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Reading and Film Presentations and Discussion

ERA: We Wanted Workers, Chapter 7

Borjas dives into the debate regarding immigration’s impact on the labor market in chapter 7. He starts off by introducing the idea that “Immigrants do the jobs that natives will not do and have little impact on native job opportunities as a result” (126). Borjas discusses the case of Crider Inc., a company that lost a large part of its workforce after immigration agents raided their chicken-processing plant and discovered that many undocumented immigrants working there. After that day, Crider was left with about 25% of its work force, and had to find replacements. To incentivize people to work at Crider, they raised their wages. This led to an influx of African American workers, and it did not have the desired effect. Crider saw “lower productivity and pay disputes between the new employees and labor contractors” (128). This situation demonstrates a point Borjas makes that Latino workers are willing to accept low pay and grueling conditions and will not complain and bargain for better pay and working conditions. Building off of the prior idea about immigrants doing jobs that natives will not do, Borjas forms a new argument: “it is instead that immigrants do jobs that natives don’t want to do at the going wage” (128). Further, Borjas discusses the helicopter parable which paints an imaginary situation where a bunch of new immigrants appear by jumping out of helicopters in the middle of the need. A quick increase in population ties into the law of supply and demand, that is, “if the supply of workers goes up, the price of workers—the wage that employers pay—also goes down” (131). Overall, Borjas present a well-supported argument regarding the effect of immigrants on wages. 

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