Posted on 01/05/2005 9:50:39 PM PST by paltz
Today the president announces his plan for a vast new guestworker system, which would grant amnesty to millions of illegals currently in the United States, as well as import millions of new workers from abroad. (The president will also call for an increase in permanent legal immigration beyond the current rate of one million a year.
I make the argument against amnesty in the cover story for the , but here I want to look at the basic assumption underlying the whole Bush plan: that there are jobs Americans simply won't do, so that the importation of foreigners is essential. Whether these foreign workers are illegal aliens, guestworkers, or permanent legal immigrants is a detail to be worked out by us, the argument goes, but our need for them is unchanged.
Even many opponents of the proposed Bush Amnesty assume this to be true, leading them to propose new and improved guestworker programs, with provisions for stricter controls against permanent settlement, greater incentives to return, tighter enforcement against unscrupulous employers, etc.
As well-meaning as such efforts may be, the basic assumption is false — there is simply no economic reason to import foreign workers.
If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.
Many people fear the first part of such a response, claiming that prices for fruits and vegetables would skyrocket, fueling inflation. But since all unskilled labor — from Americans and foreigners, in all industries — accounts for such a small part of our economy, perhaps four percent of GDP, we can tighten the labor market without any fear of sparking meaningful inflation. Agricultural economist Philip Martin has pointed out that labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce, for instance, so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers.
But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.
That this is so should not be a surprise. Julian Simon, in his 1981 classic, The Ultimate Resource, wrote about how scarcity leads to innovation:
It is important to recognize that discoveries of improved methods and of substitute products are not just luck. They happen in response to "scarcity" — an increase in cost. Even after a discovery is made, there is a good chance that it will not be put into operation until there is need for it due to rising cost. This point is important: Scarcity and technological advance are not two unrelated competitors in a race; rather, each influences the other.
As it is for copper or oil, this fact is true also for labor; as wages have risen over time, innovators have devised ways of substituting capital for labor, increasing productivity to the benefit of all. The converse, of course, is also true; the artificial superabundance of a resource will tend to remove much of the incentive for innovation.
Stagnating innovation caused by excessive immigration is perhaps most apparent in the most immigrant-dependent activity — the harvest of fresh fruit and vegetables. The period from 1960 to 1975 (roughly from the end of the "Bracero" program, which imported Mexican farmworkers, to the beginning of the mass illegal immigration we are still experiencing today) was a period of considerable agricultural mechanization. But a continuing increase in the acreage and number of crops harvested mechanically did not materialize as expected, in large part because the supply of workers remained artificially large due to the growing illegal immigration we were politically unwilling to stop.
An example of a productivity improvement that "will not be put into operation until there is need for it due to rising cost," as Simon said, is in raisin grapes]. The production of raisins in California's Central Valley is one of the most labor-intensive activities in North America. Conventional methods require bunches of grapes to be cut by hand, manually placed in a tray for drying, manually turned, manually collected.
But starting in the 1950s in Australia (where there was no large supply of foreign farm labor), farmers were compelled by circumstances to develop a laborsaving method called "dried-on-the-vine" (DOV) production. This involves growing the grapevines on trellises, then, when the grapes are ready, cutting the base of the vine instead of cutting each bunch of grapes individually. This new method radically reduces labor demand at harvest time and increases yield per acre by up to 200 percent. But this high-productivity, innovative method of production has spread very slowly in the United States because the mass availability of foreign workers has served as a disincentive to farmers to make the necessary capital investment.
But perhaps immigration's role in retarding economic modernization is confined to agriculture, which, after all, is very different from the rest of the economy. Nope. Manufacturing sees the same phenomenon of a scarcity of low-skilled labor yielding innovation while a surfeit yields stagnation. An example of the latter: A 1995 report on southern California's apparel industry, prepared by Southern California Edison, warned of the danger to the industry of reliance on low-cost foreign labor:
In southern California, apparel productivity gains have been made through slow-growth in wages. While a large, low-cost labor pool has been a boon to apparel production in the past, overreliance on relatively low-cost sources of labor may now cost the industry dearly. The fact is, southern California has fallen behind both domestic and international competitors, even some of its lowest-labor-cost competitors, in applying the array of production and communications technologies available to the industry (such as computer aided design and electronic data interchange)." (Emphasis in original)
Conversely, home builders, who are still less reliant on foreign workers than some other industries, have begun to modernize construction techniques. The higher cost of labor means that "In the long run, we'll see a move toward homes built in factories," as Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research at the National Association of Home Builders, told the Washington Post several years ago. But as immigrants increasingly move into this industry, we can expect such innovation to spread much more slowly than it would otherwise.
But surely immigration is needed fill jobs in the service industry? After all, without immigrants, who will pump our gas? Oh, wait — we never imported immigrants for that and so now we pump our own gas, aided by technology that lets us pay at the pump — thus we have fewer attendants but more gas stations and get in and out faster than we used to when we trusted our car to the man who wore the Texaco star.
Other innovations suggest how, despite the protestations of employers, a tight low-skilled labor market can spur modernization even in the service sector: Automated switches have replaced most telephone operators, continuous-batch washing machines reduce labor demand for hotels, buffet-style restaurants need much less staff that full-service ones. As unlikely as it might seem, many VA hospitals are now using mobile robots to ferry medicines from their pharmacies to various nurse's stations, eliminating the need for a worker to perform that task. And devices like automatic vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, and pool cleaners are increasingly available to consumers. Keeping down low-skilled labor costs through the president's vast new guestworker plan would stifle this ongoing modernization process.
The idea that a modern society like ours requires the ministrations of foreign workers, because there is no other way to do get these jobs done, smacks of the apocryphal quote from a 19th-century patent commissioner: "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
— NRO Contributor Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a visiting fellow at the Nixon Center.
Good points. Thanks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1315402/posts?page=12
NO SUCH THING AS "TEMPORARY" AMNESTY
Michelle Malkin ^ | Jan. 06, 2005 | Michelle Malkin
NO SUCH THING AS "TEMPORARY" AMNESTY
Michelle Malkin ^ | Jan. 06, 2005 | Michelle Malkin
Posted on 01/06/2005 10:55:00 AM PST by JustAnotherSavage
According to this article in the Miami Herald, the Bush Administration has decided to renew the temporary work and residence permits of 248,282 "undocumented" (illegal) immigrants from El Salvador under the so-called Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. The decision will be announced later today.
A Bush Administration official informed the Herald that the reason for renewing the permits was because El Salvador was still rebuilding after earthquakes that struck the country in January 2001, four years ago.
Ostensibly, the TPS program is supposed to allow people from countries experiencing a natural disaster or civil war to come to the U.S. temporarily. Most of the Salvadorans granted TPS status, however, were already living in the U.S. illegally before the earthquake struck. In effect, the TPS designation is amnesty by another name. ----snip----
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1315402/posts?page=12
"Houses will not be build. Yards will not be upkept. Street maintenance will cease. Chickens will not be slaughtered. Overgrown brushy land will not be cleared. Autobody and fender work will not be done. Garbage will not be collected. Restaurants will lose half their cooks and have no busboys.
That's just some of the stuff I can think of. Of course I live in the West."
Wow, ther must be some real lazy people out west then....LOL...here in the East...Those jobs you mentioned are not "above" most US citizens.
"If you vacumed up all the illegals our economy simply would not work."
LOL...again...
what DO you folks out west do with all your free time? Drive around looking to hire more illegals?
Cry me a river.
Last night I heard a black gentlemen call a radio show. He pointed out that when a neighborhood is taken over by immigrants, especially hispanic, that they get management jobs or buy for instance fast food places. When they do, no one but illegals gets hired. His daughter is trying to get enough money for college and can not get a job.
The arguement that it keeps prices low is BS. I pay the same for a Big mac where all the employees are American citizen as I do for one ran by illegals.
"There's a simple way to get Americans to do the "Jobs Americans Won't Do." Grant citizenship to those doing the job currently. Problem solved."
Wow.
Where to begin....
Ok, as soon as those citizens are granted citizenship...then they supposedly go "on the books" correct?
Now the scumbag employers who origionally hired illegals have to actually play "fair" and cough up taxes / ss / FICA etc.
Guess what numbskull, the scumbag employers will just turn around, fire the newfound "LEGAL" workers and hire more illegals.
"Problem solved"?
Maybe in your cartoon life it is....but here in the real world, your overly simplistic view doesn't wash.
Better yet, make every employer found employing illegals pay the bill for the education of illegal's children, medical care, and all of the other handouts paid for by the taxpayer. Maybe if they have to put up the real cost of illegal labor that currently falls on the taxpayer they will have second thoughts.
The employer gets by more cheaply because the taxpayer is footing the bill for all of the freebees given to these scumbags at taxpayer expense. Make the employer pay the cost of the services given to illegals that is currently funded by the taxpayer and see if it is any cheaper.
"BINGO! I was in the printing industry for a lot of years. It used to be a good paying skilled trades job. Now that the illegals took it over, I can't even find a pressman job. My brother has been in construction for over 30 years. He is in the same boat I am in. The illegals took over.
Skilled Trades are not jobs that Americans do not want!"
You can add:
homebuilding / carpentry
Heating / HVAC
Plumbing
Auto Body repair
Automotive Repair to your list of once hi paying blue collar jobs now flooded with illegals, thus driving down prices.
To the dumb-asses who say "what's wrong with driving down prices"? Well the cost savings are not passed on to the consumer...they go into the pockets of scumbag tax-cheat employers.....which in turn put additional tax liabilities on LEGIT business owners.
Nor do they want the laws of labor supply and demand going both ways.
Only ones that can not be exported like home building. I would also advise they learn at least three trades while they study management and that they be taught to save 25% of their income so that around thirty or so they can start their own small company. The smarter ones should continue their advancement and garner other companies to themselves and learn investment.
Or ... go into real estate. Accounting is profitable but anybody in business should study accounting. Generally though the trades are a dead end. They can be a good place for the young to learn about life but the attitude should always be upwards and onwards. Never get stuck in one place. Hedge your investments. It's like investing. Never put ones eggs all in one basket.
Yeah? So what? What are you going to do about it? Bring horses back and start building buggy whips?
Get over it. Deal with it. The stupid will be poor.
Tough!
Sorry but you're just totally full of shit. Try running a company that wants to expand. Try running any business. The labour is just not there. It ... is .... not .... there. I know. Been there done that. American kids can't even read let alone make change and show up to work on time. Mexican labour is the foundation of this country and you people who whine about it are living in a fantasy.
You're free to start a business and do that. You can advertise that your prices are higher because your employees won't work unless they are paid very high wages. That marketing strategy would work for you wouldn't it?
What nonsense you always talk !
It is called supply and demand. If I cannot find the supply I want at the price I am offering I increase my "demand" until I get the supply I need. You will always get the "supply" you want if you are willing to pay the "demand". It is how a free market works. And that works for labor, too. I won't find a supply of Oracle DBA's with 10 years of experience if my demand is that they accept $35,000 a year. If my demand is $100,000, then I will be more successful in getting supply.
Your goal is to destroy the American standard of living to create a supply glut.
Don't get wrong, we need to do away with hancuffing business through regulation as well.
Are you sane ?
May his 'employees' steal his tools & make for the border in his Chevy S10.
But not before infecting him with TB.
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