Arbeit Macht Frei

New at Reason: Caitlin Flanagan defines crimes against humanity down, and declares, "I'm guilty!" The charges include making sure her family is well cared for and giving a job to a woman who wants it. Brian Doherty is shocked.

Comments

[joe]

"Flanagan doesn't try to explain why this moral dilemma is actually a moral dilemma at all?she merely assumes that the average Atlantic reader will surely see just how evil it is to offer someone less well off than you compensation for labor"

Because you're taking advantage of someone's vulnerable position to get a good deal.

Does Doherty think a legal non-person under constant threat of deportation is free to bargain with her employer?

I think the answer is to treat your help decently, pay them a fair wage, and dismantle the cheap labor industry that is our harsh, selectively enforced immigration system, but it is a fair question to ask.

As with the free trade debate, it's amazing how much coercion libertarians will put up with, when that state coercion has the effect of driving down wages. Drive them up, however, and let the wailing begin.

[librarian]

I agree with Doherty. Did my fair share of cleaning and babysitting, when I just came to this country...it helped me to make a living, while I was getting myself oriented to new surroundings. Now, with a graduate degree and a full-time white-collar job, I am going to feel just fine hiring a nanny, if necessary. Women come to this country looking for a job - there is no shame in giving them this job, provided that you treat them decently and pay them as agreed.

[thoreau]

Joe-

Very good point. It's easy for us to say "Let the market work, let people bargain freely...yaddah yaddah yaddah." What we forget is that a person who's here illegally might have a tough time going to court to challenge an employer who violates a contract. The free market works well when people are free to bargain and have confidence that bargains will be enforced by courts. A person with inferior legal status can't be confident in his or her ability to bargain.

Joe also makes a good point in that some of a libertarian bent are more sympathetic to the employer half of the bargaining pair, and seem less upset if the laws weaken an employee's position in the transaction. Personally, I prefer to take a balanced approach, and uphold the rights of both parties, while favoring the interests of neither.

[nobody]

I'm getting good at this. I could tell it was Joe's post above even before I saw his name.

[Jesse Walker]

From the article: "some companies are so unscrupulous they take advantage of their legally disadvantaged workers and refuse to pay them their agreed-on due. (Bush's plan, by legalizing workers, could do a lot to help at least that last problem.)"

[thoreau]

My understanding is that Bush's plan would make visas contingent on continued employment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If that is in fact the case, then what's to stop a company from violating contracts with workers? A worker who complains is fired. Sure, there are all sorts of whistle-blower statutes, but those don't do the whistle-blower much good if he's already out of the country.

I have a sneaking suspicion that INS will be remarkably efficient about tracking down and removing any alien who loses his job. Call me crazy, but it's a hunch. And if that means the alien is gone before he can testify in a lawsuit over a contract violation, well, too bad. It wouldn't be the first time that government has served the interests of big business rather than the interests of the free market. (Yes, there is a difference.)

Anyway, I don't mind if a business owner removes an employee from his property. But if the business owner can call INS and say "I need this guy removed from the country", well, that's a whole other ball of wax.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken in my understanding of this program.

[Percy Dovetonsils]

Oh, the guilt of the "progressive"... This reminds me, of all things, of a recent article about the Super Bowl, in which the author compared the owners of the Patriots and the Panthers to plantation owners, watching their field hands toil from the comfort of their skyboxes. (Never mind that these "field hands" earn a handsome salary that, for a number of playrs, is far more than I'll ever see in my lifetime.)

So, if white people employing differently-hued people is, by definition, exploitive, what should white people do? Only hire fellow whiteys?

[Jason Ligon]

joe and thoreau,

What do you propose as a replacement mechanism for 'willingness to pay'? How does one determine what the 'fair' price to offer an illegal immigrant may be?

There are only a couple of scenarios here:

1) The immigrant is here illegally, in which case they are always in danger of being deported. This is a function of their choice to be here illegally rather than the alternative.

2) The immigrant is made legal without regard to employment status. Okay, but you had better find more illegal immigrants. Remember, the big lie is that we need immigrants to work jobs 'Americans don't want,' when what really has happened is that between minimum wage and labor laws, we have decided that it is ILLEGAL for Americans to work some jobs.

3) You make immigrants legal based on employment. Their legality is based on employment, and they are slightly better off than they were before in that deportation can result from being fired, but not much else. An old school illegal could be deported at any time. I am fond of this as a means of ensuring someone else besides me pays for the greed of the AARP.

4) The illegal has to stay home.

[Equality 7-2521]

joe and thoreau say:

"As with the free trade debate, it's amazing how much coercion libertarians will put up with, when that state coercion has the effect of driving down wages. Drive them up, however, and let the wailing begin."

What state coercion that drives down wages are you referring to?

"Personally, I prefer to take a balanced approach, and uphold the rights of both parties, while favoring the interests of neither."

Well everyone thinks their approach is balanced (just ask Fox News). To me saying both parties can enter into any contract they agree to seems pretty balanced.

[thoreau]

Equality-

The coercion would be if the INS can remove you from the country because you lost your job. It gives employers a big cudgel to wield against anybody who might contest a breach of contract.

Jason-

You make a good point in that some of our labor regulations make illegals more attractive than legals. I oppose minimum wage laws for somewhat more pragmatic reasons than "freedom of contract": They artificially decrease the supply of jobs available in the aboveground economy, and drive those jobs to an underground economy where contracts can't be reliably enforced.

OK, in the end it amounts to the same objection, that they impede the function of the market. But the first objection (freedom of contract) sounds like a plea on behalf of the employer, while the second objection is a plea on behalf of workers. If libertarians want left-leaning voters (not the same as leftists or left-leaning politicians, all I mean here is individuals who think of Dems as the lesser evil) to support them, then appealing to the interests of workers is a more fruitful argument.

Anyway, as long as there are minimum wage laws as well as "guest worker" visas contingent on employment, employers will either hire illegal immigrants rather than legalized "guest workers", or else they'll break contracts with guest workers and then arrange deportation for anybody who says "Hey, my paycheck was less than what we agreed on."

So the solution is to repeal the minimum wage and to make visas available without the requirement of employment. Too bad that's a political impossibility.

[Equality 7-2521]

Thoreau,

You didnt make the original statement, but if that is what joe is referring to, he is incorrect. libertarians are in favor of open immigration.

[Jennifer]

Thoreau's remarks are so good I won't try to add a thing. But I have some personal advice for Ms. Flanagan, should she be reading this--if you feel so guilty about exploiting your nanny, give her a goddamned raise!

[thoreau]

Jennifer-

Good point! "Oh, I feel so guilty that I don't pay her more!" Then freakin' pay her more!

[Jennifer]

Everybody--
I just read Ms. Flanagan's actual Atlantic article, as opposed to Reason's mention of it, and I officially feel guilty for my flippant "give her a raise" mark. Ms. Flanagan makes some good points.

[joe]

Jason, the problem is the existence of this category of person called "illegal immigrant," whose primary purpose in our economy and society is to be exploited. How do you figure out the right wage to pay a person you're exploiting? How the hell am I supposed to answer that? The old fashioned way, agreeing on a price, doesn't work, because the gun you are holding to their head (or letting someone else hold to their head) makes them quite agreeable. That's the coercion I'm referring to, Equality. And the original, libertarian post doesn't seem to have very nice things to say about people who recognize the government's anti-worker interference with the domestic labor market.

I'm for open borders, lots of documentation, and vigorous enforcement of intelligent security laws.

You know, a liberal.

[KJ]

joe & thoreau,

you have a point there. Economics 101 says that the more poorly skilled workers there are, the less they will make. The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center recently published a study finding that natives and established immigrants in the USA earn 11-percent less when they work with new Hispanic immigrants. Minority workers are especially hard hit ? they earn an average of 14 percent less. The more new immigrants there are, the less the other workers make.

So, high-level immigration is without doubt something of a corporate-welfare program, serving as a kind of rolling, reverse minimum-wage law.

The dynamic at work is simple: supply and demand. Immigration floods the country with unskilled workers, increasing the supply of people without a high-school education during the past decade about 21 percent (but increasing the supply of all other workers only by roughly 4 percent).
About half of the decline in real wages for native high-school dropouts from 1980 to 1994 was due to immigration.

Fact is that societies have always sought to exploit cheap labor with no or few rights, from ancient Greece with its Helots to the antebellum south with its slaves. Our reliance on non-documented immigrant labor is nowhere near as odious as those prior systems, but it is corrupting nevertheless.

[joe]

I think you miss the mark slightly, KJ. You assume that the wage drag is caused by market forces of supply and demand. But the low wages earned by "recent immigrants," a category which includes both legal and illegal immigrants, are lower than they would be in a free market, because of the exploitation. Similarly, established immigrants who are still working at shit jobs with new immigrants are more likely to be undocumented, no?

Even when undocumented workers are counted, we are still a long way from a labor glut. The low wages paid to easily exploitable people are not the result of supply and demand.

[Jason Ligon]

joe:

"Jason, the problem is the existence of this category of person called "illegal immigrant,"

Now, I don't dispute that, but it seems that there is a problem if you have any criteria at all other than wide open borders. I know you indicated you support open borders, but you also indicated that you want reasonable security controls (so do I). That is where the danger lies. If we place controls, there will be a class of illegal immigrants again.

I ask myself this often, and have not settled on a good answer. What do you mean by 'open borders'? What would it look like?

[Jason Ligon]

joe:

Just curious, do your pals at the AFL-CIO know that liberals support open borders?

[joe]

Jason, even the industrial unions are coming around on immigration.

"If we place controls, there will be a class of illegal immigrants again." True enough, but shrinking that class to a few thousand career criminals and terrorists makes it a manageable problem, which we actually have a chance of addressing to a satisfactory degree. It also allows the millions of regular immigrants to bargain for wages like free people, helping them, and reducing wage drain. The few thousand people who would still be illegal under an immigration policy based on security, not nativism, would be 1) unlikely to take legitimate jobs anyway, and 2) too few in number to have a substantive impact on wages.

Also, it removes the moral stink from immigration enforcement, because the people on the receiving end have actually done something besides move to a new city to get a better job.