The Red Pill

Illegal Alien Guest Worker Program

Now here's an issue that the Dems should really be screaming about, but I haven't heard any complaints from them. No, the group that seems to be complaining about this is the conservative Republican base.

The Dems are supposed to be all about the little guy, the blue collar workers, the Unions. For Pete's sake, where are the Unions on this issue? The threat to Union jobs is huge! Or do they simply see the illegal aliens as potential Union workers some day?

So for you Dems - what about this issue? Do you want illegal aliens taking all the low paying jobs and, by the way, keeping wages low?

We are now entering a time when highly skilled, high paying jobs are being transferred overseas faster than you can keep track. And the illegals are pouring into our country to take all the low-paying, unskilled jobs that supposedly no American wants. The combination of high paying jobs being eliminated and a flood of illegal cheap labor will combine to keep American unemployment high and drag down average American wages.

Seriously, what is the future for jobs in America? Hopefully this will rise to become the top issue of the Presidential election instead of who did what in the military 30 years ago (funny how the Dems didn't raise that as an important issue during the previous eight years, but that's a different topic).

Remember all those telephone service centers being set up in the Mid-West/West (Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas) and some in the South? Many will be going overseas. In my own industry, programming and testing jobs are going overseas by the thousands. And manufacturing - that's been moving offshore for years now (remember the auto manufacturing jobs) and continuing with garment (Levi's has now closed ALL manufacturing in the US) and high tech.

A big problem is how fast jobs are being moved overseas - literally overnight, especially in telephone service centers and programming/testing jobs. Unlike the auto workers of decades past, there is no warning and no training for new positions. On the plus side, those who are now losing their jobs are highly educated and can, in theory, more easily adapt to new careers.

But what are the new careers? In high tech, business is recovering after the Internet bubble burst. But the only new jobs being created are overseas. I've heard a lot of people in high tech are moving to real estate and mortgage broker positions, but that's just a temporary situation that will soon come to an end as interest rates go back up.

On the lower side the illegals are taking over jobs in agriculture, construction, landscaping services, houskeeping and janitorial, and even retail. The low wages keep prices low, but also keep overall wages low.

This opinion piece ran in the Sacramento Bee.

By Daniel Weintraub
Sunday, February 8, 2004

I was always amazed, growing up near the border in San Diego, at what a difference an imaginary line could make. On one side of the border there was prosperity, economic growth, a robust middle class. On the other side: poverty, corruption, a huge gap between the rich and poor.
That disturbing contrast led me to imagine a world without borders, where everyone enjoyed the economic freedom and opportunity we take for granted in the United States. A world where the individual, not the state, reigns supreme. Such a place remains my ideal.

But that is not the world we live in today, nor will we, anytime soon. We have nations and borders that divide us, and rules for immigration and citizenship. And as long as we do, it makes sense to enforce and follow them. Otherwise we get chaos.

Now President Bush has proposed a new immigration policy that would provide legal status to illegal immigrants working in the United States and to workers from other countries who can show they have a job offer here.

Bush deserves credit for at least addressing the problem of illegal immigration, which has been ignored for too long by a series of presidents. But his proposal is far too broad, and would probably do little to slow the flow of illegals. It might even make things worse.

Already, border agents are reporting a new wave of illegal immigration triggered by Bush's proposal. The president's plan was widely publicized in Mexico and led people to believe that if they could just get into the United States, they would get amnesty when the new rules took effect. That's similar to what happened after the last time the U.S. granted amnesty to illegal immigrants, in 1986. Every time the government does so, it makes fools of those who wait their turn to immigrate legally and creates a strong magnet for people to get here any way they can.

In addition, America's earlier experience with guest worker programs, and that of Europe, suggests that immigrants who enter the country as guests, even with a tie to an employer, often don't leave when their job ends. Such a program can be simply another way to reside here illegally, without having to pay a "coyote" and risk dangerous conditions sneaking across the border.

But the deeper question is whether the United States needs a guest worker program at all, and who would gain and lose from it.

It would certainly help impoverished Mexicans, who would find it easier to come here in search of a better life. It would help American business owners looking for cheap labor. But it would be a major blow to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants at the low end of the of job market, whose wages are bid down by the presence of a large and seemingly inexhaustible pool of unskilled labor.

California's widening gap between rich and poor is already evidence that the state is having trouble absorbing the number of immigrants it has today. The last census found that 26 percent of state residents are foreign-born, the highest proportion since 1890. In four California cities - Glendale, El Monte, Santa Ana and Daly City - the majority of the population was born in another country.

And recent figures show that foreign-born immigrants, legal or illegal, are three times more likely to live in poverty as whites and Asians who were born in the United States, and a about a third more likely to live in poverty as native-born Hispanics and African Americans.

The most compelling argument for liberalizing immigration is that immigrants fill jobs Americans don't want. But to the extent that is true, it's only true because those jobs don't pay enough to attract American labor. Without the safety-valve of immigrant labor, wages would rise until they were high enough to draw workers from other fields.

In some industries, this might cause problems. Garment factories in Southern California that rely almost entirely on immigrant labor might not be able to compete in the world economy paying higher wages. Agriculture, with its seasonal and migrant work in remote locations, probably will always have trouble finding workers, and might need to be treated as a special case.

But surely our economy could survive if the hotels, restaurants, landscapers and construction companies that now employ illegal immigrants were instead forced to hire legal residents and citizens. We would all pay a little more for those services, but we would also have lower unemployment and fewer of the social costs associated with poverty.

Bush's proposal appears to have been an attempt to attract the Hispanic vote. If so, it was misguided. Hispanics who are already citizens are not likely to support a policy that promises to further impoverish them.