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The Shrinking of our Shrinking: Will Philly Grow Next Year?
Submitted by Dan U-A on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 3:05pm.
Every year I look at the Census population estimates, and every year, I am somewhat surprised that Philly continues to lose population. This year is no different. As New York, and Chicago grow, Philly (along with Baltimore, Pittsburgh and others) keeps shrinking.
However, while it sucks to keep losing people, the trends really are starting to look pretty good:
The graph is the percent population growth for the 15 biggest cities. Philly is... at the bottom in blue. Look, for example at the first point in the graph, which is population growth from 2000 to 2001. Philly is well below everyone, except Detroit. But, if this trend keeps going, we appear to be on the verge of actually gaining population for the first time in quite a while. To otherwise see what I mean, look at the graph with the axes blacked out:
That is probably not the most statistically sound way of looking at things. But the point remains that relatively speaking, we a)started off the decade in just about the worst position of the cities shown, and b) we are consistently improving. As Ray has pointed out, population growth is not the end all of economic success for Philadelphians. But, it sure would be nice to stop hearing us referred to as a shrinking city, wouldn't it?
As an aside, for all of the Joey Vento's of the world out there, it is worth noting that without the dramatic influx of immigrants- most recently Mexican immigrants- we would still be shrinking quite a bit, as no one would be left to take ol Joey's place, after he took his Hummer to South Jersey.
Immigration has always been the key
People who grumble about immigrants seem to forget a few things...
* Their ancestors were almost certainly immigrants themselves. I don't think that 'Vento' is a Lenape name.
* The main reason for Philly's growth into the 3rd largest city in the US during the middle of the 20th century was the huge influx of immigrants- many from central, eastern, + southern Europe, as well as blacks from the American south- which occurred from roughly 1880-1920.
* The only thing keeping some cities in the area alive at all- Norristown is a case in point- is immigration. In No-town's case, it's Mexican immigrants replacing the Italians who have, by and large, fled the borough. In Philly's case, much of what was once solidly Italian South Philly is now Vietnamese.
Considering all this, Jim Kenney's idea for an Office of New Philadelphians is one of the most forward-thinking ideas I've heard in long time. Without immigrants, Philly will simply shrivel + die.
-Z
One other thing people who grumble about immigrants forget:
they sound like bigots.
And that which quacks is often assumed a duck.
In a not-unrelated matter, my old South Philly Italian Dad & I enjoyed a lunch of tacos and tamales at La Lupe today, in the shadow of a certain orange cheesesteak establishment that will remain nameless.
And that we'd never think of patronizing again.
Immigration
Let me tell you some other immigration stories.
There was a group of people working in construction. They worked as carpenters, cement masons, carpet layers and assorted other construction trades. They were both Union and non-union. They paid taxes and were paid good, but not great. They received time and a half for overtime and if hurt received workers compensation benefits. If they were cheated by their boss they could go to court and sue. They received some level of health insurance.
There were employers in the construction industry who paid their employees moderately well, deducted taxes, paid for unemployment, workers compensation and health benefits. They paid their employees time and a half for hours worked over forty and paid them for all hours worked.
Then there is a group of employers who hired illegal aliens. They did not give them benefits, deduct taxes, pay overtime or workers compensation. When their employees get hurt they are treated at the emergency room without paying. They are paid less than the employees above and do not receive health or other benefits.
The employees in the first paragraph lost their jobs because they insisted on their employer obeying the law. The employers in the second paragraph could not compete with the employers who hired illegal aliens. I hear heart wrenching stories all the time about the travails about illegal immigrants. What is missing is what the effect is on hard working Americans. As long as they are illegal they are at the mercy of unscrupulous employers. To that extent they lower wages for hardworking Americans.
Illegal immigration is not stealing lawyer’s teachers and social worker’s jobs. It is stealing jobs and lowering wages of blue collar workers and those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
Lou: 1) The solution is to
Lou:
1) The solution is to enforce labor laws.
2) The trades long excluded 'hard working Americans' who didn't have the right color of skin. This is a bad road to travel down.
illegal immigratiion
Most analysis I've seen indicates that illegal immigration does not have a very significant effect on employment and wages in industries such as construction. To the extent that it is a drag on wages and and "steals" jobs from Americans (both phenomena which are probably much less than what is generally assumed), it mostly does so with unskilled jobs.
Studies I've seen on the overall impact of illegal immigration to our economy are all over the map - with most I've seen indicating that it has a slightly net positive effect overall. And of course, many illegal immigrants are exploited by their employers - but obviously, for many, working here illegally is an opportunity for them to enhance their family's economic status.
The bottom line is that it is a very complicated issue, and not one that is well-served by polemics.
What is your point, Lou? Are you saying that immigration isn't good for the City? Are you hanging with Joey V. and eating cheeseteaks together?
This stuff really bothers me
I don't know about your family, Lou, but my grandparents and parents escaped Russia early in the last century. My uncle was kind of sneaked in when his mother somehow concealed that he was nearly blind. If they hadn't gotten in, they would be dead and I would not be. Once here my grandparents and parents worked their buns off to make a life for the next generation. And because of that my brother, sister and cousins have done alright. And me too.
So how in God's name can people like us complain that another generation of desperate people are coming into this country to work hard and save their families? Were our ancestors morally superior because the law happened to let them when it did? Should my mother and father have meekly stayed put for the crematoria if the immigration wall had been erected a bit earlier than it was?
It's true that the Mexicans who are here don't face industrialized death if they return home. Maybe they only face hunger and unemployment due to the depridations of disinvesting American corporations. Does that mean the children of those who happened to get to safety legally have the moral right to look down at this new generation of escapees? Not in my eyes, not ever. The very idea sends chills up and down my spine.
Immigration
1. My remarks were only directed towards illegal immigration. I believe that we should make it easier to let people become legal workers. It is the “illegal” part of the immigration that allows unscrupulous employers to exploit these workers at the detriment to legal workers.
2. If you do not think illegal immigration lowers wages you should look at studies in the meatpacking industry where real wages went from $20.00 to $8.00 per hour. Also look at the non union contractors association’s views on immigration.
3. Dan’s statement about the trades is an illogical argument on this subject. What happened in the past has no relevance to this argument. Further, this is an unfair shot at me and has no relevance to this discussion
4. As I said lawyers jobs, like Stan’s and Dan’s are not effected.
5. You all seem to be letting unscrupulous employers off the hook. They are the villains in this argument.
6. DE II you make no sense. Is eating cheesesteaks or completely allowing employers to exploit illegal workers the only choices in this matter.
From my perspective, Lou
Your rhetoric on this issue comes across as very close to that of people like Joey Vento.
You have overstated the impact of illegal immigration on employment and wages. To repeat: Most studies show that, in balance, illegal immigration has a negligible effect on both. In particular, it has a negligible effect on skilled jobs/workers - such as exist in the construction industry (for any job they take away from non-immigrants, they create jobs through demand and spending. I worked for years in construction with no healthcare and very few benefits sometimes, and completely under the table at other times - well before Latin American immigrants had very many jobs at all in the Philly construction industry). Exploitative employers didn't suddenly appear on the scene when illegal immigration increased.
Illegal immigration does have a negative impact on certain industries and employment/wages for Americans who lack high school diplomas/compete for low wage jobs, but that impact is probably much less than it is generally portrayed to be, and there are many factors which work together to make life difficult for those folks; so, blaming illegal immigrants for that situation seems to be scapegoating.
Again, Lou, I ask what is your point? Are you saying that illegal immigration only has an unmitigatedly negative impact on Philly?
A real problem that Democrats have yet to deal with
Maintaining the status quo on illegal immigration is one of those weird meeting places where the immoral pro-business-at-any-cost right and members of the left who may keep a distance from the uglier parts of p.c.-sounding policy become strange bedfellows.
First off, let's get out of the way that xenophobia and bigotry taint this debate almost irrevocably, so that issues attached to it become almost taboo for Democratic lawmakers to even address because a)they are not bigots, b) they don't want to be seen as aiding bigots c)they really don't want to be seen as even taking bigots seriously.
But that sucks.
It sucks because the only people in government likely to come up with a humane answer to this difficult problem are the Democrats, who at least acknowledge bigotry when they see it, and more importantly, acknowledge that it has no place in serious political debate.
But just because Lou Dobbs is a bigot, and lots of people who like Lou Dobbs are bigots, doesn't mean that employing a lot of illegal immigrants doesn't have a deleterious effect on wages and workplace conditions in certain U.S. industries, such as construction.
Not that anyone here has exactly done this, but I believe it's hypocritical to argue for a living wage and humane workplace conditions on the one hand, and to adopt a more or less laissez-faire attitude toward employing illegal immigrants on the other.
The studies I'm aware of that downplay the effect of illegal immigrants on wages and workplace conditions tend to come from rightwing think tanks that don't really care about wages and workplace conditions. They tend to focus on how we all benefit from lower prices when work is done on the (illegal) cheap. Other studies, like George Borjas' state that illegal immigrants in the workforce depressed low skilled worker wages by 9% between 1980 and 2000, and that the effect was much greater on certain areas, including construction.
That's not ok, I think.
The real problems are not so much the immigrants as the employers who create a secret economy that encourages them to come, and the ridiculous hoops immigrants have to jump through in order to work or settle here legally.
That's why I'm glad Obama named Janet Napolitano head of Homeland Security. As governor of Arizona, she enacted the harshest penalties in the U.S. for employers who hire illegal immigrants: a second violation means revoking a business license in AZ.
From an LA Times article
I don't reject complaints from labor about the effect of illegal immigrants on certain industries. When the administration gets the chance, they need to come up with the humane solution that eluded Bush.
We should make it easier for immigrants to come here and work here legally.
But once they're here legally, labor should not fight immigrants but embrace them.
And Philly must do so emphatically, as we need to grow the population.
FWIW
I think I (cough, cough) recommended that organized labor covertly encourage illegals who work for bogus temp agencies to organize better paying, safety-code complying temp agencies so we don't just depend on the Feds to crack down on employers who callously break the law from above, but also empower illegals themselves to demand an end to "the race to the bottom" on wages from below. On this very forum.
That said real immigration reform means planning for the folks already here to apply for legalization while they are still here. Otherwise you won't get the benefit of people actually signing up for it - no matter how many right wingers scream about "No Assylum!"
Still don't see how this has anything to do with why mostly legal immigration has kept NYC gaining population but has not stopped the drain here in Philly, which I think is the more pressing issue for YPP.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
The studies that I've seen
Don't fit the description you've offered. In fact, from what I've seen, studies conducted by the right wingers tend to find a greater negative impact from illegal immigration. I certainly haven't done an exhaustive review of the literature, but from what I've seen from a general interest on the subject, my take is that rightwingers find evidence of deleterious effects, and leftwingers find a lack of such evidence. Surprise, surprise (I remember a relatively extensive NYT Magazine article that broke down the studies done by right and leftwing economists in exactly that fashion). My conclusion is that no one really knows for sure, but that overall, the positive and negative effects of illegal immigration balance themselves out. That isn't to say, however, that there isn't a greater concentration of negative and/or positive effects for certain segments of the country/population - or that it doesn't have a relatively greater negative impact on the poor and less educated.
I'm pretty sure that Borjas said that the negative effects of immigration occur regardless of whether it's legal or illegal immigration - so, Lou's singling out illegal immigration, as distinct from legal immigration, is not consistent with Borjas' findings. That just serves to underscore the point that you can't just simply isolate the negative effects of illegal immigration on Philly without considering the positive effects of growth and increased vibrancy in certain areas. And any growth, whether it be fueled by illegal immigrants or not, would bring the same positive/negative trade-off.
Do you have a link? I believe that Borjas' work shows a significantly greater impact on low-skilled workers as opposed to skilled workers like construction workers. My understanding of the argument is that in areas such as construction, which are higher paying, if there were fewer illegals working the jobs, demand for legal workers would increase for a while, but then subside once those jobs were filled. The effects of illegal immigration on employment/wages is much greater in lower skilled/lower wage jobs precisely because legal workers are less likely to fill the positions - and those legal workers who remain in that industry suffer as a result. It's also naive to to think that if illegal workers just went away, suddenly employers would start forking over more money. Does anyone think they wouldn't find ways to exploit legal workers, find ways to reduce costs through automation, or find ways to exploit cheaper labor overseas?
Finally, I don't quite get this
If no one here has exactly done that, why are you bringing it up? Are you saying that I "sort of" have done that - because I don't believe that I have. I don't have an even remotely laissez-faire attitude towards employing illegals in an exploitative fashion. I have worked with illegal immigrants, and in no way take a cavalier attitude about the near slavery that some of them endure. I'm also not cavalier about the impact of illegal immigration on low-skill industries - and in particular on minority communities. But I do think that railing against illegal immigration misses the point that this is a complicated issue, with many countervailing factors.
Like I said, strange bedfellows
are those on the right who support the status quo on the employment of illegal immigrants because they don't care about safe workplaces and fair wages and those on the left who simply want to protect illegal immigrants and fear changes to current policy will add to their misery.
But the status quo is not defensible.
As you note, it involves near-slavery working conditions and drives down the already-too-low wages of unskilled labor.
I can't believe you really advocate the status quo regarding employing illegal immigrants, since you've seen the deleterious effects up close.
Those conditions are why, with a few reservations, I like Napolitano's changes.
She centers prosecution on employers, supports streamlining visas, and most of all supports creating a legal, enforceable temporary work program.
I'm glad you pointed out the good guy/bad guy line; I'm uncomfortable with it too.
Similarly though, I think it's wrong for folks on the left to be dismissive of organized labor's complaints (treat them like bad guys, I mean) about the effect of illegal immigrants on wages and labor markets.
Whether it's Borjas on the (relative) left or someone like Gordon Hanson on the right who is making the "you like low prices, don't you?" excuse, I don't find the trade-off equal at all, and everyone agrees that certain labor markets are especially hard-hit.
So, when you say
I'd remind you that when anyone -- immigrants or anyone else -- are employed illegally there are added costs and negative trade-offs; if the minimum wage is ignored, there's a trade-off in the dropped price of labor; if workplace safety law is ignored, there is a drop in the overall working conditions and a rise in the likelihood of injury.
Frankly, statements like the above and this
could be construed as a reluctant endorsement of the status quo.
But since the status quo can't coexist with adherence to basic ethical labor practices, again I'd say that the status quo is not defensible.
So while I agree that this is a complicated issue, I think people on the left -- as the defenders of ethical labor practices -- have an obligation, second of all after rooting out racism, to acknowledge that some of organized labor's complaints on this issue are merited; and, most of all, with Democrats in the White House and in majorities in both houses of Congress, I think it's incumbent upon us to find very soon a humane legal framework to end the sub-minimum wages and unsafe work practices, so that those who want to work here and settle here can do so safely and without harming labor practices in general.
Also, I'm a bit curious
Why should the focus of policy be to identify and prevent illegal immigration?
I'm not saying that streamlining processes of becoming legal isn't a worthy goal - but I can't help but see a focus on the issue of whether or not a worker is "legal" as putting the cart before the horse, and it suggests pandering to bigots (I suppose it could be argued that such political expediency will allow for overall progress to be made, but lets call pandering when we see it). If we're concerned about exploitation, we should crack down on exploitative employers. If we're concerned about low wages, we should focus on policies that will lead to increased wages.
What's with the "bad guy" and "good guy" breakdown? That bothers me.
Works both ways, DE
Ignore organized labor too often when they have a point, and you start sounding like a classist, a charge not unknown to white middle class liberals.
Classism is a form of bigotry too.
Enforcing labor laws is the only reason, I think, to work on these issues, but I think it's a good one.
Plus, if we create a workable humane system, we not only solve a labor problem, but we take away one of the Republicans' big issues.
I'll reiterate
As I say above, I strongly support Philly's working to bring more immigrants into town.
My grandfather was a shoemaker, not a lawyer
He's the one who brought his family over to this country and would have done so, whether it was legal or not, to save them. And if the threat of deportation didn't hang over their heads, new immigrant workers would be today, just as they were 100 years ago, great labor organizers.
Of course unscrupulous employers violating labor laws should be prosecuted. I don't think anyone on this thread disagrees with that.
A city losing population is a city that loses jobs
Contracting population necessarily equals an ever contracting local economy and that means ultimately less construction work across the board.
Immigration is how cities like New York have continuously economically reinvented themselves while Philly has largely floundered in terms of leveraging the same process. In fact one of the over arching themes is that in the Philly region, one of the city's big-picture problems is that immigrants skip straight to the burbs and the city does not get the same economic dynamism of immigrants reinventing neighborhoods in decline before tax-payers end up footing the bill for knocking down whole neighborhoods and then often badly trying to rebuild them from scratch with innevitably very expensive and somewhat ham-handed "urban renewal" projects.
It strikes me as odd that we jumped from this problem that the city could do a much better job in terms of offsetting population loss and the economic drag of having a city with tens of thousands of abandoned residential properties immediately to "illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs". Holy selective shift of focus, Batman.
Not all immigrants are "illegal" and much more often than not those that do come without green cards stay and their kids are no longer "illegal" after a generation.
Besides all this, while we all probably agree the US needs to do a much better job with workplace enforcement, as has been pointed out before, a significant number of illegals do in fact pay taxes through bogus "temp agencies" and the majority of industries where they don't use that particular legal dodge are in low paying service jobs - like dishwasher, maid, gardener, childcare -more so than construction. Not that we should throw out immigration enforcement, but that flat claims that illegal immigration use up services without contributing to taxes is highly suspect.
If you rent an apartment you contribute to property taxes whether you have a green card. If you buy things in the U.S. you contribute to sales taxes and business taxes. If you work for one of these bogus "temp agencies" Social Security and Federal income taxes are withheld - even if its withheld on someone else's SS#. For those that don't - again mostly in low-pay service sector jobs - there's a good argument to be made that immigration reform that brings the bulk of them into legality would do a lot to prop a teetering Social Security system.
The point is 1.) the local issue of Philadelphia doing a better job of attracting immigrants generally is vital above and beyond, actually virtually independent of, the national issue of illegal immigration and 2.) the national issue is much more complicated than you putting it, Lou.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.