and if you make them documented and legal, all appropriate laws apply...

 

Like minimum wage, which most illegals get payed well under. 

Watching what happens when illegal aliens provide a source of very cheap labor for businessmen should be the clincher for the argument that unions continue to be essential. Unregulated capitalism will always result in an underpaid underclass serving an obscenely wealthy overclass. Only unions stand in the way of businessmen reducing workers to semi-slavery.

Michael, I get the sense that liberals annoy you.  You sound so angry at us in your posts.  Perhaps, to please you, we should all emmigrate, and the US would be more to your liking.

But seriously, why don't you address the question of the companies who hire illegal workers?  If no businesses hired illegal immigrants, the word would get back to the home countries of the immigrants, "Don't come illegally; you won't have a job."

IMHO, one reason none of the politicians want to face this issue head-on is because of allegiences to vested interests - the businesses who hire illegal immigrants and get only slap-on-the-wrist fines for breaking the law.

Here's what I don't understand about Michael Lind's long-term obsession with immigration:

1) How does he expect the Dems to regain power if they implement policies that alienate their fastest growing demographic?

2) Even if we could recreate the old New Deal coalition, regaining the support of Southern and midwestern whites, we can't afford to pay for the programs like social security unless we get infusions of young workers from abroad. 

My point is not that the Dems shouldn't address immigration.  But , as with trade, party leaders need to acknowledge there are ambiguities that require some finesse. 

 

Yeah, I've also come to the conclusion that Michael Lind is tendentious and needlessly inflammatory. But let's not ignore this nugget of truth buried in all the histrionics: establishment Democrats are anxious to maintain a total embargo on the issue. Seems to be a pretty accurate summary of where the party establishment is on the issue, and it's a shame. I mean, rather than get sucked in to the "bad brown chaps" frame some on both sides of the political divide would like to use, it seems a sure winner, as many others in the blogosphere have noted, is "it's the fault of companies who hire illegals, stupid." Especially when you consider the cost of "securing" the border is estimated at $38 billion or somesuch, an approach aimed at inducing employers to obey the rules or face meaningful consequences seems far more likely to yield results.

We saw what happened in 2002 when the Dems didn't want to talk about Iraq: it was the issue, like it or not, and their inability to come up with a meaningful policy left them as either diet NeoCons or knee-jerk doves. So without some sensible approach, we'll again be left as either garden variety bigots or a pack of ostriches.

Immigration....immigration...and more immigration.  I am a staunch supporter of legal immigration.  Legal immigration is what brought the "American Dream" to life and made this country the "Big Melting Pot" it is.  The Africans, Irish, Italians, Germans built this country.  Were the first generation immigrants treated well?  Not at all and in the case of the Africans they were sold into bondage.  They did backbreaking work often living in squalor.  But their children and grandchildren benefitted from their sacrifices to have a chance to reap the rewards of the "American Dream".  Once we start with a anti-immigration (legal immigrants) policy is the sign, to me, of the death of the American Dream.  Give us your cold, tired, huddled masses...

Liberals cannot go around complaining about economic inequality and stagnating middle class wages without addressing the points raised in Lind's post. It's basic supply and demand. The greater the supply of labor, the cheaper it will be. Sensible immigration policy must take this into account and Democrats are missing a golden opportunity to wedge middle class voters away from the cheap-labor right.




Taking a hard line on immigration has a number of potential benefits for Democrats. It gets them on the right side of the law and order issue, as illegal immigration is first and foremost an affront to law and order. Second, it implicitly takes homeland security seriously, as immigrants are still the likeliest source of terror cells. Third, it enables us to address the issues of low wages and inequality without proposing more radical solutions.




Are there risks to this approach? Absolutely. Taking a hard line on immigration without coming across as a bigot or a cheap populist is tough. It would probably have to come from someone with impeccable liberal credentials. But the time has come for liberals to choose between their desire to level the economic playing field and help those at the bottom of the economy and their desire to be sympathetic to the poor and desperate from other countries who come here seeking a better life.

The immigration issue is multi-faceted.

First, true immigrants following the rule of law need to be honored first in becoming citizens and their process for becoming citizens must not be diminished by amnesty schemnes that ignore the importance of becoming an American. 

People like Gingrich have temporary worker schemes that strip these cheap laborers of all due process rights, presume that these laborers understand American law, convention, and custom, and will punish them with stiff deportation within days of being accused of even the most trivial indiscretion.  This is a recipe for a slave-like class of citizens in the US - afraid to raise a voice too loud or be seen or heard in the wrong place.

Secondly, illegal immigrants need to be acknowledged as being ubiquitous.  It is not only business that takes advantage of these people, it is Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and everyone else.  We have to be honest about this.

None of these people depress wages here, that is accomplished in the IT and technology arenas through nefarious laws established to cap engineering salaries in the US.  These laws are applied as H-1B and others working visa regulations.  They are unAmerican, unfair, and subversive.  High tech workers now routinely average salaries that gross less than high school teachers with none of the personal security.

The fear propounded by Bushco is that illegal low wage earners can harbor a threat to national security. That is true.  What they don't talk about is the threat harbored by defering so much high technology infrastructure responsibility to foreign interests here through H-1B and abroad as outsourcing.  Our edge in science and technology is gone.  One day soon we will wake up to discover that some automated weapons system we depend on is compromised by malicious software or that a nationally strategic infrastructure component is similarly no longer under our control.  Both parties are enabling this to go on without comment or intelligent debate.

Another facet of the high-tech immigration dilemna is that major corporations have contracted out their high tech departments to foreign interests (usually Indian firms) who have no interest in honoring American fair employment practices.  Americans can and are routinely discriminated against in employment with no legal recourse. 

Let's see.  My views on the effects of immigration are based on the Jordan Commission, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan and appointed by President Clinton, and the Hesburgh Commission on immigration, appointed by President Carter.  Both of these Democratic commissions, chaired by Democratic liberals, concluded that it was necessary to reduce both legal and illegal immigration in the interest of low-wage American workers.

Then there was that well-known morally-blind racist Cesar Chavez, who had his followers picket the INS because, by failing to prevent illegal immigration, it was undermining unionization.

Mr. Newman thinks that the views of Jordan, Hesburgh and Chavez, which are also my views, are "morally blind" and equivalent to the "European anti-immigrant right."  I think that Chavez, Jordan and Hesburgh knew what they were talking about and Nathan Newman doesn't.

Of the two of us, Newman is the unacknowledged ally of elite economic conservatism.  First he uncritically echoes the Wall Street Journal line that mass illegal immigration can't be stopped (in reality, a combination of stiff employer sanctions, Border Patrol enlargement and partial fencing of the US border, most of which is private property that foreigners aren't legally allowed to trespass across anyway, can shut down illegal cross-border migration pretty effectively).

As a fall-back, rather than address the economic question Newman uses another tactic of those who agree with him on the Wall Street Journal cheap-labor right--accuse centrist and progressive critics of elite conservative mass immigration policies of "racism."  This is an old cheap-labor conservative trick--according to the cheap-labor right, for example, pro-union laws are "racist" because they allegedly increase black unemployment.

So Mr. Newman not only agrees with the basic immigration policy favored by Wall Street Journal conservatives, but copies their cynical method of accusing the critics of that policy of "racism."  (By the way, Mr. Newman, the next move in the Wall Street Journal immigration-debate playbook is to mention the Statue of Liberty). 

I for one find this really Orwellian.  The older liberal position of Barbara Jordan in the 1990s and Cesar Chavez in the 1970s is now "racist" in the early 2000s; the new liberal  orthodoxy, represented by Mr. Newman, is that of....the Republican Party's economic elite.  With friends like Mr. Newman, working-class Americans don't need enemies.

So, now NPR and PBS are "liberal?"

Let me answer that question with a quesetion.  Do you believe FOX is conservative?

Hint: FOX IS conservative and NPR/PBS ARE liberal.  There are almost no purely neutral news organizations.  You just have to sift through the noise on both sides and decide for yourself.

Michael Lind argues that to raise stagnating American wages it is not enough to enforce existing immigration laws and labor laws, or even to add new ones, such as an increase in the minimum wage.  He argues that we must in any case reduce legal immigration to create a tighter labor market for legal workers, because all those labor laws are unenforceable.  He claims that even if we removed undocumented and unprotected workers from the mix, we cannot prevent black market cheating, and there are too many legal workers anyway.

To me, this all sounds like a exaggerated, overly pessimistic counsel of futility, desperately designed to find some twisted justification for a draconian anti-immigration policy whose real political aim is to win votes form white suburbantes by appealing to their racial and ethnic bigotry.

I would like to suggest that at this point that it would be good to hear the opinions of a qualified labor economist - not a political writer, or party or union organizer, but someone with real expertise in undertanding labor markets, who could present a fact-based assessment of the current US labor market, and the likely consequences of various policy options.  Otherwise we are just going to spin our wheels arguing about conflicting impressions.

Do you ever speak? Or are you content to live your life as a coward, hiding behind the ratings system, hitting everyone you don't like with "1"s?

Is this really fun for you? Reading people's posts and rating them? Yay.

I think it would be helpful if mlind toned down his rhetoric a bit. I used to pick grapes in the summer time, and do remember the frictions between Hispanic agricultural workers and non-Hispanics. Holding the meetins in Spanish and making a stink when people who didn't speak Spanish wanted thorough word-by-word translations of the debates, was one problem, sometimes. Young Hispanics talking about taking back "their" land was another. There are certainly problems and inconsistencies in some of the farm worker union's positions on immigration. But Chavez as a simply a  morally blind racist... please... I was very familiar with the living standards of illegal farm workers, and I think it would be difficlt to get most US citizens to work and live under those conditions. Most illegals themselves couldn't see it as a permanent situation, they were making money to send back home to their families, or set themselves up for something better later. Many of them made annual trips home so they could spend some part of the year living normal lives.  With the low level of pay and miserable living conditions I think there would be serious social problems regardless of whether illegal immigrants, legal immigrants or US citizens did the work. But if you paid more there would be problems with small farmers and food wouldn't be as cheap, which would cause political problems.
And as I understand his position, he says that enforcing higher minimum wage laws and working condition regulations will not work, but restricting illegal immigration while at the same time increasing wages through that restricted labor supply is workable. This is pretty glib. So there's a problem with illegal immigrations, well, no problem, we simply "restrict it" Problem solved. Sounds like a bell and cat problem to me. The people who point out that there are powerful business interests who like illegal immigrants doing certain work, and will tolerate it, and that this will be problem in restricting illegal immigration have a good point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/opinion/14brooks.html?ex=112425
1200&en=1db7282bc47a365a&ei=5070

Read the actual column.  Lind takes some of what Brooks says out of context, attributes something to him that he didn't say, and uses it as a jumping off point for his own incendiary nonsense.  It's grossly dishonest.

Why is Lind a partner contributor here?  He's dishonest, and so far hasn't contributed anything of value.  He's a troll, riling stuff up instead of making useful contributions.  

Because what the libertarian right and open borders left actually share is anti-racism on this issue, even if they disagree on everything else about immigrant rights.

The Le Pens of Europe actually support a social model benefitting native workers, much as Lind argues for, so where do the motives differ?  I actually avoided calling Lind a Buchananite largely because, unlike the European Right, Buchanan is much more hostile to workers rights for native-born citizens.

With his frankly over-the-top reaction to Lind's very short post, N.Newman has inadvertantly confirmed M.Lind's principal point: i.e., that the current liberal environment is hostile to any substantive discussion, constructive or otherwise, regarding immigration policy.

Certainly Lind's post is subject to criticism.  But reactions that include naming-calling (denouncing someone as a conservative counts as name-calling) and drawing unjustified analogies with Le Pen are methods of intimidation, not discourse.

Personally, I don't know why a liberal would defend the status quo.  The mass of undocumented immigration is bad for everyone,  except perhaps those businesses that profit from workers who cannot avail themselves of government protection.  So what I'm saying is, let's have a real discussion here.  That means canning the knee-jerk enforcement of a perceived liberal orthodoxy.

Fixing the massive illegal immigration problem in this country necessarily will include placing some new limits on immigration.  Even so, endorsing a fix cannot ipso facto make a person a nativist.

One more point:  There's no such thing as a job that an American worker is unwilling to do.  The dignity of any job is contingent on the job's compensation and conditions of employment.  For instance, factory work used to be considered demeaning.  Now we lionize it.  What's the difference between then and now?  Good wages and benefits.  

There's nothing inherently demeaning about the type of work that undocumented immigrants commonly perform, such as construction, landscaping, and janitorial and restaurant work.  It's true that in some areas American workers have ceased competing for these jobs, but they have done so simply because the availability of cheap immigrant labor has driven the market price of labor beneath what American worker's can tolerate.  

The most powerful force in the current national and global labor market right now is a worker's tolerance of squalor.  I think it's beyond question that the high tolerance for squalor on the part of of many undocumented workers is having an adverse impact on the entire national labor market.  So what's wrong with suggesting that we need to get a handle on this problem?

Perhaps we can all agree that there is a tension between mass immigration and redistributionism. The New Deal high point of redistributionary politics fell between the 1920's immigration restrictions and the 1965 re-opening of the doors to immigration.

Within a closed system, it's possible for the public to accept sharing some of their wealth with the less fortunate. But with an open system that ensures a constant inflow of poor people, taking from the middle class to give to the poor becomes harder to stomach.

My sense is that populist economic egalitarianism is moribund. Even on the left, many prefer a high immigration policy which promotes economic opportunity over economic equality. If that's what we as a society have decided, fine. But let's recognize that we've made the choice.

As long as I can remember, every single time the minimum wage has been raised, this argument has been raised. And, so far, to my knowledge, the argument has been wrong. Why keep trying the same old argument?

Theorajones,

What an unfair post.

I'm open to being corrected, but I don't see anywhere in Lind's post were he says that immigration is bad.  At most, he's saying the immigration should be controlled under a better, smarter system than the failed system we currently employ.  

So before you go off accusing folks of being supporters of slavery, why don't you come clean with your position.  What are you saying, anyway?  That there should be zero controls on immigration, and to suggest otherwise makes you a immigrant-blaming advocate of a slave-mentality?  

Outside of the libertarian party, I know very few people who oppose all controls on immigration.  Consequently, I doubt you take that position.  Assuming that's true, what is so god-awfully offensive about advocating reforms that would impose some greater limits on immigration by finding someway to cut-off the illegal portion of the influx?  

While securing the border would be expensive, Lind is correct in that cracking down on big companies alone won't be enough. It should be done, but only as part of a larger plan. There are still the small businesses which employ many illegal immigrants.

It's also politically very difficult, because while you and I may be outraged by the hypocrisy, many just simply aren’t, and would be more enraged against a Democratic party they perceive as anti-business. So, if you;re a Democratic politician are you going to commit suicide on one issue? There are many issues that need attention. One issue politicans don't last long or get much done unless it already happens to be popular anyways.

Speaking about hypocrisy, how about the hypocrisy of us “moral and enlightened” voters who blame politicians for not bringing our message to the general public? If we’re honest we’d have to admit the public would kill that messenger.

This is where think tanks can be pretty useful, in getting out a message and spurring a conversation while not needing to win votes. Unfortunately they’re all over the place and can;t seem to agree on anything either.

So yeah, the whole situation is a mess. Better to stop blaming people and shooting those on our side first of all, understand the complexity of the issue, and just do whatever one can.

How one consumes is important, and continuing to advocate reasonable solutions will eventually bring about change.

That idea to sell Green Cards and use the funds to " support local communities that might object to the costs of immigration" is a total joke.

What would stop people from hiring illegal immigrants? Then you'd still need money to close borders and police the workplace. And all the other issues would remain.

That proposal doesn't fix anything. It just reshuffles the money and the issue deck, and most likly would result in a totally bizarre system that most people found repugnant, and still with all the same problems.

This is one of the reasons I don't understand why so many in the Democratic establishment support illegal immigration and guest worker programs. Bringing in 400,000 low wage workers per year has driven down wages for American workers and will continue to do so.
We need better border enforcement and more workplace enforcement. If businesses have to hire American workers who demand better wages, then our economy will benefit.

NickDoe:  "So yeah, the whole situation is a mess.  Better to stop blaming people and shooting those on our side first of all, understand the complexity of the issue, and just do whatever one can."

How about making the whole thing a lot less complex?  The essential complaint is that unrestricted immigration [like Free Trade and the strong dollar] drives down wages because jobs are relatively scarce.  What is not discussed---and Democrats would do well to start doing so---is that we always have the option of creating more jobs.

We can, in fact, create and maintain a labor shorgtage in this country, an economic state of affairs where there are more jobs available than there are people to fill them.  See http://taxwisdom.org/trade_policy_jobs.htm

It's a solution that can be pursued no matter what happens to the dollar, trade pacts, or immigration practices.  It turns out that there is a rather simply solution to the very complex "mess."

Re: It's quite evident that the fundamental  problem with immigration in 2005 is the same problem with slavery in 1860.

Outside the true fever swamps I seldom seen a political sentiment I thought as asinine as this. Slavery was an American born and bred evil, one for which Americans bore the responsibility. Mexico's problems however are not the US's fault. If you want to blame any country other than Mexico itself (and after nearly two centuries of indpendence I might suggest maybe Mexico does bear the blame for its own contretemps), then blame the Spanish. It was they who instituted the system of peonage there, and they would created the racialist caste structure of Mexico's society. If any country ought be opening its borders to Mexican immigration it is Spain-- which actually might be a solution to its demographic woes, and the problem of excess Muslim immigration.

Yes, much as Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream speech" is misused to attack affirmative action, Cesar Chavez is now used to attack immigrant farmworkers.

I thought that graf was offensively dishonest. Dragging affirmative action in seems inappropriate, vague, and rhetorical BS.

Secondly, Newman seems to imply that Lind is misrepresenting Chavez. Actually, no Chavez was very clear.

Chavez was against open ended immigration because he knew that an endless supply of cheap labor would play into the hands of exploitive employers, and prevent any organized labor success.

It's pretty obvious. Any labor organization attempting to leverage labor scarcity via organization will fail if the labor supply is essentially infinite.

 

This whole thing reminds me of the Barbara Ehrenreich episode of firing maids, nannies and service workers, so your children won't be exposed to a climate of looking down on other races.

So we, the benevolent forces, in our unyielding compassion, will strengthen a climate where immigrants  have a tougher time getting into the country and finding work...you know...so they won't be exploited, by the capitalists.

I'm sure the immigrant strongarmed out of his carpenter's job so he & his brother workers won't be squeezed on wages is sympathetic to the cause.  

 

If anyone is slightly disturbed by the fact that this policy, whatever it's motivations, has no significant difference with the Conservative anti-immigrantion sentiment  than give yourself a prize.

 Instead of cloaking it in nonsense about exploitation, the conservative xenophobic unionists need to be honest (like Lind was) and upfront about their motivations. Just say plainly that you as a native Anglo American, are more entitled to American jobs than a swarthy immigrant ,  and this privilege exempts you from the undignified task of having to compete with this immigrant for labor, regardless of what your respective skills may be. The safety of your job and the comfort of your wage is what matters most, and if that means infringing on someone elses ability to enter the country and try to make a better life for themselves, so be it.

 

First off, what is an "orthodox liberal"?  Before it was "radical liberals" now its "orthodox.  What next?  Do you have a problem with liberals?

Now to your point: illegal immigrants coming to this country  keeps wages down.  I suspect you might be right, but you offer no support other than opinion.  Seems to me with your connections you would have some facts to back up your position.

Just some general comments.  The first is that Illegal immigrants come to this country and get jobs that pay very low. Even anecdotally we know this is true - just look into a kitchen at the Chinese restaruant and see the Mexican cooks. The second point is that illegal immigration lowers wages for others. Again, you offer no proof, but it seems plausible to some degree. 

However, it seems to me you see the wrong problem.  Admittedly, 400,000 illegal immigrants are coming to this country, so the argument goes that those 400,000 immigrants are stealing 400,000 American jos.  I'm not sure I would agree with that argument.  But even assuming it is true, how many jobs have been outsourced to India and China this year.  My guess is that they far exceed 400,000.

It seems to me you are testing the waters to see what kind of vote you could get out of screaming that illegal immigration are causing all the woes for lower and middle income families.  A kind of race-bating.  My guess, however, is that the outsourcing is doing far more damage.  I'd like to see studies on this.

Lastly, rather than propose policies that demonize illegal immigrants, which is where you are going, why not instead propose options that try to work with the Mexican governement?  How about talking to Mexico about birth control, or improving their educational system, or focing them to create a middle class.  Instead, you seem to be talking about alienating the fastest voting block in the country, and more importantly, a sector of our population with the greatest untapped potential.

Take the Roosevelt road and assert that you are trying to help your neighbor instead of ostracize him.

Dustin,

You wrote:

If anyone is slightly disturbed by the fact that this policy, whatever it's motivations, has no significant difference with the Conservative anti-immigrantion sentiment than give yourself a prize.

Since you apparently fail to apprehend the differences between the views I expressed and the views of "Conservative anti-immigrantion sentiment," allow me to spell out the differences for you. True nativist organizations like the misnamed "FAIR," support a moratorium on all immigration. Neither I nor, I am willing to bet, M.Lind support that kind of idiot policy.

Rather, my position is that a system that has, as a component of the system, massive regular violations is not much of a system. I believe that the mass of violations strongly indicates that the system, in fact, does not work. Second, the mass of immigration that occurs outside of the system poses numerous costs, most of which fall most harshly on the immigrants themselves. So, yeah, I'd like to fix the system to prevent the swell of immigration that occurs outside the system's rules.

Incidentally, illegal immigration can be fixed without prohibiting all immigration. Illegal immigration didn't arise as a serious problem until the late 1960s, so let's not be deluded into thinking that the only options we have are supporting the current system of massive illegal immigration or opposing immigration generally.

There are middle-positions which array along the lines of supporting an increase in the lawful options for immigrants to immigrate (especially for Mexican immigrants) while simultaneously increasing deterences against and obstacles to unlawful immigration. I support efforts that take this middle tack. True nativists like FAIR are adamantly opposed to them.

You also wrote:

The safety of your job and the comfort of your wage is what matters most, and if that means infringing on someone elses ability to enter the country and try to make a better life for themselves, so be it.

Unless I'm mistaken, your statement suggests that you don't believe that a nation possesses the right to impose limits on immigration. Either that, or you believe that while a nation can rightfully control immigration, it must do so for purposes other than protecting the livelihood and well-being of its citizens.

If that is your belief, fine. But at the very least you should be upfront that this is your view and that when you throw around slurs like "conservative xenophobic unionist," you merely are referring to someone who does not share your radical views.

I've also come to the conclusion that a guest worker program would be a viable way to get these workers out of the shadows and into situations where our labor laws can protect them. But the flip side is that we should be helping these immigrants put some of their remittances to work in their home countries, through improvements to their finance systems and government transparency and accountability. Any time someone is working in the US he or she is creating value for businesses in the US and not in his or her home country. In underdeveloped countries in general, and Latin American countries especially, those with any substantial wealth rarely invest broadly in local infrastructure or industry, preferring to put their money into G8 banks or markets. Helping to break this cycle should be a critical part of any guest worker program, and will provide the basis for upward wage pressure.