How do they know there’s a big increase in undocumented workers?
March 21, 2005So this report says there’s been an increase in undocumented workers, over 10 million now. But if they’re undocumented, how can these people be counted in a survey like this? They can even somehow tell that almost 60 percent of the undocumented are from Mexico. Again, how is it possible to determine a number like this when these people are by definition undocumented?
These kinds of estimates are all based on assumptions gleaned from available data. Meaning if you have a bias you can change the estimates substantially by subtle changes to the assumptions. It’s like that Drake equation that estimates how many galactic civilizations similar to ours might be out there in the universe. Tweak any one of the variables even a little and you can get wildly different results.
I just don’t trust these kinds of estimates. There’s bias in any research that uses statistical inference like this.
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