Posted on 08/21/2007 12:18:45 PM PDT by reaganaut1
The flood of foreign labor pouring into the U.S., the European Union and other hospitable environs has brought political strains. In the U.S., President George W. Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy failed to win passage of an immigration reform bill that the President viewed as legacy legislation. In Europe, France's new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been busy promising to get tough on immigrants and erecting roadblocks to Turkey's bid for European Union membership.
These are only the latest shots in a long and ultimately futile debate about immigration policy. There is little chance of stemming migrant inflows, as long as the countries supplying immigrants embrace policies that effectively mandate labor dumping.
...
Today Mexico is the world's largest labor dumper and the source of much of the contentious U.S. immigration reform debate. Surprisingly, the political combatants on both sides of the debate fail to mention the source of the problem: Mexico's statist economy. Like Yugoslavia, Mexico can't produce enough jobs. According to the World Bank's Doing Business 2007 report, Mexico's labor market ranks 108th out of 175 countries in terms of the ease of hiring and firing workers and labor-market flexibility.
Rather than modernize the economy, Mexico's politicians use Tito's broom. Mexico's 47 consulates in the U.S., more than any other country has, facilitate the sweeping by issuing passports and offering assistance when Mexican immigrants run into trouble. Thus 30% of Mexico's labor force is working in the U.S., and in 2006 they sent home $23 billion, 12% of Mexico's exports.
This is why we need them to be deported.
Carolyn
The exodus back South has begun.
Every company I know are doing I-9 searches and background checks on existing employees.
A buddy of mine found an employee who was dead, which is admirable because he had not used a sick day nor missed a day of work in 2 years (despite being dead)!
Why not invade Nova Scotia ? They’re almost as poor.
Carolyn
Most speak our language; that’d be an advantage going in...
Don’t we get most of our oil from Mexico?
At the end of the Mexican War that would ahve been the kindest thing we could have done.
It’s not just “labor dumping”. Mexico is dumping all their uneducated and their criminals on the US. Remember, as I’ve said before, “We the people” decide if we want them here. Not the government. Time to close the border to them, completely, until we use up the 12 million if we aren’t going to deport them. That should take about 40 years. Make crossing our borders, even the first time, a federal offense with jail time of a minimum of one year. Build a prison right on the border. Place a DMZ on the border also.
A border wall stretching from Tampico to Tepic would only be about 750 miles.
What do you really think though shock. If we brought in Mexico as a state rather than connecting with them as an equal in this rediculous North American Union, would it be more palatable?
What if we did it in phases over time?
Imagine only having a 300 mile border than an 1800 mile border to guard.
I think we need to build a fence from the Gulf to the Pacific and man it properly.
That is because 130 million Mexicans ( 100 there + 30 million here) will instantly become the single largest voting block and will simply take over the government of the United States.
It will be a nauseating mass orgy of violent theft of property followed by police state repression of the newly impoverished Americans by mercenary thugs hired by those "elected".
In other words, just like the Mexico of today. Which you are apparently totally unaware of, or you wouldn't make such a statement.
Unfortunately, the CATO institute is pro-illegal....and very Liberaltarian.
If you stop Mexico from labor dumping, they will be forced to address their issues. Mexico now has the richest man in the world, let him invest in Mexico.
Of course, Cato will not mention that the US does not need this Mexican labor...since the Mexicans are used only to drive down labor costs...not to bring in needed labor
One can grant the fact of Mexico's economic and political woes, but CATO still misses badly.
It's a demand side problem.... If Americans weren't paying people to cross the border illegally, the illegals wouldn't be nearly so willing to cross the border in the first place.
There are a lot of reasons for demand on the American side of the equation -- the intrinsically higher cost of hiring Americans being one biggie; and the availability to Americans of welfare as a substitute for low-wage work being another. And so American employers are often willing to overlook immigration status in exchange for the monetary savings (which, in some cases, is all that keeps them from going out of business altogether).
And then you have the American politicians who hold out government assistance to illegals ... again, the illegals are just taking advantage of something Americans are willing to give them. Solve the giveaway problem on the US side, and the illegals have less incentive to come over.
CATO also misses the train when they discuss Mexico's motives for the "labor dumping." It's not so much that they can't "create jobs," (though it's true that they can't). More importantly, the Mexican authorities recognize that promoting immigration to the US acts as a safety valve for them. The large number of Mexicans who leave for the US are not going to cause political unrest and/or revolution back home. One unintended consequence of shutting the border might well be the deterioration of Mexico's political situation -- which could result in refugees taking the place of illegal immigrants....
Second, illegal immigrants send a LOT of hard money back home, which again provides political advantantages for the PRI.
Does Mexico need serious reform? Most certainly. Will reform solve the illegal immigration problem? Partially, but probably not entirely, and certainly not soon.
Overall, CATO's rather disappointing and one-dimensional discussion of the situation offers very little useful information.
As a matter of fact, one reason Fannin wasn't that interested in rescuing Travis at the Alamo was that he intended, as soon as he became general of the Texican Army, to march on Mexico City and make Mexico either a slave holding US territory, or an independent, slave holding country with him in charge.
Well, now, "need" is a funny word when you apply it to something like a labor market.
The fact that illegals can come here and make good money suggests that American employers have decided they most definitely do "need" Mexican labor.
If American employers didn't "need" Mexican labor, there'd be no displacement of Americans in these lower-income/no-benefit jobs -- there'd be no incentive for them to hire illegals over Americans, and the illegal immigration problem would be a lot smaller.
In the whole immigration debate - the way to look at it: The US has accepted 20-30million economic refugees. More than any country at any time in the history of the world. And leftists accuse the US of being cruel when some of us insist that this chaos be regulated?!
It's a CYA article...CATO has lost a lot of support from reasonable people who agreed somewhat with their radical "free trade" fanaticism because of their related Open Borders Free For All attitude.
So now they'll just say, gee, this is all Mexico's fault, not ours, we're just advocating this great economic model, which of course apparently doesn't work in the messy real world, where thugs like the Mexican government simply take advantage of children with sterile, idealistic economic systems.
And then go right back to saying why it's wonderful to have millions of illiterate, semi-violent aliens traipse into your country and turn into a disaster area.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.