I wrote about Perry and immigration the other day, with the hook of this CIS report. Ray Sullivan of the Perry campaign writes in reply:
Rich -
America’s unsecured border is a huge problem and the states are left with the resulting challenges, especially big states like California, Texas and Florida. In light of the federal government’s failure to secure the border, Governor Perry has championed border security, authorizing $400 million from Texas to fight border crime, and called for penalties against employers who hire illegal immigrants and an end to sanctuary city policies.
However, the numbers contained in and the conclusion of the CIS report are really off base and wrong.
A central conclusion of this report is “40 percent of all the job growth in Texas since 2007 went to newly arrived illegal immigrants. Source: CIS report Page 1,
This finding is false. The numbers don’t add up.
Since Jan. 2007, Texas has created 384,700 net new jobs. Source: Texas Jobs Statistics from US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics/Total Nonfarm Seasonally Adjusted Change from Jan. 2007 – Aug. 2011 (Jan. 2007: 10,230,300 to Aug. 2011: 10,615,000)
40% of 384,700 jobs is 153,880 jobs.
The Department of Homeland Security data cited in the CIS report estimates that 60,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in Texas since 2007. Source: Department of Homeland Security report, Page 4.
So if Texas created 384,700 jobs since 2007 and 40% of that is 153,880… and the CIS says 60,000 illegal immigrants arrived in Texas since 2007, then their conclusion must be false and numerically impossible.
The author of the CIS report, Steve Camarota, addressed these very points in a blog post the other day.
I'm still mystified as to why what class of person the jobs created in Texas went to matters, but assuming it does in some way matter a pertinent question that the CIS does not, and cannot, answer is this: Was there anything preventing native-born U.S. citizens from taking the jobs that were filled by the apparently unclean hordes from outside the U.S.?
I'm willing to bet that other than qualifications, or perhaps a desire by "native" workers for greater pay or benefits employers were unwilling to provide, the answer would be no. Maybe I'm missing something because there is no inherent commercial advantage that I'm aware of for hiring someone legally coming from, say, India than there is to hiring someone born and raised in Texas. And if there's a climate ultimately promoted by reigning in malign influences, be they government regulations or trial lawyers for example, that allows private industry to hire then ultimately that's what we're looking for on a national scale. If I wanted someone to dictate who could be hired by industry I'd be a Democrat.
The part of the CIS study that annoys me, and I'm willing to bet a good number of people in the Perry campaign, is that is a pretty lousy and transparent attempt to denigrate the record of job creation in Texas by claiming that the jobs created there are of little to no benefit to Texans and that you can therefore argue that somehow what Perry would do as President is somehow keep Americans unemployed but create jobs in America for immigrants and claim that the economy has recovered.
If we really are small government conservatives who pride ourselves in allowing the market to work our reaction to the news that immigrants were hired over Americans is not denigrate the fact that jobs were created by saying they went to the wrong group of people or to ask why government didn't stop this but what did immigrants as a group bring to the table that Americans did not that caused a 4:1 ratio in immigrants to Americans hired, and is there an appropriate way to address that difference?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThey brought cheap, exploitable, almost slave labor for the most part. And Texas could have stopped a lot of it had it implement e-Verify.
Your lack of concern about your fellow American citizens just shows how "heartless" you are.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCamarota makes the Perry campaign look like idiots.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhich is a waste of time, since the perry campaign manages to do that by themselves without any help.
This is one of the most inept campaigns I've seen in awhile. It almost makes Bachman's gardasil meltdown seem competent by comparison.
Thank goodness he's imploding now and not while running against obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCamerata's "response" doesn't really answer the charges.
First, he complains that they took a longer period. Well, it was only one quarter longer, and if his statement was only true by cutting out a quarter, that would be like he cherry-picked his months to get the biggest effect. Since the Perry response covers a longer period of time, it is more representative.
But even if you grant Camarota his period, his second argument is flawed. He argues that the increase in immigrant population was only for a 3-year period, not the 4.5 year period. But in 3 years, there were 60,000 more immigrants. Unless he has some evidence that the last 1.5 years has seen a marked increase, you are looking at maybe 90,000 total over the 4.5 year period. So given that the "40%" number would required 150,000+, 90,000 is still way too few.
Then Camarota argues that since the government reports the increase in population of illegals, and NOT the "new" ones, and since many leave, he claims, there were actually a lot more "new". But that is a moot point -- the ones leaving are giving UP jobs, so all we care about is the net change. It's absurd to ignore the fact that people would leave jobs, and then argue that means we have more illegals. By Camarata's argument, if we threw EVERY ILLEGAL out of Texas tomorrow, and then the same number came back in and took their place, illegals would have TWICE AS MANY JOBS as they did before. When in fact, they'd have the SAME number.
This is all before you get into actual methodology to see HOW they knew that the illegals and legal immigrants were the ones actually working the new jobs, when you can't track illegals, and we are told illegals are a drain on society who don't work legal jobs. If Illegals are actually working jobs that are under-the-table and off-the-books, they wouldn't be COUNTED in the "net new jobs" figure.
And of course, there's still the basic flaw in the entire argument -- how can it be Rick Perry's fault that illegals are getting into Texas and taking jobs? Much less that LEGAL immigrants are taking jobs -- he has no right to set immigration policy, nor has he any control over the feds deporting illegals.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow, Dr. Camarota's (Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in public policy analysis) blows Perry's response out of the water. The Perry team is starting to look like the Keystone Cops.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf I correctly read the blog post cited above, the CIS seems to be making the following formulation:
1) Estimate 40 new illegal immigrants arriving.
2) Estimate 100 new jobs in texas.
3) Therefore 40% of new jobs were taken by illegals.
Now, CIS and Perry are arguing about the numbers for 1 and 2 based on the time frames tracked.
I take issue with using #1 and #2 to figure out #3 in the first place. It assumes that every illegal immigrant is getting a job that was tracked by the US Department of Labor.
Yet everyone tells me that illegals come across the border without a job. Are they saying that illegals have 100% employment rate?
And everyone tells me that illegals get paid under the table for jobs that are off the books. So all of these illegals have suddenly found employment in jobs that get reported to the Bureau of Labor?
None of this makes sense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"None of this makes sense."
Neither do your posts. You throw out a bunch of stuff and don't worry about facts or the truth, just how much you can spin and distort to cover up for perry.
I'll just take this time to advise anybody trying to reply to Overt- he/she will willingly lie about what you've posted to further their arguments, and when confronted about it, not bother to respond or correct their false statements.
For proof, see this corner thread: External Link
As of this time Overt hasn't corrected his / her lies about what I've posted. Just a warning for anyone thinking of replying to Overt.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour post doesn't refute what he said, and his post made perfect sense to me. The numbers don't add up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOf course I didn't. I don't want to waste any time responding to a person who will lie about what people say when it goes against perry and then refuse to apologize for it when it's pointed out. I wanted to save other people from taking the same bait I did.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor a moment there, I thought you were talking about Romney and his supporters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh yes, the old, anyone who disagrees with anything Romney says is lying gambit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHaving just reviewed the earlier argument, I can say with certainty, that at no point to you prove that Overt lied. On numerous occassions Overt proved that you had a reckless disregard of the truth. IE, you lied.
You couldn't care less what the truth is.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy don't you just use the information CIS uses, instead of pulling stuff out of your sweet patootie?
The Dept of Labor didn't track anyone. These numbers come from BLS employment surveys. The BLS does not count illegals, but because we all know there are millions of illegals working here, illegals are in the survey data. Therefore, CIS comes up with the number of illegals and types up its report.
Ultimately, these figures for illegals are nothing but a guess, but Mark Krikorian seems to be making the best educated guess one can make. Go to the CIS site and read how they figure this stuff out. If you can come up with better estimates, form your own think tank.
The Perry campaign's record on immigration is weak as it is. Criticizing this report as poorly as they have doesn't help.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem the Perry campaign is having over Immigration et. al. is the fact that inexperienced ideologues are expressing their lack of experience in dealing with this problem and others.
The only candidate that will satisfy these individuals is one with *no* experience in political executive office (Cain) or extremely plastic regarding their positions and the truth (Romney).
Once you take the time to actually listen to the reasoning behind these decisions they make sense and satisfy the core values of the conservative wing of the Republican Party to which I belong.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA made-up numerator over a made-up denominator does not generate a true percentage.
Engaging in analysis without data is simply propaganda. It may fool the rubes---and the MittBots are nothing but---but will never fool anyone who doesn't greet Romney's claims with immediate, unthinking agreement.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTeflon93>> It may fool the rubes---and the MittBots are nothing but...
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Why don't you go back to FreeRepublic where this sort of grade-school slander fills every political season?
Your post is garbage.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou can go back to your Scott Brown meeting. There's no point in electing anyone that won't reverse Obama and Mitt won't do it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy, what a fact-filled rebuttal, Ed! Congratulations on your perspicacity.
Why don't you demonstrate your savvy by explaining how two made-up numbers (the number of illegal aliens coming to Texas in a year minus the number of illegal aliencs leaving Texas in a year) when combined with another made-up number (the number of jobs created in Texas over the same year) doesn't yield a third made-up number (the proportion of new jobs compared to the proportion of new illegal aliens)?
For extra credit, perhaps you could explain how this number magically equates to the third (the number of new jobs going to illegal aliens) which is what the author claimed to be proving in the first place.
I'll bet you a Romney jersey you can do no such thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo lets get this straight. Rich writes a syndicated column based on one source that criticizes Perry and he does not give the Perry campaign an opportunity to respond. A few days later the Perry campaign responds and NR gives the original source rebuttal space and the last word. Why doesn't NR just declare for Romney (as they did in 2008) and stop pretending they are neutral observers.
Elsewhere on the web there are stories like Romney's record does not match his rhetoric as a staunch opponent of sanctuary cities when he was Governor.You won't find coverage of that here.
I remember in 2008, NR continuously published David Frum's attacks on Sara Palin -- now its beat up on Perry time.
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