Immigration is on many people’s minds today, especially the illegal variety. In fact, I think that any time you mention immigration, the “illegal” part is automatically connected in many minds (including my own) unless some other words are thrown in to qualify it.
Like many people here, I think illegal immigration is a serious problem that requires serious people to fix it. Our president and congress are apparently not those people. There are certainly many aspects of immigration that I am not qualified to make any concrete statements on, but that has never stopped me before so I won’t let it stop me now. Also, I will concentrate most on what I think the driving force is behind most policies. Money.
The main thing I want to deal with is the old standard, “They are doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.” When that is said, most nod sagely in agreement. I know I have in the past. It’s easier than really thinking about it. The truth is, most of the jobs that illegal immigrants are doing today were done in the past by Americans. This includes things like seasonal farm work, which has not always been dominated by illegal aliens though it seems to be now.
For example, I will briefly discuss contracting and construction. I think this is a case in which it’s not that there aren’t Americans to do the jobs, but that the wages have been driven artifically low. Many people feel a great sense of accomplishment when they make or repair things. I know I do. I have helped my father re-do the entire water supply in his house as well as put a new roof on it. It’s hard work at times, but not so hard that I think most Americans would reject it out of hand. However, with a large illegal immigrant labor pool to draw from, contractors are able to spend a lot less money on labor than they would have to if hiring workers legally, yet still get good work done. I don’t blame them. If they want to be competitive, they have to do that, since other contracters are using illegal labor. If they tried to be completely legal, they would have to charge more for the same work, and no one would hire them. Everyone looks at the bottom line before they hire someone to do a job for them.
If the pay were better, I think more legals would be in construction. Before someone attacks, of course I realize that if you drive wages high enough you can get a lot of people to do jobs they otherwise wouldn’t do, but I believe that you would find someone to do just about any job before it got priced out of sight. Most people have a price-point for their efforts, in that they expect to make a certain amount of money given their knowledge and skill level. Furthermore, I will try to ignore my natural cynicism and state that most people can make an honest assessment of their abilities and set a reasonable price-point. Those that don’t would have a hard time finding work. In a job market not marred by illegal labor which artificially drives wages down, I think the jobs and pay would find a natural level such that most jobs would be done by citizens eventually, at a price most of us would consider to be reasonable.
Of course, in a fair job market, the price of just about everything would be higher. Illegal labor touches just about all of our lives in some way or another. It is present in the price of food you buy at the market, the food you buy at a restaurant, the cost of hotel rooms, and it’s probably in the price of just about every consumer good you purchase, since at some time or another, someone had to load the trucks that ship the crap to you.
Note that I am not commenting on the abilities of the workers in question, which in my experience is pretty good. I don’t think the quality of services would increase if illegals were replaced by legals. The only effect to the average citizen would be the increase in price of goods and services.
Ultimately, tightening immigration policy, both legal and illegal, and penalizing employers significantly for hiring illegals will drive wages and prices up, and loosening both legal and illegal immigration policy will drive wages and prices down. That is something one should always keep in mind when talking about “kicking them all out” or “opening the floodgates.”
Remember, you cannot do just one thing.
Note: trolls who come in and start calling “racism” or otherwise acting like wankers are subject to having their comments deleted or perhaps just altered in a way that amuses me. Guest-posting time is running out, and I wouldn’t mind getting a last few digs in before I fade completely into obscurity.
It’s clear that you don’t live in a border state, or you would have mentioned, crime, schools and public health, all severely affected by illegal immigration—and not just the job market.
Any economic analysis has to observe the huge transfer of costs in the use of illegals. The contractors get rich while the taxpayers pick up the tab for social services like schools, jails, hospitals, subsidized housing, traffic impacts, etc. I can supply horrifying examples of each on request, right from my own town.
Speaking of my town, it considers itself quite liberal and “diverse”. In 1970 the population was 6% black—now it is 1% black, that whole demographic displaced by Mejicanos. All the while local Libs sprain their elbows patting themselves on the back re “diversity”.
There was an interesting letter in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle. Skip past “tasers save lives” and the letter about how we’re going to enslave the military (you can return to savor that one later), and focus on “Be tolerant and teach language”.
Apparently the city of Friendswood is considering a proposal to make English the official city language. The letter writer thinks it’s a bad idea, because it “…would only give English-speaking Americans superiority over illegal immigrants and would just be the start of an aristocratic society…If City Council members and representatives would put more effort into organizing a way to teach illegals English rather than trying to discriminate and alienate them from society, our city could be closer to a tolerant society.”
What we have here is a failure to communicate. In English.
I’m not sure how I feel about the “official language” stuff, since it often looks like grandstanding to me, but I do know how I feel about printing stuff in other languages. My grandparents on my father’s side had to learn English when they moved to the U.S. from the Ukraine; I don’t see why everyone else who comes here can’t be held to the same standard.
Any time the English-as-official-language discussion comes up, I start speaking in Portuguese or pig Latin. This pretty much ends the conversation and pisses them off, to boot. Then I tell them to go read the story of the Tower of Babel.
I’m not very popular in certain circles.
How official.
I live in the Chicago area. We have illegals from everywhere—not just Mexico. O’Hare airport runs a close second to the Rio Grande as a conduit for illegals. If you really want to control illegals, it will only be through the control of employers not some chain-link fence or balloon fence in the middle of the desert. The thing is, you’ll slow the economy down. It only grew 1.6% last quarter. Do you really think it’s worth the risk?
As far as them doing jobs that other people won’t do, it’s basically true. Most of those jobs wouldn’t be created in the first place because they’re too expensive. If jobs aren’t created, the economy slows. Look at Germany and France with all the hurdles they put in place for employers to hire. They have anemic growth if any.
Personally, I don’t see a big deal about people wanting to come in. It’s ridiculous to make to make some guy jump through bureaucratic hoops just so he can lay sod down. My ancestors floated here and planted themselves a hundred some years ago without some bureaucrat in the way. Why wasn’t their behavior criminal? This issue seems like such an Astroturf, “look over here—this is bad—give us politicians money” issue. It amazes me that conservatives want more bureaucrats. Remember, the 9/11 hijackers got in this country through bureaucrats. They really did a bang up job protecting us didn’t they? We should clean up that house before thinking of balloon fences.
So, Mishu, explain how construction and landscaping jobs would not be “created” without cheap labor. Seems to me there have always been construction jobs, and yes, I had a roofing job in high school. The crew was evenly divided among black, white and brown. Nowdays, you will see only brown on a roof.
So, Mishu, are you such a materialist that you will sell your nation for a “good economy” or so you can have you car washed $2 cheaper?
Next, Mishu will explain why 24% of our State prison inmates are illegals, while they are only 6% of the population. Sounds to me like they are 4 times more likely to be felons, and contribute to a 33% increase in crime, but that’s just arithmetic, not high-class economics. I know of three women murdered by illegals in my rather small town.
As a modest proposal toward the immigration debate, I’d like to float my own plan that, I suspect, would take care of all issues with one simple rule.
We should allow unlimited numbers of people to come into the United States to stay.
But for every one that comes in, we have to find someone already here that we like less—and ship ‘em out.
Right here it says that there were 2,193,798 possible “traders” in our collection at 12/31/05. About half are violent, which really increases the motivation for such a trade.
I’d even open this up to private enterprise—anyone wanting to forgo the benefits of US citizenship should be free to open up a place by selling the immigration right to the next qualified applicant.
It’s a dirty trick to play on the rest of the world, certainly, but there’s a certain Darwinian inevitability to it.
TW: natural88…..hmmmm…..
My grandparents on my father’s side had to learn English when they moved to the U.S. from the Ukraine; I don’t see why everyone else who comes here can’t be held to the same standard.
English as an official language is fine with me, and I’ve said before it makes sense that voting should be in English.
Please remember, however, that not everyone in the US is there permanently. Printing things in muliple languages, and having multiple language options on ATMs or telephone customer service takes nothing away from English speakers– it is simply helpful to others.
I say this as someone living in Tokyo that can’t speak the language well enough to do complicated things. I’m not alone in that. I don’t know what I’d do if the Japanese decided everyone here should be held to the standard of learning their language before they come.
You would learn Japanese, and quite quickly.
I expect it’s been observed before, but actus is not only a fool and an irritant, he is also about as humourless as a malignant tumour.
Harry Bergeron,
When I redid your math problem, I got 100% of the illegals are felons. But only some got convicted.
Cranky-D,
What you have just done is justify an increase in the minimum wage.
Would you care to show your work on that equation, jon? Here’s mine: 6% of population x 4 times more likely to be convicted of a felony than non-illegals = 24% of the prison population, or conversely, 24%/6% = 4 . Let’s keep in mind that we know illegals are predisposed to lawlessness because of the inherent illegality in illegal immigration. Hence, the whole “What part of illegal do you not understand?” question.
What cranky-d has done is explain how the market could push low end wages up. The mandated minimum wage is a legislative construct. The true minimum wage is the minimum amount that people are willing to work for. Illegals and those who employ them are not, by their very nature, too terribly concerned with the law.
Have you ever travelled outside the country? Lived in a city that relied on tourist dollars?
cthulhu,
Hmmmm….how about Lebanese protest babes for pot-stirring imams?
Both would be a better fit in their new homes.
Jon-
Don’t forget, raising the minimum wage would result in EVERYONE making minimum getting a raise.
While that MIGHT entice legals to do minimum wage jobs, I’d submit that the primary result would be to make minimum wages more attractive to illegals and act as a magnet to more illegal immigration.
I’d think that more stringent enforcement of current law and more emphasis on punishing firms that employ illegals, coupled with better border (and entry) control would be much more effective.
Reducing the SUPPLY of cheap labor would naturally result in increases in wages, without the distortions that an accross-the-board increase in minimum wages would cause.
F9nally, if increasing the minimum wages is such a great idea, then why are we stopping at such pidlly increases? Why not a $20/hour minimum? Or a $30/hour minimum? Surely this would eliminate poverty as we know it!, Right? Surely this wouldn’t cause any distortions to the labor market, right?
My $0.02
1) First of all, that was the intial estimate, and the figure has been revised upwards, to 2.2% I believe, over 2% at least.
2) Even at 1.6% we were outperforming all of Europe, and most of the rest of the world except China, who has the advantage of starting from the stone age.
Illegal immigration is a huge minus to our economic performance, not a plus.
How quickly is a person expected to learn a language when visiting an ATM machine in a foreign country? What if there is a medical problem? Not everyone in a country is there permanently, and many are actually adding to the economy rather than taking from it.
I think you chose a bad comment to include this little aside.
I don’t think so.
I have lived and worked in 7 countries and in order to understand what was going on in most of them, particularly the Arab ones, it was necessary to learn the language and the script.
It is just a fact that if you have to learn something, you do, quite quickly. If you don’t have to, you don’t bother.
And if you are serious about having every language in the world on every ATM you are barking mad.
I learned to order breadsticks and ice cream while I lived in Italy.
I also learned how to say “excuse me,” “thank you,” and “Sorry, I don’t speak Italian. But that’s okay, I’m American, and we rule the freakin’ PLANET, baby!”
I have. And I spent much of that time arguing that relying on tourist dollars is an excellent way to spiral into permanent, irreversible economic decline.
If we wanted to stop employers from hiring folks who had no legal right to work in the US, we’d let them be sued for doing so.
Translation dictionaries are a wonderful thing. When in Rome…
Now, if you’re running a business and you care to cater to foreigners in their language, that’s another story entirely. But mandating the inclusion of foreign languages for business or government transactions is foolish, and culturally suicidal.
I became more fluent in German by living in Germany than I ever did with French or Spanish having studied each for a couple of years. If you need to communicate, you learn to communicate. Joey Vento is right.
So now the subject is tourism? Nice morph–by his next post, actus will have illegals as a question of diplomatic emmisaries. Even monkyboy can sometimes stay on topic.
Regardless of whether illegal immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do, the fact remains: they come here with an immediate disregard for our laws. And we’re not getting the cream of the crop when the only people sneaking through are people who are going to take the jobs Americans don’t want to take.
Whatever happened to high school and college students doing the work that we now leave for the illegal immigrants? Since when are kids too good to do hard labor?
I keep hearing from liberals how bad the economy is, and how hard it is to find a job, but we’re allowing millions of people from outside the country to come in and take jobs from us. This is another side effect of the dot-com boom/bust – a lot of people got the impression that they were too good for certain types of work, or should be paid an outrageous amount for simple work. Anyone else remember those $70/hour HTML coding jobs? Those code monkeys are still whining about not being able to find work at the wages that they commanded during the Clinton administration, not recognizing that they never should have been paid those wages in the first place.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to keep my IPod up to date?!? I’ve got things to do, you know.
Take a look at this story.
Putting aside the revulsion at the idea of tapeworms living in your BRAIN, how many of you caught THIS money quote:
Emphasis added. So basically, the fact that they guy has (presumably) left El Salvador for the U.S. 20 years ago but still needs an English-speaking translator speaks volumes about his willingness to assimilate. Mr. Worms-on-the-brain apparently doesn’t think it’s important to talk to us native whiteys, and the fact that every government agency and business in Texas is willing to accomodate his language preference means that he doesn’t have to be bothered to learn the English language.
Ultimately you’ll have to decide if assimilation is important; I happen to think, in a nation of immigrants, that it’s VERY important. So count me as being for declarations of English as the official language.
I’m not sure how I feel about the “official language†stuff, since it often looks like grandstanding to me…
I agree with this. But I wasn’t really commenting on the official language thing; that was just background. The point is, the idiot letter-writer thinks we ought to give English classes to illegal immigrants. He specifies “illegal”!
I’m wondering if it’s a case of the brain-macro you refer to in your first paragraph: “immigrant”=”illegal”. Only instead of looking with suspicion on all immigrants because of the illegals, he’s ready to champion illegals lest we be suspected of “intolerance” toward immigrants.
Translation dictionaries are a wonderful thing. When in Rome…
They are, but they make learning about opening a bank account and paying taxes a pretty slow slog.
Now, if you’re running a business and you care to cater to foreigners in their language, that’s another story entirely. But mandating the inclusion of foreign languages for business or government transactions is foolish, and culturally suicidal.
True. But my complaint is with people that say things like, “This is America! Why should I have to see an Espanol button on my ATM? Why should I hear Spanish announcements at my airport! People that come here need to learn to speak English!”.
And yes, I hear that all the time.
I became more fluent in German by living in Germany than I ever did with French or Spanish having studied each for a couple of years. If you need to communicate, you learn to communicate. Joey Vento is right.
Yes, I have little problem communicating although I am far from fluent in Japanese. Before I moved here, I was far from fluent in Cantonese. I’m just asking people to remember that not everybody that isn’t fluent in English isn’t in the US to take your job away, work for less than minimum wage, and get free emergency room visits. I’d like them to separate the (non government-required) lanuguage issue from the illegal immigrant issue.
When you moved to the non-English speaking countries, were you fluent from day 1? Did you use your English at all?
You are barking mad if you think I even suggested that. But I do find you charming.
Someome mentioned official languages. But that wasn’t in the original post. Officially.
Well, what are you trying to say? That they should only be in the language of the host country? That they should only be in English? That only English speakers may have a medical problem when travelling abroad?
Actus ‘s question as to whether people actually function outside their own countries, and his implication that the tourist dollar has any relevance whatsoever to the argument, is frankly pathetic.
(I think you’re rather sweet, too.)
I’m trying to say that I wish Americans showed a little more tolerance toward the idea of non-English options on things like ATMs, public health literature, and customer service phone lines. Lately, I’m hearing a lot of complaints from the US about such things.
I have had to use English language options in a city that is, thankfully, open to allowing such options. I’m not here to ruin this country, or even immigrate to it on a long-term basis. I am simply not fluent enough to care for my family’s needs exclusively in Japanese. I can imagine there are others in the mirror image situation in the US, and I can imagine how unfriendly the “If you come to America, speak English” crowd must sound.
Then please accept my apologies. We are both arguing the same case.
My, how the subject drifts! What if a visiting Tutsi has never seen a traffic signal?? Think of the mayhem !
California just had a big lawsuit wherein it was argued that when graduating seniors had to pass a test to get their diploma, they were discriminated against by having the test in English.
A lead plaintiff had to be interviewed in translation, in spite of having been born here and completing 12 years of “instruction”.
I reckon the issue is NOT tourists using ATMs, but Mejicanos refusing to assimilate. They are encouraged in this lame strategy by Leftards who want to see more poverty, ignorance and isolation for their own political ends.
All i know is that the day any of you illegal sympathizers have a child that goes to school with illegal immigrant children and your child comes home asking to use el bano, You’ll be singing a different tune. See how you’ll feel about it when your daughter comes home with a gang banging mexican and calls him her boyfriend.