Posted on 01/07/2004 10:51:13 AM PST by xsysmgr
Today the president announces his plan for a vast new guestworker system, which would grant amnesty to millions of illegals currently in the United States, as well as import millions of new workers from abroad. (The president will also call for an increase in permanent legal immigration beyond the current rate of one million a year.)
I make the argument against amnesty in the cover story for the upcoming print version of NR, but here I want to look at the basic assumption underlying the whole Bush plan: that there are jobs Americans simply won't do, so that the importation of foreigners is essential. Whether these foreign workers are illegal aliens, guestworkers, or permanent legal immigrants is a detail to be worked out by us, the argument goes, but our need for them is unchanged.
Even many opponents of the proposed Bush Amnesty assume this to be true, leading them to propose new and improved guestworker programs, with provisions for stricter controls against permanent settlement, greater incentives to return, tighter enforcement against unscrupulous employers, etc.
As well-meaning as such efforts may be, the basic assumption is false — there is simply no economic reason to import foreign workers.
If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up (say, through actually enforcing the immigration law, for starters), employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.
Many people fear the first part of such a response, claiming that prices for fruits and vegetables would skyrocket, fueling inflation. But since all unskilled labor — from Americans and foreigners, in all industries — accounts for such a small part of our economy, perhaps four percent of GDP, we can tighten the labor market without any fear of sparking meaningful inflation. Agricultural economist Philip Martin has pointed out that labor accounts for only about ten percent of the retail price of a head of lettuce, for instance, so even doubling the wages of pickers would have little noticeable effect on consumers.
But it's the second part of the response to a tighter labor market that people just don't get. By holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.
That this is so should not be a surprise. Julian Simon, in his 1981 classic, The Ultimate Resource, wrote about how scarcity leads to innovation:
It is important to recognize that discoveries of improved methods and of substitute products are not just luck. They happen in response to "scarcity" — an increase in cost. Even after a discovery is made, there is a good chance that it will not be put into operation until there is need for it due to rising cost. This point is important: Scarcity and technological advance are not two unrelated competitors in a race; rather, each influences the other.
As it is for copper or oil, this fact is true also for labor; as wages have risen over time, innovators have devised ways of substituting capital for labor, increasing productivity to the benefit of all. The converse, of course, is also true; the artificial superabundance of a resource will tend to remove much of the incentive for innovation.
Stagnating innovation caused by excessive immigration is perhaps most apparent in the most immigrant-dependent activity — the harvest of fresh fruit and vegetables. The period from 1960 to 1975 (roughly from the end of the "Bracero" program, which imported Mexican farmworkers, to the beginning of the mass illegal immigration we are still experiencing today) was a period of considerable agricultural mechanization. But a continuing increase in the acreage and number of crops harvested mechanically did not materialize as expected, in large part because the supply of workers remained artificially large due to the growing illegal immigration we were politically unwilling to stop.
An example of a productivity improvement that "will not be put into operation until there is need for it due to rising cost," as Simon said, is in raisin grapes]. The production of raisins in California's Central Valley is one of the most labor-intensive activities in North America. Conventional methods require bunches of grapes to be cut by hand, manually placed in a tray for drying, manually turned, manually collected.
But starting in the 1950s in Australia (where there was no large supply of foreign farm labor), farmers were compelled by circumstances to develop a laborsaving method called "dried-on-the-vine" (DOV) production. This involves growing the grapevines on trellises, then, when the grapes are ready, cutting the base of the vine instead of cutting each bunch of grapes individually. This new method radically reduces labor demand at harvest time and increases yield per acre by up to 200 percent. But this high-productivity, innovative method of production has spread very slowly in the United States because the mass availability of foreign workers has served as a disincentive to farmers to make the necessary capital investment.
But perhaps immigration's role in retarding economic modernization is confined to agriculture, which, after all, is very different from the rest of the economy. Nope. Manufacturing sees the same phenomenon of a scarcity of low-skilled labor yielding innovation while a surfeit yields stagnation. An example of the latter: A 1995 report on southern California's apparel industry, prepared by Southern California Edison, warned of the danger to the industry of reliance on low-cost foreign labor:
In southern California, apparel productivity gains have been made through slow-growth in wages. While a large, low-cost labor pool has been a boon to apparel production in the past, overreliance on relatively low-cost sources of labor may now cost the industry dearly. The fact is, southern California has fallen behind both domestic and international competitors, even some of its lowest-labor-cost competitors, in applying the array of production and communications technologies available to the industry (such as computer aided design and electronic data interchange)." (Emphasis in original)
Conversely, home builders, who are still less reliant on foreign workers than some other industries, have begun to modernize construction techniques. The higher cost of labor means that "In the long run, we'll see a move toward homes built in factories," as Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research at the National Association of Home Builders, told the Washington Post several years ago. But as immigrants increasingly move into this industry, we can expect such innovation to spread much more slowly than it would otherwise.
But surely immigration is needed fill jobs in the service industry? After all, without immigrants, who will pump our gas? Oh, wait — we never imported immigrants for that and so now we pump our own gas, aided by technology that lets us pay at the pump — thus we have fewer attendants but more gas stations and get in and out faster than we used to when we trusted our car to the man who wore the Texaco star.
Other innovations suggest how, despite the protestations of employers, a tight low-skilled labor market can spur modernization even in the service sector: Automated switches have replaced most telephone operators, continuous-batch washing machines reduce labor demand for hotels, buffet-style restaurants need much less staff that full-service ones. As unlikely as it might seem, many VA hospitals are now using mobile robots to ferry medicines from their pharmacies to various nurse's stations, eliminating the need for a worker to perform that task. And devices like automatic vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, and pool cleaners are increasingly available to consumers. Keeping down low-skilled labor costs through the president's vast new guestworker plan would stifle this ongoing modernization process.
The idea that a modern society like ours requires the ministrations of foreign workers, because there is no other way to do get these jobs done, smacks of the apocryphal quote from a 19th-century patent commissioner: "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
— NRO Contributor Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a visiting fellow at the Nixon Center.
Uh that's the employer's purpose, to put out the best product in the market at the lowest possible price, unless you are believer in Hillary economics.
Uh psedo-Buchanan trogdude, GW Bush even though not born in Texas spent most of his life there, even became Governor, and didn't institute an income tax.
Think Snow, Shays etc.
No kidding. What he's saying is that there are jobs that Americans won't do for less than the cost of living.
Its true...
I will give you perfect example too. In Marin County California every day you drive down Anderson or Bellam in San Rafael and find hundreds of hispanics looking for work. They stand in the sun and the rain, it matters not. They openly advertise there desire to work, to do any work, every day by there mere presence.
5 or so miles away across the bay in Richmond, you can find a similar scene, but looks are decieving. Here the streets are full of the unemployed, sitting on corners, hangin out at the liquor store. This community of African Americans choose to spend their time loitering for the sake of loitering.
Across my entire memory, I can never recall packs of African Americans, or White guys for that matter, standing on the street corners to hopefully cop a job from some homeowner or contractor in Marin. Never ever.
Explain to me how it is that Americans never stand on the street corner for the opportunity to get behind the wooden end of a shovel?
For the record...I am against blanket amnesty...
Think Snow, Shays etc
Yeah right, like Snow or Shays would give the finger to the UN or sign a PBA ban.
That's it in a nutshell. Karl Rove and GWB are buying votes once again, at the expense of law abiding Americans.
Because standing on the corner looking for a job implies that you are willing to work for an employer who will illegally pay below-the-minimum wage, illegally not pay taxes, not pay any benefits etc...
Legitimate employment seekers use the internet, newspapers or other means to find legal employers.
Sure thing.
First off, guys standing on street corners to push shovels get paid well over minimum wage. In my neck of the woods, the MW is 6 and change. These street folk demand 10 and more.
Second, hiring a person off the street 9 times out 10 is for a very short duration. Last I checked you don't even need to report income less than 500 annually.
Third, benefits are for long term workers. If a street worker turns out to be a good catch, these people are typically assimilated into the organization and eventually win the benefits(provided they have papers).
Fourth, any employer who is succesful knows that seriel street hiring to avoid taxes and benefits is a losing proposition. Training costs money and is an investment to the business. They don't hire and fire and piss money down a rathole training people over and over again to do the same job.
Lastly...please tell me your joking that construction, type laborers should use the internet to seek employement? That was the best laugh all day
That said there is no denying that his excuse for a domestic policy for the most part mimics that of a lefty dem.
We already are aren't we? Especially in the border states.
This issue is the product of liberal handout policies. Not foreign born workers producing in our economy.
There is nothing wrong with welcoming foreign labor. There is everything wrong with socialist handout programs.
Sounds like your mixing apples and oranges. The causal relatsionship isn't that of foreign labor = subsidy....the causal relatsionship is liberals = subsidy...
Keep your eye on the ball.
Well...thats a problem with our system...not the Hispanic workers. The fact is that there are gazillions of natural born citizens who will do that day in and day out anyway, ie Gorons and Deaniacs
And I am not so sure the liberals can count on a rubber stamp from these folks either. They are a god fearing people rich with family values and morals...
Only time will tell there.
Let's see how many Americans show up for the job.
That's why Juan is here. And he doesn't bitch. And he sends money home to Mexico.
What do you object to - the "little" or the "Vermont".
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