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.
I can make Americans do jobs. Deport the illegals and do away with welfare.
They'll have to do it or starve to death.
Yeah, all those jobs Americans won't do, are still being done where there are no large communities of illegal immigrants.
Fast food, restaurants, construction, field labor... it's all being done by those lazy arse U.S. citizens.
Who'd a thunk it?
His amnesty scheme wont work and will only attract millions more. Of course, it's pretty safe to say that this is the plan.
There you go, trying to make sense again.
Exactly--just what I was about to post. But one big economic problem is how to transport the millions of inner-city welfare recipients to the boondocks to do some of the agricultural work currently done by illegals. Transporting millions of people, housing them, and figuring out where to put their very young children once they're at the job site takes money, lots of it. Still, if the logistics could be worked out, you might have a good plan.
Where are these jobs Americans won't do coming from, are we creating thousands of them per month, to match the number of illegals breaking into our country? Somehow I find that hard to believe.
There's only one job I can think of that Americans won't do... and that's kissing up to the UN!! (We'll leave that to the Euros)
It seems to me what he's saying is if the the U.S. continues to rely on cheap illegal labor, we become complacent in many ways when it comes to becoming more efficient when advancing our labor force through technology and research (kinda like what the unions like to do to keep their jobs)
This whole "They do the jobs Americans won't do" really ticks me off.
THere was an article in the Chicago Tribune a while back describing how one of the local construction unions was becoming almost all mexican. They got a foothold, brought brothers, cousins, etc.
These guys were making very good wages (50K+ if I recall)and I don't believe that there are no Americans to take those jobs.
I dont want to spend money to have our leafs(sp?) raked. Love them illegals ...
Just kiddin!
Did someone have to cart your sorry butt somewhere to get you to work? Just kidding, but it's true. People who want work will find it. Jobs that need to be done, will attract workers if the wages are reasonable for the type of work that needs to be done.
Studies have been done on the work illegal aliens do in the fields, as if that's the only work they do these days. The cost of lettuce was projected to rise by $0.10 a head. The work component of field produce isn't as much of the store purchase price as most people think.
Middle-men make a lot of money off this stuff. So do the grocers. The field laborer isn't the usual 50% of the purchase price on this type of product.
I'd rather pay $5 for Strawberries. At least I have the option to pay it or not. But forcing me to subsidize some businessman's cheap labor is wrong. WHY does no one mention this? What good is a guestworker program that continues to force taxpayers to foot the bill???
In the West, we're not talking hundreds per year, folks, we're talking thousands.
Give us a break! JOrge, you want to talk guestworker...also talk forcing the businessmen to pay a livable wage to them. We're tired of paying for it.
before welfare people worked for whatever they could get. now with welfare they pick and choose because they know food, rent, medical treatment and some spending cash is is the mail box monthly.
Send home the illegals and cut welfare and those jobs will be jobs for Americans again.
It's called "GREED". If I hire a criminal, pay them under the table, cheat my fellow citizens out of a job, the taxes that would ease their burden, and promote more freeloaders coming into the region, it's okay as long as I can bank more at the end of this week.
I have no idea why anyone would be so happy about destroying decent paying jobs in the U.S., but some people will buy onto anything if you can push their buttons just so.
Number cruncher numbskulls make my teeth hurt.
This clymer talks about the percentage of the economy that is agriculture and off the top of his head says no big deal we can shit can that small percentage. No problem. So vegies are more expensive. No problem.
What the idiot does not understand is that vegies will rot in the field. No, they won't even get planted.
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. If you vacumed up all the illegals our economy simply would not work. Deny it all you want. It is the case.
They will make any excuse, try to convience the people with BS lies. The eletist of both parties are guiltyt of this and we, the people are not buying it anymore. We are educated also, especially in the lies and deception of what is going on now. We are fools any longer!
I ant to see what this congress does and how strong they make the Immigration Policies and how strong they enforce them. They speak by talk is cheap, we have to see the ACTION.
The Control of the Borders and seaports is also hot on the list. Real Border control. They have spent so much of our tax dollars paying off South American Governments and farmes to grow other crops and not be involved in the growing of durgs, yet they will not buid a simple wall and fence to control our borders.
As long as our taxes are going to some other foreign government it a great policy, but when it is for the American Taxpayer, it just doesn't come up to the same mark.
Now they send our jobs to other countries, industrial jobs, even answering a phone at a stinking call center is being sent overseas. The call center for unemployment compensation for one of our own states is in India. What kind of a mess have these idiots gotten us into? You may not agree with me or I may sound on the edge of sanity, but I am sick and of being enslaved by all of these asses.
The other half of the problem is our welfare state.
How do you shut down one when you have three generations wholly invested into it?
Come on .... answers!
Now I know you all here are independantly wealthy and don't care a whit whether or not you ever see your couple thou a month you are owed by social security but most folks really need it.
Without immigration there won't be enough paying into it for you to get your benefits.
But if you have a solution to this America waits with bated breath.
Years ago it was havesting food and cleaning homes. Then gardening. Then illegals started taking jobs teens traditionally had like selling and serving fast food. Now they've moved into construction jobs.
Come on mercy, you're living in the United States of America.
No need for gloom and doom.
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