[The KG9 Kid]

The best line I've heard in the immigration debate is that if it were true that low-paid foreign workers are a critical component to a vibrant and growing first-world economy, then Mexico would be like Switzerland considering the amount of low-paid workers it has as it's primary national resource.

I read that the astonishly oil-rich nation of Dubai is being built almost entirely by a foreign low wage workforce. Dubai might or might not be a good example for the United States to follow since they pay about the equivalent of US$2,000/annually as the best wage to construction workers who build their giant hotels and office buildings. Dubai also sure as hell isn't educating and feeding those worker's families or putting them on the 'roadmap to citizenship' or whatever Uncle Sucker is calling it.

[Wallace T.]

Were low paid foreign workers so crucial to national prosperity, how did America enjoy the strong economy we did from the end of World War II to the recession of 1973-74, a period during which immigration into the United States was relatively small? Granted that the post-World War II economy was largely industrial driven, as opposed to the more service oriented and high tech economy of our time, strict enforcement of existing immigration laws would benefit native-born workers and possibly stimulate additional labor saving technology. As an example, when large numbers of blacks left the segregated South of the early and mid-20th Century for industrial employment in Northern cities, mechanized cotton planting and stripping equipment and chemical control of weeds replaced manual field labor.

[Ben Ficklin]

Your analogy between Mexico and Switzerland omits capitol. It takes both labor and capitol.

This the basis of the relationship between the US and Mexico. The US has plenty of capitol but a shortage of labor. Mexico has plenty of labor but a shortage capitol.

So, US capitol flows into Mexico to use Mexican labor and Mexican labor flows into the US to combine with US capitol.