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Scrabler
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2660
Location: Mobile, AL
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 Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:01 Post subject: Who said immigrants don't harm our hospitals?
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The New York Times
July 18, 2005
Immigrant Births Put Pressure on Hospitals
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:37 a.m. ET
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) -- Almost one in four American births is now to a foreign-born mother, according to a recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies. The result, medical experts and advocates say, is a growing pressure on American health care centers to not only deliver babies, but deliver them in more languages than one.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says hospitals that get federal money must provide interpreter services. It just doesn't say how. Most hospitals reach out with phone-based interpretation services. But critics say the phone has limitations, especially during childbirth.
''What, are they going to pass the receiver back and forth while the doctor is catching the baby?'' asked Dr. Francesca Gany, director of the Center for Immigrant Health at the New York University School of Medicine. ''Health care facilities are definitely feeling the heat.''
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is studying the link between medical error and interpretation issues, Gany said. And the National Health Law Program is looking at how small health care providers can offer language services. A report by the Washington-based Institute of Medicine said 56 percent of such providers surveyed had received no language training.
Though studies are under way, there are no national numbers for access to, or use of, interpreter services in health care. But there are some telling samples.
One hospital in Madison, Wis., said requests for interpreters more than doubled, to more than 4,000 requests a year, between 2000 and 2003. In Columbus, Ohio, Children's Hospital in 2002 had almost 8,000 requests for interpreters.
A survey of New Jersey's hospitals shows that in a largely urban state where 11 percent of residents have limited English, just 3 percent of hospitals have a full-time interpreter. Eighty percent of hospitals offer no staff training on working with interpreters, and 31 percent have no multilingual signs.
Cost is a barrier and most hospitals told the New Jersey survey that reimbursement for translation services is needed. A 2002 study by the National Association of Children's Hospitals found interpreting costs at 22 hospitals ranged from $1,800 to $847,000 per year.
The alternatives to a trained translator can be, and have been, a Spanish-speaking janitor pulled into the delivery room, said Dr. Portia Jones, an assistant professor at Albany Medical Center in New York.
Jones oversees a pilot interpreting program for the center's medical students. In a city of just under 100,000, the program includes about 30 volunteers who speak Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Polish and other languages.
''This seems like such a no-brainer,'' Jones said. But change comes slowly.
Nancy Kohn, field coordinator for the Boston-based The Access Project, said some people have told her that if they don't speak English at hospitals, they don't get seen. The project focuses on improving health care for underserved populations.
When all else fails, children themselves have stepped in. One interpreter group does a presentation titled, ''Can my 7-year-old interpret for me in the delivery room?''
Utica's number of refugees per capita, 10,000 in a city of 60,000, is one of the highest in the country. The Multicultural Association of Medical Interpreters in Utica contracts with about 40 interpreters in 14 languages and arranges about 600 interpreting sessions a month, triple the number in 2002.
Even with such numbers, the lack of interpreters at Utica-area hospitals brought complaints less than two years ago, but in unusually polite terms.
Translated from Russian, one woman's letter reads, ''I appeal to the employees of the maternity ward, please be so kind in the future as to provide all non-English-speaking women giving birth with a trained interpreter, especially during their hour of their greatest need and trial. Again, thank you very much for all your care and concern.''
The woman had consented to an operation on her fetus, but without quite understanding why.
In another case, a man from Bosnia tried to understand as a doctor attempted to explain that the man's wife needed a Caesarean section. Horrified, the man translated incorrectly and told his wife the baby was dead, and it would have to be cut out of her. The woman went into shock. Though the baby was healthy, she couldn't take care of it for a week.
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Silvermouse
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 12 Oct 2002
Posts: 11015
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:06 Post subject:
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I don't think anyone has said that illegal immigrants flooding our hospitals isn't bad.
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Scrabler
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 2660
Location: Mobile, AL
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:07 Post subject:
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| Silvermouse wrote: | | I don't think anyone has said that illegal immigrants flooding our hospitals isn't bad. |
Someone did but I forget what thread it was in. Or they said they aren't flooding them, I forget which.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:15 Post subject:
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| Scrabler wrote: | | Silvermouse wrote: | | I don't think anyone has said that illegal immigrants flooding our hospitals isn't bad. |
Someone did but I forget what thread it was in. Or they said they aren't flooding them, I forget which. |
Oh cool ! When did the ER and the maternity ward of a hospital become the same thing?
-Nah-
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:16 Post subject:
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| Nahualli wrote: | | Scrabler wrote: | | Silvermouse wrote: | | I don't think anyone has said that illegal immigrants flooding our hospitals isn't bad. |
Someone did but I forget what thread it was in. Or they said they aren't flooding them, I forget which. |
Oh cool ! When did the ER and the maternity ward of a hospital become the same thing?
-Nah- |
Scum, go back over the fence. You aren't welcome.
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 7044
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:17 Post subject:
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The article talks about immigrants. Note that "immigrant" is not the same as "illegal immigrant" which the article doesn't mention at all.
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Occulis
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 13293
Location: Moral Relativity Central
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:18 Post subject:
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Silvermouse! How are you!!!!
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:19 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | | The article talks about immigrants. Note that "immigrant" is not the same as "illegal immigrant" which the article doesn't mention at all. |
Well, not to mention the fact they're talking specifically about birthing babies which is not and never has been the domain of the ER in any civilized hospital. Women who are admitted to the ER while in childbirth are moved to the maternity ward almost immediately. They don't stay there and they cerainly don't take up beds that are normally reserved for patients admitted to an ER, and if they do, it's not for long at all.
-Nah-
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:20 Post subject:
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| Kbarr wrote: | | Nahualli wrote: | | Scrabler wrote: | | Silvermouse wrote: | | I don't think anyone has said that illegal immigrants flooding our hospitals isn't bad. |
Someone did but I forget what thread it was in. Or they said they aren't flooding them, I forget which. |
Oh cool ! When did the ER and the maternity ward of a hospital become the same thing?
-Nah- |
Scum, go back over the fence. You aren't welcome. |
I'm quite welcome. So welcome in fact they game me a birth certificate and a SS number to boot !
*sings* Proud to be an American !!!
-Nah-
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Maldek
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 16 Oct 2002
Posts: 2089
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:20 Post subject:
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how much does a coat hanger and a stick of butter cost nowadays ?!!
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sinrakin
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:21 Post subject:
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| Nahualli wrote: | | sinrakin wrote: | | The article talks about immigrants. Note that "immigrant" is not the same as "illegal immigrant" which the article doesn't mention at all. |
Well, not to mention the fact they're talking specifically about birthing babies which is not and never has been the domain of the ER in any civilized hospital. Women who are admitted to the ER while in childbirth are moved to the maternity ward almost immediately. They don't stay there and they cerainly don't take up beds that are normally reserved for patients admitted to an ER, and if they do, it's not for long at all.
-Nah- |
I wasn't disagreeing with you, just making an additional point 
a) they're not talking about the ER
b) they're not talking about illegal immigrants
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:21 Post subject:
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| Nahualli wrote: | | sinrakin wrote: | | The article talks about immigrants. Note that "immigrant" is not the same as "illegal immigrant" which the article doesn't mention at all. |
Well, not to mention the fact they're talking specifically about birthing babies which is not and never has been the domain of the ER in any civilized hospital. Women who are admitted to the ER while in childbirth are moved to the maternity ward almost immediately. They don't stay there and they cerainly don't take up beds that are normally reserved for patients admitted to an ER, and if they do, it's not for long at all.
-Nah- |
Scum, go back over the fence. You aren't welcome.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:24 Post subject:
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| sinrakin wrote: | | Nahualli wrote: | | sinrakin wrote: | | The article talks about immigrants. Note that "immigrant" is not the same as "illegal immigrant" which the article doesn't mention at all. |
Well, not to mention the fact they're talking specifically about birthing babies which is not and never has been the domain of the ER in any civilized hospital. Women who are admitted to the ER while in childbirth are moved to the maternity ward almost immediately. They don't stay there and they cerainly don't take up beds that are normally reserved for patients admitted to an ER, and if they do, it's not for long at all.
-Nah- |
I wasn't disagreeing with you, just making an additional point
a) they're not talking about the ER
b) they're not talking about illegal immigrants |
"Not to mention..." implies agreement, adding on to a statement that's tacitly mutually understood.
-Nah-
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motherface
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 12 Mar 2003
Posts: 3407
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:34 Post subject:
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They should just change the citizenship requirement.
- If your parents are citizens who have lived in the United States for at least 10 years, you're a citizen.
- If your parents aren't citizens, you have to follow the naturalization process.
The end.
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kbarr
RealPoor Jedi
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 11239
Location: New York, now go fuck off...
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:46 Post subject:
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| motherface wrote: | They should just change the citizenship requirement.
- If your parents are citizens who have lived in the United States for at least 10 years, you're a citizen.
- If your parents aren't citizens, you have to follow the naturalization process.
The end. |
They are working on that law as we type.
nah, the modebone f*g, slipped in under a law designed for slaves. It needs to be fixed badly.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 16:47 Post subject:
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| motherface wrote: | They should just change the citizenship requirement.
[list][*]If your parents are citizens who have lived in the United States for at least 10 years, you're a citizen. |
Check.
Much to Kbarr's chagrin. Every new change to the laws he comes up with, I am eligible for.
-Nah-
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motherface
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 12 Mar 2003
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 17:01 Post subject:
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Illegal immigration is one problem. If people are willing to go through the steps to become citizens, which includes learning written and spoken English, and paying taxes (in theory, anyway), then I have no problem with them. People hopping over the fence and pop out a kid just to ensure the kid's a citizen, which (I'm guessing) enables them to stay in the U.S. to care for their child, who is a citizen, needs to stop.
I don't know or understand most of the immigration rules and procedures, but it seems to me that if you're on U.S. soil you should fall into one of maybe 3 or 4 categories: Citizen, Tourist, Student, Resident Alien. Tourists should be allowed to stay for maybe a month. Students during the time they're enrolled in full-time classes at an accredited institution. Aliens up to maybe 5 years, after which if they want to stay they need to apply for citizenship.
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Zapper
RealPoor Sensei
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 1512
Location: Connecticut
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 17:08 Post subject:
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So those of you agains illegal immigrants are saying that you are willing to:
pay $5 for a head of lettuce?
an extra $40-$50 grand to get your house built?
$10 for a gallon of OJ?
an extra $10-$15 every time you dine out?
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 17:09 Post subject:
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| motherface wrote: | Illegal immigration is one problem. If people are willing to go through the steps to become citizens, which includes learning written and spoken English, and paying taxes (in theory, anyway), then I have no problem with them. People hopping over the fence and pop out a kid just to ensure the kid's a citizen, which (I'm guessing) enables them to stay in the U.S. to care for their child, who is a citizen, needs to stop.
I don't know or understand most of the immigration rules and procedures, but it seems to me that if you're on U.S. soil you should fall into one of maybe 3 or 4 categories: Citizen, Tourist, Student, Resident Alien. Tourists should be allowed to stay for maybe a month. Students during the time they're enrolled in full-time classes at an accredited institution. Aliens up to maybe 5 years, after which if they want to stay they need to apply for citizenship. |
This is vaguely how it works now. The problem is it's too easy for people to hop and pop, as you mentioned, so most people don't bother going through the process because, hell, why bother, right?
This is why I am personally in favor of closing down the f*****g borders and putting f*****s like that guy who is renting out his SS card before a firing squad. People like that make experiences like my parents' cheap and worthless in light of the system. When my parents came here they had to be working within 30 days, they had to be in school learning English within 90, and they had to start the naturalization process within 6 months. Even tho they could have dodged the system, they didn't. They went through the process and we were born to citizens, not illegal aliens as Kbarr would love to believe.
Sure it's harder now but times have changed. It's possible, just harder. You just have to have a very good reason for wanting to be here and have either a lot of money or a lot of skills to back it up.
-Nah-
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motherface
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 12 Mar 2003
Posts: 3407
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 17:27 Post subject:
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| Zapper wrote: | So those of you agains illegal immigrants are saying that you are willing to:
pay $5 for a head of lettuce?
an extra $40-$50 grand to get your house built?
$10 for a gallon of OJ?
an extra $10-$15 every time you dine out? |
I don't believe any of your numbers, but you're going to have to come up with some better ones if you want to show that illegal immigrants contribute more than they detract. If I have to pay an extra $5000 per year in property taxes to build a new school because the current one is filled up with the children of illegal immigrants, then $5 for a head of lettuce sounds like a bargain.
They pay no income tax. They cause the government to hire translators and post signs in other languages. They lower property values by packing into houses 20-40 at a time. I don't think paying the busboy $6/hour instead of $3/hour is going to translate to an extra $15 per bill when dining out, and if it does, there's always take-out.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 17:41 Post subject:
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| motherface wrote: | | Zapper wrote: | So those of you agains illegal immigrants are saying that you are willing to:
pay $5 for a head of lettuce?
an extra $40-$50 grand to get your house built?
$10 for a gallon of OJ?
an extra $10-$15 every time you dine out? |
I don't believe any of your numbers, but you're going to have to come up with some better ones if you want to show that illegal immigrants contribute more than they detract. If I have to pay an extra $5000 per year in property taxes to build a new school because the current one is filled up with the children of illegal immigrants, then $5 for a head of lettuce sounds like a bargain.
They pay no income tax. They cause the government to hire translators and post signs in other languages. They lower property values by packing into houses 20-40 at a time. I don't think paying the busboy $6/hour instead of $3/hour is going to translate to an extra $15 per bill when dining out, and if it does, there's always take-out. |
I agree with you, I'm also of the opinion that those "jobs not even black people want" would start to fill up if there weren't enough illegals to fill them. Hell, it may even improve the situation some when the "snotty white kid" who never wanted to work there has to and starts making noise about minimum wage, etc. When white people get involved, things change. I don't see a downside. It's something the country has to do. If you're legal, there's a whole wealth of resources available to you to improve your life. Welfare isn't the only way. There is no good reason why someone who's a legal alien or naturalized citizen should be picking fruit.
-Nah-
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Zapper
RealPoor Sensei
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 1512
Location: Connecticut
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:07 Post subject:
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Its a free market economy, prices are set by what people are willing to pay not just by what companies are willing to charge. Obviously the market does not support higher prices for any of those goods because if it did companies would be charging them.
Illegal immigrants who accept lower wages obviously make it possible for companies to operate with lower costs. Employing a legal immigrant or a US citizen will Increa wages and also increases SSI, medicaid & payroll tax costs for companies, don't tell me prices for goods would not increase as well.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:08 Post subject:
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| Zapper wrote: | Its a free market economy, prices are set by what people are willing to pay not just by what companies are willing to charge. Obviously the market does not support higher prices for any of those goods because if it did companies would be charging them.
Illegal immigrants who accept lower wages obviously make it possible for companies to operate with lower costs. Employing a legal immigrant or a US citizen will Increa wages and also increases SSI, medicaid & payroll tax costs for companies, don't tell me prices for goods would not increase as well. |
Right, and that's just something we're going to have to suck up and deal with.
-Nah-
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Zapper
RealPoor Sensei
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 1512
Location: Connecticut
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:11 Post subject:
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| Nahualli wrote: | | Zapper wrote: | Its a free market economy, prices are set by what people are willing to pay not just by what companies are willing to charge. Obviously the market does not support higher prices for any of those goods because if it did companies would be charging them.
Illegal immigrants who accept lower wages obviously make it possible for companies to operate with lower costs. Employing a legal immigrant or a US citizen will Increa wages and also increases SSI, medicaid & payroll tax costs for companies, don't tell me prices for goods would not increase as well. |
Right, and that's just something we're going to have to suck up and deal with.
-Nah- |
Oh I have no problem paying more, most of the stuff we buy is organic and that costs 2-3 times what an average veggie costs. but I don't think the average american does. They already b***h about price gouging on every good out there.
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motherface
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 12 Mar 2003
Posts: 3407
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:35 Post subject:
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| Zapper wrote: | | Its a free market economy, prices are set by what people are willing to pay not just by what companies are willing to charge. Obviously the market does not support higher prices for any of those goods because if it did companies would be charging them. |
A true "free market economy" doesn't remain such for long. Companies begin buying up smaller rivals and you end up with a monopoly sooner or later unless government intervenes. Keep that in mind.
| Zapper wrote: | | Illegal immigrants who accept lower wages obviously make it possible for companies to operate with lower costs. Employing a legal immigrant or a US citizen will Increa wages and also increases SSI, medicaid & payroll tax costs for companies, don't tell me prices for goods would not increase as well. |
You are stupid.
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Zapper
RealPoor Sensei
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 1512
Location: Connecticut
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:39 Post subject:
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| motherface wrote: | | Zapper wrote: | | Its a free market economy, prices are set by what people are willing to pay not just by what companies are willing to charge. Obviously the market does not support higher prices for any of those goods because if it did companies would be charging them. |
A true "free market economy" doesn't remain such for long. Companies begin buying up smaller rivals and you end up with a monopoly sooner or later unless government intervenes. Keep that in mind.
| Zapper wrote: | | Illegal immigrants who accept lower wages obviously make it possible for companies to operate with lower costs. Employing a legal immigrant or a US citizen will Increa wages and also increases SSI, medicaid & payroll tax costs for companies, don't tell me prices for goods would not increase as well. |
You are stupid. |
Are you saying a company would not pass on it's costs to the consumer and instead absorb them? Yeah right, I think someone else is the dumb one.
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motherface
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 12 Mar 2003
Posts: 3407
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 18:40 Post subject:
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| Zapper wrote: | | Oh I have no problem paying more, most of the stuff we buy is organic and that costs 2-3 times what an average veggie costs. but I don't think the average american does. They already b***h about price gouging on every good out there. |
They b***h about price gouging...
Because they don't have any spending money...
Because the government is taking it all in taxes to fix the problems caused by illegal immigrants, and because the illegal immigrants took their jobs.
If the illegal immigrants had to pay taxes like anybody else, I'd hate them less. They'd also be less desirable to potential employees, but c'est la vie.
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Soriak
Toomuchtimeonhands
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 952
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 19:30 Post subject:
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| Quote: | | The alternatives to a trained translator can be, and have been, a Spanish-speaking janitor pulled into the delivery room, said Dr. Portia Jones, an assistant professor at Albany Medical Center in New York. |
Am I the only one who finds it sad, that the only bilingual person they could find was a Janitor?
How hard could it possibly be to hire nurses who speaks at least basic spanish? Don't even have to pay them more, just stop hiring those too stupid to learn a second language. It's not that difficult...
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Soriak
Toomuchtimeonhands
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Posts: 952
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 19:36 Post subject:
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| Quote: |
Displacement activity
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Do immigrants take our jobs? Only if we try too hard to preserve them
ON APRIL 20th 1980, Fidel Castro, Cuba's president, declared Mariel harbour an “open port”, inviting those Cubans who wished to leave his country to do so. Many accepted eagerly. Between May and September, about 125,000 of them were ferried to America by a flotilla of fishing vessels, yachts and shrimp boats, often chartered by Cuban exiles in Florida.
In 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia. A month later, the Bosnian Serbs laid siege to Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital. That year, almost 234,000 Yugoslavs applied for asylum in safer European countries.
The Mariel boatlift, as it was called, and the Balkan wars have provided two of the more interesting “natural experiments” in the economics of immigration. Both have allowed economists to cut the Gordian knot entangling immigration's impact on the economy and the economy's impact on immigration. Often, cities and countries that host the most immigrants also boast the best economic performance. That might be because immigrants bring prosperity; but it might be that they are attracted by it. Awkwardly, to the commonest question—do immigrants take our jobs?—the two experiments offer different answers.
The Marielitos who settled in Miami added about 45,000 workers to the city's labour force, an increase of 7%. In a seminal study published in 1990, David Card, now of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the city's economy took the new arrivals in its stride. The murder rate rose that year, he reported, and riots broke out in the summer. But Mr Card found no indication that the Marielitos cost the city's non-Cuban residents their jobs or depressed their wages.
His sanguine conclusion is not widely shared on the other side of the Atlantic. Europeans still incline to the view that immigrants usurp the jobs held by natives, according to a survey* of public attitudes by Christian Dustmann and Albrecht Glitz of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. These worries may be well founded. A 2003 paper† by Joshua Angrist, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Adriana Kugler, now at the University of Houston, uses the break-up of Yugoslavia to shed light on how Europe's labour markets respond to foreign arrivals. They show that a country's distances from Sarajevo and Pristina were good predictors of immigration during the Bosnian war and the Kosovan war (in 1999) respectively. Thus if native workers fared worst in the countries closest to these cities, this is evidence that immigration can hurt their fortunes. The authors estimate that in a country similar to Germany, 100 new arrivals from outside the EU could displace between 35 and 83 native men from their jobs.
Miami virtue
Why did Miami cope so well with its sudden influx of new workers, while Europe struggled so badly? In a paper†† last year, Ethan Lewis, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, looked at Miami's mix of industries before and after the boatlift. Perhaps some industries expanded to accommodate the kind of unskilled labour most of the Cuban boat-people could offer? The garment industry, for example, was used to hiring Cubans and might have taken up any slack. But Mr Lewis finds little evidence of such a shift. Miami's manufacturing complexion broadly resembled that of other cities in the south and mid-west in the 1980s, just as it had in the 1970s.
Mr Lewis offers a different, surprising explanation. As a result of the boatlift, Miami's firms were slower than rivals elsewhere to adopt technologies, such as computers, that have taken over some of the routine, codifiable tasks performed by unskilled workers. With so many willing, untrained workers available, the city's joiners, bakers and electrical-equipment makers felt under no great pressure to replace men with machines. By 1984, for example, 36% of people in Houston used computers at work. But in Miami only 23% did. The impact of the boat-people was visible not in the things Miami made, but in how it made them.
Many politicians now argue that they should pick the type of immigrants their economy “needs”. But as Mr Lewis shows, what an economy needs is not written in stone. Flexible economies take advantage of whatever labour lands on their shores.
Why did Europe's economies fail to adapt? Mr Angrist and Ms Kugler suspect that government efforts to preserve jobs backfired. In many parts of Europe, for example, governments try to protect workers by making it more costly to fire them. But workers that are expensive to fire are also dear to hire. Immigrants—often recruited on temporary visas, beyond the embrace of unions and sometimes outside the law altogether—become more attractive by comparison. Because they cannot become ensconced in a job, they are more likely to be offered one. In the short run, this kind of immigrant competition undercuts wages and raises profits. In the long run, however, higher profits should tempt new firms to enter the market, compete for workers and bid wages back up.
In Europe, sadly, the long run never arrives. The entry of new firms is inhibited by regulations to protect old ones. Mr Angrist and Ms Kugler show that the higher the barriers to entry in a country are, the worse is the impact of immigration on the job prospects of its citizens. Intended to shield small players from competition, these regulations instead provide for stagnation. Perhaps Europe's politicians should worry less about repelling immigrants, and more about unshackling the firms that might employ them.
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Nahualli
RealPoor Master of Posts
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 8461
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Posted: 07/18/05 - 19:39 Post subject:
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| Soriak wrote: | | Quote: | | The alternatives to a trained translator can be, and have been, a Spanish-speaking janitor pulled into the delivery room, said Dr. Portia Jones, an assistant professor at Albany Medical Center in New York. |
Am I the only one who finds it sad, that the only bilingual person they could find was a Janitor?
How hard could it possibly be to hire nurses who speaks at least basic spanish? Don't even have to pay them more, just stop hiring those too stupid to learn a second language. It's not that difficult... |
The idea seems to be "because they shouldn't have to" which I agree with. Your job in the States should not depend on whether or not you can speak a language other than your national language unless your job is to interact with foreigners in a diplomatic or business capacity.
However, as a language junkie, I see absolutely no downside at all to speaking other languages. Nothing wrong at all.
-Nah-
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