Rex Kerr
2 min readMar 11, 2022

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Yes, I looked at all zero articles that you cited. It took me zero seconds.

If you had cited something, I would have addressed the arguments presented. As it is, you haven't really made an argument.

Children going to public school is an investment. They're extremely likely to stay in the U.S. unless we kick them out (e.g. by ending DACA), and statistically are likely to end up as productive members of society, improving the economy and making life better for everyone. So using that as an example of it being costly is ridiculous, unless you don't understand how investment works.

It is true that health care is a cost. But illegal immigrants tend to be younger and therefore don't need all that much emergency health care (though if you're arguing that we should just get them into a normal health care plan because it's way cheaper than doing it on an emergency basis--yes, of course, you'd be right there), and a lot of them tend to work and therefore you need careful analysis to understand whether it's a net benefit or a net drag and also over what timescale.

It is true that immigration depresses wages. If there is an inadequate amount of work to go around, that's bad--so in times of high unemployment, illegal immigration arguably is especially bad. Presently, unemployment is not high, so this is much less of an issue. If the particular issue is that some people are otherwise unemployable because they have no other skills of value, well, it's true, there may be more competition for jobs in certain sectors; so maybe you're arguing for the importance of a comprehensive job retraining program that allows people to be more flexible regarding the kind of work they are seeking. That might be highly cost-effective; education does tend to be in the long run (though I'm not sure about retraining programs specifically).

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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