New at Reason

David Weigel | April 21, 2006

Jesse Walker considers the illegal immigrants who are being exploited in the USA.

Comments

|4.21.06 @ 9:10AM|#

I am still trying to figure out what the Reason party line is on immigration policy really is. It appears to be "let in anyone who can find there way here", or at best "let in anyone who can find there way here, outside of obvious threats". Surely they jest. Obviously, our current policy is absolutely inane, but so would be an utterly open policy as well. We cannot possible absorb the tens of millions of people who would come here if they could. In an idealized flat libertarian world, yes, a completely open policy would be an ideal one. But we do not live in a perfect world, and it is dangerous to pretend we do.

Also, I often hear around here that "illegal immigrants pay taxes, too". That is true. But very few of them pay the roughly $10,000/person that represents the combined state/fed/local expenditure per person. Any working-age adult making less than $30,000 or so is taking out more than they are putting in, and that is assuming they are actually paying their taxes.

Yes, we should have guest workers with reasonable flexibility. The time period should be limited and they should have to apply from their home country. Illegals already here should have no advantage (or disadvantage) during the application process. But they should have to go home, first. Have fun watching them flood back OUT of the country.

|4.21.06 @ 9:19AM|#

Chad,

Forcing 11-15 million people out of the country would be the largest forced migration in the history of the Americas.

What fun!

|4.21.06 @ 9:29AM|#

Chad, if I remember correctly, Cato published a study showing that the net present value of taxes an immigrant with a high school education was -$4,000 over their lifetime. That's not a very big deficit. We might be able to address the gap by charging each immigrant an extra, say, $400 for each year they are here until they gain citizenship--an entry tax, if you like (I'm just making that number up; obviously a real calculation would have to be done). That would be less than many immigrants are paying someone else to be transported here illegally. Alternatively we could deny certain benefits programs from immigrants until they gain citizenship.

Regarding the number of immigrants the U.S. could handle, I'm not sure anyone really knows. We can surely handle a lot more than the amount we're currently taking in. Immigration per 1,000 U.S. citizens is about a third of what it was at its peak. What is the constraint on the number of immigrants we can accept? Housing and other market-provided infrastructure will be expanded by the increased demand. Perhaps there is public infrastructure that would be overwhelmed. It would certainly be more costly (in total, not on the margin) to carefully screen out dangerous criminals and potential terrorists as the number of immigrants rises.

|4.21.06 @ 9:33AM|#

"But they should have to go home, first. Have fun watching them flood back OUT of the country."

Talk about expensive. Is it really worth it to track down all these folks just to deport them so they can fill out some forms and then come back. Sounds like the government though. Got all the points: Expensive, fixes nothing, lots of regulations and forms.

Your point is taken that we can't just toss open the doors because probably half the world would hit the open sea. But what the right wing 'pubs are suggesting is just not going to work. That is not to say Dems ideas are any better.

What is Reason's line? Prob. depends on the writer, that's usually seems how it works. This magazine is good because it generally has a libertarian direction, but it is refreshing that you can't tell their position on one issue by their position on another. Unlike your standard Dem and 'Pub rags.

Ron Hardin|4.21.06 @ 9:43AM|#

The benefits of paying low wages don't accrue to business but to their customers, unless that one business is the only one in the field doing it.

Just as the benefits of pollution went to consumers not companies when pollution was rampant.

The inability to do economics is really grim.

|4.21.06 @ 10:15AM|#

Chad -- I think where you are going wrong is looking for a "party line" at all. Immigration is an issue that divides everyone, no matter how politically homogeneous on other issues. I've held half a dozen views over my own life, and I'm young yet.

Immigration is a genuinely hard problem, which is probably why all the "total solutions" offered by various political groups fall so flat. There are dozens of confounding variables, each of which is itself a hard political problem.

Myself, I'd start by blowing up the 7% cap and drastically increasing legal immigration (and firing the current immigration bureaucracy -- what a bunch of asses!) Without some work to make legal immigration reasonably possible, any solution to illegal immigration is going to be pissing in the wind -- the drug war times a thousand. The law can fight supply and demand, but only if they're within an order of magnitude of equilibrium already, and that's just not the case with immigration.

|4.21.06 @ 10:16AM|#

Uh, yeah, Ron. If us dummies kud do ecinomicks, we would know that such businesses pass the entirety of the cost savings onto their customers, don't realize any profit for themselves from the practice, and are actually hiring and underpaying illegal immigrants out charitiable insticts towards their customer base.

Not.

Ron Hardin|4.21.06 @ 10:20AM|#

It's not out of altruism that competition gives the customer the best price.

Once it covers the return businesses in general will settle for, the price can't go up in the face of competition.

|4.21.06 @ 10:24AM|#

That wasn't the part I was arguing with, Ron, but with your assertion that "The benefits of paying low wages don't accrue to business..."

Yes, they do. Perhaps not entirely, but you didn't make that point. You said that the benefits of paying low wages don't accrue to business.

|4.21.06 @ 10:26AM|#

This article brought up something I'd been thinking about regarding the illegal immigration debate. A business looking to save money could easily find a group of immigrant workers desparate for employment, give them no benefits, few breaks, long hours, and pay that would be insulting to anyone trying to earn a living.

The beauty of it, of course -- if you happen to be such an employer --, is that there is absolutely no legal recourse for these workers. Complain, and you get replaced quickly. To whom would you complain? A union? They despise your guest-working ass and the money you send out of this country and away from them. The police? They're looking to deport you.

I'm not sure how matter this could be addressed, but even as a proponent of free-market capitalism I have a hard time approving of anyone being taken advantage of after providing an honest day's work.

|4.21.06 @ 10:33AM|#

"I'm not sure how matter this could be addressed, but even as a proponent of free-market capitalism I have a hard time approving of anyone being taken advantage of after providing an honest day's work."

SPD, I have been thinking about this same issue and I don't know how to work it either. I know sending everyone home is not the answer, neither is just let anyone that wants in in. But a job is a contract, and how does one keep from getting screwed by someone (the employer) who does not keep their end of the bargain? Open to answers.

|4.21.06 @ 10:37AM|#

SPD,

Actually, unions (including the AFL-CIO) are very pro-immigrant. Unions such as SEIU and UNITE HERE have staged major efforts to organize undocumented immigrant workers, and there has a broad push across the board by unions to reform immigration laws to make the "illegals" legal. Unions were a major force in organizing the recent protests.

Go to the AFL-CIO's homepage and see what they have to say about immigration. Rather than taking the exlusive, protectionist line you assume, they are actually taking the pro-worker line - and, I might point out, doing so at the risk of alienating lots of white, nativist "Reagan Democrat" types who make up a large part of their base of support.

|4.21.06 @ 10:47AM|#

SPD:

It's a similar concept to the cause of violence involved in the illegal drug trade. If you're selling crack and you get robbed and beaten, what are you gonna do? Go tell the cops that someone took your crack?

Anytime we criminalize an entire industry or subclass, we're bound to see both increased violence surrounding it, and increased incidences of abuse and extortion. I'm not sure that this is a real principled, logical argument against anything (if it were, then one could make the argument for legalizing murder, since accused murderers can't go crying to the cops when they're abused or taken advantage of)...but it does shed light on the pragmatic end of the issue.

Now, that having been said, the whole "complain, and you get replaced quickly" thing is a bit shaky. Shit, feel free to replace them quickly---it's your money, after all. "Forcing" them to work more than 40 hours? Hehe, right...unless they're being held their against their will, they can just leave and find another kitchen job. Often, I am "forced" to work more than 40 hours per week, but I don't own the company, and I'm free to leave when I want. But when you defraud them (such as paying them lower wages than promised), that's where I draw the line. Fraud, blackmail and coercion--that's different from simply shitty working conditions and pay.

|4.21.06 @ 10:55AM|#

Evan,

When the threat of arrest and deportation is hanging over your head - when the boss can bring the machinery of state force down on you whenever he feels like it - your "negotiations" with him cannot be said to be genuinely uncoerced.

|4.21.06 @ 11:07AM|#

"we should have guest workers with reasonable flexibility"

Why?

|4.21.06 @ 11:33AM|#

Seems like there should be some way to punish the employers but not the illegals. If they put me in charge, I would certainly be able to think of ways to do that and I would.

You tag enough rich people, instead of directly tagging the illegal immigrants themselves, and we would get some of this reform that the current system (little enforcement against employers) does not seem to yield.

|4.21.06 @ 11:41AM|#

The real question is do you want your children to grow up in a country with 430-450 million people in the next 40 years? The current amnesty being floated would bring in 30 million in 10 years. This is 10% population growth in a very short period of time!

What about density, water, traffic, pollution? Any sane policy has to consider that there are limits.

There's only so much open space left in this country.

|4.21.06 @ 11:46AM|#

Wait, I thought that people living in a free market economy don't need to worry about resource shortages because the market will find ways to adjust...

Mike|4.21.06 @ 12:46PM|#

There's only so much open space left in this country.

Yes, there's a finite amount of open space in this country. But that finite number is HUGE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USA-2000-population-density.gif

Yes, cities are crowded, but they've always been crowded. To argue we're going to become one giant urban ghetto ignores recent history (sprawl, lower density urban areas, etc.) and geography.

|4.21.06 @ 12:53PM|#

I have had a large amount of experience working with immigrants at the other end of the pay scale.

The field I work in, quantitative finance, imports a huge number of immigrants from all over the world. Off the top of my head my colleagues have come from, Brazil, Bulgaria, South Africa, The Phillipines, India, Germany, England, etc...

Even in this white collar profession wages, as a legal immigrant, still get curtailed by government policy. As a rule, you need to work a certain number of years working for an employer before you are granted citizenship.

In those years employers will tend to underpay there foreign workers, since their recourse is to leave the country. Or to try and find another firm to sponsor them, but then the citizenship clock resets to 0 (there are also a significant number of legal fees associated with hiring an immigrant).

This problem becomes quite pernicious at the grad school level. Foreign students can get internships at finance firms...provided they are unpaid. This drives the wage for student labor to 0. A pretty annoying situation.

|4.21.06 @ 12:56PM|#

To the extent that there is an open space shortage in the US, it is a regional/metro area problem (one that is heightened by sprawl and lower density urban areas, Mike, not alleviated by them), not a national or even statewide problem. Even Rhode Island, taken as a whole, has considerable open space.

And this problem has nothing at all to do with overall population or even the rate of increase, but with local and regional urban design. Some high population, high-growth metro areas, such as Seattle, have done a much better job preserving open space than some low-growth metro areas (such as metro Detroit), or (relatively) low-population metro areas (such as certain coreless "suburban" regions in the sun belt).

|4.21.06 @ 1:10PM|#

I'm not sure how matter this could be addressed, but even as a proponent of free-market capitalism I have a hard time approving of anyone being taken advantage of after providing an honest day's work.

As a proponent of free market capitalism, you should hit upon the solution rather quickly. One should not need the permission of the state in order to work. Period.

|4.21.06 @ 2:06PM|#

"Open space" has become a euphemism for "minimum lot size zoning". To the extent that that's all we seem capable of building anymore, I suppose I could see a problem with absorbing many millions of new arrivals. But done intelligently, and by actually listening to demand (there is a huge unmet demand for forms of living that we've mostly done away with: cities and small towns), I think we could absorb everyone who wants to come here.

|4.21.06 @ 2:34PM|#

"I forced boys younger than you to live lifetimes of poverty & deprivation. I felt I owed it to them."

Or in other words, what would have happened if the guys that shot Ceaucescu would have moved to Germany to mow lawns?

Mike|4.21.06 @ 3:34PM|#

To the extent that there is an open space shortage in the US, it is a regional/metro area problem (one that is heightened by sprawl and lower density urban areas, Mike, not alleviated by them)

My original point was meant to be two-fold:

1) There is no shortage of space, overall.
2) Even at the metro level, the trend AWAY from very high density living ensures that the sardine-can-future is very unlikely. Yes, sprawl takes more space, but space isn't a problem.

You're right that sprawl brings its own problems, but they are not the problems predicted by a) anti-urbanites from the past or b) anti-immigrationites of today.

|4.21.06 @ 10:15PM|#

Space is not the issue, but things like water, energy, park/recreational utilization, etc sure are. There is also simply a limit to how fast we can grow without losing control of the system. If 300 million potential immigrants showed up tomorrow, we could not possibly hope to house, feed, or educate them. We have the space and resources to let in several million people per year (we can quibble about the exact number, of course), but we should clearly do so in an orderly, controlled fashion that serves our nation's interests as best as possible.

In response to UtilityMaximizer, I think we agree. Actually, more than a decade ago, I wrote as the thesis for my mandatory history class in college that the US immigration policy should be similar to what you said - essentially, requiring immigrants to pay a fee of several thousand dollars, deducted from their paychecks. This would eliminate dead-weights and assure us that the people we are letting in really are committed, while killing the "immigrants are freeloaders" meme. It would also increase the quality of the applicants, as only those with the potential to make a few thousand bucks would bother to apply. Having people of determination and skill enter our country is a blessing, and we should be seeking these people out.

|4.22.06 @ 1:02PM|#

"...when the boss can bring the machinery of state force down on you whenever he feels like it - your "negotiations" with him cannot be said to be genuinely uncoerced."-joe

When the employee has gone to considerable trouble to put himself in that position it is bit difficult to say that he is coerced. The illegal immigrant came to this country because he is willing to work for low wages in poor working conditions (at least relative to most native born citizens). That is his competitive advantage in the US workplace. That will not go away by waving a wand to make him "documented".

|4.22.06 @ 1:10PM|#

MJ-

It is true that most poor immigrants will always be in low-paying jobs that aren't terribly fun. But if they didn't have to worry about deportation, and if they didn't have to limit their job search to employers who are willing to break the law, their conditions would still improve. They could choose from a wider range of jobs. Still not great jobs, but better than the place described in Jesse's article.

|4.22.06 @ 1:19PM|#

I would be open to charging an immigration fee. Let in anybody can cough up a one time fee of, say, $4000, and who can pass a background check against criminal and terrorist databases. That fee, although steep, would still be competitive with what the coyotes are charging, because the people who pay it would be able to live and work in the US without fear of the law.

Border enforcement would still be a tough task, but probably not as tough because:

1) If fewer people are trying to sneak in then the task becomes more manageable. Not easy, of course, since the size of the border is fixed, but comparatively easier.

2) If fewer people are willing to pay for a smuggler's services, then smugglers won't be willing or able to invest as much ingenuity in finding ways around the border guards. That shifts the tide in our favor.

I don't like the idea of guest worker programs that require a person to remain continuously employed to stay here. Frictional unemployment is a normal and healthy part of the free market. Ill-conceived enterprises fail, improving economic efficiency. People realize that they're in the wrong job so they live off savings while looking for another job. And so forth. To make residency contingent on continuous employment is to hamper the free market.

Also, when people complain about treatment of workers, the standard libertarian response is to find another job. OK, fair enough. But if some people know that quitting will put them in legal jeopardy, that basically amounts to putting a thumb on the scales to shift the balance of power between the employee and the employer.

Finally, conservatarians, take heart: If we let in 10 million people per year at $4k per person, that would go a long way toward funding more wars against countries that had nothing to do with 9/11.