American immigration laws have had a longer run than bootlegging laws, but they are likely to end up on precisely the same scrap-heap of history, and for pretty much the same reasons.
In the early twentieth century, social justice types decided that liquor was evil and must be banned. Laws were duly passed outlawing demon rum and its cousins. Because nothing had been done to reduce demand, the laws simply created a thriving market for the bootleg variety. After battling the problem for several years, the nation eventually scrapped the whole experiment as a failure.
American immigration laws have had a longer run, but they are very likely to end up on precisely the same scrap-heap of history, and for pretty much the same reasons.
Outsourcing
Although outsourcing jobs to foreign countries has long been a contentious issue for the American public, most American economists see no problem with it. As both Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell like to point out, there is no functional economic difference between outsourcing a job to Korea and automating that same job through the purchase of a computer whose parts were made in Korea. In both cases, the job is no longer available to the American worker. Let’s examine this a bit more thoroughly.
Technology not only permits a computer to replace a local worker, it permits a worker half a world away to replace a local worker. Modern shipping, built on modern technology, has long been rapid and reliable enough to replace the local worker just as assuredly as a machine would. But transportation of goods is not always sufficient to solve the problem.
When Walmart buys a shipload of goods from Thailand or Reebok sews sneakers in Singapore, the corporation leverages third world muscle. The practice works because the corporation moves goods and not people. But, from a purely economic perspective, there is essentially no difference between outsourcing factory jobs to people in the South Seas and importing South Seas citizens to fill factory jobs in the United States.
In both cases, the American worker has been replaced. In the first case, he has been replaced by someone who ships goods subject to tariff into the country. In the other, he has been replaced by someone who pays tariff (sales tax, income tax, etc.) to live in the United States.
From the viewpoint of strict economics, whichever is the more cost-effective solution is the better solution.
Insourcing
Reebok imports goods rather than people primarily because it is cheaper to import goods rather than people. Not every industry is so blessed. Agriculture, for example, is tied to the land. The fields on which they produce goods cannot be transported to the laborers, so the laborers must be transported to the fields. Similarly, the slaughter of livestock or the remodeling of houses is tied to geography. Even if it were possible, it would make no economic sense to ship this raw material to the laborers.
Thus, corporations in the business of selling easily transportable goods have an economic advantage over corporations that depend on goods with fixed geographic locations. Reebok is driven to reduce costs. It does so by employing cheap foreign labor. By a quirk of fate, it is able to do so without running afoul of US immigration law. Tyson Foods, the immense chicken farming conglomerate, is driven by the same pressure to reduce costs, but enjoys no such legal economic advantage in producing its end-product. So, it levels the playing field by employing foreign labor anyway: illegal immigrants.
But, this isn’t the whole story.
Homesourcing
As a recent survey points out, using illegal immigrants as day laborers is not limited to the corporations involved in harvesting livestock or produce. As it turns out, illegal immigrants make up a substantial portion of day laborers, and the number one employer of day laborers is homeowners.
Now, the homeowner is the smallest of the small-scale economic players. From an economic point of view, illegal immigration allows Joe Q. Public to leverage the economic advantages of cheap foreign labor in exactly the same way that Reebok and Walmart do, but without the shipping costs incurred by either corporation.
Thus, illegal immigration not only helps large, geographically fixed corporations, it also gives small business, especially the micro-business that is a family household, an edge. In fact, it gives micro-businesses the edge necessary to stay competitive with corporate giants who can afford massive just-in-time inventory control and the economy of scale possible through massive bulk purchases of items.
The illegal immigrant is the poor man’s automation. But why would small business need this kind of automation? Because the government has outlawed low-wage jobs.
Bootlegging
Now, keep in mind that fully 99% of all enterprises employ less than 500 people. 52% of all workers are employed in small business. Small businesses produce three-quarters of the new jobs, and are much more economically nimble, able to respond to market pressures more rapidly than large corporations. Unfortunately, this is precisely the sector hit hardest by the minimum wage.
The minimum wage law is essentially a tax, a tariff on low-cost goods and services. The Smoot-Hawley tariff on foreign goods that economists have long lamented has been transformed today into the minimum wage tariff on low-end jobs, a government-imposed tax which not only outlaws low-wage jobs, it forces businesses who offer such jobs to pay the cost of enforcing the laws.
By taxing low-wage jobs, the minimum wage thereby abolishes such jobs. How? It artificially transforms them into high-wage jobs. At least, that's the theory.
In fact, the government actually creates a black market for low-paying, low-end jobs that cannot be legally filled by entry-level workers. But, on closer examination, the law actually does something much worse than this. Because it essentially outlaws low-wage jobs, it creates in those same entry-level workers the belief that low-paying, low-end jobs should not exist at all.
That is, the artificially imposed minimum wage creates in the American public an erroneous notion of what constitutes a just wage. This notion is not shared by most of the rest of the world. As a result, neighbors who do not accept the American government’s notion of what constitutes a just wage are more than willing to step in and do the job for what the job is actually worth, rather than demand the price of the job plus the government tariff.
Thus, perversely, while large corporations do employ illegal immigrants, the economic necessity which creates illegal immigration is not created by the corporations themselves. It is, instead, created by Joe Q. Public via the day labor market and the small business community in reaction to the government interference in the marketplace. Illegal immigration enhances the economic clout of the average American consumer by allowing a lower price for goods and services than would otherwise be possible.
Given the American appetite for low-cost comfort, an appetite which has caused Americans to essentially stop having children, illegal immigration is both inexorable and inevitable. Stopping illegal immigration would require a change in American attitudes towards their own comfort and bank accounts, and that simply won’t happen. A nation which can't be convinced to stop killing one-third of its children will certainly not want to give up its cheap lettuce, no matter what the demagogues say.
Though I don’t entirely agree with your liquor analogy, I tend to agree with your overall assessment. Stopping the illegal invasion will be difficult if too many Americans abet it by giving jobs to illegals. But that is only the tip of this iceberg. Illegals are attracted as much by the tax-paid freebies as the jobs. They know that the safety net we put together for our own ‘poor’ will rescue them from a life with no safety net. In their own countries, their is no walking into a hospital to get emergency care whenever injured. Their children do not get an education that will lift them out of poverty. And, when they mug a rich man, they cannot expect a reprimand and release to do it again.
Yet, you seem to be arguing it is futile to stop the invasion. The consequence of that is national suicide. Those who invade are not interested in becoming Americans so much as escaping poverty. They have an avowed preference for taking over our country as they have taken so much else without reference to our wishes. If we need more workers to fill jobs “Americans don’t want”, it is a simple matter of increasing legal immigration to fill those jobs. If the problem is the minimum wage law, then roll back the minimum wage until the demand to fill jobs is gone. Somehow, I don’t think that will stop the flow of illegals. They are not coming here just to remain forever the cheapest labor. They want as much as they can get for their labor, no different than you or me. Unlike you or me, they are willing to break laws and threaten society to do it. The sheer numbers of those coming are a threat, and one we can’t simply absorb. If something is not done to stem this tide, the engine of prosperity will be destroyed; and then we’ll be as bad off as they.
Alcoholism damages people, their families, and the communities to which they belong, and was not merely a “percieved” evil. Anyone who has lived with an alcoholic or drug user can vouch for this. We may have little hope of ever controlling these behaviors, but that does not make it stupid to try. Whenever one of these evils grows larger than a community can sustain, it is no longer a matter of can we contain it or tolerate it. We must contain them or be destroyed as a community. That changes the dynamic. Right now, the invasion has grown so large that its effects are being felt. That too changes the dynamic. Those who order our society are feeling the pressure from below, and that changes the dynamic. When enough consumers say it is more important to close our borders than to have cheap produce, the dynamic has changed and somebody better listen.
It’s interesting that Mr. Kellmeyer has consigned the prohibition
and immigration laws to the same scrap heap.
Particularly since the Johnson-Reed Act, passed during the
Prohibition Era, was not only successful, but was the biggest
contributing factor to the successful assimilation of all post
Johnson-Reed immigrants and their offspring in U.S. history.
Until 1965 of course, when social justice types, of an
invidious sort, succeeded in eliminating any semblance
of a functional immigration system while simultaneously
redefining attempts at assimilation as unjust, racist and bigoted.
The Hart-Celler Immigration Bill isn’t an immigration law so
much as the absence of an immigration law.
How else does one explain “Press One For English”,
bilingual education and 9/11?
Mr. Kellmeyer states “…from a purely economic perspective,
there is essentially no difference between outsourcing factory
jobs to people in the South Seas and importing South Seas
citizens to fill factory jobs in the United States…” and “…
whichever is the more cost effective is the better solution…”
Certainly in both cases the hapless American is jobless,
but in the latter, our imported foreign national is essentially
joining the same economic sphere as our American friend.
Does increasing the population of a particular economic
entity make it more or less cost effective?
And for whom?
The illegal alien is the poor man’s automation?
This makes no sense does it? If that’s the case, then
1 illegal alien is good, but 50 is better. Why bother with
technology at all? (But if that’s the case, should we consider
Tyson a pauper due to its hiring of busloads of illegal aliens?)
The definition of automation is “the act of implementing the
control of equipment with advanced technology; usually
involving electronic hardware; “automation replaces
human workers by machines”
The hiring of illegal aliens, individually or by the trainload
more closely resembles indentured servitude than automation.
And in a deft move, Mr. Kellmeyer says, “…Thus, perversely,
while large corporations do employ illegal immigrants, the
economic necessity which creates illegal immigration is not
created by the corporations themselves. It is, instead,
created by Joe Q. Public…”
So corporate giants like Tyson are pretty much forced to hire
illegal aliens, but its Joe Q. Public, the little guy, the individual
homeowner who’s really to blame.
Mr. Kellmeyers slavish defense of corporate addiction to
illegal alien labor, by trying to shift the blame to what he calls
the “…American appetite for low-cost comfort, an appetite
which has caused Americans to essentially stop having
children…” is absurd.
Certainly Americans aren’t having children at the rate
of, say, the Mexican illegal aliens. Who are predominantly
Catholic. And predominantly illiterate. And not particularly
interested in the rule of law. Or education. Or speaking English.
Nor do they exhibit any qualms in offering their labor at well
under the prevailing wage.
Americans, somewhere along the way, thought it might be
a good idea if they started to consider the finite natural
resources and the quality of life that they were passing along
to their children.
Of course, the illegal alien population has all but washed
away those plans.
And the Catholic Church, welcoming its new congregants
with open arms, is just as willing to ignore the cornucopia of
negative and destructive effects produced by the illegal alien
presence on our soil.
Mr. Kellmeyer also makes the ridiculous assumption
that the vociferous and ever growing opposition to the
illegal alien invasion is based on economics.
It is not.
And in a final bit of demagoguery, Mr. Kellmeyer says,
“…A nation which can’t be convinced to stop killing one-third
of its children will certainly not want to give up its cheap lettuce,
no matter what the demagogues say…”
A bit over the top isn’t it? What’s one thing got to do with
the other?
Ah, I forgot, Mr. Kellmeyer integrates his Catholic faith
with the headlines.
He doesn’t have to be right, fair or truthful. Just Catholic.
The author of this article has produced a new version of Poppycock.
He should go into production and distribution immediately and cease all writing aspirations.
I had a fairly short-lived email debate with Steve Kellmeyer about his last article on immigration, “The Children We Never Had”. After some argument over his original article, he shared with me his view that a race riot in St. Louis in the early 1900′s that occured after a company brought in black laborers from Southern states to work as “scabs” because the white workers were demanding more money, paralleled the situation that we currently face with illegal aliens taking jobs “under the table” for under minimum wages, or displacing American workers by taking jobs for less money than they are worth. Evidently, a company importing legal laborers from another state to work in their factories because their workers decided to unionize and demand more money, is exactly the same as a Mexican sneaking over the border, not learning the English language, getting benefits from the government, and working for less than established wages that are not liveable for legal citizens who are not getting food stamps, free medical care, free education for their kids, and and subsidized rent. I haven’t read this article, but I can see by the comments that the logic of this essay is along the same lines. To quote Steve directly from one of our correspondances: “Look, all we need to do to keep illegals from coming in is get rid of
our immigration laws.
Then they won’t be illegal and everything will be fine! :)”
As you can see, his solutions to illegal immigration are well thought out. I really don’t understand why his essays are published at a website dedicated to Conservative and Libertarian philosophy, because they are neither.
I think Kellmeyer represents a substantial piece of the
Conservative and Liberatrian philosophy as it exists today.
No disrespect, but I’ve shared more than a few unpleasant
post 9/11 moments with self-declared Libertarians who’ve
insisted the displacement of American workers and culture
is more than justified by the ensuing economic benefits,
and self-declared Conservatives who’ve assured me American
workers are benefit driven, pampered louts.
I’m not even sure what a conservative is any more.
I know it’s not a compassionate conservative because that’s
a liberal. Nor is it a neocon because that’s a liberal with a
shotgun who likes loud noises.
As for Libertarians, well, the United States is more of an
idea, a sort of virtual, rather than physical, reality to
them isn’t it?
Nuff said.
I call myself an unaffiliated American Citizen now.
Even a Patriot when the situation warrants.
But none of this will stop the 10,00 illegal aliens
crossing our borders every day, will it.
It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck sometimes.
David Tatosian