The Wall Street Journal is touting a new study,[American Made: The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on U.S. Competitiveness,, PDF] released under the auspices of the National Venture Capital Association, that says that immigrants create jobs. [Immigrant Entrepreneurs |New evidence that newcomers create jobs and wealth, November 26, 2006 ]

The number of jobs created by these immigrant entrepreneurs is said to be 220,000–you might want to compare that the with the number of illegals, the numbers of Americans unemployed as a result of mass immigration, or reflect on the fact that immigrant entrepreneurs tend to create jobs for other immigrants. (Immigrants do, of course, create jobs in the “parable of the broken window” sense that if harm is done, then someone has to be paid to fix it, such as law enforcement, corrections, and harassed budget analysts who are trying to figure out where the money is coming from to pay for all these jobs that have been created. )

The study is done by immigration enthusiast Stuart Anderson, who has peddled other immigrant-friendly studies, and was briefly employed by the Bush administration as an “Executive Associate Commissioner, Office of Policy and Planning” for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Then the Journal starts on H-1b Visa holders, who aren’t entrepreneurs, but indentured servants, and who can’t create jobs, but only take them, at lower rates than Americans charge. Apparently the numbers of H-1b Visas are settled, not by “market demand” but by “the political mood of Congress. “

After praising a plan by Republican John Shadegg to let in more H-1Bs (Shadegg is good on immigration generally, but has a C Minus rating from Americans for Better Immigration on this one issue) the say what a shame it was that Shadegg’s GOP colleagues “were more interested in using the immigration issue to help demagogue their way into the minority. They’d have been better off embracing immigration as a major source of American economic vitality.”

As far as I can tell, it’s Bush that wants amnesty, but the American people aren’t interested. A simple way of putting this is the way Stephen Dinan did in the Washington Times:Public, Bush split on illegals.[June 7, 2006 ]

Really, the only jobs that are being created are on the Wall Street Journal editorial page itself, and in the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives.

I’m not a expert on LaRaza. The first time I ever heard about it was from Rodger McAfee, the Socialist Dairy farmer that posted bail for Angela Davis in a conversation when he was recruiting me for a job in the early 90’s.

Activist McAffee had some real hesitation about the organization–so I haven’t been inclined to deeply investigate the hesitation my colleagues here at VDARE.com who come from a rather different ideological background have about LaRaza.

However I thought it was interesting when a reader forwarded me this article by R. Cort Kirkwood which suggests that La Raza is the recipient of the lion’s share of recent donations from Wal-Mart:

According to the Capital Research Center, the corporate side of the Walton empire shoveled nearly $750,000 to leftists in 2004, compared with $2,500 to “conservatives.” None of this, of course, shows up on the foundation’s website. Among the recipients were the NAACP ($60,850), AARP ($3,750), the Izaak Walton League ($2,250), LULAC ($12,000), the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation ($10,000), and Planned Parenthood ($2,500). The biggest recipient of Wal-Mart money? The National Council of La Raza, at a cool $630,000.[Wal-Mart Conservatives, Chronicles, November 2006]

Now, the dynamic here is pretty clear: Wal-Mart hires workers at the wage levels at which they are likely to produce the least tax revenue in the existing system–and thus require the maximum of subsidization from other taxpayers. Wal-Mart also has a track record of profiting from illegal immigration both by hiring illegal aliens and markets products in communities in which they are numerous.

Now the Wal-Mart owners are less inclined to support open borders than the other most very wealthy Americans-but the average rating of their political donations is still indicactive of someone inclined to significantly increase overall immigration.

I would argue that the basic problem is concentrated wealth. Property owners can gain from mass immigration because if you pack more folks into a given space you can increase property values even if you lower productivity per worker. That means that the folks dependent on their wages for income pay the cost of immigration-and those that own larger amounts of property are most likely to be net beneficiaries of mass immigration. This will inherently be a problem in any society that permits huge levels of private wealth accumulation.

I would argue this is why those that favor immigration restriction should favor measures to contain the most extreme levels of concentration of private wealth. Why should conservatives stand up for the property rights of the Waltons and Wal-Mart when they are doing everything they can to degrade the citizenship rights of VDARE.COM readers?