Almost Over...

We leave for good in two days. Last minute packing and cleaning now fill up most of our time. I just hope now that everything fits in the cars. Looking around the room, the apartment is just a shell. The only thing that remains the same are the pictures on the walls (left up to keep our sanity as long as possible). Even the pictures will come down either today or tomorrow. Luckily we have done pretty much everything that we need to outside the apartment so there won't be much rushing around today.

It is really nice that Denise and Kayla will be coming up to help us move. Having the truck to haul some of the big stuff will be a lifesaver. It is also really good because it will allow us to take one final tour around Vancouver tomorrow, showing Kayla the place we have come to call home. I will really miss this area, I have never been unhappy about the weather my whole time here. Even when it is raining, it feels right.

I turned in all my stuff into the thesis office (close to 800 pages of paper). The funny lady that runs the place let us know that there were no glaring mistakes that would require a reprint of the whole thing (margin errors, page numbering, etc.). That was a huge relief. Now we just wait a couple months and hope there are no problems prior to binding. Being completely done with the thesis feels like a relief. It was an interesting topic and I enjoyed the things I learned from it. I can't believe it is really over...

Copies of my thesis are for sale, only $80 CAD each (Just kidding SFU, I know I only have a partial copyright).

Still Hasn't Sunk In Yet

I defended my thesis successfully yesterday. It was really intense but a lot of engaging questions were raised and everyone there complimented me on my answers and calmness. I can't believe that I am done. I just have to make some minor revisions and then print the copies to be bound by the library. It is so exciting to have a Master's. Since Heather defended yesterday (which was overly success), every time she does something I say "that is your first time doing _____ with your master's." I have started doing it for myself as well since yesterday afternoon.

It just feels crazy to think that we will be moving back to the U.S. in about a week. Having worked for two years on one project is something new and I am glad that it has worked out so well overall. My extremely kind adviser came to the bar after the defense and graciously bought pitchers for a few of the grad students that came to the defense. It was a nice celebration. Today we have been invited to a celebratory/going away BBQ. It will be sad to leave our friends, but moving onto to the next part of our lives will be really exciting. Seeing all our old Utah friends will be really fun as well.

Because I am a bit of a masochist, I found a couple jobs I could not pass up applying for in Washington D.C. It was actually kind of fun updating my resume. The jobs that I see are really interesting and would be really exciting as careers. It is cool to be in a position to try out careers and still have a lot of options to fall back on if I decide it isn't exactly what I want. The possibility of doing a PhD is still out there but I think that getting an idea of what is out there for the types of jobs I want first is a good idea.

Migration Myths, Journalistic Mistakes: How do Articles Like this Get Printed?

On the front page of MSN today was a link titled "What if All the Illegal Immigrants Went Home". It sounded like an interesting piece so I decided to check it out. Obviously the folks at MSN.com felt the actual title of the article, "What if we threw out all the illegal immigrants,"was not quite appropriate for the tagline. Once I saw the actual title and checked the credentials of the writer (Shirley Skeel, a "print and radio journalist based in Seattle who has written for Bloomberg News, The Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph in London. She has also produced radio features for National Public Radio and its affiliates"), I was not sure what I would find. I did a quick google search of Skeel's previous work and found some other less than complimentary commentaries about other Skeel articles here.

While shoddy journalism is nothing new at MSN Money, this articles takes lessons learned from an intro to economics course and attempts to apply them to the real world.

"The biggest losers would be middle-class families with two working parents, living in high-immigrant states such as California, Texas, Florida or New York."

What about the twelve million people forcibly displaced? Seems like being tossed back to a variety of countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia would be more difficult. These workers left for a multitude of reasons (including discrimination), and being forcibly returned would be much worse than someone having to clean their own house. Not to mention that many of those that had to go back to low-income countries would now face extremely difficult circumstance as large numbers of former immigrants would now end up competing for the same jobs that caused them to leave their home country in the first place. Also, the families that would be destroyed by such an event would also be in a worse situation than the guy who has to mow his own lawn. Many families have some family members that are undocumented workers while other members have gained legal status. This could even mean couples being split up and parents separated from children. Skeel touches on the difficulties of deporting so many people, but only as an afterthought (though it seem like the whole article is more of an afterthought, than actual journalism).

Possibly the most insulting part of the article:

"Economists say if [American citizens] agreed to bone meat or install insulation, they could earn 6% to 10% more than the deported workers, as wages rose to lure new workers. That could mean $18,000 to $30,000 in pay a year."

Come on, what "economists" did you speak to? This sort of theoretical armchair economics is the reason most Americans understand so little about how global capital works. These two sentences are riddled with so many problematic and untrue assumptions that it would take more time than I am willing to invest to deconstruct them. However, I will focus on two key points: wage determinants and employment networks.

This statement (and the wider article) makes the fallacious assumption that the "illegal immigrants" are the reason for lower wages. While from a purely theoretical perspective this may seem plausible or even likely, any engagement with the actual literature on wage restructuring points to wider, more structural factors. Aviva Chomsky (2007) notes that wages across the U.S. have either stagnated or declined for low-skill workers, while profits have increased in many sectors. She argues that it is the businesses that target undocumented workers because of their marginal status, which allows companies to treat them abhorrently while not fearing repercussions. This is particularly true in many agricultural industries that rely heavily on undocumented labor. Were they to switch to documented workers with legal rights they would deeply cut into their profits and thus face the wrath of their short-term minded shareholders. This would likely push many companies either to increase their production of goods in other countries (which may not be as profitable as it used to be, due to the high costs of transportation due to higher gas prices) or by directly increasing the prices of goods (something that would create a serious backlash).

For employment networks, most social scientists recognize that it is not simply employment that determines where an individual lives. However, Skeel found someone intellectually lazy enough to believe so (however without evidence, like most researchers at the Heritage Foundation; Rector is a senior research fellow, though research is a strong word for what the Heritage Foundation does)

"Just how quickly would Americans fill the vacated jobs? And at what pay rate? Perryman points to Texas, where he says there are more than 1 million illegal workers, but only 450,000 unemployed residents. 'If you do the math, it just doesn't work,' he says. He doubts that many needy Virginians would move to Texas for often-grueling, low-paying jobs.

Rector disagrees. He says it would take time for 'Cousin Fred' in Texas to phone up his jobless mates in Virginia, but, 'There are a lot of people who work for less than $20,000 a year.' And they would move for a job."

While some people move to find employment, the vast majority of Americans would have no idea where and what types of jobs are available in their own town, even less so in places across the country. The idea put forth by Rector in the above quote relies on the economic ideology that individuals are rational choice robots that have perfect information and are able to weigh the costs and benefits of their decisions. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist, has studied informational asymmetries and notes that these naive assumptions of many economists simply are not supported by research. Calvó-Armengol and Jackson (2004) identify that the importance of social networks in determining opportunities for employment has been well-researched and is overwhelmingly supported. To assume that eight million American citizens (the number it would take to replace the employed undocumented workers, from Skeel's estimates) would pick up and move to take part in unskilled and nonunionized work is just ridiculous.

While such hypothetical articles allow us to think about the difficulties of immigration policy, when as poorly researched as this one, it is hard to see how it adds to the debate. Immigration is a complex issue without simple solutions (as can be seen in nearly all countries), however, using simplistic logic and ignoring previous empirical work will not get us any closer to a solution.

References:

Calvó-Armengol, Antoni, and Matthew O. Jackson. 2004. "The Effects of Social Networks on Employment and Inequality." The American Economic Review 94: 426-454.

Chomsky, A. 2007. They Take Our Jobs: And 20 Other Myths About Immigration. Boston: Beacon Press.

Is it a little Chile in here?

So I dropped off the final copies of my thesis today for my upcoming defense. Printing off four copies of a 150 page thesis is pretty brutal. The four copies doesn't even include the one I will print off for myself... At some point in the last two weeks they reset all the grad student printing accounts without telling anyone. Both Heather and I were reduced to $30; about enough to print two copies. Luckily, my senior adviser came through and offered up his printer. Sadly his printer has that weird glitch where it just stops midway through printing sometimes.... To make a long, painful story short, the theses are in. Just a little over two weeks now until the actual defense. I am kind of looking forward to it, though I am still nervous about the event itself. It will be nice to have that closure. I ran into my second adviser today and he was saying that he really likes the defense because it is a good opportunity to have an academic dialogue. He felt this was something very common where he did his graduate degree (University of Wisconsin - Madison). I have to agree in some ways, though I would rather not have to talk to most of the other grad students any more than I already do.

In other news, I have stepped down from my position as the president of the SA Grad Caucus. While the job was not terribly intense, not having to care about the when, where, and how of the next meeting is nice. I do feel concerned about the person that was elected to take over the position. He can be pretty overbearing and long winded. I guess it isn't my problem to worry about.

I am really going to miss having limitless access to academic journals and a well-stocked library. I have begun looking through some of the journals I use most frequently and getting all the articles I can... Kinda scary. Also, as crazy as this sounds, I will miss writing my thesis. I really enjoyed writing it and am sad that it is over. I have even begun looking at doing some freelance articles for different political magazines. While I already have a couple academic co-authored articles under review, it would be nice to also show that I can write for more popular audiences (and get paid for it). There are a few areas that I feel that I have sufficient expertise to write widely on (not that expertise should stop me, you just have to look at the hacks over at Slate and the New York Times to see that qualifications mean nothing).

Now to go work on perfecting my query letter...

I <3 Computers

So the other day Heather and I got asked by the second adviser on her committee to present in the graduate methods course on going from the prospectus to writing your thesis. My presentation was going pretty well until I started explaining the importance of a good way of organizing your computer files and articles as you work. I talked about creating a library folder and then having a consistent naming scheme that would allow you to find the files you need easily. One of the older PhD students (the same student who once said she was so frustrated she wanted to "take my kayak and paddle off into the sunset"), asked a couple questions about the program I used to organize citations, Endnote. Those questions went fine but I wasn't sure if she was understanding my answers.
It became clear when she said "Also, what do you mean create a library folder?" To which I explained that it was a place to put your various pdfs of articles that you will accumulate.
She responded quickly "Oh I get that, but how do you create a folder?"
Confused I said "On a computer?"
She said "Yeah, do you mean like a word folder?" (as if such a thing exists) At this point I was at a loss for words, students obviously had similar experiences like this with her in the class and giggled and rolled their eyes.
The professor chimed in "No, just a regular computer folder."
"Uh, yeah, just right click to create a new folder where you want it" I said, not sure if the idea of right clicking would make her head explode.
"Well I'll just ask you more about it later" the student said to me.
At this point I was looking for the exit to make a run for it. My presentation ended and Heather started hers. When Heather was in her first few minutes the fire alarm went off and we had to file out of the building. The kayak lady cornered me outside and said "Well I am really bad at the computer so I'll email you in a couple weeks and we can get together and talk about" At this point she knew I was defending in less than a month which means I have to turn in my final draft in two weeks. In less than a week from the defense we will be moving back to the U.S. The last thing I have time for is helping someone learn to right-click and create a folder. Why did I say yes....

Intensifying Violence as a Way of Increasing Safety?

The ruling today by the Supreme Court on District of Columbia v. Heller does not come as much of a surprise but does set a dangerous precedent and shows how out of touch with reality the current court is. The ruling struck down the 1976 Washington D.C. law that banned the ownership of concealed weapons in Washington D.C. Scalia argued that gun ownership represents an important part of the "historical narrative" of the U.S. However, so did slavery, but I don't think his "air-tight" logic will get applied to that. Evidence from those who study gun violence and gun ownership find that while gun ownership among the general population does not increase crime, it does increase the intensity of the violent crime. A recent opinion piece points out the absurdity of the "more guns, less crime" ideology. Ludwig and Cook (2006) argue that this leads to greater likelihood of death from violent incidents and thus a greater risk to the community. Kleck (2004) notes that increased gun ownership by non-criminals leads to increased number of guns in the hands of criminals, through a variety of mechanisms. Luckily, D.C. is still able to create regulations for gun ownership if not ban it outright. Evidence of the effect of the 1976 law was overwhelmingly positive, with a twenty-five percent reduction in gun homicide and a similar reduction in suicide with a gun. Similar declines were not found in the areas of Maryland and Virginia that surround Washington D.C., which did not implement similar measures (Wintemute 2008).

Besides the evidence of the negative social costs in relation to violence, the ruling raises another key issue. The ruling notes that gun ownership is important for hunting and self-defense. On the issue of hunting, clearly the preferred weapon of most hunters is not a handgun. While hunting may be a enjoyable pastime for some, it seems that having measures such as trigger locks or disassembling them should not be a problem, as was required in Washington D.C. prior to the ruling today. For self-defense, Hemenway (2000) found that that criminal uses of guns far outweigh self-defense uses. This casts serious doubt on whether the presence of guns actually makes us safer, even from a self-defense standpoint. Wintemute (2008) also notes the dangers of guns and the likelihood of fatal accidents when fear is a factor, even when there was no actual threat.

While I don't think any amount of evidence can make die-hard gun activists change their mind, I hope that others are more open to the overall effects of guns on society. While a collectivist approach to public policy is not something that many Americans understand, it would provide for a safer future. Fixing the fear of violence through arming ourselves does little to assuage the fear and makes us less safe as a society. Reducing inequalities and creating active, engaged communities would do much more to foster safer neighborhoods than any amount of individual effort.

Citations:

Cook, Philip J., and Jens Ludwig. 2006. "The social costs of gun ownership." Journal of Public Economics 90: 379-391

Hemenway, David, and Deborah Azrael. 2000. "The Relative Frequency of Offensive and Defensive Gun Uses: Results From a National Survey." Violence and Victims 15: 257-272.

Kleck, Gary. 2004. "Measures of Gun Ownership Levels for Macro-Level Crime and Violence Research." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 41: 3-36.

Wintemute, Garen J. 2008. "Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public's Health." New England Journal of Medicine 358: 1421-1424.

Misperception of Intent

When discussing undocumented workers many people on both sides of the argument make the claim that these workers end up in jobs "Americans don't want." However I think this argument places the decision making wrongly in the hands of the average American, who in this fantasy considers themselves too good for farm work or that it is too difficult work. It seems more likely that the reason these jobs are not taken by Americans is because the companies that hire these workers would be completely uncompetitive if they hired Americans (due to their ability to demand better pay and protection). Only through hiring marginalized workers with no formal rights are they able to remain competitive with goods produced much more cheaply elsewhere.

There are many jobs that are much more disgusting and backbreaking than field work but are done by Americans and some are even unionized. This is possible because these industries can remain competitive despite paying reasonable wages due to different competition structures than is present for agricultural work (e.g., copper mines). Many of these companies would have already moved production to another country if possible; but they are unable to, due to the type of product they produce.

While this argument leads some to push for new policies of protectionism, for me it indicates the need to structure trade in a fair way. Protectionism has done little to provide good long-term jobs for Americans. We must come to the point where the lowest cost is not separated from the factors from which the product are produced. Products from countries with substandard quality controls, unethical work practices, and terrible human rights records must be identified as such. By accepting these products despite these problems, we are just serving to reinforce the negative tendencies under which the goods were produced.