Letters

From the July 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 6)

Carrying Capacity Network

Washington, D.C.

Glenn Garvin opens with the charge that the United States is engaged in a "battle against immigration." Lest he forget, immigration is a purely discretionary policy. Arguments to reduce immigration are not attacks against individual rights since U.S. immigration policy extends privilege, not entitlement.

Mr. Garvin maintains that some legal and all illegal immigration (he does not distinguish between the two) is essential to provide low labor costs. Referring specifically to proposals to stop illegal immigration, Mr. Garvin quotes an illegal immigrant who says "Americans would have to put black people back into slavery" to achieve the same low labor costs. Amazingly, Mr. Garvin equates illegal immigration with slavery, then advocates the continuation of this phenomenon. Does Mr. Garvin really wish to claim that the preservation of American agriculture necessitates illegal exploitation?

Finally, Mr. Garvin fails to mention the studies, including the comprehensive study by Donald L. Huddle of Rice University, that find that immigration (legal and illegal) does indeed displace U.S. workers. One need only look at the janitorial and hospitality industries to see where native black labor has been replaced by recent immigrant labor.

It is a myth to claim that the U. S. economy requires immigration; in fact, most data show that current levels of immigration are economically and environmentally harmful. Rather than continuing down the current path, we should place a temporary moratorium on immigration while we rethink our current immigration policies.

Mark W. Nowak

Executive Director

Population-Environment Balance

Washington, D.C.

Glenn Garvin asks, "Once we've gotten rid of the immigrants, who is going to pick the lettuce and tomatoes?" He estimates that, among other things, it would cost the average American household $4.00 a week in higher produce prices if immigrants were no longer imported to work in the fields.

Is this all the cheerleaders for open borders have to offer? Mass unskilled immigration--with its undisputed effect of accentuating the gap between rich and poor, with its harmful impact on unskilled Americans, with its distorting effect on the economy, achieving economic growth at the cost of retarding economic development--this mass immigration can be justified because families will save $4.00 a week on groceries? (Incidentally, real economists have estimated that the cost would be far less.)

Mr. Garvin seems to recoil from the idea that without large- scale immigration of unskilled workers, vegetable growers and garment manufacturers would have a greater incentive to mechanize. Or that some products would be imported instead of produced domestically. But what's wrong with that? This is, after all, merely a description of continuing economic development in an industrialized country. American business shouldn't try to compete with the developing world on the price of labor, but rather should create high- wage jobs through greater productivity and automation.

And if some products are simply too expensive to produce in the United States without imported labor--in other words, if another country has a comparative advantage in the production of that good--then, by all means, let's buy it from them, importing products rather than people.

This points up the fundamental fallacy in Mr. Garvin's thinking, and that of many others whose libertarianism is as simplistic. Although economics teaches us that labor is a factor of production, it is also more--it is people. Whatever one's views on free trade--which I personally favor--bolts of cloth or casks of wine are mere objects to be consumed. Immigrants, on the other hand, become new members of the receiving society, with human and civil rights unrelated to their status as workers.

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