Fred Thompson to address illegal immigrantion (sic) during Atlanta visit

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | October 17, 2007 | Jim Galloway

[Perchant]

Up there in Minnesota, you don't have to worry about it; down here in Southern California, I would. I am on the front lines.

I was raised in California. I watched California go to hell right in front of my eyes. I don't want to see the rest of America become like California.

Your most absurd argument is about "artificially high wages". Wages for citizens are kept artificially low because of an artificially large and illegal labor pool. If the illegals were sent home, some businesses would go out of business ( good riddance ) and many others would need to entice citizen workers away from their current jobs and that raises the wages of all workers. The fallacy that the open borders advocates use is that the only available laborers are the unemployed and unemployable

A man's labor has an intrinsic valuableness that has been effectively devalued by flooding the job market with cheap and illegal labor. If I thought for a minute that we were stuck with the labor debasing policy of importing artificially cheap labor, I would argue for doubling the minimum wage whereas your argument for lowering the minimum wage while not stopping the flow of illegals will create even more demand for illegal alien laborers. Your argument is detached from reality and all common sense.

[Finny]

Your most absurd argument is about "artificially high wages". Wages for citizens are kept artificially low because of an artificially large and illegal labor pool.

Ummm. Okay: A small business needs somebody to do a low-skilled job, like washing dishes. In the books of the restaurant, the actual value of the job is worth, let's say, $5 an hour. However, there is a minimum wage law that says the employer must pay $6.50 an hour AND ALSO match the employee's Social Security contributions; for the sake of argument, let's say that amortizes to the equivalent of 25 cents an hour. So the ACTUAL WAGE that the Government coerces this guy to pay is $6.75 for a job that in real economic terms, returns only $5 per hour. If the employer raised the price of his food to make up for this, he'd lose too many customers. So instead, he shrinks his profit margin and finds other ways to accommodate Big Government.

THEREFORE the employer will put an absolute premium on employees who show up and work hard. I don't know about you, but I've held at least a half-dozen blue-collar jobs in my life right here in California, and tell you true that I'd rather have a fellow employee who was dependable, honest, amiable, and productive and illegal next to me for the course of a year than a series of lazy, sloppy, shady, flaky legal American kids who bitched about earning "only" minimum wage. I have been there. That's why I tell you with absolute certainty that physical deportation of 6 to 12 million illegals would be the stupidest thing on planet earth. There are better solutions to this than brute force.

Now if the guy with the restaurant was free to pay what he wanted for the job, it would drop the bottom out of the market for huge numbers of illegal immigrant workers (as opposed to non-workers sucking on the government tit -- that's a whole 'nother talk show and a major contributor to the illegal worker problem). American teen-agers could get very cool part-time jobs not available now because employers don't have the freedom to create jobs of variable pay rates. Teen-agers would learn an excellent work ethic -- the better they perform, the more valuable they become to the employer, and the higher they get paid. Illegal Mexican adults (who do many of these jobs today) would find it less lucrative to be here because the wages would be considerably less and the competition would be considerably tougher.

How do you extrapolate your argument for lowering the minimum wage while not stopping the flow of illegals ? You really honestly think that I'm for throwing all immigration controls to the wind? Do you seriously think I'm advocating for wide-open borders to all who want to come? That's an insult and beneath you. I am saying that physical border control alone will have zero affect on this problem (of illegal workers in search of low-skilled jobs that pay the equivalent of high-skilled jobs in their home nations) except to exacerbate strife, because the real problem has nothing to do with the borders and everything to do with Big Government interference in the economy and realms of personal responsibility.

Brute force -- punishing American business, imposing ever-stricter Big Government regulation on free commerce, including the relationships between American employers and American employees, is a fool's errand. This problem was caused by brute force! Brute force of taking our tax money away to pay for government-subsidized basic services such as education and medical care to illegal "minorities," and the brute force of making businesses pay more than a fair wage just to buy some votes for politicians who push minimum wage laws on a public too economically illiterate to understand its destructive false premise.

[Perchant]

A small business needs somebody to do a low-skilled job, like washing dishes. In the books of the restaurant, the actual value of the job is worth, let's say, $5 an hour.

You are setting up your argument with a faulty premise. A business owner's books don't determine the "actual value" of a job. If there aren't enough willing laborers to wash dishes at $5 dollars an hour, washing dishes becomes a $6 dollar an hour job. If the owner can't find someone to wash dishes at $12 an hour, the job becomes a $15 an hour job and maybe the employer will need to offer other benefits to entice someone to come wash dishes for him.