The real world, of course, is a place very different from this pleasant reverie. More immigrants enter the nation than there are jobs for them. They work for employers, a disproportionate number of which are in the agricultural industry, for sub-minimum wages and some of them live in horrifying conditions. Others do pretty good work in industries that are fairly casual about paperwork and conforming to the law -- think construction, one of the few jobs where convicted felons can earn a reasonable wage, precisely because construction employers are not particular about paperwork or background checks. Debatably, they depress wages in some sectors of the economy. They stay for long periods of time using counterfeit, stolen, or defunct documentation, when they use documentation at all; such a culture of avoiding and deceiving the law seems to necessarily create an attitude of lawlessness. They have families here and their children become citizens, work in the underground economy where they can avoid taxes, and drain our social welfare programs like public schools and TANF. They are resented by people already here – no more so than by properly-naturalized citizens who did it the right way. Nothing these negative effects of the phenomenon of undocumented laborers entering the country illegally is racist; however, resentment over these thigns is all too often tinged with racism, inspiring the worst in Americans.
The question always seems to me to come down to this: "How much are you willing to pay for a head of lettuce?" A directly related question is "How much would I have to pay you to spend ten to twelve hours a day picking lettuce?" The cost of the labor needed to create produce is directly reflected in the price of produce and cheap, plentiful food is one of the fundamental parts of the foundation of our economy. And if I'm willing to pay it, and he's willing to accept it, what's the problem? It occurs to me that the ways one might approach the issue from a policy standpoint, I've decided that the policy approaches one might take on the issue. On the far left side of the continuum we have something like "open borders" policies, and on the far right we have the policies moatdiggers love best. We might classify them thus:
Most Radical Reform | Most Dramatic Counter-Reform | |||||||||
Open Borders | Amnesty | Fast Track to Naturalization | Guest Worker Program | Liberalized Work Visas | Status Quo | Restricted Visas | Tightened Border Control | State Police Arrest and Refer to ICE | Fast Track Deportation | Shooting Illegal Immigrants for Sport |
The biggest flaw I see with Arizona's law is not so much its unconstitutional usurpation of an exclusive Federal power by the state of Arizona – although that's a serious issue. Article I, Section 8 provides that Congress is to provide for a "uniform rule of Naturalization" which under current case law means that only the Feds can make and enforce immigration law. But I'm not entirely sure that a "reference" from a state law enforcement authority to a federal one when there is a legitimately "reasonable suspicion" of a Federal law being violated of a Federal law is contrary to this policy.
The real problem is, what is a "reasonable suspicion" of someone being an undocumented alien? The standard is something objective about the suspect that can be articulated and is not based upon a suspect classification (like race). There's a bunch of things that I can think of:
- Apparent inability to speak or understand English
- Emotional reaction when the phrases "La Migra" or "documentos por favor" is used
- Flight from police upon approach
- Lack of identification documents
- Large quantities of cash or, alternatively, very little cash or other implements of money
- Congregation in areas known to be frequented by day laborers seeking employment
Personally, I think going in the other direction is a smarter thing for us to do. We need the labor. I don't want to pay $8.00 for a head of lettuce and that means we need cheap and plentiful agricultural labor, which for the most part only undocumented workers are currently willing to provide, at least in the border states. I don't think amnesty is just as to those already here – I think that there should be a way to get those workers here integrated into the system without making them go home first, because that's both asinine from a logistical point of view and putting the undocumented worker who wants to get into compliance into a difficult economic position. Perhaps a fine for those already here, which can be pro-rated and incorporated into their tax withholding?
But unless we're going to make it easy to get that green card, we're going to have more illegal immigration, more undocumented labor, and more of the problems associated with it. Attempts to build walls, moats, electronic fences, and any other sort of physical or enforcement barriers to entry will all prove laughably and expensively ineffective against simple human ingenuity mixed with economic desperation; already, people are squashing themselves ten at a time into the trunks of cars and literally risking death in the middle of the Sonora desert to enter the United States and an underground industry of coyotes willing to smuggle them in, often supplying their labor to illegal sweatshops, meth labs, or worse. And there are plenty of legitimate employers willing to offer them money should the immigrants succeed in escaping those hazards.
Simply put, there is a large black market for labor out there. There is very little that any government, at any level, can do to regulate a black market – without legalizing the trade. Intercession and penalization has failed spectacularly in regulating the black market for drugs. Why should we think that a similar tactic is going to work with undocumented labor?
Two Presidents in a row, one a Republican and one a Democrat, have both said that some kind of a guest worker program and liberalization of immigration and naturalization laws is necessary. They're both right and even crediting the most noble of motives to the lawmakers in Arizona, what's going on there is not a step in the right direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment