For someone who spends a lot of their time trolling, it's pretty easy to get under your skin. The only time I'd ever heard of the CIS before was when they were in the new for publishing the bogus data about Obama releasing tons of prisoners. But when I say they are "at it again," I'm mostly poking some gentle fun at you. You've done an awful lot of ranting and raving about the lemmings on this board to be so dogmatic in your opinions.
I know you are passionate about trade and immigration. And it's a worthwhile conversation that we should be having as a society. But you present one side of the story and attack anyone who has the audacity to question you. I think it's worthwhile to know, for example, that Hispanic immigrants use LESS welfare than Hispanic natives. I think it's worthwhile to know that immigrants without a high school education use LESS welfare than native high school drop outs. I think it's worthwhile to know that poor immigrants use LESS welfare than poor natives. But when you just say that immigrants use more welfare than natives, you lose that nuance.
It's the same with immigrants and jobs. You talk about immigrants' impact on the American worker all the time (it seems like Borjas is your hero). But of course it is not as simple as immigrants take jobs from natives. And most of the data suggests that immigrants are a net positive for the economy. The negative impacts seem to be clustered in a small subset of the population. Specifically, among high school drop outs. To me, rather than curtailing immigration in any significant way, it makes a lot more sense to take a piece of the gain that immigration provides and use it to help (1) prevent native high school drop outs in the first place and (2) help those who have with job training and assistance programs.
I think there is a similar story with trade.
I liked this article from the Economist. Trade agreements have been great for the economy as a whole, but has contributed to a decline in jobs for unskilled workers (at the same time it made their stuff much cheaper to purchase). While that is clearly a problem, I don't think the answer is as simple as pulling out of trade agreements. We should enact policy to take some of those gains the agreements afford and use them to help the unskilled workers who are being harmed. From the piece:
"To the extent that some Americans are harmed, which is inevitable, the projected gains of future free-trade agreements should be more than enough to compensate losers, if only the government can get itself organised. Peter Petri and Michael Plummer, two economists, estimate that the TPP will boost American incomes by $131 billion, or 0.5% of GDP. That is over 100 times what America spent on trade-adjustment assistance in 2009: there is plenty of scope to do more for the losers from trade...
If America is to go on reaping the gains from trade, it must ensure it compensates those who lose out. You can oppose protectionism, or you can oppose redistribution. It is getting harder to do both."
