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.
You missed one of the points in the article..
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.
So your argument is to replace the illegal migrants with welfare recipients..
That's OK as a short-term solution, but will not work in the long-term..
That doesn't solve the problem, or offer the solution.
It just transfers it from one source of manual labor to another.. and the result would probably be reversion to migrant labor within a generation..
It doesn't promote the search for technological innovation, or agricultural mechanization..
Faster, cheaper, better.
You're right mercy. Just the thought of enforcing our laws and securing our borders scares me to death.
The entire country would eventually starve to death, there would be food riots, store shelves would soon be empty. Ivy and weeds would grow over the tops of our homes in a matter of months. Water at the tap would eventually dry up. Our cars would fall apart, and nothing would work.
Most Americans would be found cowering in the corners of their homes, only to meet a brutal death without illegal aliens.
You're not on the edge of insanity, or on the edge of sanity for that matter. You're smack dab in the middle of where you ought to be, and you know it.
You don't have to have a doctorate to have common sense. I agree with your comments. They make perfect sense to me.
Thank you for making them.
Your capatilistic, brain washed attitude is very refreshing! I have worked many jobs, for a pittance of a wage. I stand for education and self betterment. however any JOB well done should be respected. Our greedy government does not see it that way. Giving all respect and power to those with the highest bank accounts! I know several white people on welfare. They would gladly work for aliving. Bush does not give a damn outsourcing jobs and allowing citizenship to questionable , immagrants? That is the answer, alright. Keep the wages down so greedy capitilists can keepp the profit margin on the + is the answer.
BTTT
I have had jobs like that during my college days. Working with people who cannot communicate with you, is very difficult.
hmm even kitchens in $50+ per person restaurants are full of immigrant workers.
They they they they they.
"They" is the market. Now it is a true global market. The only way out of the box is to learn the game. No career lasts. Actually there are no careers any more. You must be multi-skilled. You must always be looking into the future and staying ahead of the curve. Its cutthroat with absolutely no guarantees.
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.
Fabulous.
What trade should I send the kiddos off to?
Elevated blood pressure BTTT
"During a immigration subcommittee hearing in March, Mr. Cannon had the gumption to question the executive director of CIS, Mark Krikorian, as well as to challenge Roy Beck, who heads NumbersUSA and serves as "spokesman" for CFAW. After first denying it, Mr. Krikorian was forced to admit that CIS is a spin-off of FAIR.
"In fact, CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, Project-USA and more than a half-dozen similar groups that Republicans have become disturbingly comfy with, were founded or funded (or both) by John Tanton, a retired doctor in Michigan. In addition to trying to stop immigration to the U.S., appropriate population-control measures for Dr. Tanton and his network include promoting China's one-child policy, sterilizing Third World women and wider use of RU-486.
"FAIR, where Mr. Krikorian once worked, is run by Dan Stein and shares advisers and personnel with CIS and other members of the Tanton nexus. As our Jason Riley noted in a March op-ed, "By Dr. Tanton's own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics."
After your first sentence, I'm not sure if you think I agree with you or not, but for the most part I do.
Where I would differ with you, is your take that Bush only listens to the wealthy. I may be wrong, but I think he sees it as humanitarian to let the poor undereducated masses from Mexico flood into our nation.
While I do think the capitalist bottom line does get highest conseration here, I would support that if we had closed borders and didn't outsource and send manufacturing jobs overseas.
If all business concerns played by the same rules, overseas manufacturing would not threaten the one guy who didn't sack everyone and send those jobs to China or elsewhere.
Our trade is mismanaged. We were a nation second to none in 1992. At that time had about $100 billion a year trade deficits. Now it's over six times that much. Are we really better off?
Are wages sustaining the belief that each generation will have a higher standard of living in the U.S.?
I don't think so. I've seen what's happening to our infrastructure. Southern California is be turned into the nation's waste bin.
Please do tell, oh wise one, what exactly are we supposed to do with our own citizens who are of below average intelligence? You know, the FIFTY percent of people who are less intellectually competent than the rest? They used to (and in many states are still) working in construction, manufacturing, and other jobs that are disappearing from our shores entirely...or are being given to low wage illegals. There are some people who are not capable of doing anything else...why don't you people GET that?
So now, we taxpayers not only get to make up for the social costs of the $6/hour illegal immigrant who has a wife and three kids; we also get to pay the "extra" for the former American employee who used to be able to (mostly) pay his own way. These people used to have the hope of at least making lower-middle-class status...and they were thrilled! Now, we almost entirely support them...great!
ping
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!
It would work if, while we are vacuuming up the illegal aliens, we let in more legal immigrants to take the places of the illegal aliens in the workforce.
LOL! You were kidding, right?
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