Immigration Heats Up
Nick Gillespie | March 27, 2006, 7:42am
The immigration debate--already on a rolling boil for some time now--looks to spill over on to the stove as the Senate gets around to passing overdue legislation on the issue. The Financial Times lays out the triple threat of our current policy:
The Senate's deliberations, scheduled to start Tuesday and extend over the next two weeks, could reshape a national immigration system that is widely perceived as failing the foreigners who want to enter the United States, citizens who expect it to prevent illegal border crossings and employers who look to it for workers to fill jobs that many Americans refuse to do.
More here.
Late last year, the House of Reps overwhelmingly passed an immigration bill that increased fines and penalties for illegal immigrants and employers. That legislation, which pointedly refused to address guest-worker programs, was rightly seen as a slap at President Bush, who was widely attacked within GOP circles for talking up various types of plans that might legitimate illegals. The FT notes that immigration splits the Republicans in two:
The issue pits two of the party's core constituencies against each other, with social conservatives insisting on tough enforcement and the need to protect American culture and the business lobby calling for a reliable source of labor.
And it plays heavily into political ambitions, with every would-be presidential candidate staking out a position with an eye toward 2008. Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is pushing a bill that's basically a mirror of the House bill--tough on enforcement, with no provisions for guest workers. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is pushing a bill that's co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and is approved by business types; Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) is pushing something similar. For whatever arcane reason, the Senate Judiciary Committee must approve a bill today for a vote, otherwise Frist's bill is the one they'll vote on.
Adding some fuel to the fire: President Bush will be making a speech about immigration today, at a naturalization event for new citizens. And in his Saturday address, he backed away from amnesty for current illegals.
Go here for a bit on America's ambivalence regarding immigration. Go here for an op-ed that Jesse James DeConto and I wrote about "who grew your Christmas Tree." And go here for our February issue, which features a DeConto's great February cover story on "America's Criminal Immigration Policy."
RexRhino | March 27, 2006, 1:03pm | #
How much are these prices supposed to soar? When the auto manufacturers started paying decent wages cars didn't get so expensive that nobody could afford them. If an industry absolutely cannot survive if it pays decent wages to its workers, blame the industry, not the people who want more than coolie wages to do the job.
Are you joking right? You do realize that the U.S. auto companies are teetering on bankruptsy, right? The largest portion of the cost of buying a GM car is the pension and insurance obligations? If it wasn't for those, your new Cadilac Escalade would cost about as much as a Toyota pick up truck? The U.A.W. essentially priced the U.S. automakers out of buisness.
I seem to recall Henry Ford paying his workers more, in part because he said they would then have the money to buy his products. Was he wrong? Did his higher wages destroy the economy through runaway inflation?
Henry Ford demanded better service for better pay. At the time it was not uncommon for 10%+ of workers on any work day not to show up. People would work a couple months during the winter, and then go work on the farm in the summer. The whole situation with industrial workers was a mess.
By increasing pay, and also later by providing benifits for stable long-term employement (such as pension), Henry Ford was able to create a very stable work force. The whole thing was mutually benifitial. Henry Ford payed more, which made the workers happy, Henry Ford got proper professional workers. A steady worker would learn their job on the line, and do it much faster, etc... Henry Ford was doubling pay, and he was probably getting double productivity in the long run. But in essense, the whole thing made a lot of sense for everyone involved, the workers and for Ford.
Nowadays though, schemes to raise wages are one sided, and based on coercion. They are not about negotiating an understanding between workers and capital where everyone benifits, but forcing one side to give at the expense of the other side. Those kinds of solutions simply don't work. If you amazing plan for society requires a police force to be pointing guns at people's heads to keep it running, it is probably unstable and not economicly viable.
But for all the rest of the economically illiterate people who think that all the problem with the world comes from the fact that the government just doesn't run everything... Lets take something like Orange Juice... If we start paying $30 an hour starting wage, plus benifits, and double inflation raises each year, like the auto industry pays... orange juice prices will have to go up to pay for the labor. Since, for something like oranges, labor is the primary cost, we are seeing a 5-10 times price increase for orange juice. If a carton of orange juice cost $5, it now costs $25-$50 dollars. Two things will happen:
A. If it is ONLY the orange pickers who get the wage increase, the cost of orange juice becomes prohibitly expensive to the average person, and the industry collapses. People will drink apple juice, or mango juice, or prune juice... or for $50, they will buy a nice French or Italian red wine, which is much more healthy anyway. Nearly all the workers who were making those high wages, don't have jobs, so wages weren't raised.
B. If you raise everyone's wages, in every industry, and you have also raised the cost of products by at least that amount, you have made no change. Every makes more and pays more. Actually, this might hurt people, because everyone is now in a higher tax bracket and now pays more money in taxes.
This is where you start understanding on how the defining belief in the western world today is government worship. The government does not have the ability to alter the laws of the conservation of matter or energy. The government doesn't have the power to create anything out of thin air. If we have a smaller labor force by excluding mexicans from the labor force, it isn't helping Americans, because having a smaller labor force doesn't increase our available goods and services. Less people producing goods and services means less goods and services, and everyones standard of living goes down. You aren't helping the mexicans either, because if they are willing to come to the United States to work for next to nothing, it is because the next to nothing they are getting paid in the U.S. is greater to the next to nothing they were making back home - and now, since all that labor is consentrated in mexico, the laws of supply and demand now lower the labor costs in mexico even more, hurting the mexicans.
Sorry, but government cannot alter the laws of reality, even if the vast majority of people are behind the attempt.
RexRhino | March 27, 2006, 1:25pm | #
How much are these prices supposed to soar? When the auto manufacturers started paying decent wages cars didn't get so expensive that nobody could afford them. If an industry absolutely cannot survive if it pays decent wages to its workers, blame the industry, not the people who want more than coolie wages to do the job.
Are you joking right? You do realize that the U.S. auto companies are teetering on bankruptsy, right? The largest portion of the cost of buying a GM car is the pension and insurance obligations? If it wasn't for those, your new Cadilac Escalade would cost about as much as a Toyota pick up truck? The U.A.W. essentially priced the U.S. automakers out of buisness.
I seem to recall Henry Ford paying his workers more, in part because he said they would then have the money to buy his products. Was he wrong? Did his higher wages destroy the economy through runaway inflation?
Henry Ford demanded better service for better pay. At the time it was not uncommon for 10%+ of workers on any work day not to show up. People would work a couple months during the winter, and then go work on the farm in the summer. The whole situation with industrial workers was a mess.
By increasing pay, and also later by providing benifits for stable long-term employement (such as pension), Henry Ford was able to create a very stable work force. The whole thing was mutually benifitial. Henry Ford payed more, which made the workers happy, Henry Ford got proper professional workers. A steady worker would learn their job on the line, and do it much faster, etc... Henry Ford was doubling pay, and he was probably getting double productivity in the long run. But in essense, the whole thing made a lot of sense for everyone involved, the workers and for Ford.
Nowadays though, schemes to raise wages are one sided, and based on coercion. They are not about negotiating an understanding between workers and capital where everyone benifits, but forcing one side to give at the expense of the other side. Those kinds of solutions simply don't work. If you amazing plan for society requires a police force to be pointing guns at people's heads to keep it running, it is probably unstable and not economicly viable.
But for all the rest of the economically illiterate people who think that all the problem with the world comes from the fact that the government just doesn't run everything... Lets take something like Orange Juice... If we start paying $30 an hour starting wage, plus benifits, and double inflation raises each year, like the auto industry pays... orange juice prices will have to go up to pay for the labor. Since, for something like oranges, labor is the primary cost, we are seeing a 5-10 times price increase for orange juice. If a carton of orange juice cost $5, it now costs $25-$50 dollars. Two things will happen:
A. If it is ONLY the orange pickers who get the wage increase, the cost of orange juice becomes prohibitly expensive to the average person, and the industry collapses. People will drink apple juice, or mango juice, or prune juice... or for $50, they will buy a nice French or Italian red wine, which is much more healthy anyway. Nearly all the workers who were making those high wages, don't have jobs, so wages weren't raised.
B. If you raise everyone's wages, in every industry, and you have also raised the cost of products by at least that amount, you have made no change. Every makes more and pays more. Actually, this might hurt people, because everyone is now in a higher tax bracket and now pays more money in taxes.
This is where you start understanding on how the defining belief in the western world today is government worship. The government does not have the ability to alter the laws of the conservation of matter or energy. The government doesn't have the power to create anything out of thin air. If we have a smaller labor force by excluding mexicans from the labor force, it isn't helping Americans, because having a smaller labor force doesn't increase our available goods and services. Less people producing goods and services means less goods and services, and everyones standard of living goes down. You aren't helping the mexicans either, because if they are willing to come to the United States to work for next to nothing, it is because the next to nothing they are getting paid in the U.S. is greater to the next to nothing they were making back home - and now, since all that labor is consentrated in mexico, the laws of supply and demand now lower the labor costs in mexico even more, hurting the mexicans.
Sorry, but government cannot alter the laws of reality, even if the vast majority of people are behind the attempt.
Outraged | March 27, 2006, 10:21pm | #
One thing that really outrages me with these protests are the waving of Mexican flags.
Who are these people that are here illegally waving their national flags in our faces?
It is to our demise as a nation that we do not shut down our boarder with Mexico and send all of these miscreants back to Mexico where they can wave their Mexican flags on their territory.
They take away our jobs, which the President says are jobs that Americans will not do.
HA !
How about construction. Once a viable high paying job... Now in my state, it turns out that the general contractors here are filling these construction jobs with Mexicans, that cannot even speak English... and they are "compensated" with a wage that is substantially less than what an true blue American citizen worker would be paid.
So... I guess that American construction workers did not want the job anyway...
Our country is in danger of being over run by illegal aliens. We have the visgoths at our gates and we like Rome will fall.
Take control of our boarders and keep these people out.
Here is what Theodore Roosevelt wrote about this very thing that is now so much in the news:
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
And they have the audacity to wave their Mexican flags in our faces ! These people that are not even citizens of this country !
And that said, these Mexican illegals want our social services, they crowd out the schools in my home state, and even demand that they be educated in Mexican-Spanish, they put pressure on law enforcement...
Their demands go on and on...
And they wave the Mexican banner on our streets, even in our Capitol.
(I wonder what Vicente Fox wold say if our citizens demanded the same of his country if we had our citizens crowd over the boarder to colonize Mexico?)
We should have taken over Mexico after the Mexican American War.
Now we have to deal with this. I say ship 'em all back to Mexico where they can wave their Mexican flags day in and day out.
OUTRAGED
