Yesterday I explored why many conservatives want the borders enforced before we will even consider a guest worker program. Basically because we\’ve been mislead so many times that faith is not an option.
But what to do with the workers already here? Our president, who is apparently perpetually delusional on this issue, claims that we \”need\” these workers. That they \”do jobs that Americans won\’t do. If this weren\’t a serious issue this claim would be halarious because it is so obscenely false. It\’s a claim I addressed previously and later Thomas Sowell addressed as only he can.
But what would happen if they left you ask? What about the jobs they currently do?? Well when faced with a shortage, our system would do what it always does. Adjust. It\’s one of the benefits of a free-market system. Wages would go up and more Americans would be willing to do those jobs. In addition, business owners would be open to innovation and technology to make their operations more efficient, therefore requiring less workers.
Ah, but this would cost everyone else as those increases in costs are passed onto the customer right?? Well yes…but it\’s not as bad as you think. First of all, I have found no industry in which illegal immigrants make up a majority (or even a significant minority) of workers. Nevertheless, either wages would have to rise to either attract additional workers or capital would be needed to invest in new technology. How much additional costs would be passed onto the consumer? Well…:
The average \”consumer unit\” in the U.S. spends $7 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables, less than is spent on alcohol, according to Martin. On a $1 head of lettuce, the farm worker gets about 6 or 7 cents, roughly 1/15th of the retail price. Even a big run-up in the cost of labor can\’t hit the consumer very hard.
Martin recalls that the end of the bracero guest-worker program in the mid-1960s caused a one-year 40 percent wage increase for the United Farm Workers Union. A similar wage increase for legal farm workers today would work out to about a 10-dollar-a-year increase in the average family\’s bill for fruit and vegetables. Another thing happened with the end of the bracero program: The processed-tomato industry, which was heavily dependent on guest workers and was supposed to be devastated by their absence, learned how to mechanize and became more productive.
Now as you see, the costs inflicted on consumers would be very minimal. Especially when you compare that to the \”hidden costs\” of illegal immigration. I\’m talking about crime, health care, government benefits, etc that many of our southern states have been struggling with for years now. Don\’t believe me?? Then believe Selwyn Duke
Would goods become more expensive? Perhaps, but while this isn\’t the focus of this piece, that may be more than offset by the elimination of the social consequences (e.g., hospital, welfare and education costs) of absorbing millions of often illiterate (some can\’t even read and write their own languages) Third World immigrants into our nation. Regardless, this is the traditional, healthy, free market way of spreading the wealth around. And I\’d rather redistribute wealth through the market than through socialism.
Okay, so we don\’t \”need\” them and our economy isn\’t going to collapse if we get rid of them. Fine. But how can one seriously propose rounding up 12 million (or whatever figure you want to use) illegal immigrants? Well…we don\’t have to. And it\’s actually fairly simple.
To start you make some high profile arrests of illegals. Make it clear to other illegals that just because they\’ve crossed the border doesn\’t mean they are safe. Let it become known that this is an issue we are finally going to take very seriously.
Then you come down on companies that employ illegals like the Justice Department has been reading too much Old Testament. Put the fines on an exponential scale. Make it unprofitable to hire illegals and they\’ll stop. Their job is to run a profitable business after all. Suddenly the Land of Opportunity is restricted to law-abiding workers only.
Do the above, and I would expect that a vast majority of the illegals within this country will self-deport. After all, according to many pro-illegal immigration activists, they are all just families trying to get a better life right? Get out and come back through the front door and we\’ll be happy to take you.
And certainly we do have to reform our legal immigration system as well. The current system is ridiculous. Rather than base our quotas on ethnicity and locales, it should be based upon our labor needs. If we actually need people to pick onions in the field…fine, let in more unskilled workers. We need more engineers? Fine, let in more highly educated immigrants.