April 04, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Immigration and unskilled labour
Mickey Kaus makes the most serious argument I've seen in favour of restricting immigration to boost low-skilled wages:
Clinton's Achievement vs. DeLong's Pie in the Sky: Mark Kleiman blogs:Brad DeLong is right: the biggest beneficiaries of immigration are immigrants, and those benefits ought to count. If we want to help low-income Americans, there are better ways to do it than restricting immigration. [Emph. added]
Oh yeah? Name one. ... Actually, DeLong names five:
... more progressive tax brackets, more public provision of services, a more generous Earned Income Tax Credit, a higher minimum wage, a greater focus on education.
I would suggest that if DeLong actually thinks changes in these policies will dramatically improve the situation of low-income Americans, especially unskilled African American men--not to mention help reestablish the black family, which is the real goal--he is dreaming. 1) A "focus on education" hasn't helped those hanging out on the streetcorners and selling drugs in the past. They are not big successes at school! 2) Progressive tax brackets only help if you actually earn money, which these people aren't doing. 3) The Earned Income Tax Credit does send cash to low income earners, but again you need to earn at least some money to get it. And it's already pretty big. We probably can't increase it much higher without running into cost and disincentive problems when the credit is phased out in the mid-income ranges (i.e. workers will end up losing--in phases-out EITC payments--a good chunk of any extra dollars they earn). 4) A higher minimum wage will help, but if you raise it too much it becomes a job-killer. 5) As for "public provision of services," it's not clear what DeLong means. Suppose we had national health care. Would that change the lives of the estimated 72 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's who are "unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated"? Will they stop being scrubs hanging out on the corner--or will they be scrubs hanging out on the corner who get free medical care?
The one thing that seems to have been a huge boon for unskilled African Americans is the tight low-wage labor market of the Clinton years--especially during Clinton's second term. It's hard to give a high school dropout a college education. But if you give him an unskilled job paying $10 an hour he's got a shot at forming a family (with another worker). And in the process he's integrated into the mainstream, working culture. It's even better than "provision of services"!
A tight labor market is especially important for young black men because they tend to be at the end of the employment queue. You have to let employers run through all the groups they prefer--and illegal immigrants are one of them--before they will reach out to ghetto kids. That's the sociological reality. If we let in lots of unskilled immigrants, however deserving, they will jump ahead in the queue.
I'd always thought the tight 90s labor market, and the opportunity it provided for those at the bottom, was one of the glories of the Clinton years that Democratic economists like DeLong celebrate and wish to replicate. Maybe Democrats could run an economy so hot it would provide employment for millions of decent, hard-working immigrants from Latin America and Korea and for any left-behind unskilled Americans. That would be nice! But until we achieve that miracle, we will have to think about restricting the influx of competing low-wage workers from abroad.
The question then becomes: should we want to help these low-skilled workers at the expense of immigrants? Especially when the immigrants are hard-working people born into a rotten economic environment, while the American low-skilled workers get that way by virtue of personal decisions like dropping out of high school?
Well, maybe. Environment matters, as I've argued before; most of my nice middle class readers, dropped into a dysfunctional slum at birth, would drop out of school, sell drugs, and get pregnant out of wedlock, just like the current occupants do. It is cripplingly difficult to get out of such an environment once you're in it . . . most of our ancestors with the Horatio Alger success stories came out of cultures with perfectly functional economic mores, but where larger economic conditions made advancement difficult. Today's poor Americans, on the other hand, lack basic things like stable families and educations, or even the cultural support to seek such things.
Many people argue that family formation is the first step to solving the problem of the underclass (problems, rather, since America has at least two distinct forms of poverty: urban and rural). Higher wages for low-skilled jobs would theoretically make men who have them more attractive candidates for marriage, allowing them to form families at a higher rate. In time, that might undo the devastation that was wrought by the 1960's-era welfare policies that pushed men out of poor households.
But colour me sceptical. A wage increase of 8% would mean, for someone earning Wal-Mart salary, about $1200 a year . . . not chicken feed, but not exactly enough to raise a kid in most places, either. Is $2400 a year (the difference for a two-income family) enough to overcome the demand-side problems created by young men who want to have children without responsibility, and young women who seem to be willing to offer this service? Seems unlikely. Meanwhile, poor would-be immigrants are suffering somethign a lot worse than hanging out aimlessly on street corners.
But on the other hand, a chance to alter the poverty cultures in our society is not to be tossed away lightly. Poor areas are not happy places to grow up, whether they be housing projects or trailer parks, and even less happy places to spend your whole life . . .
Posted by Jane Galt at April 4, 2006 12:09 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksWho makes a "personal decision" to be born with a low IQ?
And we should help poor Americans in preference to poor foreigners because they are Americans. Would you support a 8% tax on low income Americans to finance foreign aid? So why support immigration policies that have the same effect?
Posted by: James B. Shearer on April 4, 2006 02:25 PMBut colour me sceptical. A wage increase of 8% would mean
Keep in mind that Borjas published his finding of the 8% wage differential back in 1996, using data from an even earlier period. I suspect that the differential is even higher today due mainly to excess labor supply from illegals and the resultant increase in discouraged workers. Take a look at Black labor force participation rates. Half of Black men in their 20s and in possession of a high school diploma are unemployed.
So, we're not really referencing a marginal gain of only $1,200 for every low income earner because the gain is probably larger than 8%, but we're also looking at adding people from a devastated class into the workforce and getting them off of a dead end track and off of taxpayer assistance.
should we want to help these low-skilled workers at the expense of immigrants?
Yes, because these low-skilled workers are our co-citizens and due to the fact that we live in a social welfare state, they are also our burdens. The immigrants to which you refer are illegal and they are not authorized to be in our country, they self-selected. They have imposed their presence on the citizens and displaced US workers, many of which now depend on subsidy from taxpayers, and even if they are not subsidized, they're still at a sub-optimal economic level.
Posted by: TangoMan on April 4, 2006 02:36 PMIt is funny (though sad) to see a market oriented person like yourself, in this context, trying to minimize the meaning of jobs. It's not about an 8% wage increase. It's about employment, or unemployment. Say there are 10m illegals in this country and they miraculously disappeared overnight. What then? There would be 10m jobs open. Of course many new illegals would flood in to take them, but that would take time; meanwhile a desperate labor market would dip into the pool that it ignores, namely, that of our fellow citizens with the least employability.
Even if cutting off illegal immigration resulted in a 0% wage increase at the low end, if it served to get millions of people off the streets and gainfully employed, it would be a good thing.
Furthermore, getting that first job is important beyond simply getting someone off welfare. It's the first rung on a ladder than will never be climbed otherwise.
Posted by: Leonard on April 4, 2006 03:40 PMSay there are 10m illegals in this country and they miraculously disappeared overnight. What then? There would be 10m jobs open.
Well, no. There would be 10m jobs open at the wages and conditions that the illegals offered. If workers couldn't be found at those wages and conditions (as seems quite likely), some number of those jobs would have their wages and conditions improved so as to find workers, some number would be outsourced to other countries, some number would be automated out of existence, and some number would simply disappear as they could no longer be performed profitably. The US economy has gotten really efficient at doing all of those things in response to suddenly untenable market niches. Once all of those offsetting effects are taken into account, it is entirely possible that net jobs made available from such an action could actually be negative, due to technological follow-on effects and/or aggregate wealth losses. Without doing a lot more research, we just don't know.
Posted by: Dave on April 4, 2006 04:03 PMInteresting post. I've also read pretty persuasive arguments that map the improvement of Black standard of living during the Great Migration (roughly 1930-1970) to the tight immigration policies that were in place from 1924-1964. One could very well make the argument that between tight immigration policies and WWII, the Civil Rights era was destined to happen. After all, since there was no other large source of cheap labor available to businesses, they had pretty much no choice but to dip into the nigras in the ghetto. I know in the Queens neighborhood where I grew up, the second Mexican labor was available (roughly the mid 90s) was also the second you didn't see Black men get those low-level jobs.
At the same time, as a grandchild of Black Carribbean immigrants, I find something vicerally wrong with denying one set an opportunity over another. Also, there are some arguments that Carribbean immigrants do better than their Black counterparts, ceterus parabis. However, you could also argue that while educational opportunities are less vis-a-vis America, they are more accessible in the Carribbean as opposed to a Black people born in the US. Simply put, I'm torn.
Posted by: Todd on April 4, 2006 04:10 PMDave, although I agree there are plenty of ways to substitute illegal alien labor other than with citizen labor, I think it's pretty far fetched to believe that 10m jobs could open up and none of them end up being done by citizens. I'd guess that perhaps half would disappear via mechanization or outsourcing. But there are lots of jobs "that americans won't do" that we can't do with machines or foreigners - waiting tables, for example. These will be the ones which, as you say, "would have their wages and conditions improved so as to find workers".
So, certainly the net jobs will be negative. Nobody questions that. The question is, will net effect be better or worse, and for whom? Some say "the world", and others, "American citizens".
I'm practically certain that cutting off illegal immigration would be a boon for American citizens. Most of us would be unaffected - we'd pay a little more for this or that, maybe have to rake our own lawns. But some, the least well off, would benefit greatly.
I'm also pretty sure, from a strictly microeconomics POV, that for the world as a whole, cutting off immigration would make it poorer, at least in the short run. In the long run, I'm not as sure because I can see the electoral effect of importing a new people, and it's not good. It's socialist.
This is what the debate is really about.
Posted by: Leonard on April 4, 2006 04:17 PMConservatives and libertarians readily admit some percentage of the poor need help because "it isn't their fault." Low IQ, illness or disability, etc. Yet rarely has a liberal ever admitted to me that some percentage of the poor are in those circumstances because of poor choices. No, throw money at them, and enable the irresponsible behavior to continue.
Maybe the optimum way to solve the immigrant problem is to have all "jobs Americans won't take" filled by able Americans who can no longer subsist (and I won't say comfortably) by doing nothing. If immigrants can't find jobs in the U.S. then maybe they won't come.
As an employer in an area with tight unemployment and relatively few immigrants, I've seen the irresponsble behavior that "poor" minority Americans exhibit when you do hire them: lateness, absenteeism, insubordination, laziness, etc. And not just the poor: one 4 year black college graduate, major in accounting, was so ill prepared that he didn't know how to use a calculator during the interview testing process. Another minority, a Stanford engineering graduate
no less, was terminated because he repeatedly climbed onto his desk in an open work area (or lay down on the lobby couch) and took a nap during the business day. What does it say for
the universities that took their tuition money, handed them a sheepskin, and sent them out into a workaday world they couldn't comprehend?
Exactly where would all this replacement citizen labor come from? Have any of you talked with employers who hire low-skilled illegal immigrants? I've talked at length about this issue with several. They did try to hire U.S. citizens, and often got a few workers - until after the first payday. The employers I met just gave up on the drunks and dopeheads.
Immigrants from Mexico bring an incredible work ethic with them when they cross the border. IMO, there are very few unemployed workers who could do half the work these guys are doing. I've also talked with U.S. citizens who worked alongside unskilled Mexican workers. The U.S. workers had to give up and find something easier.
Economic theory might predict that wages could eventually be raised high enough that some existing workers would change jobs. But why should we want that?
Does anyone believe an unemployment rate much lower than today's 4.8% is sustainable? Please understand that the 7 million illegal immigrant workers represent about 5 percent of the U.S. workforce.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 4, 2006 04:38 PMmost of my nice middle class readers, dropped into a dysfunctional slum at birth, would drop out of school, sell drugs, and get pregnant out of wedlock, just like the current occupants do.
This is just not true. Most of your nice readers are high SES, and high IQ. Dumb people don't read blogs much, and certainly not geeky intellectual blogs by geeky intellectual borderline libertarians.
High IQ people have different life outcomes than low IQ people. See the correlates in the wiki IQ article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq#Practical_validity.
In particular note that IQ correlates with "Job performance" at level 0.54, and the correlation with "Negative social outcomes", -0.2.
If your average reader (IQ 110, perhaps) had been raised in an inner city, he probably would not have dropped out (though he might have been very bored). It is very likely he'd have a job now and be doing pretty well at it. Perhaps in the military - they use IQ tests to determine who to recruit, and your boy would be a nice catch.
Posted by: Leonard on April 4, 2006 04:45 PMI don't drive through low income areas very often, but on the rare occasions when I do, those "poor" young male minority high-school dropouts hanging around on the street corners don't exactly look mal-nourished. In fact, they seem to have more disposable income than I do.
If the objective is to get those people into the legal mainstream economy, one good starting point might be to de-criminalize drugs and thereby deprive them of their current livelihood. After a while, hanging sheetrock and weeding strawberries might start to seem like more desirable options than they do right now.
[sarcasm=ON]As an added bonus, we could then fire a few million DEA agents, and get them doing something constructive like mowing lawns and picking tomatoes, also. At that point there would be no more need for illegal immigrants. (Of course, the quality of lawncare and tomatoes would probably go down quite a bit....)
John W,
To be fair, it's not just minorities who deal drugs or who somehow survive while officially unemployed. Like many others, I have middle-aged blood relatives - all European-American - who have worked at legal jobs less than half their adult lives.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 4, 2006 05:27 PMImmigrants from Mexico bring an incredible work ethic with them when they cross the border. IMO, there are very few unemployed workers who could do half the work these guys are doing. I've also talked with U.S. citizens who worked alongside unskilled Mexican workers. The U.S. workers had to give up and find something easier.
Make racist generalizations much?
I have worked side by side with unskilled Mexican (and other) workers. I have yet to meet a group about whom such generalizations could be accurately made.
Some whites are lazy, some work really hard.
Some Hispanics are lazy, some work really hard.
Some blacks are lazy, some work really hard.
Some asians are lazy, some work really hard.
This mytho-poetic notion of Mexican worker ants who do the labor of two normal men is just crap, and racist as well.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 4, 2006 05:55 PMJane, isn't Mickey Kaus commiting the "lump of labour fallacy" here?
He appears to be assuming that if illegal immigration was ended, there would be more jobs for low-skilled Americans as if jobs came in a lump sum. Was there tighter effective limits on illegal immigration in the 1990s when unemployment was so low than in the 1980s and now?
Also if the lump of labour belief was true, we'd see American unemployment rising as total population rises. Given population growth over the last century, presumably the unemployment rate should be in the high 80s by now. Even allowing for some mismeasurement by your department of statistics, this seems unlikely.
Posted by: Tracy W on April 4, 2006 06:07 PMBombadil,
It gets extremely tiresome to hear folks throw "racism" into almost every discussion.
Here's a few non-racist reasons why Mexicans work harder in the U.S. than our unskilled citizens do:
1. The Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are a highly select group of that nation's population. They want to succeed much more than the 90% of their countrymen who choose to not cross over. They risk starvation and exposure to weather. They pay coyotes as much as $1,000 to sneak them across the border and into safe environments. They accept transience and separation from their families. They've proven they want the jobs more.
2. Unlike citizens, illegal Mexican workers are not protected by U.S. laws that make it difficult for an employer to fire them. So the Mexican workers must produce at a high level, or they're gone.
3. Unlike citizens conditioned by four decades of an entitlement culture, illegal Mexicans realize they cannot depend on a government safety net. Their children's supper is dependent on their hard work.
Mexican immigrants are not harder workers because of "race", whatever that term means. It's pre-selection and operating in a true market that makes them better employees.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 4, 2006 06:21 PMConservatives and libertarians readily admit some percentage of the poor need help because "it isn't their fault." Low IQ, illness or disability, etc. Yet rarely has a liberal ever admitted to me that some percentage of the poor are in those circumstances because of poor choices. No, throw money at them, and enable the irresponsible behavior to continue.
I don't think that this is a fair characterization of what most folks on the center-left think. I have had a number of discussions with classmates, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances on the left who acknowledge that much the cause of poverty of it is behavioral. However they seem to believe that with the right programs (e.g. early child education) this behavior can be changed and break the cycle.
Also I think that many folks who support social programs can readily acknowledge that the parents have made poor choices but don't want to reduce these programs for fear of "punishing the children" who weren't responsible for making those choices and often suffer as a result of them.
In other words, their support of governmental poverty programs is not because they don't believe that poverty is often (and reasonable people can disagree to the extent) caused by poor personal choices, they just think that (a) with the proper incentives people can be "educated" to make better choices and (b) it's better to risk subsidizing the undeserving poor than remove support for the deserving poor.
That's not to say that I find such arguments persuasive (in part because we disagree as to the proper role of government in a free society) but it would be just as dishonest of me to intentionally mischaracterize everyone who disagrees with me as it would be for someone supports poverty programs to disregard the role of personal choice.
I have an even better suggestion for how to improve the lot of those born in America who find themselves in poverty:
Work as hard as the Mexicans.
Posted by: secret asian man on April 4, 2006 07:03 PMSay there are 10m illegals in this country and they miraculously disappeared overnight. What then? There would be 10m jobs open.
Right now we have an unemployment rate of about 4.8% The primary concern of the FED is that our economy might be creating too many jobs.
Subtracting people from the labor force is not going to give jobs to people who don't have them. Everytime a person takes a job they also spend their income which creates demand for a new job. If you pull people out of the labor market you are also going to drop demand.
The number of jobs in America is mostly determined by the number qualified job applicants.
To increase unemployment among African Americans we have to increase qualifications among African Americans. This mainly means fixing K12 education.
Now of course why K12 is not working in much of the African American community and what we do about is a hell of issue to tackle. But it is the issue we face.
Posted by: Karl Smith on April 4, 2006 07:23 PMMexican immigrants are not harder workers because of "race", whatever that term means. It's pre-selection and operating in a true market that makes them better employees.
They are better employees because they will work for less than minimum wage, and the employer doesn't have to pay any of the usual overheads that legal employees have (disability insurance, taxes etc).
Mexicans don't work harder than others ... its just untrue. Some of them work very hard, some of them slack off - same as everyone else. Hire some illegal labor at your local Home Depot and you might get some guys who work like mules all day, and some others who sputter to a stop every time you quit standing over them.
I have worked with Mexican labor (possibly illegal - I dont know for sure) doing roofing, landscaping, and working in an insulation factory. THEY DONT WORK HARDER.
You can posit all the self-selection mechanisms you want, but in the end it comes across essentially as stated oh so eloquently by "secret asian man" above:
I have an even better suggestion for how to improve the lot of those born in America who find themselves in poverty:
Work as hard as the Mexicans.
Arrgh. If Mexicans are such superior workers, why is Mexico a poor nation?
JohnDewey, you may have reasons other than reflex anti-gringo bias for your generalizations, but your argument is a close cousin to "secret asian man"'s above - hey stupid (non-Mexican) people, quit being so lazy and try to emulate the superhuman Mexicans.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 4, 2006 07:28 PMGet rid of AFDC. Some cultures and some individuals, avoiding shame restrictions, are willing to make government, Uncle Sugar, daddy. Bad precedent. Operative shame is useful for working. If you have to, a negative income tax as first proposed by Goldwater and now Charles Taylor creates better incentives but probably costs more because it's hard to target. For your health care plan, to return to a previous blog, let poor people go to prison clinics on a space available basis.
Posted by: michael on April 4, 2006 08:04 PMJane really means illegal immigrants, and more particularly means illegal Mexican immigrants.
Does anyone have a problem with our immigration policy favoring illegal Mexican immigrants over everyone else? I don't see why they should be the only ones with free access to our country just because they happen to be poor and close. How many people from, say, China and India want to immigrate and would do so illegally but can't because it's much harder than walking across the border?
I'm all for greatly increased legal immigration quotas that take demand into account, but I'm surprised that the no-borders advocates don't realize or don't care that a no-border policy, whether de facto as now or de jure as they'd like, is so lopsided in favor of Mexico. Is this faire? Should we care?
Posted by: AT on April 4, 2006 08:15 PMThe primary concern of the FED is that our economy might be creating too many jobs.
Too many jobs indeed, but those jobs are primarily low skill and low wage jobs. The National Academy of Science determined that every immigrant with less than a high school education ends up receiving over their lifetime a taxpayer subsidy of $89,000 (1996). Now I would imagine that a US citizen with the same level of education, who is entitled to greater social welfare benefits, ends up with an even greater subsidy. Surely, it's in our interest to reduce the greater subsidies as best we can, and this can be done by raising labor's market value.
So, my question to Megan and to the commenters here, is what is the macro value of a new job that is created if the pay for the job doesn't even cover the worker's costs to society? Each new job that is created this way goes hand in hand with large taxpayer subsidies. Sure, the allocation of costs and benefits is split, with the employer, employee and client reaping the gains and the taxpayer getting stuck with the subsidy.
We need to face the fact that some people are of such low skill level that their worth in the market isn't high enough to cover their costs to society. Because we live in a social welfare state, there is little we can do about our own citizens, but surely there is little need to import foreign workers and grant them subsidies. The US is the world's most technologically advanced economy and we're importing millions of Mexican high school drop-outs who can't generate enough economic value to pay their way. There are some industries that are hanging on because of this indirect subsidy and ISTM that the indirect subsidy for labor is producing a non-pareto outcome and these industries need to increase their mechanization or relocate to lower wage areas rather than rely on taxpayer subsidized labor.
So, in a nutshell, why create low wage jobs, then clamor for more labor (filled by illegals) when each job created creates a need for taxpayer subsidy?t
Posted by: TangoMan on April 4, 2006 08:20 PMIt is interesting that the problems that today plague the black-American community didn't really exist fifty years ago. You would think that normally, the survival instinct of a person leads them to do as best as they can, given their circumstances. Maybe these "Great Society" programs bear a lot more of the blame then even their most ardent opponents give them.
Posted by: JoshK on April 4, 2006 09:18 PMAlso if the lump of labour belief was true, we'd see American unemployment rising as total population rises. Given population growth over the last century, presumably the unemployment rate should be in the high 80s by now.
Excellent point. Indeed, if immigration really had such a devestating impact on wages, American workers should have been losing ground since Jamestown.
Posted by: P.B. Almeida on April 4, 2006 09:27 PMI'm all for greatly increased legal immigration quotas that take demand into account, but I'm surprised that the no-borders advocates don't realize or don't care that a no-border policy, whether de facto as now or de jure as they'd like, is so lopsided in favor of Mexico. Is this faire? Should we care?
AT:
1) Is there any such animal as an advocate of no borders? Maybe in Lou Dobbs's feaverish nightmares, but I doubt in reality anybody who's not a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda wants the USA not to have borders.
2) You're right that Mexicans and Central Americans possess an "unfair" advantage when it comes to immigrating illegally to the USA. Not having an ocean between one and one's destination is indeed a big advantage. For the most part, those of us who favor a liberalization approach to immigration/illegal immigration don't hold the position we do because we want Mexicans to have this unfair advantage; we hold the position we do because we acknowledge this existence of this advantage, and wish to see the policies of the American government comport with reality.
Or, to put it another way, I think I'd agree that it's not "fair" that somebody from Mumbai can't sneak across the US border as easily as somebody from Mexico City. But the facts on the ground (the presence of 11 million mostly Hispanic illegals in the US, and the arrival each month of thousands more) are neither fair nor unfair. They're just reality. If a good sized sea lay between the US and Mexico, or if Mexico enjoyed developed-world wages and living standards, or if the US were as poor as Bolivia, or if no Mexicans were aware of the higher wages available in the US (or some combination of these or similar conditions were in place), the US would probably have a much smaller number of Mexicans attempting to get in, and a much smaller number of illegal Mexican immigrants already here.
Posted by: P.B. Almeida on April 4, 2006 09:53 PMSo, my question to Megan and to the commenters here, is what is the macro value of a new job that is created if the pay for the job doesn't even cover the worker's costs to society?
The US enjoys a substantial benefit from immigration. You're confusing net government receipts (or expenditures) with net economic contribution. You only have cause to worry if the bulk of the immigrants we were attracting were too old too work.
Just look at the math. Americans each produce, on average, something like $40k worth of economic output each year. If the output for illegals is only half this total (I doubt it's this low, but whatever), we can infer that illegals account for something like $220 billion of US GDP. Now, if this $220 billion ultimately generates (say) $75 billion in taxes to the US public sector, and these illegals go onto to consume (say) $100 billion worth of government goodies, then society as a whole still comes out ahead. It's just the public sector that runs a deficit -- not the economy as a whole.
Of course, even the claim you're making about the net public sector cost of illegal immigration is highly dubious. The data I've seen imply a net cost to the finances of local and state government, but a net benefit to the federal government.
The bottom line is: the 4% or so of the population here illegally accounts for a portion of US output. GDP figures don't bother to check passports.
Posted by: P.B. Almeida on April 4, 2006 10:14 PMThe three best things that ever happened to the labor movement were; the black death (helped break down feudalism) and the two world wars(created enough of a labor shortage to give unions some power)
It is supply and demand... with globalisation and immigration the world economy can simply return that wonderful pre black death income distribution status. Just hope you or your offspring dont get caught on the wrong side of that global economic/political watershed.
Bombadil-
Well, my experience is preceisly the opposite of yours.
I worked at Wendy's, the fast food restaurant, for five years. One of the stores I worked at was located right next to a housing project. This project had tenants of all races and ethnic groups, from blacks to Puerto Ricans to Vietnamese to Indians. Men, women, teenagers, senior citizens -- the project had them all.
We were always in need of labor and would hire virtually anyone who applied. Not a single worker from the projects lasted more than two weeks. Most didn't last more than two or three days.
Then one day we got our first Mexican applicant. He was an illegal alien, in fact. Anyone who has ever worked with low-skilled laborers will appreciate the fact that this was a big day for our restuarant. Our shortage of labor ended instantly.
Every single one of the Mexicans was courteous, reliable, and worked incredibly hard. Every single one, without exceptions. Not one stole from the cash register. Not one decided that they just didn't like working and stopped showing up for work. Not one came to work drunk or high. Not one got into a fight with a customer or a fellow employee.
In my youth I held virtually every kind of unskilled job imaginable, from dishwasher to fast food worker to shopping cart attendant. At all of these jobs, I saw firsthand that illegal aliens were far superior to most American workers, and they were certainly head and shoulders above the welfare types.
Posted by: Joe Schmoe on April 4, 2006 11:09 PMP.B.:
Is there any such animal as an advocate of no borders? I'm being glib, but as I recall, the WSJ editorial page comes close. My opinion is that people who don't think there's any point in guarding the borders and don't care at all that we have zounds of illegals here except as cheap carbon labor units might as well be no-borderers.
You're right that Mexicans and Central Americans possess an "unfair" advantage when it comes to immigrating illegally to the USA. Not having an ocean between one and one's destination is indeed a big advantage. For the most part, those of us who favor a liberalization approach to immigration/illegal immigration don't hold the position we do because we want Mexicans to have this unfair advantage; we hold the position we do because we acknowledge this existence of this advantage, and wish to see the policies of the American government comport with reality.
If we can agree that any amnesty or "guest worker" plan is an improvement in legal status for current illegals, then it will increase the number of people willing to come here illegally. Our 1986 amnesty won't have been a one-time event. I don't think anyone expects a guest worker program that takes in 3 million people a year, so it won't soak up all the supply of immigrants. I can't quantify whether the number of illegal entrants will decrease or increase under such a program, but I think it's plausible that codifying our lax policies will cause a net increase.
This isn't necessarily a grave problem, but it is when combined with Jane's attitude that border enforcement can't work and isn't worth trying. That's just a sure way to vastly increase immigration, with much of it probably still being illegal and definitely from Mexico and Central America. It's not going to do anything for anyone else who wants to come here. Why would an employer pay to ship someone from overseas when they're already here or, at most, a bus ride away?
I don't see what's unrealistic about (1) increasing immigration quotas, including from Mexico, and (2) sealing the Mexican border.
Posted by: AT on April 4, 2006 11:22 PMThe US enjoys a substantial benefit from immigration.
No, the immigrant enjoys a substantial benefit from immigration. The nation as a whole benefits to the tune of $10 Billion annually in an $11 Trillion economy, and that's factoring in all forms of immigration, not just illegal immigration. So, the H-1B engineers & programmers, the legal immigrants, other visa categories (actors like Russell Crowe), etc are all included in that figure.
The economic contribution of the illegal doesn't vanish if the illegal isn't performing the task. The economic contribution can continue via mechanisation or productivity improvements from hiring a better trained worker even if you have to pay them a higher wage. The difference is that these alternatives don't necessitate taxpayer subsidies. See the example Robert Samuelson cites in his Washington Post article:
In the early 1960s, growers relied on seasonal Mexican laborers, brought in under the government's "bracero" program. The Mexicans picked the tomatoes that were then processed into ketchup and other products. In 1964 Congress killed the program despite growers' warnings that its abolition would doom their industry. What happened? Well, plant scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine. Since then, California's tomato output has risen fivefold.
Did the economic activity in this industry vanish with the elimination of a class of labor? No, it didn't but the taxpayer subsidy sure did.
Of course, even the claim you're making about the net public sector cost of illegal immigration is highly dubious.
Says you? If we're going to trade appeals to authority I'll back the National Research Council (table 7.5) rather than take your opinion on the matter. Thanks, nonetheless.
Posted by: TangoMan on April 4, 2006 11:35 PMcolour me sceptical.
This is obviously a rhetorical ploy to demonstrate solidarity with immigrants, who while they cannot speak American, nonetheless manage to add to the vibrant cultural diversity of our great nation.
Well done Megan! Very subtle.
Posted by: Jonathan Wilde on April 4, 2006 11:47 PMWhat are we going to do with all of the lazy people?
REALLY? I think megan is just getting to this question. In todays world, what are we going to do? Its pretty troubling. Poor, stupid lazy people treat their childen so poorly and don't prepare their kids for life at all. So punishing the adults results in another generation of poor, stupid, lazy people. In other words, it doesn't really help our society, and punishes innocent kids who in another circumstance, would be productive memebers of society.
I think its reasonable to assume that illegal immigrants are self-selected highly motivated people. So we are in effect comparing the people who would work themselves through college if they were born in the USA with people who cant get themselves to finish high school.
But still the question remains, what are we going to do with the lazy people? I think any answer that revolves around punishment as a primary motivator is going to hurt the kids more than the adults - why, you ask - the adults just don't care, how much worse can their lives be really!! Its no big deal to them if they don't get much or if there is some highly negative consequences to their actions, they have already demonstrated an amazing capacity for risk, acceptance of poor living conditions, and lack of interest in improving their situation.
What is going to solve this problem? Any free market solution assumes people who think rationally, can make choices to improve their sitation, want to avoid pain, and give a f*%# about what happens. This is clearly not the case for many of these people. Any socialistic solution involves changing people who don't want to change with solutions that haven't worked in the past and giving people things they don't deserve and will probably destroy anyway.
But these statements dont solve the problem. and we need to solve it. Is there some mental virus we could unleash that will help these people solve the problem. Remember, they have already been exposed to capitalism, so thats not it. They have experience with handouts, so thats not it.
Also, as an aside, the Great Society had lots to do with creating this problem, but DO NOT underestimate the importance of moving urban industrial jobs overseas. This has been well documented by some Jane-beloved U of C researchers who were surprised at the level of the effect when they researched it. Many blacks moved north to work in factories, and then the factories closed. Lack of stable, well paying jobs combined with some Great Soceity magic has resulted in our current situation. This isn't reversible now, where just creating the jobs will solve the problem. It might have been 25 years ago, but not now.
Posted by: mickslam23 on April 5, 2006 12:47 AMPB:
http://deletetheborder.org/
Their relationship to Lou Dobb's nightmares, or card-carrying al-Qaedists, are left as an exercise.
The phrase "comport with reality" sounds a lot like "recognize a problem, but ignore it because it's too big to deal with."
Though for the record, I think removing millions of illegal immigrants and building a wall with Mexico would be impossibly hard. I mean, building a transcontinental railroad with 1850's technology hard. Or sending a man to the moon and back with computers from the 60's. Now, if we needed to split an atom, or sequence the human genome, fine - but a wall? Twice as long as what the chinese built (500 years ago)? That's just crazy talk.
Posted by: bgates on April 5, 2006 05:25 AM"So punishing the adults results in another generation of poor, stupid, lazy people." What we've been doing since the 1960's is paying poor, stupid, lazy women to have children. It doesn't sound much like punishment to me, and it's proven to be a good way to create new generations of poor, stupid, lazy people. I don't know the solution (other than social darwinism, that is, letting their children starve along with them), but more of what we've been doing will just make the problem worse.
Education? Your first problem is that most of the children of the non-working class don't want to learn, and will harass those that do pay attention in school. I know how to save those who do want to learn - kick the rest out, break the teacher's unions, and pay teachers according to merit - but that's too politically incorrect to ever be implemented in the public schools.
Posted by: markm on April 5, 2006 08:20 AMAT:
"I'm surprised that the no-borders advocates don't realize or don't care that a no-border policy, whether de facto as now or de jure as they'd like, is so lopsided in favor of Mexico. Is this faire? Should we care?"
AT, I'm not one of the no-border advocates, so I'm not answering for them.
Personally, I don't see why we should care that it is easier for Mexicans to participate in the U.S. economy. It is probably easier for North Africans than for Mexicans to find their way to Italy or to France. So what? It has probably been easier for Koreans than for Mexicans to enter Japan. Does that make any difference to the economies or the political tensions of those nations? It probably affects the U.S. more because of our freedoms, including freedom of opportunity.
The U.S. has gained from the contributions of Mexicans in particular for at least 160 years. Those Mexicans have gained as well. Why should we wish to stop that?
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 08:36 AMIs there any such animal as an advocate of no borders? Maybe in Lou Dobbs's feaverish nightmares, but I doubt in reality anybody who's not a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda wants the USA not to have borders.
I dunno, perhaps Dobbs might have been thinking of someone who holds this view:
First, a response to readers who ask why I'm not paying attention to the fact that illegal immigrants are, well, illegal.
Several reasons. One, for the same reason that I don't pay attention to the fact that illegal drugs are illegal: I don't think they should be. I don't think that driving under the influence of marijuana, or beating your kids while high on heroin, are somehow worse than doing the same things while blind drunk. I'm not going to support stiffer sentences for drug users while simultaneously hoping that the laws are repealed; if I can't have the laws repealed, then I'd prefer them laxly enforced.
Seems to me like a Jane is saying by comparing her support of ending drug prohibition with her views on immigration that she?s in favor of either repealing our immigration laws or making them laxly enforced. The difference between this and someone who comes right out and says they?re for ?open borders? is really only one of semantics. Posted by: Thorley Winston on April 5, 2006 10:42 AM
Bombadil wrote: "...Arrgh. If Mexicans are such superior workers, why is Mexico a poor nation?..."
Mexico is **NOT** a "poor nation". Mexico is at least an "upper middle class nation," financially speaking. But the vast majority of its wealth is in the hands of a tiny, tiny group of ultra-rich (and ruthless) families -- probably no more than a hundred or so families -- who control everything.
Why argue about absolutes? Yes, we will not criminalize nor deport 10 million people, but we can put measures into place that might change the rate at which they flow into the country. A sensible, but workable proposal might include a wall (good symbolic measure), higher fines on employers of more than half a dozen illegals, a system for regularizing some of the illegals who are here that would be most desirable to the economy and who have no criminal records, rapid and strict deportation of any illegals or legals with criminal records, changes to legal immigration to expand that flow while changing the rules to disfavor family reunification while encouraging high education immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia. None of the these measures would require a police state. Applied sensibly the flow would be slowed substantially. Morover, shifting the nature of legal immigration would give us an immigrant pool less favorable to Latin Americans and more accomodating to peoples who do not share natural borders with us.
Maybe you don't agree, but this seems like a good starting place for talk.
Posted by: torre on April 5, 2006 12:22 PMtorre,
I agree with muc of your proposal. But why try to engineer the pool of immigrants? If the markets need fast food workers and lettuce pickers and guys to hold roadway signs, why should we insist on favoring technical workers?
Also, family reunification makes sense from both moral and practical standpoints. When families are housed together we get all sort of positive results. Mexican workers embrace family values. Separating their families will great more problems for both the U.S. and their home country.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 12:37 PMP.B. Almeida,
You seem to be assuming that all the net income (subtracting out govt. services used) generated by illegals benefits the US as a whole. Well, that completely discounts the fact that they are consuming goods and services. They aren't exactly donating that income back to US citizens.
john w.,
Mexico is poor. How can you possible call a country with a per capita GDP of about $10k "upper middle class"?
JohnDewey,
You ask, "If the markets need fast food workers and lettuce pickers and guys to hold roadway signs, why should we insist on favoring technical workers?"
Well, maybe because lettuce pickers don't make nearly enough money to offset their costs in a country with a large social welfare program. And on top of that you want to bring their families here? So let me get this straight, you actually think its good for the US to bring in a guy who makes maybe $20k a year, and then let him bring over his 3 kids, each of whom will cost the state about $8k per year to educate? Why exactly is that a good idea?
Also, do you have any basis for your statement that "Mexican workers embrace family values"? Because I've seen Hispanic figures for illegitimacy, crime, high school drop out rates, etc. that make me question what exactly it is you consider a "family value".
Roy wrote:
"You seem to be assuming that all the net income (subtracting out govt. services used) generated by illegals benefits the US as a whole. Well, that completely discounts the fact that they are consuming goods and services. They aren't exactly donating that income back to US citizens."
Sir, I'm really not understanding your economic argument here. Are you implying that only unspent immigrant income benefits the U.S.? When immigrants or anyone else spends their dollars on U.S. goods and services, they enable the creation of more jobs. The holders of the newly created jobs then spend their money, and even more jobs are created. I'm sure you know about the multiplier effect, but just in case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics)
Roy,
Regardless of the stupidity of our welfare system, the U.S. still needs the lettuce picker. The unemployed drunk or dopehead is not going to stand out in the sun and pick the crops.
If allowed, the low-skilled worker is likely to also bring over his wife who will work in the fast food restaurant down the street. Both will benefit our economy.
Virtually no parent in the U.S. pays the full cost of his child's education. Education of children is paid by all property owners and businesses. More than half of all households do not even have schoolchildren. Landlords and businesses pass on their school taxes to their customers. Mexican immigrants contribute what our government has determined to be their fair share of the cost to educate their children.
Bombadil-
Well, my experience is preceisly the opposite of yours.
Actually the experience you relate below is not precisely the opposite of mine. I am not saying that Hispanics are inferior workers - you are saying that Anglos and other ethnicities are inferior. I am saying that they are all pretty comparable.
I worked at Wendy's, the fast food restaurant, for five years. One of the stores I worked at was located right next to a housing project. This project had tenants of all races and ethnic groups, from blacks to Puerto Ricans to Vietnamese to Indians. Men, women, teenagers, senior citizens -- the project had them all.
We were always in need of labor and would hire virtually anyone who applied. Not a single worker from the projects lasted more than two weeks. Most didn't last more than two or three days.
So, to restate: you worked at a Wendy's for five years and had not one single (non-Hispanic) employee who lasted longer than two weeks? Wow, that is a remarkable turnover rate. I have worked at several fast-food places and I have never seen one that couldn't keep any of its employees for more than two weeks. That must be a world record for sustained turnover.
Then one day we got our first Mexican applicant. He was an illegal alien, in fact.
Just out of curiousity - how do you know?
Anyone who has ever worked with low-skilled laborers will appreciate the fact that this was a big day for our restuarant. Our shortage of labor ended instantly.
I have worked with low-skilled labor and I can appreciate that replacing all your payroll-tax playing employees with under-the-table workers might reduce your labor costs quite a bit.
Now the paean begins:
Every single one of the Mexicans was courteous, reliable, and worked incredibly hard. Every single one, without exceptions. Not one stole from the cash register. Not one decided that they just didn't like working and stopped showing up for work. Not one came to work drunk or high. Not one got into a fight with a customer or a fellow employee.
And every single gringo you employed for five years was unable to make it two weeks. Wow, thats incredible. Every single one. And yet, somehow that claim seems less than credible to me.
In my youth I held virtually every kind of unskilled job imaginable, from dishwasher to fast food worker to shopping cart attendant. At all of these jobs, I saw firsthand that illegal aliens were far superior to most American workers, and they were certainly head and shoulders above the welfare types.
You worked with illegal aliens at every job you held, and all of them were superworkers? Amazing.
Myself, I have worked quite a few low-wage jobs. I have worked with many people of different ethnicities, including several flavors of Hispanic (there are different groups of Hispanics, you know).
I have never seen any ethic group whose members were universally superior to others. But I have seen that it is very politically correct to claim that "Americans are lazy" or that "Americans won't do certain jobs" - which IMO is complete bullshit.
Again, if Hispanics are such superior workers why isn't Brazil or Venezuela or Mexico the center of the economic world?
Racist nonsense. People are people; illegal labor competes on price, not quality.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 5, 2006 01:41 PMJohnDewey,
I think the benefits of the multiplier effect are overstated, especially in an economy with full employment.
And sure most parents don't pay enough in taxes each year to cover the costs of their kids for that year, but on average, over the course of their taxpaying life they will. Illegals however, make well below the national average income, so they'll never pay enough in taxes to cover the costs of their kids.
Also, this whole idea that without Mexicans the vegetables would just wilt in the field just isn't true. (Sadly I know this because 30 years ago there were far, far fewer Mexican workers, and yet still my mom was making me choke down carrots) Farmers would just have to raise wages or automate. Either way we have a lot less poor people to subsidize.
Honestly, from reading your posts, I get the feeling you believe that the US would benefit from bringing in ever single person from Mexico. Do you not see the problem with greatly increasing the number of number of uneducated, unskilled people in America?
ps. I hope my response doesn't come across as harsh or condescending, because that certainly isn't my intention.
A sensible, but workable proposal might include a wall (good symbolic measure)
If you're going to build it, it needs to be more than symbolic, given the kinds of tunnels the drug traffickers and ilegales smugglers have already managed to contrive everywhere the river doesn't run. Specifically, it needs to be reinforced concrete, about fifty feet deep and a yard thick, and regularly lined with sensors to detect the attacking strokes of the mining parties.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 5, 2006 01:55 PMBombadil,
I guess my earlier explanation wasn't all that clear. Let me try again.
The comparison is not between Mexicans and Americans. It's between two subsets of those populations. The first are the extremely motivated Mexicans who risk their lives, who leave their families, and who pay coyotes an amount equal to two or three months of their Mexican wages. They do this just on the chance that they can work their tails off at some menial job in the U.S.
The second group consists of the unemployed Americans who might be willing to work at menial labor. For most of the past two decades, these workers consisted of mainly the chronically unemployed - the drunks, the misfits, the malcontents, and others that just can't cut it in our world. That group also includes very young Amricans who haven't developed important work habits such as dependability and focus.
I'm not arguing that every American who wishes to compete with Mexican labor cannot do so. But I've been on this planet for 55 years, and I've never seen a group of workers more motivated than today's Mexican immigrants. I've worked around many of them. My wife has worked alongside many in the healthcare industry. My brother hires hundreds to build his houses. We all agree that an unmotivated Mexican immigrant worker is a rare exception - very rare.
I agree that people are people everywhere. Every ethnic group probably has good workers and not-so-good ones. The economic progress of each nation is not dependent on their stock of workers as much as on the freedoms they're granted and the laws they're forced to operate under. Culture does play a part as well.
One suggestion: consider using a little tact. Describing the arguments of others as racist nonsense and bullshit will only encourage them to ignore you and your arguments. And you don't want that, do you?
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 02:13 PMRoy wrote: "...Mexico is poor. How can you possible call a country with a per capita GDP of about $10k "upper middle class"? ..."
The official $10K figure doesn't include the Swiss bank accounts.
Go do a Google search. The third richest man in the WORLD (after Gates & Buffet) is a Mexican.
During the Salinas de Gortari presidency (in the late 1980's and early 90's), Mexico was producing new billionaires at the rate of something like 4 or 5 per year -- and that figure only includes what's "on the books." It doesn't include bribes & corruption, and it certainly doesn't include narco-traficantes.
JohnDewey:
I agree we are comparing two disparate subsets - and I am saying that I do not believe the selection effect is so great as to render every Hispanic worker in this country a worker god striding through a sea of disaffected, pampered gringos.
You can say that you work around illegal immigrants (how do you know they are illegal ??) and that they are highly motivated. Fine. I am saying that I have worked around Hispanics, some of whom may have been illegal (somehow they never made a habit of confessing their immigration status to me). I didn't feel the urge to kneel in their presence; some of them worked very hard (harder than me, I occasionally was inflicted with the teenage lazies) and others liked to carry the smallest bundles (of shingles) they could get away with.
Where do our conflicting anecdotes leave us?
Do you believe that the US worker is inferior, or not? Do you believe that the US economy would collapse, that produce would rot in the field and die on the tree if we couldn't pay Hispanics to harvest it for us? Do you believe that fat, lazy American Eloi live in a paradise provided by Hispanic Morlocks, and that the dinner bell is about to ring?
Alarmists of every stripe seem to be beating the drums: lets seal up the border lest we are overcome, lets open up the borders because we are inferior, etc etc.
I am saying that we should take a deep breath, and calm down. Hispanics are not superior. Americans are not inferior. People who work under the table have a competitive advantage in the labor market. Lets even the playing field; in my libertarian fantasy we would do this by eliminating all forms of payroll tax, but I know that won't happen, so lets do the next best thing and stop illegal immigration.
Let Mexicans come to this country legally, let them compete dollar for dollar with American workers.
Re:tact. A commenter who claims that all illegal Mexican labor is superior to all American labor (see Joe Schmoe above) is a racist. Is there a more tactful word? How about ethnocentrist?
Bullshit might have been a bit strong - racist I stand behind.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 5, 2006 02:42 PMRoy:
"I think the benefits of the multiplier effect are overstated, especially in an economy with full employment."
Well, we disagree about this. The economy is at full employment and also able to employ millions of immigrants. IMO, that's precisely because of benefits derived from the multiplier effect.
"30 years ago there were far, far fewer Mexican workers, and yet still my mom was making me choke down carrots"
My guess is that 30 years ago we employed just as many Mexican agriculture workers. In 1969, Cesar Chavez led Mexican-American union workers, many the descendants of former illegals, across California to protest Mexican illegals hired to work in fields. The illegals were clearly a threat to his union then. But not the biggest threat. The wages demanded by Chavez motivated farm owners to replace many agriculture jobs through automation.
"Do you not see the problem with greatly increasing the number of number of uneducated, unskilled people in America?"
I do not see a problem with letting motivated workers from Mexico fill available jobs.
From what I've read, many current illegals are educated and skilled. They've accepted the sad reality that skilled jobs in Mexico will continue to pay far less than unskilled ones in the U.S.
I have never suggested we open our borders. In fact, our current system, as inhumane as it sometimes can be, seems to ensure we get only the most motivated workers.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 02:45 PMAlso, $10K per capita is pretty good compared to most of Africa and Asia. They are poor in comparison to western Europe, Japan, a few other Asian countries, all tiny, and of course to the USA and Canada, but most of the world's population isn't making $10K per capita. Millions of Mexicans seem to be able to scrape together $1,000 or so to pay a coyote to smuggle them across the border, and there are billions of people in other countries who have never seen that much money.
Posted by: markm on April 5, 2006 02:55 PMBombadil,
Personally, I do prefer "ethnic group" and "ethnocentric" to "race" and "racism". That's probably because I just don't like the whole concept of race as it's applied to humans. But perhaps it's just a convenience. It's easier to say "white race" than to say "group of pale lookng freaks over there sipping mint juleps on the veranda".
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 02:57 PMJohnDewey:
"My guess is that 30 years ago we employed just as many Mexican agriculture workers."
The number of illegals has at least quadrupled since in the last 30 years. Even assuming all this increase went into other occupation, that still doesn't change my underlying point. Whether it be picking lettuce, construction, mowing grass etc., the fact is all these things were getting done when we had far, far fewer Mexicans. The idea that they do jobs that American's won't isn't true, they just simply do them at wages most Americans won't take.
If you were just talking about a guest worker program, I wouldn't object all that much. It seems though, that you want to give illegals, and their families, citizenship. (I assume after a process) I just think this view overlooks some of the obvious social problems caused by a massive expansion of the underclass. And unlike other immigrants (Germans and Chinese for instance) even the descendents of Hispanic immigrants remain on average near the bottom rung of society when it comes to things like educational attainment and crime rates. Not to mention that the rampant anti-American sentiment I saw at these pro-immigration rallies leads me to question if they have even the slightest desire to assimilate into American culture.
Finally, I'm not sure how you can write that "many current illegals are educated and skilled", when every study shows the majority don't even have a high school education.
"Whether it be picking lettuce, construction, mowing grass etc., the fact is all these things were getting done when we had far, far fewer Mexicans."
Roy, the unemployment rate is 4.8%. For all of the 20th century that was considered full employment. Economists understand very well that 100% of workers will not be employed 100% of the time.
Illegal immigrants make up about 5% of the U.S. workforce. If they weren't working, and we are at full employment, who will do the work?
Forty years ago, households mowed their own lawns. Landscaping was too expensive for all but the wealthy. Women remained at home to handle housekeeping and cooking. Immigrants have changed that world. Men play golf and ride trailbikes on weekends instead of maintaining their yards. Middle-class families enjoy landscaped homes. Our economy now benefits from the labor of talented women who have been freed from household chores. Why would anyone want to go back to that other world? If low-income workers are available, and they can make our lives easier, why not take advantage?
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 03:50 PMMiddle-class families enjoy landscaped homes.
Don't most middle class families have their kids do the lawnwork? When I was growing up, having to mow the lawn, trim the bushes, rake up leaves etc. was a standard weekend chore for all the boys in the neighborhood.
I wonder if that could be a red state/blue state thing.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 5, 2006 04:11 PMJohnDewey wrote: "...If low-income workers are available, and they can make our lives easier, why not take advantage?..."
Well, if they are going to be GUEST workers who stay for a while and then go home permanently, then I personally don't see any problem at all.
If they are going to become FULLY assimilated citizens, then there might not be a problem, although once they start voting, they will presumably vote for programs & policies that benefit themselves and their children -- which are not necessarily the same programs & policies that benefit you & me.
If they are going to become NON-assimilated citizens, voting in the United States while maintaining an intense patriotic loyalty to a corrupt quasi-dictatorship in Mexico, then I see HUGE problems.
John W.
Millions of Jewish-American and Irish-American citizens in the U.S. were intensely loyal to Israel and Ireland for decades after they arrived here. Did their divided loyalties really hurt us in the long run?
What is a "fully assimilated" citizen anyway?
My Cajun ancestors continued speaking French for 150 years after Louisiana was purchased. That didn't stop them from serving proudly in our armed forces, just as Mexican-Americans are serving proudly today. Did the Cajuns - including my uncle and cousins who died in WW II - meet anyone's definition of "fully assimilated'?
Italian-Americans still wave the Italian flag in parades on Columbus Day. Does anyone doubt that Italian-Americans as a group have proven their loyalty to the U.S.?
Why should the current wave of immigrants - Mexicans, Vietnamese, Dominicans, or whatever - be forced to meet a standard that no other ethnic group had to meet?
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 06:13 PMJewish
Irish
Cajun
Italian
Mexican
The ethnic separatist strain of one of these groups advocates tearing off a (large) piece of US territory, by hook or crook, and welding it to some mythical ethnic superstate.
It might be the Italians, but I don't think so ...
Posted by: Bombadil on April 5, 2006 06:41 PMLet us assume illegal immigrants earn $10k/capita. If he/she earned less, he'd go back to Mexico. The immigrant either owns a home or rents. No matter which, he/she pays pays property taxes either directly to the tax collector or indirectly through his landlord. These property taxes pay to educate his/her children, same as everybody else's (assuming he/she brought them along and didn't leave them back in Mexico).
On $10,000 Jose and his employer pay $1500/year in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Jose will never collect so this subsidizes US workers. Jose pays no federal income tax because $10k is not taxed. Because he's illegal he gets no Earned Income Credit. His rent is $500/month, $6000/year of which $1000 goes to property tax. He has ($10k - $.75k - $6k) $3250 left over which he spend on essentials and pays $160 in sales tax.
There are 12-20 million illegal immigrants. Assuming 12m, then these immigrants spend $111 billion/year. They pay $18 billion to SS/medicare which they will never collect; they pay $12 billion in property taxes, 80% of which goes to schools. They pay $1.9 billion in sales taxes.
If a law is passed and all 12-20 million are bussed home, it will take 440,000 bus trips (at 30-50 passengers/bus). We can assume INS will hire 22,000 illegal immigrants to drive the buses at less than minimum wage(at $3.00/hour, 40 hours/trip) for $52.8 million.
When all 12-20 million are gone
1)there will be $31.9 billion lost taxes
2)8-12 million housing units will be empty
3) a great many REITs will go bankrupt
4) loans on illegal immigrant homes will be defaulted
5) some apartment buildings which rented to illegals will default on loans
6) some S&Ls will go under
7) $111 billion will suddenly disappear from the Southwestern economy
8) Retail sales will plummet
9) Some small businesses will close and default on bank loans.
On the whole, as an investor, I would sell Bank of America and Wells Fargo, as well as any South Western S&L stock. Crops will rot in the fields, so sell west coast agribusiness. Also sell West coast nursing home and extended care stocks because they will have to replace low paid care givers with union help. Also sell retail chains.
I would not be a buyer of any stocks but would park by cash on the sidelines until the full ripple effect was known. If both Ford and GM file for bankruptcy, we may have a major recession.
But we will have the Moral Satisfaction in knowing that the Laws, including the economic laws, are obeyed. And of course, about 100 immigrants will die in a bus crash. Too bad. But if we do nothing, none of this will happen.
Posted by: Sol Vason on April 5, 2006 07:21 PMJohnDewey,
"Forty years ago, households mowed their own lawns. Landscaping was too expensive for all but the wealthy. Women remained at home to handle housekeeping and cooking. Immigrants have changed that world. Men play golf and ride trailbikes on weekends instead of maintaining their yards. Middle-class families enjoy landscaped homes. Our economy now benefits from the labor of talented women who have been freed from household chores. Why would anyone want to go back to that other world? If low-income workers are available, and they can make our lives easier, why not take advantage?"
I'm pretty sure even you'd agree that riding riding lawnmowers, washing machine, microwave ovens etc. had a much, much greater affect on American leisure time than illegal immigrants. And unlike illegals, microwaves don't make up 23% of the inmates in L.A. County jails.
Posted by: Roy on April 5, 2006 07:28 PM"I'm pretty sure even you'd agree that riding riding lawnmowers, washing machine, microwave ovens etc. had a much, much greater affect on American leisure time than illegal immigrants."
Nope.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 07:45 PM"I'm pretty sure even you'd agree that riding riding lawnmowers, washing machine, microwave ovens etc. had a much, much greater affect on American leisure time than illegal immigrants."
Nope.
?!? That has to be some kind of class and/or blue state/red state thing. How many people did you know growing up, or do you know now, who have a maid/nanny/servant of any kind? How many of them mow their own lawns?
Not every gringo lives in a 2500 sq ft. mansion and has a couple of brown-skinned servants dancing around doing all their physical labor for them .. in fact I would guess that its pretty uncommon, although I admit I don't have any hard numbers.
But most people I know do have microwaves, and those microwaves save them hours of time each and every week. Multiply that by the number of households in the nation and I imagine its a pretty big effect.
We can write it as an inequality:
(# households with a microwave) x (time savings of microwave) > (# of households with a Mexican mowing their lawn) x (time savings of having a Mexican mow the lawn)
Posted by: Bombadil on April 5, 2006 07:51 PMSol,
Perhaps the direct lost FICA taxes are a little overstated because 30% or so of the illegals are paid cash. But I assume you haven't included the lost taxes due to the negative multiplier effect, which should be even larger. All in all I think it's a good assesment of the impact.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 5, 2006 07:56 PM""So punishing the adults results in another generation of poor, stupid, lazy people." What we've been doing since the 1960's is paying poor, stupid, lazy women to have children. It doesn't sound much like punishment to me, and it's proven to be a good way to create new generations of poor, stupid, lazy people. I don't know the solution (other than social darwinism, that is, letting their children starve along with them), but more of what we've been doing will just make the problem worse"
I think there are huge differences between states in the amount of welfare that is given to lazy people, and the south seems to have both worse welfare coverage and greater problems with all of the poverty related indicators, like divorce, education rates, and worker productivity. Additionally, I think before the great socitety, we didn't really have a welfare system. We created the great society to address the problems, it didn't work, but what we were doing before that (nothing) didn't work either. Doing nothing created generations of poor stupid lazy people extremely effectively, in fact it did it so well that we created the great society to try something different.
Thats exactly the problem I sketched out in my little essay. And the issue is that it is our problem, and not theirs. they don't care to solve the problem, but solving it would greatly improve my and my childrens standard of living. Economic dead weight.
Posted by: mickslam on April 5, 2006 08:08 PMBombadil-
Oh, please, enough with the accusations of racism. FYI, not that it is any of your business, my wife is Hispanic. Her dad is from Mexico, her mom from Nicaragua. She grew up in Nicaragua. So no, I am not cleaving to a patronizingly racist stereotype ("boy, them Meskins work like dogs!" and yes, I am aware that there are hispanics other than "Mexicans."
Nor am I saying that every single Mexican (excuse me...undocumented person of Latino heritage) on the planet is a hard worker. As it happens, every single one I have ever met has been an incredibly hard worker, and I have met hundreds. That said, I am sure there are probably a few illegals out there who are lazy.
What I am saying is that on average, Mexicans are far, far harder working, and make far better employees, than native-born American poor people. If I had to choose between hiring 10 illegal aliens just over the border, or 10 unemployed men of whatever race from the local housing project, I'd choose the illegals every single time.
Your contrary position is contrary to my experience.
Posted by: Joe Schmoe on April 5, 2006 10:54 PMThere is a relevant experiment in process right now. The recunstruction after Hurricane Katrina has significantly reduced the pool of Hispanic labor in Kansas City, forcing employers to turn to the domestic underclass. My son is now doing drywall work for cash. He is considered a star employee because he shows up when and where he is supposed to, merely slows down a little rather than stopping when the boss isn't around, and is willing to refrain from toking on the jobsite if the client is one who would object. The boss has been known to bail employees out of jail, garnishing wages to cover the investment. In fact, his first day after being hired, he was driving the boss around during such a bailout; honored with this task because he actually has a valid license, insurance and no outstanding warrants.
Posted by: triticale on April 5, 2006 11:22 PMEducation of children is paid by all property owners and businesses.
Don't know about your state, but in many (most?) states public education is increasing funded out of state revenues that have nothing to do with property ownership -- income and sales taxes here in Colorado. K-12 education is the largest item in the state budget by a substantial margin. Urban and particularly suburban areas subsidize the poorer rural areas where they simply can't raise sufficient property tax revenue to support a modern school infrastructure. New York and Kansas are both going through painful processes where the state government is being forced to come up with the money that they promised to the local school districts.
Posted by: Michael Cain on April 6, 2006 12:27 AMJoe Schmoe: why would your wife's or father-in-law's Hispanic ethnicity make me think that you are not a racist? I didn't say you were racist against Hispanics ...
But this sort of statement: What I am saying is that on average, Mexicans are far, far harder working, and make far better employees, than native-born American poor people is by definition a racist statement.
And, to put it bluntly, given the details of your experience (five years of not one employee lasting longer than two weeks, all these Hispanics you have worked with who have freely told you that they are illegal aliens, hiring illegal aliens at a corporate restaurant like Wendys, your contention that every single one of the hundreds of Mexicans you have worked with has been John Galt reborn, etc) I just don't believe you. You are not credible.
Posted by: Bombadil on April 6, 2006 01:16 AMMichael Cain,
Whatever the funding mechanism for public education, the cost is ultimately born by the entire population. It is not paid for solely by parents. That was my point, to counter the argument that full education costs should be included in an analysis of immigrants' net tax contribution.
Here in Texas, wealthy suburban school districts also subsidize poor rural school districts. I think the urban school districts sometimes do as well.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 6, 2006 04:32 AMNo, you idiot, I didn't say that not one native-born employee lasted more than two weeks; I am a native-born American and I worked there for five years, so that obviously cannot be true.
What I am saying is not one native-born American employee who lived in the housing project next to the store lasted more than two weeks.
The middle class teens were somewhat reliable; some would quit after a day or two, but most tayed for more than two weeks.
We also had four employees with Down's syndrome who had been there for years. There were also three or four housewives who were quite reliable.
But illegal aliens vs. people from the projects -- you know, the people who are the subject of Jane's post -- it was no contest. The difference was like night and day.
I also worked at a Wendy's located in my college town. There the situation was pretty much the same. The local poor employees would last a couple of months, not a couple of weeks, but they still weren't especially hard working or reliable.
Now that you mention it, there was one at that store who who kept his job for more than two weeks. He was on parole, and it would be revoked if he didn't remain employed, so he was a very reliable employee for six months. He quit the day his parole was up.
Posted by: Joe Schmoe on April 6, 2006 08:18 AMBombadil, your lack of reading comprehension doesn't make you very credible, either. You repeated "five years of not one employee lasting longer than two weeks" twice - although Joe's original post clearly meant that employees out of the projects never lasted over two weeks, not all employees, and although Joe explained that to you once.
I suspect Joe is exaggerating a little, but my experience tends to confirm most of what he said. I live in a northern rural area with no "projects", but I do know families where every single member over 15 has a criminal record, and no man has held a steady job in thirty years. It's not that jobs have not been available. Dragging themselves out of bed and down to a job at McDonalds on time three days in a row seems to be beyond them.
As for Mexicans, my experience there is nearly 40 years old, back when cherries were picked by hand. Mexican migrant-worker families did a very good job, and earned quite a lot at $0.75 per 25-pound box of cherries. (I've no idea what their immigration status was.) Because we lacked enough housing for migrants, Dad also tried hiring local people (the local population was 100% white and American-born), but we mostly got just trouble from most of them. It's not that you couldn't find good labor locally, but that the good workers already had jobs that would last far longer than cherry season.
Incidentally, there was one picking crew that was better than the Mexicans, a group of about 80 young black men from Alabama. They rented a bus and negotiated a group contract with a big grower. Our farm was much too small to make a deal with them, except one year a spell of cold weather delayed ripening of the cherries where they were contracted until after they arrived. Ours were ready, and they picked 20 acres clean in 3 days.
Posted by: markm on April 6, 2006 08:26 AMOn $10,000 Jose and his employer pay $1500/year in Social Security and Medicare taxes.
ROTFLMAO!!!
Posted by: Thorley Winston on April 6, 2006 11:20 AMEmployers can all exhale congress has agreed...anyone that has been in the county for more than five years is allowed to stay. Unskilled labor will never have to be payed more than minimum wage again...what a relief. I have many positions that americans will not do! Sure the postions are unsafe, dont offer benefits and pay $5 per hour. And investing in labor saving capital gets sooo expensive. What a great day for America
On the economic benefits of illegal immigrants -one word - remittances
Posted by: fiona on April 6, 2006 01:48 PMSol Vason:
An impressive bit of number crunching. Unfortunately, what it mainly reveals is that you have little or no knowledge of what takes place in the hiring and housing many of the illegals within US borders.
First, although I have never personally been involved in this scenario, allow me to explain to you how illegals are normally paid in agriculture (which accounts for a large chunk of labor in the shadow economy). When the ag season arrives, and things need to be planted/plucked/sorted RIGHT NOW so that they can be grown, distributed, and sold well within the spoilage window, you don't ask questions beyond the minimum necessary to cover your own butt: "Do you have 'papers' somewhere?" Of course, nobody ever says "No, Senor," so you hire the person, agree to pay them, say, $2-3/hour cash up-front, and inform them that (a) you need to see their papers "eventually"; and (b) once you have those papers with the associated tax data, you will pay them the difference between the cash agreement and actual minimum wage, less the relevant with-holdings.
Some actually produce those papers and join the legal payroll. The rest work for sub-minimum wage cash payments until the end of the harvest season, at which point you begin aggressively seeking papers and drop hints that "los federales" will be checking up on things soon...and they all magically disappear until next year's growing season.
You really think FICA is reported on actual illegal hires, who never had a valid Social Security number to file under in the first place? That $2-3/hour paid to probably-illegal hires easily disappears into a mixture of miscellaneous business expenses (take a look at Form 1040 Schedules 'C' and 'SE' sometime) and the business owner's own out-of-pocket. I can assure you none of this ever sees FICA's light of day, which is why Thorley Winston is laughing so hard at your analysis, and which is why others here want to see the immigration bureacracy and laws substantially overhauled.
Second, housing. There are lots of ways this is done; some housing does involve rental units, although typically for an illegal this will mean a slumlord who doesn't check documentation too closely, knowing in turn that the tenants cannot complain to the city about conditions that are often poor and occasionally near condemnation-level. Four to six people may be sharing a tiny apartment. Others will share a house with legal friends/relatives, sometimes as many as 8-10 living within 1000 square feet, and thus contribute indirectly to society through utility bills but certainly not on rent.
Then there is the case where a larger local agricultural employer might, in times long past, have bought up a few family farms in order to expand prouction, and still have the houses standing (again, because nobody is maintaining them, these are often in deplorable shape and otherwise un-rentable). So, they offer their seasonal workers a roof and four walls and not much else for little or nothing, again, entirely off-the-books and often with crowded living conditions.
In short, the only contributions an illegal worker will reliably make to the US economy is in sales taxes. Everything else is up in the air. There is very little contribution to FICA, and I think your figures grossly exagerate the rental-business and property taxes impact.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 6, 2006 02:04 PManony-mouse,
How did you arrive at the conclusion that agriculture accounts for a large chunk of labor in the shadow economy? I can't disprove your numbers, but I'd like to know that you have some sort of evidence.
The Center for Immigration Studies has researchers who are dedicated full time to the problems caused by illegal and legal immigrants. Their estimates of illegal labor in the U.S. include:
farming, fishing, forestry .........258,000
construction and extraction ......1,268,000
bldg cleaning, maintenance .........791,000
food preparation ...................725,000
production .........................772,000
transportation, moving .............516,000
sales ..............................337,000
office and admin support ...........304,000
You can view their other estimates at:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back206.html
Their findings seem to contradict your post.
"In short, the only contributions an illegal worker will reliably make to the US economy is in sales taxes." Another argument for the Fair Tax.
Posted by: markm on April 6, 2006 05:35 PManony-mouse,
it is quite easy to get a job using someone eles's name and SSN. I have never been asked to show by passport or birth certificate or even SS card in order to me employed. On the other hand, its impossible to get hired without supplying an SSN except for 1099 work.
The fake expenses you mention employers use to deduct under the table payments won't pass a tax audit. Anyone who does this gets denounced by the first unhappy employee to the IRS. And your example guy is going to have lots of unhappy employees.
Your scheme works in the movies, but not in real life.
Second, harvest workers are paid piecework (1099), noy hourly.
Mexicans don't like slums. They prefer to live in Spanish speaking neighborhoods with Mexican groceries and Mexican restaurants. Two or three illegals earning $10k each earn enough to afford livable housing.
Posted by: sol vason on April 7, 2006 12:56 AMJohnDewey:
Interesting analysis. Given (a) all of the necessary hedging about the uncertanties in counting, as well as (b) that study's interest in portraying job losses to potentially-willing, impoverished citizens, and (c) my own observations regarding the scope of illegal labor in just one small section of an agricultural region, my guess is that the numbers they cite are probably correct in broad outline, but skewed mildly toward the more desirable and trackable jobs (e.g. somewhat toward construction and somewhat away from agriculture, for example). Also, I expect that the "transportation, moving" category includes persons involved in produce transport, which I was including in my definition of "agriculture."
Low-wage agricultural jobs throughout all of the Western states from southeastern Texas to the Pacific Northwest seem to have a high participation of Mexican labor, no small chunk of which is comprised of illegals, so 258,000 appears to me as a low estimate. But, even if empirical evidence should prove me mistaken at calling this proportion a "large chunk," I still maintain that this would have a noteable impact on Sol Vason's accounting math.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 7, 2006 05:37 AMit is quite easy to get a job using someone eles's name and SSN. I have never been asked to show by passport or birth certificate or even SS card in order to me employed. On the other hand, its impossible to get hired without supplying an SSN except for 1099 work.
Funny, I've usually had my drivers' license checked. At any rate, while I don't doubt that this trick is used more than a few times, it cannot go too far before someone at the IRS begins to wonder how one person is managing to show up at so many places...thus triggering an audit. Moreover, it is only impossible to be formally hired without showing a Social Security number. Under the scenario I described, it never makes an appearance, nor does it need to; payment is cash and off-the-books, complete with some nominal gestures toward plausible deniability.
The fake expenses you mention employers use to deduct under the table payments won't pass a tax audit.
Yes...IF an audit occurs and IF the party in question is dumb enough to fudge the numbers in ways that are obviously wrong, and especially if the person gets greedy and tries to claim an excessive quantity/$-amount of particular business deductions, rather than balance a little fudging with a lot of out-of-pocket.
Anyone who does this gets denounced by the first unhappy employee to the IRS. And your example guy is going to have lots of unhappy employees.
No, my example guy has a lot of seasonal employees who desperately need any work they can get, don't know enough of the system beyond the word "deportation" to manipulate it like that, and frequently don't speak more than fifty words of English.
Second, harvest workers are paid piecework (1099), noy hourly.
In the situation I described, they are paid on whatever terms are convenient to the employer, because a large chunk of it never sees the books. Yes, it may well be piecework; but the relative rates come out somewhere in that ballpark.
Your scheme works in the movies, but not in real life.
Garbage. I formerly had a relation and a few friends in the ag business. For obvious reasons they never gave names or particular cases, but they knew quite well what all went on. My family was also involved for a couple years in attempting to fully legalize an eight-member migrant family that was -- partly through the confusion of dealing with the INS procedural bureacracy -- living in a bizarre netherland between one member's expired greencard, his technically-illegal spouse, a couple US citizens by birth, and who knows what else.
What is your experience in dealing with illegals?
Mexicans don't like slums.
Who said that they do? But in some cases the illegals cannot yet afford better, have left behind worse, and are very scared of being discovered by anyone with deportation powers; thus they are meanwhile grateful for whatever keeps the rain off and the cold out. This can, and sometimes does, include conditions that justify my use of the pejorative "slumlord."
They prefer to live in Spanish speaking neighborhoods with Mexican groceries and Mexican restaurants.
They usually get that option anyway, because successive generations build up that kind of instracture. I've got access to good Mexican eating everywhere around here, some of it fairly authentic. That doesn't mean that all of the available housing is nice. I've seen, first-hand, what some of that kind of housing looks like, so if you're going to continue spouting contradictions, a summary of your background experience would be nice.
Two or three illegals earning $10k each earn enough to afford livable housing.
First, I don't know where you're getting that $10k figure from, but if that's some sort of group avearge, bear in mind there is a vast difference between the kind of wages that can be earned in, say, construction, as compared to agriculture.
Second, the ag jobs I describe are highly seasonal. So the bulk of all annual income arrives during the summer months, when (a) utility bills are lowest, (b) food availability is highest (low supermarket produce prices due to the local seasonality, cheap/free food is sometimes a perk from the emlpoyer), and (c) high seasonale demand means that all teen/adult family members are employable. Given that many first-generation immigrants have not always had much background in basic financial management, a "paycheck to paycheck" mentality results in surplus summer income being dissipated, followed by grinding poverty during the winter.
Third, family clustering is pretty common in Mexican culture, and among the lower classes large housing is much less common. Once in the States, these type of traditions and 'norms' are often maintained for some time, even among legals and the second generation of both legals and illegals. So, I maintain there is no basis for the magnitude of illegal-housing rental impact that you claimed.
My point? Same as before -- retail sales and associated taxes are the only economic contributions that illegals will reliably make. Everything else may exist...or it may not.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 7, 2006 06:31 AMSomeone else up the thread wrote the magic word "Remittances", and I shall again write it. How can people who work for substandard wages, who send billions of US dollars back to Mexico, be at the same time making a substantial contribution to FICA or the income tax? As anony-mouse has now pointed out twice, it is not at all difficult to pay people off the books in agriculture, and from my own observation it can be done in the building trades as well as in the restaurant business.
The government of Mexico now admits that remittances are the single biggest source of income to the economy. That means that remittances contribute more to Mexico than the sale of oil, more than tourism. Much of that money goes directly to families untaxed, but is then spent on various things including consumer and durable goods. Thus remittances allow the Mexican government to do little or nothing about poverty, relying upon the presence of illegal workers, living in substandard housing, working for substandard wages, to lift their poor up a bit. This is not a good relationship.
No one has yet discussed health care, therefore it 's long past time to do so. Employees paid in cash, off the books, obviously do not receive health insurance, 401K or other benefits. Illegal aliens thus use the local emergency room at the nearest hospital for all their health care needs. Since Federal law prohibits any ER from turning anyone away, there is no danger they will not receive aid. In some areas along the southern border the majority of ER cases are illegal aliens. None of them come with Medicaid cards, nor do they have any insurance, so how is their care paid for? Their care is paid for by the hospital directly and the hospital then attempts to collect from somewhere else. In the case of small towns, such as Douglas, Arizona, this can lead to an ER that can no longer sustain itself. So part of the "health care crisis" that our liberal friends fret about, consists of foreign nationals using US hospitals at no cost to themselves. I do hope that open-borders advocates have factored the health care costs into their cost-benefit equation...
Posted by: ellipsis on April 7, 2006 10:32 AMThe issue of Mexican revanchism needs to be discussed further. For generations, history books in the schools of Mexico lamented the "lost lands", and urged students to support the reconquest of said lands, La Reconquista. I have personally met Mexican nationals who went to school in the early 1980's who told me of this feature of their education. Now, I have also been told that under recent administrations, certainly in the 1990's, La Reconquista has been played down, but cannot say for sure. In any event, the Mexican education system for years taught La Reconquista as a good thing, and the demonstations of the last fortnight or so have been viewed by many media outlets in Mexico as a successful manifestation of La Reconquista; a hallmark that the reconquest of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas is proceeding nicely. Perhaps this is mere emotional cant for the masses, but it is still there, and can be seen on the US side in such things as signs reading "This is our continent, not yours" and so forth. This is a new and unique thing in US history; yes, there were those German immigrants in the 19th century who desired to create some kind of autonomous state within the Middle West, but that wasn't to be handed over to the Kaiser. La Reconquista means that a portion of the contiguous US is to be removed de facto from the US and returned to Mexico, and certainly an open border facilitates that process.
Let us consider the recent manifestations in a more abstract way, and see if there is any larger significance to them. Citizens of a foreign country are demonstrating in the streets of US cities, demanding that US laws not be enforced within the borders of US. This is a direct, obvious, not at all subtle, attack upon the sovereignty of the United States. It is not a replaying of the Civil Rights movement, it is not "68 all over again", it is a direct challenge to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. Libertarians should bear in mind that a country is more than some number of producing/consuming human units who share a vague idea or two in common...
Posted by: ellipsis on April 7, 2006 10:51 AMWhat does it imply if Mexican illegal immigrants long for "La Reconquista"? Mainly that they don't understand why the heck they crossed the border in the first place! My German ancestors might have liked a more Germanized Missouri, but they certainly didn't want to unite it with their homeland under the Kaiser - the Prussians were why they left in the first place, and they never forgot that.
So why do the Mexicans think they are crossing the border? Obviously, because we are richer. Perhaps they think this is because we stole the land from them, but it isn't. It is because we created the wealth. Even during the Gold Rush, California was much poorer than any part of the USA now, and probably poorer than Mexico is now.
We created the wealth. Mexicans didn't create nearly as much because their government (and occasional lack of government) kept getting in the way. The best reason to allow immigrants' children to get free public schooling is to hammer things like that into their heads - but it's not going to happen when teachers are learning their trade under socialist professors of education, and then joining a socialist union (the NEA or whatever) as a pre-condition to getting a job.
Posted by: markm on April 7, 2006 11:59 AM"That has to be some kind of class and/or blue state/red state thing. How many people did you know growing up, or do you know now, who have a maid/nanny/servant of any kind? How many of them mow their own lawns?
Not every gringo lives in a 2500 sq ft. mansion and has a couple of brown-skinned servants dancing around doing all their physical labor for them .. in fact I would guess that its pretty uncommon, although I admit I don't have any hard numbers."
Personally, I knew no one growing up who had domestic help of any kind. Now I know a lot of people in my Red State who do. In fact, we have a maid service come in on a regular-but-not-terribly-frequent basis. Partly, that's a function of my being a professional who grew up in a blue collar home. But partly it is a proliferation of maid services in the last 15 years or so.
Merry Maids advertises on TV! That never happened 20, or even 10 years ago. Hell, I don't know that there was such thing as Merry Maids 20 years ago.
I don't have any hard numbers either, but I agree that it's uncommon among Americans to have hired help for "all their physical labor," but it is increasingly common to hire help for some chores.
Posted by: denise on April 7, 2006 12:06 PMIt is also important to bear in mind, as others have already noted, that the Republic of Mexico is an oligarchy in which a handful (40, 60, 100, pick a number) of families control stunning amounts of wealth and intend to continue to do so. By sending the poorest of the poor to El Norte, the Mexican elite reduce the pressure upon them to enter the 20th century politically. By encouraging the rural poor to emigrate, the Mexican elite reduce the pressure to bring basic services such as electricity and clean water to more remote areas. Socialist Mexico has continued to resist all manner of pressure by using the US as a "safety valve"; yet it is not the responsibility of the United States to perpetuate the Mexican elite in their political and economic power, is it?
President Bush seems to have relied upon his personal relationship with Vincente Fox more than is prudent, but in any event that relationship becomes moot this summer with the election of the next President of Mexico. It is not at all unlikely that the far-left Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) will win the election; even if the PRD is not a majority in the Congress, they will get quite a bit of support from the center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in confronting Uncle Sam.
Thus, after the election, it is likely that the tensions between Mexico and the United States will increase, no matter what the US Congress does. The Mexican government force Grupo Beta will continue to assist Mexicans in breaking US laws, maps and cartoon booklets designed to assist in illegal border crossings will continue to be printed by the Mexican government, Mexican consuls will increase their deliberate interference in US politics and legal affairs, and so forth.
Many of these actions, if considered in the abstract, are nothing less than direct attacks upon the sovereignty of the United States; by what right do foreign citizens march in the streets of US cities, making demands upon the lawmkers of the US Congress? Anyone who tries a similar stunt in Mexico gets deported in a matter of hours...
Posted by: ellipsis on April 7, 2006 12:33 PMmarkm:
"We created the wealth."
Who is this "we" you write about?
Would it include the Chinese immigrant workers who built the transcontinental railroad? Some of their descendants in California were no duobt essential to the technology revolution of the past 20 years.
Does it include the Cuban immigrants who were granted amnesty in the mid-60's? One of them became CEO of Coca Cola and guided the company to record profits.
Would your "we" include immigrants from Mexico, such as Felix Tijerina? Born in Mexico, he first worked in Texas as a busboy in 1905. Somehow he ended up founding a very successful restaurant chain, becoming one of Houston's most respected business leaders. He was probably most proud of the "Little School of the 400", which he built in the 1950's. Through that school, Mexican-American young children were taught 400 basic English words to help them get started learning in Texas schools.
There is no question that American freedoms and property rights made possible the wealth we enjoy today. Immigrants from all the rest of the world have come here and benefitted from those freedoms - and added to our wealth. Despite the silly utterances of a few rebellious teenagers, Mexican immigrants today are eager to contribute just as all the other immigrants that came before them.
Posted by: JohnDewey on April 7, 2006 01:05 PMEllipsis wrote: "...The issue of Mexican revanchism needs to be discussed further. For generations, history books in the schools of Mexico lamented the "lost lands", and urged students to support the reconquest of said lands, La Reconquista. ..."
And one of the main reasons why Mexico lost half its territory was that they had allowed uncontrolled immigration into Texas during the early 19th century (and, I guess, into California also.) Obviously, THEY have learned a valuable lesson from that experience, but we haven't.
On the lighter side:
Q.) Why is Mexico such a poor country?
A.) Porque los malditos Yanquis robaran mitad de nuestra tierra -- la mitad con todas las buenas carreteras.
"And one of the main reasons why Mexico lost half its territory was that they had allowed uncontrolled immigration into Texas during the early 19th century"
I think it was a little more complicated.
The Spanish Mexican government didn't just allow new settlers into Texas, it invited them. It was believed that additional settlers would stabilize Texas. It's true that many illegal American immigrants also settled in Texas.
The Mexican government, though, was never comfortable with the Americans who migrated there. This was partly due to the religious difference, as Mexico was officially a Catholic colony and then Catholic nation. The other insurmountable problem was the issue of slavery. Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829, but Texas settlers ignored the law.
The real blame for the Texas revolution was the abolishment of the Mexican constitution by the central government in 1835. Santa Anna attempted to assert control by replacing the elected Congress with an appointed one. Texas was one of four northern Mexico states that revolted, but the only one successful in resisting Santa Anna's armies.
I think it is incorrect to say that Mexico could not have retained Texas. Had the Mexican republic