Help Illegal Immigrants in the USA: Close the Border
I recently heard of a business that is employing illegals and paying them sub-minimum wage. The owners even make them work everyday except one a month and threaten to fire them if they sit down or take a break at any time during the day. It’s an agricultural based business, and like many in rural America it is dependent on cheap labor. As far as I know it doesn’t force the people to work there (I’ve heard that at least one employee quit because of the working conditions and pay), but this information posed a dilemma to me, one that challenged my populist and libertarian instincts.
What is the ethical thing to do? Call ICE? Doing this would guarantee the illegals and their families would get deported. Now I may be a registered Re-thuglican, but I’m not heartless. The vast majority of illegals working here are hard working, honest folk (except for their complete disregard for America’s immigration laws), and alerting Immigration would hurt the workers more than their employer, who would most likely get a small fine if they received any punishment at all. The enterprise is based in one of the poorest counties in the state, and they do employ citizens (although they don’t treat them any better than the illegals.)
Should I do nothing and allow “slavery” to rise again in the South? Funny how that word gets abused almost as much as the “H” word (“Holocaust”) does. This isn’t slavery. Before the Civil War slaves could not leave their jobs; doing so could result in severe punishment and often their death. This business isn’t holding any of its workers behind barbed wire. Each is free to leave, and many do – usually involuntarily when the supervisor fires them. They are then replaced by others. In this area there are tens of thousands of illegals working the tobacco and corn fields with more flooding in daily.
And that’s the problem. Those of us who want to close the border to illegal immigration are often viewed as heartless, even un-American for our views. But those who support open borders and lax immigration rules never discuss who their policies hurt the most: the immigrants already here.
Consider that a worker at the agribusiness is fed up with working 29-30 days a month for $25 a day. His competition isn’t an American citizen; it is another illegal immigrant, perhaps a newly arrived one desperate for any type of wage to survive. If that person was still on the other side of the border, there would be much less competition for his job and the agribusiness would be forced to either improve his wages and working conditions, become more efficient and productive, or go out of business. But lax immigration would mean the continuation of a steady stream of workers willing to replace him, thereby guaranteeing a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.
This is Adam Smith’s invisible hand at work, and indicative of how progressives who support “immigrants rights” often pave the road to hell with their good intentions. In order to improve the lot of the workers at the agribusiness, a call to ICE won’t do – unless it’s to demand they do their job to secure the border. In fairness to them, it’s not possible because the politics of the issue prevent them from doing that job. Preventing the agribusiness from checking documentation and immigration status of their employees will not help the workers, nor will any laws as long as the supply of workers from abroad continues. “Guest worker programs” may seem good in theory, but the fact that such programs guarantee wages and working conditions (and increase business expenses due to maintenance of records) will always make the option to hire illegal immigrants more attractive. Those guest workers would then find themselves in the same predicament that many low-skilled American citizens find themselves today: not skilled enough to demand better paying jobs, but more expensive than illegal immigrants.
The Left likes to lay claim to the issue of illegal immigration in the hope that the immigrants will follow in the footsteps of those newly arrived in the past who built the Democratic patronage machines in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere. I suspect that their interests would decline if the illegal immigrants voted Republican after becoming citizens. It’s not a stretch: socially, Mexican families are much more conservative than typical Democratic households and have more in common with Republicans on issues such as gay marriage and abortion.
In order for the lot of such workers to improve, demand has to increase for their work and the only way that is going to happen is for everyone in the USA to start farms to boost demand for their labor or for the supply of labor from abroad to be cut off. Once shut off, workers will be able to demand higher wages and better working conditions because they could not be replaced so easily.
Over 120 years ago a big chunk of my ancestors arrived from Eastern Europe and did manual labor. Back then there were no minimum wages, no OSHA or other such regulation, yet they did okay. While they arrived legally, I don’t completely begrudge the illegals for wanting to improve the lot the way my ancestors did. But I don’t want them to be treated badly either. Anyone who wants to improve the lives of farm laborers should support closing the border. It’s the only viable solution to improve the lot of illegal immigrants and to force outfits like the one I’ve heard about to treat their employees better.
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