Do We Exploit Cheap Immigrant Labor?
By Ryan McMaken
Posted on 2/1/2007
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Capitalists have never been very popular among anti-immigration
activists. It is not at all uncommon to come across anti-immigration pundits
like Lou Dobbs discussing the evils of "corporate America" and its efforts to
"exploit cheap labor" at the expense of the American worker.
The use of such rhetoric is time-honored among the foes of free
markets. To their enemies, business owners are not persons with rights, but are
instead part of a faceless entity known as "corporate America." And their
businesses do not hire people to perform productive work. Instead, they
"exploit" cheap foreign labor.
Such charges are to be expected. Many within the anti-immigration
movement, most famously Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan, tend to be fundamentally
opposed to free markets and free trade. As a political movement, the
anti-immigration lobby - whatever the merits of some of their particular
arguments - largely depends on populist arguments holding up the American
wage-earner as a victim of capitalist greed.
The capitalists, the argument goes, systematically victimize
American workers through support of both free trade and open borders. The free
trade robs American wage-earners of manufacturing jobs that move overseas,
while the open borders bring in immigrants who steal the few remaining jobs
from the native population.
While there are indeed free market opponents of large-scale
immigration, the practical results of the anti-immigration movement have been
anything but friendly to free markets. In fact, recent anti-immigration
legislation has evolved into some of the most crippling and heavy-handed
regulation ever placed upon American businessmen and women. The impact on
individual freedoms and on the health of the marketplace continues to grow in
the name of stopping immigrants at all costs.
This is not to say that immigration is an unmitigated blessing.
There is much that should be changed about immigration policy in the United
States. Immigrants, illegal and otherwise, should be denied access to welfare
benefits of all types. This includes not just traditional "welfare" like TANF
and Medicaid, but also public schooling, public higher education, public
housing, and other taxpayer-supported amenities. Indeed, such policies should
be extended to the entire population, but failing that (as is likely to be the
case), immigrants would be a good place to start.
And secondly, birthright citizenship should be abolished
immediately. Since, in the modern world, the extension of citizenship is
essentially an extension of the welfare state, the numbers of people to whom
such status can be extended must be greatly restricted. This would also greatly
diminish the numbers of immigrants eligible to vote, thus cutting off the use
of immigration as a political tool. Likewise, the amount of time one must
reside in the United States before full citizenship is possible should be
extended substantially.
These two types of policy changes would undoubtedly do much to
reduce immigration without harassing private citizens or requiring surveillance
of the general population. Yet, since many within the anti-immigration movement
regard these policies as politically difficult or as undesirable in other ways,
they immediately turn to immigration policies that crush the liberties of
native citizens and add even more to the heavy burden of government regulation
and compliance. The result nationwide has been new laws designed to punish
private businessmen and women for doing business with people who are not
government approved.
At federal, state, and local levels, governments have been
targeting property owners and employers as part of a crackdown on illegal
immigration. Central to this crackdown have been efforts to force employers and
landlords to track the citizenship status of employees and tenants.
The state begins with a presumption of guilt (against all parties),
and then stipulates that owners of rental properties will be made to perform
detective work and enforce immigration laws at their own expense. They'll be
required to spy on their residents and inform on them to government officials.
Should landlords be found to be lacking in due diligence, they are liable for
fines and other harassment from government authorities.
Like the landlords, employers will also be required to enforce laws
at their own expense and to waste untold hours checking the validity of social
security numbers (a government invention) and other documentation offered by
prospective employees. Should government agents perceive a lack of enthusiasm
in digging up dirt on employees, such employers will be subject to fines.
Government schemes to have people spy on neighbors, customers, and
business associates are alarming for a variety of reasons, but recent efforts
to make every employer and every landlord a spy for the state are particularly
insidious in the way that they cripple business and drive a wedge between
business owners, their customers, and their workers. While the relationships
between apartment owners and residents should be one of mutual benefit between
a service provider and his customer, government meddling has instead made that
relationship one of distrust and suspicion.
The new bureaucratic regulations against businesses cropping up
across the nation look simple enough. Businesses must follow the law or be
fined. What this means in practical terms, though, is that employers and owners
of rental properties will have to endure an even greater regulatory burden than
they do now. Once again, peaceful, voluntary agreements between private
individuals and their residents and employees have become the government's
business. And, as usual, small businesses will be punished most since small
property owners and small business owners often lack the capital and legal
resources that large enterprises can access.
Last month, a group of landlords in Texas sued the local municipal
government over a new law that mandates fines for landlords who rent to illegal
immigrants. In an Atlanta suburb, new laws have been passed requiring that
landlords provide immigration records on any and all residents to county
officials on demand. Landlords who do not comply may have business licenses
revoked and will be prohibited from collecting any rent from immigrants who
cannot provide sufficient documentation to please government officials. Guilt
is always assumed.
As with all regulations, these draconian measures will not only cut
into the razor-thin profit margins already endured by most in the multifamily
housing industry, but property owners will inevitably have to pass on at least
some of the added cost in legal fees and staff time to residents. The end
result will be less affordable housing for all residents, legal or illegal.
While the anti-immigration lobby is busy bringing higher rents to
America's apartment dwellers, they are also hard at work raising the prices of
a wide variety of other goods and services.
During the last harvesting season in Colorado, small farmers
reported being unable to find sufficient labor to harvest crops, even at wages
well above the minimum wage. The farmers, who are indeed heavily reliant on
migrant labor, blame harsh new anti-immigration laws that "scare off" migrant
workers, both legal and illegal. Their interpretation may or may not be totally
accurate, but the new laws to which the farmers refer are notable for the
alarmingly high fines imposed on employers for hiring non-government-approved
labor (illegal aliens).
According to the new laws, the state may perform random audits and
non-complying employers may be fined $5,000 for the first offense and $25,000
for each additional offense. As if such employers don't already waste enough
time filling out mountains of paperwork for government agencies, employers will
be on the hook for verifying all social security numbers submitted by potential
employees. If an error is made, or if the employer's techniques are not
sufficiently effective at uncovering fraud, the employer could find himself
writing a check to the government for $25,000. The added cost in staff time,
legal fees, and crop spoilage to farmers will be driving up the cost of food
while making American farmers less competitive in the international
marketplace.
The anti-immigration lobby would have us believe that legions of
unemployed software engineers would love to pick strawberries for six dollars
an hour. Yet, as experience has shown time and time again, reliable labor is
actually quite difficult to come by. Finding employees who can pass drug tests
and criminal background tests is a strenuous exercise in itself. Finding
workers who are willing to work night and weekend shifts is still more
difficult. Finding workers to bend over and pick fruit for hours in the hot sun
is harrowing indeed. As one farmer noted with despair about the native local
workforce: "I don't care if you paid $40 (an hour), they'd do it about three
hours and say, 'That's not for me.'"
The farmer in this case is surely exaggerating, but those of us who
have owned businesses know that a good man or woman is truly hard to find. If
an employee is willing to show up, work hard, and not cause trouble, business
owners have better things to do than spend hours playing gumshoe.
To justify their drive to prop up wages via immigration laws, the
anti-immigration lobby often points to a variety of real crimes (such as
murder, trespassing, and fraud) that may be committed by some engaged in the
non-crime of working for pay. They then suggest massive regulation that does
not target real criminals, but only ensures that no one can work without
government permission.
Cracking down on peaceful activity because it may decrease
undesirable activity is the philosophy of the prohibitionists: Drinking might
cause bar fights and wife-beating. Therefore drinking must be outlawed. Or
perhaps a person who buys a gun might shoot his wife or his neighbor at some
future date. Therefore, gun purchases must be watched and controlled by the
state.
Of course, the only actual crimes here are the actual crimes. A
twenty-year-old purchasing a beer or an individual purchasing a gun is no more
a crime than is a peaceful immigrant who contracts for work without government
approval. Yet, the prohibitionists would have us believe that since someone who
drinks or purchases a gun might commit a crime at some point in the future,
liberty must be cast aside.
To illustrate further, we might note that the same arguments are
now being applied to mortgage lending. Thanks to high national foreclosure
rates, governments are cracking down on mortgage brokers who are allegedly
making fraudulent loans. Fraud is certainly a real crime. Yet the response of
most governments has not been to prosecute those who commit fraud. No, the
response has been to create a host of new "crimes" such as working as a broker
without a government license.
Only 33 copies remaining! $16
Since some real criminals might be found among immigrants, and some
frauds might be found among mortgage brokers, the unfortunate response of some
is to therefore advocate monitoring, licensing, and controlling everyone who
wants to refinance a loan or pick a head of lettuce. As Kerry Howley has
pointed out, many opponents of immigration want nothing less than a national
database to provide control over who has government permission to work and
when. The only moral solution, though, is to prosecute real criminals for real
crimes (deport them if necessary) and to leave the rest of us alone.
Those within the anti-immigration lobby who support these endless
controls and regulations on America's business class labor under the same
faulty ideas that gave us Prohibition, the war on drugs, and an increasingly
inhospitable business climate that directly produces the flight of capital that
the populists think is a capitalist plot. It is no coincidence that many who
oppose immigration also oppose free trade, support the war on drugs, and
repeatedly suggest as remedies for every social ill more prisons, more
regulations, more prosecutions, more fines, and more government.
As with Prohibition, gun control, and the war on drugs, this
anti-business war against immigration will fail to achieve its stated goals.
But it will certainly produce a much bigger government in the process.
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Ryan McMaken is a policy analyst in Colorado. Send him mail.
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