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 What
Jobs Won’t Americans Do?
Illegal immigration economics…
[Selwyn Duke] 4/3/06
One reason
we’re supposed to rejoice at the pitter-patter of illegal
feet is that foreigners are only coming here to “do jobs Americans won’t
do.” It’s one of those basic assumptions upon which the argument
in favor of forgetting we have borders, a culture and laws rests, and even
President Bush mentioned this “truth” while speaking about immigration
reform recently. And, undoubtedly, there are certain immutable laws of economics.
Only, this
isn’t one of them.
The next
time someone mindlessly parrots this mantra, just ask, “What
jobs would those be?” As you’ll soon learn, the answer
doesn’t really matter, but sometimes we’re shamed
by didacts who oh-so-sternly say that illegals are the people
who “pick our fruit for us.” So, fruit picking – something
that must be in league with being a rat catcher in Victorian
London or Wile E. Coyote’s stunt double – is as good
an example as any.
One amusing aspect of the fruit picking fiction is that millions
of people in our country engage in this activity as a form of
recreation. Why, there are folks who embark upon autumn ventures
to the hinterlands to pick apples and consider it a fun family
outing. But I digress.
I have to ask, if I paid you $800 an hour to pick fruit, would
you do it? Except for the silk and satin set, I have a feeling
most would beat a path to my orchard. And this brings us to what
is a true law of economics.
There are no jobs
Americans won’t do. There are only wages
Americans won’t work for.
And this relates to
a fact of contemporary American life: immigrants, illegal or
otherwise, depress wages. Oh, some would dispute this?
Well, they’re wrong and I intend to prove it.
There’s another universal, unchangeable law of economics
called “supply and demand,” and most of us understand
it. Regardless of what product or service is at issue, if demand
increases relative to supply, prices increase; if supply increases
relative to demand, prices drop. And this phenomenon is relevant
here. Why?
Quite simply because,
like it or not, within the context of a free market system,
workers are commodities whose value is
determined by supply and demand. For example, a skilled neurosurgeon
doesn’t make a half a million dollars a year because what
he does is so important. If that were the case, he’d earn
more than people who hit, kick and throw balls around and sign
autographs. No, his income is a function of his rarity; create
100 million more just like him and his salary will become relatively
paltry.
Thus, increase the
supply of workers relative to the jobs available and the value
of workers decreases. This is not opinion, my friends,
but hard, cold fact. Immigrants swell the worker pool, thereby
increasing competition for jobs, allowing employers to pay less
for the same employees. We’ve all heard of a “buyer’s
market” and a “seller’s market”; well,
high levels of immigration transform us from a worker’s
market into an employer’s market. Big business loves it.
Of course, the immigration
lobby has an answer at the ready when this truth becomes inconvenient. “How much do you
want to pay for a head of lettuce?!” they exclaim.
What’s so ironic about this argument is that its proponents
are generally the very same people who’ll zealously campaign
for increases in the minimum wage, an action that can also increase
the cost of doing business and, therefore, retail prices. But
since they say they want to help poor Americans, let’s
discuss that.
The natural, free
market way to help low income Americans is to increase their
value by making them rarer commodities. How
do you do this? You guessed it, by severely curtailing (a moratorium
would be ideal) immigration. Do that and America becomes more
of a worker’s market, forcing businesses to offer more
money to attract applicants.
Would goods become
more expensive? Perhaps, but while this isn’t
the focus of this piece, that may be more than offset by the
elimination of the social consequences (e.g., hospital, welfare
and education costs) of absorbing millions of often illiterate
(some can’t even read and write their own languages) Third
World immigrants into our nation. Regardless, this is the traditional,
healthy, free market way of spreading the wealth around. And
I’d rather redistribute wealth through the market than
through socialism.
Lastly, there’s another irony here. Cesar Chavez, the
head of the United Farm Workers Union during its heyday, is a
hero of Americans of Mexican descent. So much so, in fact, that
his name is often associated with the dual cause of promoting
immigration and the of California and the American southwest,
known as La Reconquista. Conveniently forgotten, though, is a
very inconvenient fact: when Chavez enjoyed the peak of his power,
he was a fervid – bordering on venomous – opponent of illegal immigration. And he not only railed against it but
often actually reported Mexican illegals to the INS so they could
be deported. He also protested illegal immigration on the border
in 1969 and had civilian border guards who were sufficiently
heavy-handed to make today’s Minutemen seem milquetoasty.
What motivated him?
Quite simply, he was charged with the responsibility of keeping
his union members’ wages as high as possible.
And he understood the law of supply and demand.
We have a union called the United States. I just wonder if membership
therein means anything anymore.
Of course, there’s
always cheap lettuce.ONE
copyright
2006 Selwyn Duke
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