Ezra Klein does a little book report on Princeton immigration scholar Doug Massey’s research on immigration. Once you’ve weeded through all of the preamble here’s the nugget:
According to Massey, the rise of America’s large undocumented population is a direct result of the militarization of the border. While undocumented workers once traveled back and forth from Mexico with relative ease, after the border was garrisoned, immigrants from Mexico crossed the border and stayed.
“Migrants quite rationally responded to the increased costs and risks by minimizing the number of times they crossed the border,†Massey wrote in his 2007 paper “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis.’†“But they achieved this goal not by remaining in Mexico and abandoning their intention to migrate to the U.S., but by hunkering down and staying once they had run the gauntlet at the border and made it to their final destination.â€
The way I read it, Massey’s findings support neither the views of those who want to stem the flow of immigrants across the border, mostly Republicans, nor those who consider a “path to citizenship” the sine qua non of immigration reform, mostly Democrats.
What it does support is something I’ve been saying for a long time: that the immigration reform that we really need and that would best suit the bulk of the immigrants we actually receive as well as the needs of the people who are already here is a guest worker program.
That leaves unanswered the basic sovereignty question of how you attract only the workers you want and keep out those you don’t want but so does every version of immigration reform that’s been under discussion.
Before the Civil War, slaveowners would take their “property” into Illinois to work illegally as well. The salt mines in Little Egypt were particularly open and notorious.
Lincoln would say at time that the Negro is at two disadvantages, one was the laws that prevented him from earning the wages from his labor, and the other was his practical ability to use those laws which existed to his advantage. The illegal immigrant likewise cannot claim his legal rights to the lawful wages due his labor, for to do so, he risks unemployment at least, deportation at worst.
That’s a nearly forgotten chapter of history but it’s one of the reasons that Illinois was the center of the new Republican Party. It was anti-slavery but not necessarily entirely for altruistic reasons.
Dont we already have the equivalent of a guest worker program in existence and it just needs expanding?
Steve
The number of work visas available to Mexicans is completely inadequate—about 10,000 per year IIRC. Not only would the number need to be expanded by an order of magnitude but we would need to develop some ability to screen applicants and keep track of them once they were here. So great a difference in scale is a difference in kind.
Or, said another way, our present system is essentially a 19th century system supported with a lot of wishful thinking.
I also think we need to abandon the romanticism with which so much of our views of immigration are tinted. The words “we are a nation of immigrants” or the like should be banned. All nations are nations of immigrants. The only question is the timing.
Actually, you “run the gantlet” and you “throw down the gauntlet.”
A lot of growers don’t want to pay the H-2A Visa costs, which is a a prevailing wage cost, plus housing, transportation and worker’s compensation. (Don’t have to pay FICA though) And the Southern Poverty Law Center argues that a lot of the time the workers don’t get the wage they are legally entitled to anyway, or suffer deplorable working/living conditions.
Current immigration reform proposals circulating would lower the prevailing wage cost or make other wage concessions for the grower. We apparently have a lot of agriculture that cannot be produced with minimum wage labor, and the choice we are being given is between illegal labor and legalized double-standards. I wonder if some of this agriculture is fit for this country or if we would be better off subsidizing moves to machines and greenhouses instead.
I find the notion that “well, they just can’t get back now” to be bizarre. But then again, I don’t find those observers in high regard.
Immigration is a very complex and thorny issue. In addition to some interesting comments here, let me just throw in that I have relatives in agribusiness. Farmers, brokers and packers. Don’t make the foolish and naïve mistake of thinking a central problem is not that Americans won’t take this work, hence the need for immigrants. Its simply reality.
One could posit that in the absence of immigrants agribusiness wages would rise and American citizens would take the work. Perhaps, but don’t hold your breath. I think, if nothing else, consumers would decide this. Again, don’t hold your breath.
Corporatist Republicans have some blood on their hands for not dealing with these realities as they are. Democrats have shredded body parts on their hands for they only know one thing: promise illegals work and govt bennies and they are reliable votes.
Hey Michael?! You were remarking on slavery?
In the case of picking in the absence of immigrants the U. S. would probably produce less of certain crops domestically. The case of meatpacking is probably somewhat different.
Meatpacking used to be a trade that paid good wages. Now it’s a dirty, dangerous trade that pays mediocre wages. What changed? I can’t help but think that not only has the influx of immigrants willing to work for less made a difference but the confidence that after that group of immigrants would be another and another and another.