Given that they’re illegal, how could we ever know if the number is down or if they just found some other way to cross the border?
Also, it would be quite foolish to think there is only a single factor affecting wages. There are a multitude of factors, and a reduction in the number of illegal immigrants might be one of them, although it’s hard to be sure.
Across the entire economy, not blue collar. If you want to compare apples to apples, the data is running right there is the article we are already discussing, no motivated googling necessary :)
> Given that they’re illegal, how could we ever know if the number is down or if they just found some other way to cross the border?
There are surrogate measures that we can use.
Traffic numbers are a good one in Southern California. When there are crackdowns/bad economy, the traffic decreases markedly. Gasoline sales drop. Those are hard numbers that the state collects.
Money transfer services have to report. Those numbers are recorded.
Just because someone is illegal does not mean they have no impact. This cuts both directions: positive and negative.
Given that they’re illegal, how could we ever know if the number is down or if they just found some other way to cross the border?
Also, it would be quite foolish to think there is only a single factor affecting wages. There are a multitude of factors, and a reduction in the number of illegal immigrants might be one of them, although it’s hard to be sure.