More immigration frustration
After my first (somewhat unpopular) post on the subject, I'm going to venture into the breach in a bit more controversial fashion. I'd like to discuss how I think our impasse with illegal aliens is having a negative effect on other communities in the United States, namely low-income, urban African-Americans and low-income rural whites.
In this post, I outlined the relationship between labor supply, illegal immigration, and minimum wage laws. Namely, that employers who wanted to flout wage laws had an easy recourse to do so by employing non-citizen labor.
Based on that thinking, I get very frustrated when I hear Bush trot out the canard of "these are jobs Americans won't do." It's rather the case that they won't be offered them because their wages mandated by law have priced them out of the market.
At the same time, we hear that our economy would collapse if we removed the lynchpin of illegal labor because there would be no one to work at these jobs. Again, this presumes that there is absolutely no available labor for the tasks, something we know isn't true; it's merely that there exists no legal labor, creating the illusion there's none whatsoever.
Let me bring this back to my original paragraph by citing Kaus (scroll up to post titled 'Clinton's Acheivement'). Mickey rightfully notes the chronic unemployment and underemployment of young black men was in part mitigated by the incredible job market in the late Clinton years. In short, Kaus says the labor market was so tight that employers had to go beyond the pool of illegal labor and employ inner city blacks.
Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that deprived of pool of illegals, they would hire underemployed African-Americans? Going a step further, since these underemployed people are citizens, wouldn't they have to pay them a fair and legal wage?
Let us also consider the sociological effects of this. As seen here, marriage is becoming an increasingly iffy proposition, especially in African-American communities. The columnist hints at a possible correlation between the decline in marriage and the loss of blue-collar employment for black men. In short, she says, "linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman."
But if these men were not just employable but employed, I have to believe that dynamic would change somewhat. Jobs would lead to wealth creation, to a more stable family setting, to lower crime rates, and to many other good things that come with employment. Everything I just wrote is just as true for underemployed rural whites, I should add.
It seems to me a great many social ills could be addressed if we acknowledge the reality of what our dependence on illegal labor is actually doing to our fellow unemployed Americans.
posted by Joshua @ 7:50 PM
7 Comments:
Just to get the comments thread started:
I disagree with this article almost entirely, and particularly resent its logical equivalence between illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, Latinos, and African-Americans.
I think we half-agree here. I think we should have a better legal system of immigration that does allow more people across the border in a legal, respectable fashion.
I just think that illegality does drive down our low-end wages, which means we don't even give American citizens a chance to compete. Maybe they wouldn't be very good workers, but I'd rather they get the first shot at it.
I think the guest worker program is a crappy idea because of that economic reason and because it reeks of European-style "we want your labor but not you! Embrace marginalization."
Here's a good piece on immigration and Americanization. The last quote is particularly good.
This is just a thought, but what does everybody think about ranking foreigners based on nationality to weight their preference in immigration procedures? It sure would keep out the undesirables!
Just kidding. This is just a test comment to see if I can get the apostrophe back in my name.
Actually, I'm going to have to disagree with Tacitean here on the idea of guest worker programs being a crappy idea. By tightening our borders and forcing migrants into the hands of unscrupulous coyotes and increasingly dangerous transit routes, we've increasingly made the trip here to the United States a one way journey. Thus, an unskilled Mexican worker can't simply come here for a season or two of labor and then return to his family for the remainder of the year before repeating the cycle. Instead, the difficulty of the trip means he's much better off remaining in El Norte as an illegal and sending his wages home, which is precisely what happens.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas "The approximately 10 million Mexican nationals who reside in the U.S. sent back an estimated $20 billion in 2005, an amount equivalent to 3 percent of Mexico’s GDP." Furthermore, "over 45 percent of all households that receive remittances would fall in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution if the remittances were removed. However, only 12 percent of these households still belong to the lowest decile if remittances are included in their income." Obviously, we're not talking about people disinterested in their nation of birth.
So that brings us back to the Mexicans waving their Mexican flags during the demonstrations of the last few weeks and where you and I probably do agree - many of these illegal workers don't actually want to be US citizens. But I'd argue that were it easier for them to enter for available and reliable seasonal work, they would choose that path and return to their families during the off-months. But since an illegal can't easily go home, it instead starts to make sense to think of what could be a seasonal migration as a permanent change and to make roots and plans accordingly so.
The proximity of our two nations is something that greatly separates our situation from the example of numerous European guest worker programs and I think it should be taken into account. And were I a betting man, I'd say if you were to widen a guest worker program properly, within a few years you'd see many of these seasonal workers taking their hard-earned dollars and investing it more directly, rather than simply remitting the money, back home in Mexico, better stimulating their economy and, eventually, helping to provide better opportunities there that would lessen the need and desire to work here in the US.
Think about this. And I'm out!
Better yet, think about this:
"Polls...indicate the issue is not dampening African Americans' sympathy with the struggles of Latinos.
....
The Field Poll in California released Wednesday showed 82 percent of blacks support offering undocumented workers the opportunity to become citizens, while 76 percent of Latinos and 74 percent of whites took that position."
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