Posted on 04/01/2006 10:55:38 AM PST by Westpole
Here is a basic question. If we could wave a magic wand and in a short time every illegal worker returned to his native county, would we be richer or poorer?
The answer is substantially poorer. In fact it would trigger an economic crisis that could well shatter our economy. Various economic models have tried to answer whether we could get alone without foriegn workers but no model has yet captured the domino effect of a complete elimination of foriegn workers. No employer wants to be quoted on his business or industry's dependancy for obvious reasons. But this is the scenario that would unfold if that magic wand was waved.
There has been some discussion of the negative effects in the agricultural industry where overwhelming the workers are Mexican migrants. Some looney congressmen yesterday suggest prison workers could do that work. But agriculture would be the least of our problems. At least 50% of the construction sites across the country would be shut down. Ditto for a substantial portion of hotels, motels, and restaurants.
The answer is substantially poorer. In fact it would trigger an economic crisis that could well shatter our economy. Various economic models have tried to answer whether we could get alone without foriegn workers but no model has yet captured the domino effect of a complete elimination of foriegn workers. No employer wants to be quoted on his business or industry's dependancy for obvious reasons. But this is the scenario that would unfold if that magic wand was waved.
There has been some discussion of the negative effects in the agricultural industry where overwhelming the workers are Mexican migrants. Some looney congressmen yesterday suggest prison workers could do that work. But agriculture would be the least of our problems. At least 50% of the construction sites across the country would be shut down. Ditto for a substantial portion of hotels, motels, and restaurants. In varying proptions other industries including manufactoring would face similar shut downs.
In effect the elimination of foriegn workers would act like a strike. When a union strikes the workers stop working and the business shuts down or hires replacements workers. Oh yes the anti-immigration say but that simply means employers would pay more and American workers would fill in.
The problem with this wishful thinking is that replacement workers would have to come totally from the ranks of the unemployed. And there simply are not nearly enough unemployed workers to fill the needs. Remember that even crop picking requires some skills, construction work is highly skilled and even work associated with the hospitality industry requires enormous training and a dependable work force.
So if a company could not find replacement workers it would shut down...and that would mean ironically greater unemployment. Non of the advanced skill trades for example in HVAC, electrical, plumbing etc in the construction industry could do their work if there were no workers available to set up the forms to build the building in the first place.
This country has never faced a massive general strike. Even in the days when the United Auto Workers could threaten to bring the country to its knees by stopping auto production would pale in comparison to such a massive withdrawal of labor.
Those that have fanned the flames of anti-immigrant prejudice appeal to racial fears and security fears risk our economy with their solutions. The reality is no there are not sufficient Americans to do the work foriegn workers are doing.
Despite all the dust up over how tough our policies should be on illegal immigration the law of supply and demand usually trumps. Remember before we had the War on Terror we had the War on Drugs. Similar calls were heard to close the border. A powerful new police force was formed to stop the contraband, the DEA. Well so far nothing hoped for as occured. Drug smuggling is unabated though our prisons are full. Somehow unless we deal with diminishing demand....the supply will be there.
There is no border in the world between such a rich country and such a poor country as the United States and Mexico. The result is we need vast numbers of workers...coincidentally they need the jobs. Rather than rail against this our policy should be to embrace economic growth and opportunity. The president is from Texas and knows first hand that it makes much more sense to adopt a sensible, econmically viable guest worker program than either the status quo of condoning a shadow work force or the extremely onerous suggestions that we attempt to get rid at whatever cost every illegal worker in the country. So what would happen if all the foriegn workers stayed home? You would hear a giant sucking sound....of our economy doing down the drain.
Beat it loser...
Right, because the leeches are breaking the law.
Yeah. Forget about those millions of more qualified people around the world who are trying to get here legally. Let's just give citizenship to Mexicans with a 4th grade education.
Sudhir, who speaks English, and is a college graduate, shouldn't bother applying. We need illiterate blue collar workers more. /sarc
Good post. I agree completely. Too bad many here on FR seem not to understand basic economics.
Interesting....Ben Stein, Michael Medved, and others basically agree.....and WHO are YOU to tell others to BEAT IT?
Except for the fruit and fern pickers the illegals used to stay home.
Why are they so needed now and not then?
I find it impossible to believe that no legal Americans will do jobs in construction or the hotel/motel/restraunt industry.
susie
More Bullsh$t. America can survive anything including losing a bunch of third world turds that are looting our national treasury.
Oh the horror. I shudder to think.
How did America survive these 200-plus years without hoardes of illegal Mexican workers flooding across the border.
I'm stumped. How 'bout you?
Here's an idea; let's try it for twenty years and see if you're right.
Close the border and we'll talk about the illegals remaining in this country.
Well, this is a bunch of hooey.
Of COURSE these jobs are getting done in areas of the country where (so far) the ILLEGALS have not infiltrated.
Sheesh.
We can get ALL the workers we need LEGALLY!
Illegals are not needed.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Lame article on BS premise.
Is there a link to an article?
It's a Vanity.
You're right- we'd be just like Canada, Australia or New Zealand- none of which has large-scale immigration of unskilled labor. And life is a living hell there. (sarcasm)
I WILL agree that in 15-20 years we'll have a demographic crisis. Too few young people to work and take care of the older people. Then we may well have a need for mass immigration. But we don't now.
The Teamsters brought the country to it's knees ( for a short while ) during the Carter years.
You don't mention how the you get the illegals already here to come in from the cold.
you don't have a solution either.
If sending 'em all back shuts the country down, shut it down.
You are dillusional if you really think that all, or even most, of the businesses in America willingly or knowingly hire illegal hispanic workers.
Those which do are a criminal minority, and should be fined heavily the first two times they are caught, and should face a small jail sentence the third time they are caught.
Medved is a film critic.
How does this make him an immigration expert, an economist, or otherwise remotely qualified on this particular issue? If you need surgery, are you planning to have Roger Ebert perform it?
#1. It is NOT a question of economics. It about the rule of law and the preservation of our culture.
#2. Illegals are a net LOSS, courtesy of our socialistic gubmint'.
What would happen?
No more tuberculosis.
Higher pay for American low skilled workers, who will spend it here rather than remit it to Mexico.
Less emergency rooms closing.
School districts would have a lot less pressure on them as would our healthcare system.
No more (growth) of MS-13 or other foreign gans.
No more rallies with Mexican flags.
And all the good that not importing poverty would bring the country, including less socialism.
Agribusiness would be less subsidized.
The playing field would be level for compeition in farming, construction, etc. as right now employers of illegals have a competitive advantage.
Our laws would no longer be a joke.
Then if we are actually short workers, well, we'd have an incentive to increase and speed up legal immigration.
LOL, another April Fools post, man there sure are a luck of jokers here today. Economy destroyed if criminal stopped commiting crime! LOL Best one yet!
That is the whole point of this issue. Too bad more folks don't recognize it.
All the greedy gringos would have to mow their own lawns and grow some lettuce for themselves. Doesn't seem like too much to ask to preserve our republic. Yes it's that simple, be a patriot and don't become addicted to slave labor.
1. Rich white liberals would have nobody to watch their children. 2. It would cost more to have your lawn mowed. 3. Meat would cost 50 cents more a pound. 4. You'd have to sack your own groceries. 5. Fewer cars would be detailed.
And wages have been driven down in the construction trades by the non-union Illegals. Americans would do these jobs for a living wage.
Illegals are being used like slave labor. Guest workers would be like indentured servants stuck in low wage situations staying at the whim of their employers.
Over the short term, when you suddenly toss a big change into the economy, you get some pain. Over time, people adjust
When labor is expensive, what happens is people invent ways to have machines replace people wherever feasible. This is what caused the US to have such technological dominance for the previous hundred years or so.
Where there is an endless supply of cheap labor, there is no incentive to invent better automation. Mexico has endless cheap labor. It has turned it into such a paradise, hasn't it?
Well parsed.
Nobody questions that every developed country need low cost labor. Illegal immigration is not the way to achieve this, however. So yeah, I'm in favor of sending them all home and replacing them with a number of workers we decide we need. Right now, it is totally left to the desires of the illgels. I am not convinced that the number of illegals and their citizen offspring is the right number. I think there are far too many now.
And, for those who think waving a majic wand to solve the illegal immigration will also solve our border security problems. Think again. Even withpout the illegals, our borders will still be just as long and just as pourous.
We must secure the border.
Once again, you are confusing the concept of illegal border jumping migrants with the concept of workers from a foreign country who, by visa or legal application, entered the US in order to work and set down roots of citizenship.
There is a 180-degree difference.
Here is basic question. If we could wave a magic and in a short time every assclown lib got a brain, would we be richer or poorer?
Somehow this doesn't add up to me being better off. This anology is correct, just on a smaller scale then a whole country but the same results. We can't take in the whole world and taking in the whole world will not makes us richer. Only some one who has a 5 year olds mentality would think so.
It is YOU who do not understand basic economics.
If the illegals were gone, businesses would have no choice but to adapt, automate, raise wages, or get out of said business.
>>>LOL, another April Fools post,<<<<
I have to admit, I bought into for a second.
Prove it.
I'm tired of the rhetoric. No facts, "in fact," are stated.
Prove the assertion.
Various economic models have tried to answer whether we could get alone without foreign workers but no model has yet captured the domino effect of a complete elimination of foreign workers.
What economic models and by whom? This is a vacuous empty statement. Rhetoric.
But this is the scenario that would unfold if that magic wand was waved.
Again, prove it. This is another empty vacuous statement.
And there simply are not nearly enough unemployed workers to fill the needs.
Aha, not enough unemployed. That statement alone speaks volumes.
and even work associated with the hospitality industry requires enormous training and a dependable work force.
But apparently not the requirement to speak English. Ever try to get a bar of soap or a towel from these highly trained non-English speaking hospitality workers.
if we have the good sense to toss them, we will be forced to rebuild our industrial base that we have so stupidly exported or otherwise shut down with things like NAFTA (a selling/talking poiny of which was that it would greatly cut illegal entries to the US, remember?), WTO, GATT, and all the AFTA's to come.
picking veggies, babysitting, landscaping, and entry level construction labor are things that OUR OWN kids used to do as summer jobs and when entering the job market.
Here's my solution:
1) Deport all illegals who've chosen to break our laws
2) Immediatley allow in all the people who've been waiting patiently to be let in.
Americans would do those jobs and many others if there was a living wage. Illegals have driven the wages and benefits down.
BUMP! Wht brother to invent an automatic lawn mower when Yuan will do the job for 10 bucks?
Nice essay on why we should allow our country to die. Incidentally, no such magic wand exists...so the "worst" that you could ever hope for would be a much more gradual process. Furthermore, your basic premise, that we would be substantially poorer, is bunk. If all illegals were suddenly, magically returned to their homeland, their would definitely be a sting for those bastards that employed them; but in the long term our country would be so much better off for it. The pro-illegals folks refuse to take a long-term view, as they are much more concerned with the short term hit to their pocketbook while we work to become a healthy country again.
Last time I checked there were approx. 5 million unemployed workers in America.
And of course, the federal govt. is poised to increase the LEGAL visa applications both for Mexican workers and countries around the world.
Yes, we need a lot of people willing to do menial labor/entry positions, but we are the smartest country in the world.
We should be able to figure out how to get them WITHOUT enticing them to flood across our southern border.
What? You mean I'll miss those 80s 2-door Buick Regals with the fancy rims and lettering on the back with the two silhouette babes facing each other on either end of the window? Oh, the horror!
The pro-illegals crowd----particularly those with a vested interest in keeping the supply of illegals flowing----will lie, lie, and lie some more to protect their cheap labor.
And the American taxpayer makes up the difference. This is what I cannot believe people like Ben Stein and Michael Medved can't get their minds around. Cheap labor is not cheap.
susie
Yeah, but what explains people like Tony Snow, Michael Medved and Ben Stein (to name but a few)? I really feel like Alice in the Twilight Zone.....
susie
Bump, back in the fifties I'd earn spending money with the trusty old law boy. I'd drag it all over the "hood" looking for laws that needed mowing. 50/50 I'd get the job if my price was right. Sadly those days are gone.
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