The other day our old friend Michael Reynolds left a manifesto on immigration in a comment at OTB that I didn’t want to get lost so I’m excerpting it here. I liked it so much it could almost be my own.
1) We have a perfect right to decide who does and who does not enter this country.
2) I don’t doubt that the “anchor baby†phenomenon is real, but it’s so tiny a thing as to be irrelevant to much of anything.
3) We should tune our immigration policies with the goal of improving the lot of US citizens, with a secondary goal of humanitarian assistance.
4) We should recognize the reality which is that without Mexicans and Salvadorans this country would grind to a halt in five minutes.
5) It is likely true that illegals depress wages, but it’s also likely true that the wages thus depressed are their own and those of other recent immigrants.
6) We need to decide the issue rationally, without right-wing racism or left-wing sentimentality.
There is one specific that I don’t think that Michael understands properly and I want to address that. It’s #4.
First, “Salvadorans” is sleight of hand. When you look at immigration over the period of the last 30 years something between half and three-quarters of all immigrants over that period have been Mexican nationals and most of those have been illegal. I’m generally unconcerned about immigration but I’m concerned about the extremely large volume of Mexican immigration over the period of the last generation or so because I think it has had serious effects on both of our countries.
But I have a more serious objection. There is a feedback mechanism between the large number of low-skilled and non-skilled immigrants and “this country would grind to a halt in five minutes”. Rather than investing in equipment or skills training of their employees to increase productivity, they don’t worry about productivity but instead tailor the companies’ processes to be performed by low skill employees. They can always depend on more of them so they can be confident that their payroll costs will remain low.
I recognize that my explanation doesn’t apply to manufacturing. But it does apply to agriculture, banking, the insurance business, food service, retail, and many of the other service businesses that have been where the job growth has been for the last forty years.
“We have a perfect right to decide who does and who does not enter this country.
What do you mean “We,” Kemo sabe?
I don’t remember the last time I saw a Caucasian on a roof. In Eastern Washington the asparagus growers lost over 70% of the their crop because the illegals had been scared off. They tried to bring in some Caucasian unemployed but they were not physically able to do the work under the hot Eastern Washington Sun. Without the Hispanics we would all starve to death so we need some way to at least issue temporary work permits.
Whites & blacks aren’t on roofs anymore because contractors can hire an illegal for much lower wages than they’d pay an American. My brother did such work back in the day, until the Mexicans chased everyone else out of the market.
Obviously, you’ve never been to Chicago. Only the lowest end roofers are Hispanic here. My guess: unions.
Ah, Chicago unions finally proving useful. Used to here all kinds of horror stories about Chicago unions when I worked in trade shows back when.
#4 is where I depart. I’m in Door County, Wisconsin, this week at an upper-mid level resort, and there do not appear to be Latin American staff. (There appear to be Northern or Eastern European cleaning staff), and I can write about the Mexican restaurant, but this comment gets really long at that point . . . Back in Central Illinois, Mexicans don’t serve in the mechanized agricultural industry, nor do the lawn and gardening. We have rednecks, and they can make enough money and afford to live in the community.
This is not to dismiss other people’s experiences; I’m just suggesting they are Southern/Western, if not coastal, experiences. Some places would grind to a halt, not all.
Low-end roofers where I live are stoners of indeterminate ethnicity.
As I’ve mentioned before, my brother owns a construction business in Colorado. Most of his subs use a significant amount of hispanic labor but he doesn’t know if they are illegal or not, but they are probably not.
I agree with PD that regions vary widely. Here in Florida there aren’t many Mexicans and much of the low-end labor in my area is taken up by crackers with alcohol problems.
BTW, I took one of those political quizzes and it gave me this:
http://www.isidewith.com/elections/2016-presidential/1135591861?from=CDBUVFe4X
God help me, Marco Rubio? I’m a left-libertarian centrist, how can that be? Then I noticed that I don’t match with any of the candidates when it comes to foreign policy. Maybe I should look at immigrating to Australia.
Just out of curiosity, what jobs are Spanish speaking immigrants filling in the banking and insurance industries?
Steve
One of my private bankers’ last name is Del Toro. Just saying.
It’s a complicated subject, and I’m reasonably OK with Michael’s comments, until he has to go to the racism thing. Just don’t understand his mentality there. It’s really not helpful in a legitimate issues debate.
No Mexicans in Florida? Bullshit, Andy, Orlando was overrun with them in the Aughts. Stretches off Oak Ridge were dangerous for non-Mexicans to go thru at night and large sections off Semoran were all Mexican. Still seems to be based on news reports. (And yes, they were Mexican/Central American, not Puerto Ricans, who both look and carry themselves differently.)
Their numbers dropped with the housing bust, but they’ve been moving back in with the new bubble. Add in the Newyoricans and the whole place is becoming a primarily Spanish speaking area. Pretty much everything except the high end places south of 50 are Third World, as well as Bithlo, Ocoee, Pine Hills & parts of Winter Garden, though Pine Hills is more Caribbean.
For that matter, I remember an infamous incident (for those of us who were there) playing Mexicans at basketball in Ocoee 25 yrs ago. The Mexicans ran a weave offense. A fucking weave! Worse still, they’d just keep running the weave without even trying for a shot. That was one miserable summer afternoon. Never before, or since, have I seen a need for a shotclock on the playground….
It should also be noted that having a large group of people w/ second class status isn’t exactly good for the moral hygiene of the country. You’d think we would have learned that lesson by now, but it seems most (including Reynolds, whose ideas are basically of the “well, what are ya gonna do” variety, while giving full throated support to a party that wants completely open borders) want this kind is system.
Isn’t #5 a tautological fallacy? Illegal immigrants depress wages because large numbers of US workers have been displaced- thus they are the group whose wages are effected by the continuing stream of new immigrants.
Banks and insurance companies continue to handle and move enormous amounts of paper physically.
I got someone for whom I’d never vote: Rand Paul.
@CStanley, partly a fallacy, but depends on the job. To quote an article on the asparagus picker shortage, business needs “a supply of new workers who can come in, work and go home.” Seasonal work is hard. Farming communities used to support a year-round miscellaneous labor force. And you cannot raise the prices, because import competition. I’ll buy my asparagus from Latin America, thank you.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/plenty-of-asparagus-few-workers-to-pick-it/
That’s actually a very complicated question that touches on a variety of U. S. policies but that’s why I favor a substantial (as in ten-fold) increase in the number of work visas available to Mexican workers coupled with strict enforcement of labor and immigration laws.
But I think that’s just a near-term solution. As I’ve said before, just because you can’t get your wife and kids to pull you plow doesn’t mean that farming is impossible or even impractical or uneconomic. It just means that you’ve got to change how you’re doing it. Use a mule rather than your wife and kids. Or buy a tractor.
I think that a future U. S. in which there are a lot of people designing, building, and programming robots which, among other things, scuttle around in the beds and pick asparagus will be a lot better than one in which we have large groups of people using neolithic farming methods.
So, already in this one comment I’ve touched on trade, military, industrial, agricultural, land use, labor, law enforcement, and banking. As noted above, it’s complicated.
@Icepick
… who both look and carry themselves differently.) …
I cringe every time I generalize about a group (black, brown, white, or yellow). I know there are differences among the groups, and those differences are substantial and profound.
I hate doing it, but it would take so much time trying to educate people, especially the truly enlightened ones.
@Drew
… Just don’t understand his mentality there. …
I do not know about him specifically, but many of the liberals/progressives I have run into who live around lower income black people say the most vile racist things about them. They do not consider themselves to be racist, and they will accuse Republicans of being racists.
It is useless trying to reason with them.
@
… Use a mule rather than your wife and kids. …
Or, get a bigger whip. If the US Supreme Court makes polygamy legal, you could have a 2 or 3 wifepowered plow. You could also marry a sturdy woman. I assume that you have her properly clothed. High heels are not the best plowing shoes. You need to get her some lightweight work boots.
Nice
I live in CA where the tipping point of Mexicans exceeding the White population has already happened. Over the years I look at people’s skill sets, honesty, etc. rather than skin color. For instance, when I see roofers on a roof, it’s the quality of their work that’s noted, not how many of them are of one color or another. For the most part I find the Mexican work force and community to be an asset. Their work ethic, family cohesion is something to be admired. However, no matter how much I respect and appreciate any cooperative effort of people coming over to this country, I also believe that such a migration is most successfully blended when it is orderly and accomplished legally.
Nonetheless, we have made immigration into the political football it is because laws have become either suspended or bendable, subject to emotional diatribes from both parties. The people caught in the middle are the immigrants themselves, who are treated with yo-yo-like rationales, rather than a solid construct of what one has to do to migrate into this country to become a citizen or attain a work permit. I truly think if politics would get off the table, if borders became borders, if filters worked to know who we let in and where they are, if paperwork became less laborious/confusing, if disincentives were carried out for employers to hire legal workers at living wage salaries etc. the over-due solutions to immigration could handily be resolved.
For me the question is not good or bad or even asset or liability. It’s who decides? I believe that Mexican citizens have a right to choose the direction in which Mexico should go while American citizens have a right to choose the direction in which the United States should go. To understand what I’m getting at you might want to take a look at my old post, “The Influence of Immigrants on American Political Thought”. It’s a historical perspective. Immigrants may leave a lot of things behind when they come here but they retain their political beliefs.
But that’s not what’s happening now. What’s happening now is that due to our highly conflicted policies Mexican citizens are deciding what’s good for the U. S. rather than American ones. Most Americans believe in much stricter immigration control, that we have about the right number of immigrants already, and that there should be a path to legalization for illegal immigrants although not necessarily a path to citizenship. Does that look like the direction in which “comprehensive immigration reform” will take us?
By saying that Mexicans are, for the most part, an asset is not the same thing as also supporting the relinquishment of American policy making to the demands of Mexican immigrants. I thought that was self evident when I talked about the importance of legal immigration practices being emphasized versus the emotion and drama we see surrounding this issue.
I also personally question how comprehensively politicians should package reforms dealing with immigration. For instance, if you start with ensuring a less porous border, including allowing border patrols to do their jobs of managing the borders, then tackle processing a greater number of work permits concentrated on real employment needs in this country, that would be some first steps that might ratchet down some of the rhetoric. Then you could work on better visa oversight, fast-tracking some of the paperwork of those applying legally, finding incentives/disincentives for employer cooperation and so on.