Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Counterpoint: Reply To Orrenius And Zavodny, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] On the fundamental conclusions, the positions argued by Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny and my own are in essential agreement. The immigration policy of the United States is in dire need of changes. The public concern is, in their words, “driven by the increase in immigration in recent years, particularly of unauthorized immigration.” Our mutual worries pertain to the disproportionately adverse impacts of the immigrant inflow on the nation’s low-skilled work force and the high fiscal burden borne by local communities and states with growing immigrant populations. The differences between the two papers center on the approaches taken to …

The Elusive Goal: The Quest For A Credible Immigration Policy, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] The starting point for all immigration reform efforts must be making the immigration system enforceable. Nothing else makes sense. Otherwise, immigration policy is on a squirrel wheel going nowhere. Illegal immigrants will keep coming in defiance of its terms.

The Career Of Vernon Briggs, Jr.: A Liberal Economist’S Struggle To Reduce Immigration

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] At the conclusion of Cornell’s spring semester in 2007, Briggs ended his 47 years of college teaching. As he retired, Cornell honored him with emeritus status. Since then, he has occasionally given public talks and written articles on the need for immigration reform. He says his work still draws motivation from a principle he left with his students at the end of the last lecture in each of his classes over his entire career: “The mode through which the impossible comes to pass is effort.”

That quote from Justice Oliver Wendell Homes was passed on to Briggs by Michigan …

Thomas Robert Malthus: The Economist, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

"As Robert Heilbroner has so aptly observed, economics has produced "a handful of men" whose contributions to mankind have been "more decisive for history than many acts of statesman who basked in brighter glory, often more profoundly disturbing then the shuttling of armies back and forth across frontiers, and more powerful for good and bad than the edicts of kings and legislatures." One such person cited by Heilbroner is Thomas Robert Malthus."

Illegal Immigration: The Impact On Wages And Employment Of Black Workers, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Before addressing the specific issue of illegal immigration and its economic effects on black Americans, the broad subject needs to be placed in perspective. No issue has affected the economic well-being of African Americans more that the phenomenon of immigration and its related policy manifestations. Immigration defined the entry experience of the ancestors of most the nation’s contemporary black American community (as slaves who were brought as involuntary immigrants); it placed them disproportionately in the states that today comprise the “South”( at no point in American history has less than half the black population ever lived outside the South); …

Thomas Robert Malthus: The Economist, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

"As Robert Heilbroner has so aptly observed, economics has produced "a handful of men" whose contributions to mankind have been "more decisive for history than many acts of statesman who basked in brighter glory, often more profoundly disturbing then the shuttling of armies back and forth across frontiers, and more powerful for good and bad than the edicts of kings and legislatures." One such person cited by Heilbroner is Thomas Robert Malthus."

Illegal Immigration: The Impact On Wages And Employment Of Black Workers, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Before addressing the specific issue of illegal immigration and its economic effects on black Americans, the broad subject needs to be placed in perspective. No issue has affected the economic well-being of African Americans more that the phenomenon of immigration and its related policy manifestations. Immigration defined the entry experience of the ancestors of most the nation’s contemporary black American community (as slaves who were brought as involuntary immigrants); it placed them disproportionately in the states that today comprise the “South”( at no point in American history has less than half the black population ever lived outside the South); …

The Economic Downturn Is Accentuated By Labor Market Deficiencies Of U.S. Immigration Policies: A Mandate For Change, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] The depth and length of the economic downturn has already led federal policymakers to implement fiscal policy remedies (i.e., government spending and tax cuts) of unprecedented proportions. These efforts have been intended to enlarge labor demand by stimulating aggregate spending in the lagging economy. Likewise, the Federal Reserve has pursued an expansionary monetary policy (i.e., increasing the money supply) that has driven interest rates to historically low levels and held them there longer than has ever before been imagined. Despite the massive scale of these policy initiatives, they have been of little avail. Throughout this troublesome period, however, the …

Changes In The Labor Market, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] The service-oriented economy has an undeservedly bad reputation. The notion of a service-oriented economy somehow conjures up an impression of a nation of "hamburger flippers." That's not where the growth in employment is coming in the service sector. In fact, the greatest increases in the service sector are coming in the professional and technical areas. Fully one-third of the growth in employment since 1972 has occurred in the professional-technical worker classification. Eighty percent of the managerial jobs in the United States are in the service sector. As a consequence, the changes require a better prepared labor force than we've …

Illegal Immigration And The Dilemma Of American Unions, Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Over its long and often turbulent evolution, the American labor movement has confronted few issues as persistently and as difficult has those related to subject of immigration. By definition, immigration affects the size of the labor force at any given time as well as its geographical distribution and skill composition. These vital influences, in turn, affect national, regional and local labor market conditions. Most immigrants directly join the labor force upon entering the country, as do eventually most of their family members. Hence, organized labor never has ignored immigration trends. As Samuel Gompers, one of the founders of the …

Illegal Immigration: The Impact On Wages And Employment Of Black Workers

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Before addressing the specific issue of illegal immigration and its economic effects on black Americans, the broad subject needs to be placed in perspective. No issue has affected the economic well-being of African Americans more that the phenomenon of immigration and its related policy manifestations. Immigration defined the entry experience of the ancestors of most the nation’s contemporary black American community (as slaves who were brought as involuntary immigrants); it placed them disproportionately in the states that today comprise the “South”( at no point in American history has less than half the black population ever lived outside the South); …

Illegal Immigration And Immigration Reform: Protecting The Employment Rights Of The American Labor Force (The Native Born And Foreign Born) Who Are Eligible To Be Employed, Vernon Briggs, Jr.

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Ever since the latter half of the 19th Century when the United States began to use its lega l system as a means to regulate both the size and the composition of the flow of foreign-born persons into its population and labor force, policymakers have had to confront the issue of what to do about those who defy the ensuing limitations, restrictions, and exclusions. As a consequence, the subject of illegal immigration has made frequent appearances on the nation’s political reform agenda. For while the United States claims to be a “a nation of immigrants,” it also boasts that …

Vernon Briggs: Real-World Labor Economist

Vernon M Briggs Jr

[Excerpt] Vernon Briggs stepped into a wastebasket and launched my career as a labor economist. In the spring of 1969, I was sleepwalking through the undergraduate economics program at the University of Texas and sitting in Dr. Briggs’s labor economics class. He was vigorously making a point when his misstep off the small classroom stage produced a roar of laughter but did not break his train of thought. He woke me up; I thought, “Man, I want to be as passionate about my life’s work as this guy.

The Human Resource Economics Of Vernon Briggs

Vernon M Briggs Jr

This essay examines the conception of human resource economics (HRE) that shaped the career of Vernon M. Briggs Jr. It probes the history of economic thought to describe the intellectual roots of HRE. It explores how HRE emerged to address the issues of economic growth, stabilization, and efficiency, as well as how it contributes to the public discourse on matters of social equity, economic opportunity, and government regulation. It explains the clash between human capital theory and HRE. And it outlines Briggs’s five dimensions of human resource development (HRD), which is his term for HRE that manifests itself in public …