In a comment section on the Seattle Times website, one individual suggested that farmers and orchard growers in eastern Washington who knowingly or unknowingly employ illegal immigrants were operating "illegal" businesses. I responded by asking this person what he suggests as an alternative--if these growers can't find legal workers, should they just go out of business? His answer: Yes. The stupidity underlying this attitude also reveals why out of the atmosphere of extremism on the right and pathetic cowardice on the left, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith can seriously offer a so-called “job creation” bill that is in reality a job-killer. Instead of "creating" jobs, his bill is nothing more than a federal requirement for employers to use the cumbersome E-Verify system, a flawed system at best, and bureaucratic and costly nightmare at worst. This is really just a political sop for Republicans to claim they are doing something to “create” jobs without actually doing anything. Naturally, numbers are being thrown about without any actual way to substantiate their accuracy; the number currently being bandied about concerning the number of jobs taken by illegal immigrants is 7 million, but that is like the “Manchurian Candidate” Senator Johnny Iselin making up a different number of communists in the government every time he’s asked, before finally settling on the number on the label of a ketchup bottle. The wild assumption, of course, is that once the country is rid of these 7 million job-stealing illegals, 7 million out-of-work “real Americans” will have jobs.
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this fraud. Not all of these jobs are located in the areas with high unemployment, especially large urban areas. Areas where these jobs are located likely have either labor shortages or unreliable labor. The question is if the unemployed are willing or able to move where the jobs are; if recent history is any example, not likely. E-Verify won’t help the former, and will only cause only labor availability problems for businesses in the latter. The “lump of labor fallacy” suggests that unless workers in high unemployment areas actually get off their fundaments and move to the areas where there are jobs, what will occur is that labor shortages where the jobs are will simply cause those businesses to reduce output and jobs, or go out-of-business altogether. Although there may be some downtick in unemployment rates in the short-term, in the long-term unemployment will only marginally improve—or even worsen. Why? In past (as recently as the Clinton years), immigration (which was at much higher rates in the 19th and early 20th centuries than today) increases total demand for goods, thus creating more jobs. Immigrant labor was essential for the economy to grow. And now politicians looking for phony answers to real problems are scapegoating immigrants who are here contributing to the economy. Experts who dispute the utility of anti-immigrant laws point out that instead of releasing jobs for “real” Americans, the actual cost to the economy in driving out people who are now working may cost the economy $2.6 trillion in lost GDP in the next ten years. This is not a job creator—it is a job killer.
It appears that Rep. Smith may realize that he has a problem here, suggesting a rider to his bill authorizing 500,000 guest workers to enter the country. Of course, the next question is why don’t you just provide legal status for long-time farm workers already here, but of course nothing about this “debate” makes any sense, save if one takes into account things like racism, prejudice, discrimination, nativism, xenophobia—the usual suspects in the American character.
Meanwhile, as if to underscore the point: “Heat on Immigrants Makes Harvest Tough” blares a recent headline in Saturday’s Tacoma News-Tribune, a newspaper that editorially swings right. After ICE raids created labor shortages and disrupted harvests, desperate apple growers put out radio ads attempting to entice the “natives” with as much as $150 a day into their orchards. Much the same situation is occurring in Georgia and Alabama, where economists warned their Republican-controlled governments that playing racial politics was bad economics. There were so few people responding to the call for workers in Washington that growers demanded that Gov. Christine Gregoire—better known for her political opportunism than principle—forgot that she support for anti-immigrant legislature and called on the federal government to get off its heiny and do something to save you from yourselves, like untangle work visa requirements that allow social and racial “undesirables” like “Mexicans” to do the “undesirable” work. But it’s impossible to discuss rationally the immigration issue these days. I’ve tried that with people posting comments on the Times’ website. “They” shouldn’t be here, and that’s that. If “those people” were not here everyone would have jobs. It is pointless to point out that “natives” have been saying that ever since Benjamin Franklin complained that German immigrants were incapable of assimilation into the Anglo political and social “culture.”
A history lesson: Throughout most of this country’s history, it had a paternalistic attitude toward Latin America; the Western Hemisphere was the U.S.’ private domain, and Europeans needed to keep their hands off. Of course, this merely meant that the U.S. didn’t want competition in its own meddling in the affairs of its neighbors to the south. The U.S. also had a symbiotic relationship with Mexico, not only because much of its western dominions were once part of Mexico and the U.S. retained a measure of that cultural heritage (particularly in the retention of Spanish place names), but because many Mexicans still regarded the region as “home.” The 1924 immigration law did not include quotas for immigrants from Latin American as they did for Europe, and border crossings were tolerated, especially for cheap labor. But the dynamic changed during the Great Depression, and like today politicians, local officials and “populist” rabble-rousers used Latinos as easy targets in which to direct popular discontent. “Mexicans” were indiscriminately rounded-up with nothing but the clothes on their backs and “repatriated” to Mexico; it is estimated that 60 percent of them were U.S. citizens, and even into the 1980s these people were still fighting for reparations for the homes, businesses, land and belongings that were simply was stolen from them in order to satisfy the popular prejudice. And “Mexicans” have been playing this dual role ever since; the current mess was created by U.S. policy makers who never saw the need to establish a coherent and workable temporary work visa program that made it easier to legally bring in workers they needed—workers who could be relied upon to move where work was needed. There would be a “balance” between those rounded-up and deported, and those who would replace them. This short-sighted policy only encouraged people in the country illegally to stay underground.
In the course of my “discussions,” I also suggested that it was my impression that these people with Latinos on the brain was an indication of a particular ingrained prejudice (if not racism) against them; after all, nearly a quarter of illegal immigrants were non-Latino, and 13 percent of the total were Asian. I suggested that Seattle’s International was probably stuffed with illegal immigrants, but despite the fact that immigration detention center was right next door, ICE agents didn’t bother going there. A female responder basically called me a liar, and even if there were a few people who were not Latino here illegally, they had just overstayed their visas, while “Mexicans” were “pouring over” the border. Well, I didn’t just “make this up.” A May 2006 story in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “Of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal migrants, about 13 percent or 1.5 million are from Asia, the Pew Center estimated in a report released in April. Most of those 1.5 million likely are among the 25 to 40 percent of illegal immigrants that Pew estimates entered the country legally but then overstayed their visas.” And if the majority did not “overstay” their visas, how did they get here? Many are “boat people,” stowing away cargo ships, sometimes as many as two dozen hiding in shipping containers, obviously for a price. Ever notice how many Vietnamese immigrants in the country, especially older ones, don’t know a word of English? According an AP story in 2006, the likelihood these people are illegal immigrants is more than a possibility. Legal Vietnamese immigrants complain that it takes too long for their relatives to receive immigration permits, so they find “other” means to bring them in country. Of course, there is the question of why relatives who are not spouses or children should expect to automatically be allowed permanent residence.
According to an MSNBC report, it was pointed out that Chinese immigrants who enter the country illegally, particularly off ships in Canadian ports; as many as a million shipping containers arrive in Canadian ports every year, and as the story noted, it’s a one-in-a-million shot that a container holding illegal immigrants will be caught. And once they are here, they are difficult to deport, because of the state of U.S.-Chinese relations, and the fact the Chinese government probably doesn’t want them back anyways. Some of these people are granted refugee status; others are simply let go into the population. The same goes for Southeast Asian illegals. This is why the ICE doesn’t target the non-Latino undocumented, and why their numbers as a percent of the illegal population is probably higher now than it was in 2006. The irony is that while the U.S. looks askance at illegal immigrants from country’s whose governments it deems “unfriendly” or views as political refugees, the victims of governments the U.S. has backed—like the right-wing murder regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala—found or find it almost impossible to receive asylum status in this country.
Oh, the irony: The AP story added this quote: “’In the Latino community, people come here illegally for jobs,’ said H. Chang, a 23-year-old Korean college student who asked her full name not be used because her parents are living in Los Angeles illegally. ‘For us, a whole family comes here for a student, and many stay illegally.’"
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