Posted on 06/11/2013 7:20:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is that there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs that Americans won’t do,” especially in agriculture.
One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?”
“Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an economist using such a word.
A recent editorial on immigration in the Wall Street Journal brought back to me the memory of Alchian’s response with a statement about “the needs of an industry in which labor shortages can run as high as 20 percent” — namely agriculture.
Although “need” is a word often used in politics and in the media, from an economic standpoint there is no such thing as an objective and quantifiable “need.”
You might think it obvious that we all need food to live. But however urgent it may be to have some food, beyond some point food becomes not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous. Widespread obesity among Americans shows that many have already gone too far with food.
This is not just a matter of semantics, but of economics. In the real world, employers compete for workers, just as they compete for customers for their output. And workers go where there is more demand for them, as expressed by what employers offer to pay.
Farmers may wish for more farm workers, just as any of us may wish for anything we would like to have. But that is wholly different from thinking that some third party should define what we desire as a “need,” much less expect government policy to meet that “need.”
In a market economy, when farmers are seeking more farm workers, the most obvious way to get them is to raise the wage rate until they attract enough people away from alternative occupations — or from unemployment.
With the higher labor costs that this would entail, the number of workers that farmers “need” would undoubtedly be less than what it would have been if there were more workers who are available at lower wage rates, such as immigrants from Mexico.
It is no doubt more convenient and profitable to the farmers to import workers for lower pay than to pay American workers more. But bringing in more immigrants is not without costs to other Americans, including both financial costs, in a welfare state, and social costs, of which increased crime rates are just one.
Some advocates of increased immigration have raised the specter of higher food prices without foreign farm workers. But the price that farmers receive for their produce is usually a fraction of what the consumers pay at the supermarket. And what the farmers pay the farm workers is a fraction of what the farmer gets for the produce.
In other words, even if labor costs doubled, the rise in prices at the supermarket might be barely noticeable.
“Jobs that Americans will not do” are in fact jobs at which not enough Americans will work at the current wage rate that some employers are offering. This is not an uncommon situation. That is why labor “shortages” lead to higher wage rates. A “shortage” is no more quantifiable than a “need” when you ignore prices, which are crucial in a market economy. To discuss “need” and “shortage” while ignoring prices — in this case, wages — is especially remarkable in a usually market-savvy publication like the Wall Street Journal.
Often shortages have been predicted in various occupations — and yet have never materialized. Why? Because the pay in those occupations rose, causing more people to go into those occupations and employers to reduce the number of people they “need” at the higher pay rates.
Virtually every kind of “work that Americans will not do” is in fact work that Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans. And there are certainly many unemployed Americans, available to meet farmers’ “needs” today without bringing in more foreign workers.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
I just finished digging up the lid on my septic tank and I was wishing a neighborhood kid would immigrate over here and give me a hand.
It is RACIST to impose SLAVE WAGES on LEGAL immigrants, by promoting the influx of ILLEGALS.
More brilliance from the man who should have been our First Black President
What he says is true.
Sure employers do well with mode labor competition lowering prices maybe but that is because their cheap employees get medicaid, food stamps and EITC.
This is similar to the problem with Walmarts, but worse because its an argument for importing more.
Gee, the Free Republic gloBULLists and Free Traders need to chime in here. This is blasphemy.
Construction and farming guys don’t want to hire the extra legal body to keep track of all the guv paperwork that goes with having a legal employee.
The migrant worker situation worked fine until border states started offering the spouses and family of workers freebies in the 80s.
If anything that number has gotten bigger over 6 years as we have "trained" more of population to live like that.
I'm betting this lady isn't going to be rushing out to an orchard to pick fruit, no matter how much you pay her. She is too busy talking on her Obamaphone.
It isn't just the pay, it's the cost of hiring Americans. The latter includes taxes, social security, ObamaCare, paperwork...
Then, in the early 90s, when marketing companies went nuts trying to build consumer markets for illegals, and banks started crying about how all these immigrants were gettin rolled for their paychecks because they couldn’t have bank accounts - and got laws passed so they didn’t need SS#s to open them - that’s when I knew we were f(*%(^&d.
Some was mandated by the courts like free school, in the case of hospitals congress w Reagan mandated they treat people with no money or insurance.
Now the problem has grown out of control.
The tragic truth is that once today’s “invisibles’ are out of the shadows and legalized, they will have to be paid as Americans. Those industries that cannot afford Americans and must have slave labor to survive will still have to have slave labor. A new crop of slaves will be imported to displace the new Americans.
I lived in the TX corn country for a year and was amazed at the little apartment complexes in the middle of cornfields.
They were built in the 60s to house true migrant workers who went back home when the harvest was in. Now they’re used to store farming equipment.
The engine that drives most illegal immigration is the poor economic and social conditions for many in Mexico.
An oligarchy of billionaires run Mexico. These people control the monopolies that dominate the Mexican economy. Traditionally they have been able to repress competition leading to slower economic growth, a stunted entrepreneurial class, a lack of foreign investment, limited choices for consumers, and fewer jobs. These conditions help keep almost half the Mexican population in poverty and only semi-employed.
This is not an indictment of capitalism but of the forces that restrict free market equity in Mexico.
Mexico is rich. Last year they passed Brazil in economic growth. But where the U.S. is over regulated, Mexico is under regulated. In the U.S. the government is the main obstacle to economic growth. In Mexico it is the ruling class. And Mexico has a judicial system that favors the powerful.
An example: Billionaire Carlos Slim controls 80 percent of telecommunications—landlines and mobile phones—in Mexico. The absence of competition means fewer jobs, less innovation, slower growth for the industry, and little choice in rates or services for consumers. Slim is not a robber baron but a shrewd industrialist operating in the environment he was born into.
The key to solving the illegal immigration crisis may be forceful diplomacy aimed at helping Mexico design a new regulatory model that encourages competition, foreign investment and a new generation of entrepreneurs and small business owners.
A task force of thinkers and builders drawn from across the spectrum of the U.S. economy could serve as an economic Peace Corps.
This will not be easy but it will be far easier than attempting to assimilate tens of millions of Mexican nationals into our system.
This will not be easy but it will be far easier than attempting to assimilate tens of millions of Mexican nationals into our system.
We need to expand the functional border about 200 miles south into Mexico and build the schools, hospitals, business infrastructure to keep them there after the harvest is brought in. Mexico ain’t gonna do this.
Five words, had they been spoken several hundred years ago would have drastically changed the problem-laden era in which we now live:
‘LET’S PICK OUR OWN COTTON”
These conditions help keep almost half the Mexican population in poverty and only semi-employed.
What does illegal immigration have to do with free trade?
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