skilled workers (those involved in the manufacture of the machines, and a smaller number in their actual operation).

Having a huge -- effectively bottomless -- pool of subsidized, cheap labor stunts both technological and economic development. By keeping the cost of goods artificially low, it prevents labor-saving alternatives from being developed; and labor-saving devices are the hallmark of civilization, because they allow people to move their attention and labor to higher and higher-value activities. As people move to higher-value activities, they can afford to purchase more (or have more leisure time), and their standard of living increases. Simply throwing more people at the problem is no way to develop economically; at best you can achieve a sort of slow development of your upper class, growing the gap between the top and bottom of society ever wider, but the cost is that you create a vast, disenfranchised underclass, and that's bad for business all around.

There is no inherent superiority argument here; I never said that the illegal immigrant was in any way an inferior person to the American worker -- to do so would be racist, and worse than that, factually wrong. However, having a country with a vast surplus of labor is destabilizing, and leads to social stratification. If we want to be a nation of aristocrats and serfs, then we ought to just create an official "second class" citizenship (call it a "permanent worker visa"), open the doors, and stop lying to ourselves. But if we want to actually work towards a goal, however unattainable, of egalitarianism, social mobility, and stability without draconian enforcement, allowing a vast pool of unskilled laborers to remain and stifle growth is not the way to do it.

new immigrants (legal and illegal) plus births to immigrants add some 2.3 million people to the United States each year, accounting for most of the nation's population increase. In fact, because natives have only two children on average, absent the additions that come from immigrants, the U.S. population would be roughly stable in the long-run without continued high levels of immigration.

RTFA, look at the wages

http://www.forthecause.us/ftc-video-CNN-WarOnMiddl eClass_060623.wmv
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305appendice s.pdf

To avoid this, I think we should adopt the exact same border security policy as Mexico.

I live in Arizona, and the illegal immigrant problem is reaching epic proportions. My wife works for the state health department, and the numbers that she mentions on how much it costs the taxpayers to subsidize these illegal aliens in just Arizona is mind blowing.

Just looking at a report on the Center for Immigrant Studies website http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalcoverage.ht ml/ mentions that it cost the US more the $10 billion in government services for households headed by illegal aliens. Good to know that my tax dollars are hard at work.

*No roads
And what do you call what we have now? I call it "rocks, holes, and unofficial speedbumps". I'm considering throwing in the towel on trying to maintain an SUV, for gods sake, because I can't drive regularly without something getting screwed up on it: shock absorbers, electrical problems, etc.

*No police protection
Good. The last instance of "police protection" I received was being pulled over and ticketed $20 for not wearing a seatbelt. I'd pay not to get that kind of "protection".

*No fire departments
We've had three cases here recently of firemen getting caught starting fires. Two weeks ago there were twelve mysterious grassfires all over the state in one day. And guess who put them out? Volunteer fire departments.

*No primary or secondary education
        *As a result of which, 90% of our middle class would be being paid substinance level wages, working 12-16 hour days to be able to eat. You know, like we did before we enacted regulations to stop that shit.
You can get an education without the help of the government. And if you're too dumb to do so, you're better off working 12 hours a day, because it would be wasted on you. By the way, my mother has a college degree, and works 10 hours a day in a factory, so let's not pretend that education has much to do with working conditions or job availability.

*No military, so we'd likely be part of China by now
If I had back the taxes that I pay and freedoms that I sacrifice to support all the ridiculous US military excursions around the globe, I'd do just fine defending my country the way it was intended to be defended: by citizens, not by mercenaries. As it is, the US government more often attacks US citizens and creates terrorists and dictators than protects us from foreign threats. And the Chinese nuclear arsenal was built by a man educated through the generosity of the US taxpayer. So, no, I don't exactly see how my taxes are being used to protect us from China, or anyone else.

*No social security, so we'd have elderly people competing for jobs in order to live
I don't give a shit. Young people compete for jobs in order to live. There's nothing magical about the elderly that makes them immune to the decisions they have made in their lifetime, good and bad. Life sucks, you have 70 years to learn to deal with it. If you haven't done so by then, tough. Don't expect to impose your stupidity on future generations.

*A large homeless problem, as elderly people will frequently lose the competition
Elderly people can live with their families, like they have done for thousands of years. Those without families should have that much more retirement money to live off of.

*A much lower expected lifespan, due to the above and lack of medicaid
Yeah well everybody dies. Get over yourself. And lifespan is more affected by improvements in healthcare for the young than by using the elderly as an excuse to ruin the economy.

*Garbage all over, since we wouldn't have garbage pickup and people would refuse to pay
I have (private) garbage pickup. And I pay for it. And if I didn't, it would get burnt in an incinerator or buried in the backyard, which is exactly what the garbage people do with it anyways.

And of course your southern border is so secure. Give me a break.

The millenium bomber was caught at the Canadian border before all the terrorist paranoia. Didn't seem to matter that he didn't need to have a passport, did it? All these things end up doing is annoying the 99.9999% of people who are travelling legitimatly.

Now, if you want an example of critically analyzing the effects of immigration, look at this piece I did a while back.

There is a fundamental question here: should small, powerful interests be able to shape policy against the will of the public? I don't think that is a good idea-but that is the case with immigration policy in the US.

This poll is in no way misleading. It is a simple question. A clear majority of the US public want _less_ _legal_ immigration-81% of "leaders" want the present levels or more.

Your position is an extreme minority position according to every poll I've ever seen-the problem is that it is a position supported by wealthy and politically influential elites. If liberal immigration policy really benefits people outside those elites, why do we see this difference in opinion?

On the issue immigration, there is serious difference between elite and popular opinion.

(b) HABEAS CORPUS AND JUDICIAL REVIEW.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--Judicial review of any action or decision relating to this section (including judicial review of the merits of a determination made under subsection (a)(3) or (a)(6)) is available exclusively in habeas corpus proceedings consistent with this subsection. Except as provided in the preceding sentence, no court shall have jurisdiction to review, by habeas corpus petition or otherwise, any such action or decision.
(2) APPLICATION.--
(A) IN GENERAL.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, including section 2241(a) of title 28, United States Code, habeas corpus proceedings described in paragraph (1) may be initiated only by an application filed with--
(i) the Supreme Court;
(ii) any justice of the Supreme Court;
(iii) any circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; or
(iv) any district court otherwise having jurisdiction to entertain it.

It authorizes the Attorney General to detain certified terrorists for additional periods of up to six months if their removal is unlikely in the near future and if the alien's release will threaten national security or public safety. It limits judicial review of such detention to habeus corpus proceedings.

There is a possibility that the high immigrant population here would not notice those errors. And that's not counting the illiterate population, nor those who choose to mis-speak English.

The general objective is to grow crops with the minimal inputs needed to get good results. It's basic factory quality control. Measure, compute, apply.

Robots for agriculture have been around for a decade or so, but only as prototypes. That's beginning to change. Computers, cameras, and servomotors are so cheap now. Agricultural implements are getting smarter. Still, mechanical harvesting of fruits and vegetables hasn't made much progress in recent years. The crops that were hand-picked in 1975 are pretty much the ones that are still hand-picked. (Except for tomatoes, which have been made tough enough for machine picking by breeding and genetic engineering.)

In the developed world, all grain, rice, potatoes, corn, and cotton picking was, of course, mechanized decades ago. Which is why those things are so cheap.