Creating a "High Wage- One Tier Labor Market"
Michael says the goal is a "a high-wage, one-tier labor market."
We agree on that. But we disagree on how to enforce it. Michael thinks you can get that by upping enforcement at the border. Which is guaranteed to be a failure.
500 immigrants die each year trying to cross the border-- a degree of motivation that will overcome almost any increased enforcement efforts.
So if Michael wants a "high wage" labor market, why not just start there? Raise the minimum wage, reinforce freedom to form unions, and increase enforcement of labor laws. Give all workers, including undocumented immigrants, the ability to enforce those rights through triple damages for every dollar stolen from those workers-- and even more serious sanctions for any employer who fires a worker for exercising those rights.
Low-wage employers would be subject to a cross-fire of government wage enforcement and a blister of employee lawsuits and union organizing drives that would shut down the low-wage sector and make hiring undocumented workers less attractive. And if any were hired, they wouldn't be undermining wage standards for other employees.
Michael will say he wants to punish unscrupulous employers who hire undocumented workers. But how will he catch them all? If undocumented workers fear deportation, they will become collaborators with bad employers to hide sweatshops from the government. A two-tier labor market will continue under Michael's scenario precisely because he will create millions of unwilling collaborators with low-wage employers.
This is the delusion of the enforcement-only immigration control advocates. Any honest solution to wage inequality requires empowering those exploited to act as allies against low-wage employers.
If we want to put sweatshops out of business in this country, we can either turn the millions of undocumented workers into allies in fighting them-- or turn them into criminals and unwilling collaborators in hiding the underground economy from law enforcement officials.
Over at the Progressive Legislative Action Network, we've highlighted the state governments that are supporting real solutions to the the exploitation of immigrant workers-- and that means empowering undocumented workers themselves. New York State's high court just recently affirmed that undocumented workers had a full right to sue under state labor laws. Judge Victoria A. Graffeo writing for the majority said that denying them equal rights “would lessen the unscrupulous employer’s potential liability to its alien workers and make it more financially attractive to hire undocumented aliens and would actually increase employment levels of undocumented aliens, not decrease it.”
California, which has dealt with the issue of exploited immigrants for longer than almost any other state, passed SB1818 in 2002, which affirms that all labor protections are available to any employee “regardless of immigration status.” The National Employment Law Project details a host of specific initiatives to end the two-tier labor market involving immigrant workers.
And a long-term solution requires ending the exploitation of workers in their home countries, so that they don't have the need to flee their homes to find a better life for their families. California, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, along with sixty cities, counties and school districts, have changed their procurement policies to ban government purchases from contractors violating internationally-recognized labor rights. Governor of Maine, John Baldacci, recently launched a challenge to his fellow Governors to join a multi-state Governor’s Coalition for Sweatfree Procurement and Workers Rights to strengthen monitoring of labor conditions of contractors used by states. With states and local governments purchasing $400 billion in goods and services, a nationwide coalition of states could play a pivitol role in changing sweatshops both at home and abroad and creating real long-term solutions to the conditions driving immigration.
If the federal government would join these states in enforcing labor rights and negotiating trade agreements that require the enforcement of labor rights among our trading partners, we could create a real "one tier" labor market" in the US and, by ending exploitation by employers in our trading partners, curb the motivation for immigrants to leave their homes in the first place.
"Michael thinks you can get that by upping enforcement at the border. Which is guaranteed to be a failure.
500 immigrants die each year trying to cross the border-- a degree of motivation that will overcome almost any increased enforcement efforts."
No offense Mr. Newman, but that's a pretty weasely answer. People rob, steal & murder every year, despite that there's a huge disincentive to doing so. Does that mean we shouldn't enforce laws against those crimes as well?
I commend you for youe progressive stance on immigration in general. As a tireless advocate for worker's rights, your defence of liberal immigration & insistence upon improving their lives here, is much more commendable than those who simply want to keep them out.
Yet on the question of whether illegal immigrants, are indeed illegal, whether rewarding illegal immigrants is unfair to legal immigrants & whether the state should actually enforce it's borders, you offer nothing except to say that trying to enforce the borders will fail. Does that mean you believe we shouldn't enforce them?
You don't need to be an anti-immigrant demagogue or one who tries to make treating an illegal immigrant for an injury a crime to realize there is a problem here.
March 28, 2006 6:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am not sure but I think that unless your proposals are instituted globally they won't work. How do you respond to those who say that the result of a high wage one tier system wiil be for jobs to simply flee the US. Your opponents would argue that our economy will stagnate the way the European economy has stagnated.
Ron Byers
March 28, 2006 6:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
But your comments show how wrong-headed Michael's proposals are-- they concentrate on building walls around the US without dealing with the global economy. If you keep immigrants from coming to the US to work, many jobs will just leave this country to go to where those potential immigrants now live-- but at even lower pay.
We do need a global "one tier" labor market where labor rights are enforced in all countries; wages don't have to be exactly the same -- cost of living and productivity differ -- but basic rights of workers to organize on their own behalf should be uniformly protected. And the US shouldn't trade with countries that deny such rights to their workers.
As for enforcing labor rights in the US, ultimately we need to confront the challenge of creating decent paying jobs for all residents far more than we need a futile anti-immigrant crusade, which is just a scapegoating mirage used by politicians to ignore the real challenges of dealing with global corporate attacks on wage standards. But the US government and US workers have plenty of tools, if used in collaboration with other governments, to raise wage standards both in the US and around the world.
We just need to decide to fully use those tools.
March 28, 2006 6:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
My point is that you can't enforce them, so futile attempts to do so cause more harm than good. I don't approve of taking drugs but I think most of our drug laws cause more harm than good as well. There are many bad laws and making a virtue of enforcing a bad law in the name of "law and order" is the road to most of the stupidities of government.
My point is that enforcing wage laws is possible, since you don't have to depend just on the limited resources of cops, but can create broad-based enforcement through civil lawsuits and union organizing by the employees themselves. So instead of a handful of cops doing enforcement, you have tens of millions of employees helping to enforce the law.
March 28, 2006 6:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
So let me make sure I get this straight. You think a nation-state trying to police & secure it's borders, & prevent just anyone from walking across and into the country is "bad law" and does more harm than good? Am I understanding you?
March 28, 2006 6:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any law that is ineffective and undermines other core values of that society is bad law. And I'm not necessarily saying some degree of border control might not be useful, but as a solution to ending the two-tier economy that Michael was supposedly complaining about, it's a poor enforcement instrument.
But there is an irony that the US spent decades condemning the Berlin WALL, the Iron CURTAIN, and all sorts of other borders restricting freedom of movement as a violation of human rights, then suddenly the US gets indignant when desperately poor immigrants turn around and question the moral santity of the US building a wall on our border.
On pragmatic grounds, border controls are probably inescapable but I wouldn't put a lot of moral authority behind them; and when they are demonstrable failures in achieving public policy, we should be using other tools such as wage law enforcement as a better route to protecting wage standards in our country.
March 28, 2006 6:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hadrian's wall and the Great Wall of China would seem to be more apt examples. Both were intended to keep people out. The Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain were intended to keep people in.
Both were very expensive and ineffective. In both cases the "global economic refugees" (the Scotts and the Mongols) penetrated their respective wall. Similar walls (legions of troops working as border patrol) in Germany were unable to keep the huns, goths and visigoths out of the Roman empire.
Maybe the Romans and Chinese should have sent some trade unionists to Germany and Mongolia. They would have been better served by improving the overall economic well being of the barbarians than by trying to keep them out.
March 28, 2006 7:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Minimum wage laws are a bad idea. You can put as many "0"s on paper bills as you like, but if $10,000 notes buy nothing, that "high wage" is a sham. Goods are produced by land, labor, and capital. Laws which keep these from meeting on mutually agreeable terms reduce the supply of goods.
Here's a simple thought experiment. Your State legislature passes a bill: "In (your State) it shall be illegal to sell X for less than $Y per (unit)." Four categories:
Now fill in X and Y with "new televisions" and "$500", or "new cars" and "$30,000" or "beef" and "$4.00/lb" . High-end sellers win. Sometimes high-end buyers win (e.g., less traffic with fewer cars on the road). Low-end buyers lose. Low-end sellers always lose. Minimum wage laws harm most the workers with the least to sell.
The law is a blunt instrument. It cannot see the reasons someone might accept a $4.00/hr. wage. A $4.00/hr. wage, four hours per day at a shop a ten minute walk from home is better than a $6.00/hr. wage, four hours per day, at a shop that is a two hour commute (one way, $2.00 fare each way) from home. The law cannot see non-monetary compensation like on-the-job training.
Homeschool if you can.
March 28, 2006 7:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Make a continued pattern of hiring of illegals a crime punishable by jail; and make sure the penalties flow more than one level up the org chart.
Since this is important, reward and protect people who report significant wrong-doing, either by cash rewards, or by fast-track immigration processing.
I'm not sure whether I'm serious.
March 28, 2006 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Once again, I agree with you, Nathan. And I am weary of the moral equivalency argument (which comes in two major forms, I believe):
(1) Illegal aliens are no different than robbers, murderers and rapists. If all illegality were the same then there would be no need for any more than one law and one punishment - you break the law, you are all the same and the punishment will be the same. Obviously that is not the case in our system.
(2) The notion that "oh the liberals are so gung ho on the rule of law when it comes to Bush's warrantless wiretapping program but here with illegal aliens all of the sudden the law is inconvenient" sounds different but again has the same basis as (1) -- that if the law is broken the damage is equal no matter what the crime, but added to it is the truly mind-boggling equation between abuse of power and the desperation of the powerless.
I am not claiming sainthood for illegal immigrants, or that they should get a free pass; that would be as unworkable as the one-sided enforcement suggestions of Lind. But to frame illegal immigation in the ways illustrated above, you would then have to add half of America (employers of illegal immigrants, from small companies and large corporations to individuals) as criminal as well, it goes on and on until pretty much everyone would be in jail.
The only other question I have is related to situations I've seen here in New York. I'm concerned about small businesses who can barely if ever completely obey the law (and not just labor laws but taxes, insurance, zoning, etc.) if they want to stay afloat. It's not that many of these small business owners don't want to do what is right, but the laws are so byzantine and unrelated to the real world that I doubt any small business could survive completely on the up and up.
I remember when Clinton pushed through the Family Medical Leave Act. It was sensitive to this fact and applied the law to bigger businesses, ones that employed a larger number of people. I wonder if you could address that situation in terms of businesses who want to play by the rules when it comes to labor but cannot afford to offer what larger companies can.
March 28, 2006 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is actually a good post. Mr. Lind seems to assume that because immigrant or guest workers couldn't vote that they would not be able to maintain a reasonable wage for themselves. While it may be a concern that voters in the country may not be aware of the need to increase minimum wages if most of the minimum wage jobs are filled by immigrants, it does not follow that there are no other ways to demand and enforce higher wages.
We need to find a way to allow illegal workers to enforce and protect their rights. That will require moving them towards legalization, and it will require loosening union and workplace freedom of association laws.
Simply closing the border won't work.
March 28, 2006 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is absolute nonsense, and demonstrably false to boot. The whole reason so many people die is that they try to cross the Arizona desert - when temperatures reach 110 degrees or more in the summer - because crossing into San Diego or El Paso became so difficult. The border patrol actually has a good record of enforcement. It's just that policing a 2,000 mile border, especially when Mexico is indifferent at best to this problem - takes a huge amount of resources. Nathan is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Because we can never achieve a 100% hermetically sealed southern border, we should just give up on border enforcement. Sorry, but while we may not be able to cut the flow of immigrants off completely, we can probably drastically reduce it. The hesitation to do proper border enforcement has never been its lack of effectiveness. It's because we as a country are so damned ambivalent about this problem.I also see that Nathan is still oblivious to how illegal immigration undermines the very things he claims to care about, like enforcement of workers rights. Isn't it clear by now that the attraction of illegal labor for employers is precisely that they won't be required to fulfull their obligations, whether its to pay a decent wage, pay Social Security set-asides or anything else for that matter. The government could never possibly hire enough agents to pro-actively enforce the laws, so enforcing the labor rules in a particular case usually starts when someone brings a complaint. But illegal immigrants are attractive for precisely the reason that they are too afraid to bring complaints. And unionization isn't the answer either. Unions are often hostile to illegal immigrants, and rightly so. Plus many jobs done by illegals - like day-labor construction, or home child care - are not really possible to unionize. So what he is really advocating is the complete removal of any fear that illegal immigrats might get deported. In other words, lose the distinction between legal and illegal immigration altogether.
It's hard to overstate just how boneheaded this all is. The evidence is OVERWHELMING that illegal immigration harms the economic prospects of the poorest Americans, as Paul Krugman's column yesterday made clear. If Nathan thinks that just raising the minimum wage will solve this problem, he simply has no clue about how the real labor market works, which is pretty sad for a labor activist.
The answer to illegal immigration is to slow it to a trickle, which can be done, and then figure out a way to get the illegals that are already here to "come in from the cold" through some combination of incentives. Perhaps it's a guest worker program, or perhaps it's amnesty - I don't know. Then we should focus on the jobs now being done primarily by illegal immigrants and get employers to substitute American workers. We have something like 40% unemployment among black inner-city youths. Why can't these people harvest grapes, or clean hotel rooms? If labor activists like Nathan Newman really wanted to be helpful in this debate, they'd figure out ways to match American unemployed with employers who are now breaking the law.
March 28, 2006 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
As for small businesses, simple rules are useful to keep the paperwork down, but as long as the minimum wage and other labor rights are uniform, no business loses out from higher standards. In fact, the small businesses that offer decent wages benefit from better enforcement of the law, since they aren't undercut by competitors who use low wages, rather than innovation, to win out in the marketplace.
March 28, 2006 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The difference between immigration and drugs is that immigration is economically rational. If you raise the cost of drugs -- which the war on drugs has succeeded in doing -- users pay the premium and drug dealers get rich. If you raise the cost of illegal immigration -- to employers, especially -- illegal immigration stops. Employers will not hire illegal immigrants if the expected costs exceed the savings, and illegal immigrants will not cross the border without jobs. The problem is amenable to incentives.
Increased enforcement at the border -- without targeting employers -- is a great strategy for Republicans. It achieves three things: 1) Makes them look tough on illegal immigration 2) Ensures that businesses will continue to have a supply of cost-effective, illegal immigrant labor 3) Pays off constituents in the Southwest with law enforcement jobs. Democrats should not go along with this approach, needless to say.
March 28, 2006 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Minimum wage laws actually exist, and vary by state. You ought to be able to supply empirical support for your theory. You also ought to be aware that theories, however sensible, are mere conjectures without such support.
March 28, 2006 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brad- You are just dead wrong on the facts. Labor unions are on record and actively in support of giving undocumented workers legal status AND on giving them the legal right to sue their employers for wage violations and for the legal protection to join unions.
And day labor work, home child care and a range of other jobs done by undocumented workers not only can be unionized, they have been at times.
There are a lot of folks on these threads making claims for what "unions think", when they are just dead wrong on the facts.
Here is what the AFL-CIO executive council said just this month:
The position of the labor movement is, yes, to erase the distinction between legal and undocumented status under labor laws. You may not agree with the labor unions on this issue, but you are just wrong on the facts to claim that they agree with you.March 28, 2006 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
What Bradthedad said. ^
This immigration issue is great to kick around because there are so many angles to it. I got an email this morning from a liberal advocacy group telling me to write my Senators and tell them I love illegal immigration
I ended up writing in favor of stricter enforcement. This "guest worker" idea is totally sinister. As if there weren't enough of a gulf between the classes, now we are going to create a permanent serf class. Just awful.
One thing no one seems interested in...what about Mexico? Russia was always referred to as "the sick man of Europe" and Mexico seems to be the sick man of the Americas. If the US is draining Mexico of hard workers, is that really good for Mexico? Lets help Mexico get on its feet - other Latin nations seem to be getting it together economically, why does Mexico have to be the odd-man out?
I could be for legitimate immigration from Mexico, but these illegals are absolutely terrible for labor standards and wages. I agree with Paul Krugman.
Interesting here - the "nice" or "bleeding heart" liberal who takes pity on the little guy and the wealthy employers who want to exploit powerless, disenfranchised wage slaves seem to be on the same side of this issue: Keep the illegals comin'.
Strange bedfellows indeed.
March 28, 2006 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK fine. But a quick Google search shows this is a relatively recent development - last few years. Historically, unions have been hostile to illegal immigrants.
But it's really a small point. Tell me how any of this makes a dime's worth of difference in the real world.
March 28, 2006 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
What it means is that labor advocates, who once supported anti-immigrant policies have decided that those approaches were a failure. Folks who spend their days trying to improve wages for working families have decided that legalization and uniform labor rights are the best way to improve wage standards for all workers, both native citizens and immigrants.
Some folks can evaluate the reality of a failed border enforcement policy and promote an alternative. Others just want to keep pushing the same failed policies of the past.
March 28, 2006 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any law which cannot be enforced (no matter how correct the motivation behind the law may be) is bad because it a) wastes resources that could be used to pursue some other, actually obtainable objective, and b) helps to further a culture of lawlessness generally.
March 28, 2006 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
The other interpretation is that unions have done such a piss poor job of staying relevant in today's economy that they continue to see non-public sector union membership decline. So they're desperate for new ways to attract membership and money.
And if the well-paid, middle-class union leadership has to sell out their working-class membership base to do it, well that's life.
March 28, 2006 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it's no surprise that xenophobia easily becomes attacks on unions. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in an earlier era, "the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature, spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."
Hate begats more hate, division more division. But labor is quite united with religious organizations and civil rights organizations in support of legal status for undocumented workers. Here is just a partial list of those who endorsed the 2003 Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride which promoted legal status for the undocumented:
For more, see here. I suppose some see all these organizations as traitors, selling out their "people", but most see that native workers and immigrants workers share interests and only lose when they are pitted against each other.March 28, 2006 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
The vast majority of organization on your list are religious. One can't expect them to advocate anything but compassion and charity. But the labor unions have a different mission, which is to advocate for their membership. From where I sit, there is almost nothing more antithetical to the interests of low-wage workers in this country than cheap illegal labor.
I also take strong exception to being called a xenophobe. Advocating enforcement of the borders and the law is not the same as saying keep foreigners out and you know it.
March 28, 2006 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The right term for this is "regulatory burden". I work at a small company in the biotech field, and I can assure you that regulatory burden is a big big deal for us. And it's not just the simplicity of the rules, it's having rules where compliance can be demonstrated without the need for a ton more documentation.
If the law can be followed and enforced with minimal additional paperwork, then it does not have an inherent tilt toward large business. But if it does, large businesses will win, and depending on how substantial their advantage, they might even want to keep the law to drive out competitors (this last bit I doubt). So the devil may well be in the details.
Overall, though, I think this idea works well as a counterpart to stepped up border enforcement. As I've noted before, capital flight and underinvestment in Latin America is not confined to the elite - people of many economic stripes try the best to park their money outside the domestic economy. That kind of thing takes decades to change: the evolution of sane and workable monetary policies (Lula deserves much credit for his efforts there), real and transparent financial markets, helping states shed or reform unprofitable businesses, etc. In the interim, doing nothing to discourage human or capital flight will continue to really hurt these economies.
And when wages go up among undocumented workers - won't that just lead to vast unemployment among these folks? After all, they have it pretty squarely in their heads that there are NO prospects for employment in their own country, so better to hang around the States and hope for employment here. But that could result in a vast pool of people with no work, minimal education and language skills and very weak social networks waiting around hoping work will show up. You may get two tiers anyway: the employed and the unemployed...
I'm not saying I'm against the concept, which I think is humane and does have the benefit of putting workers in charge of their own advocacy, but I'm not sure it alone will suffce.
March 28, 2006 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, there's been more investment in Latin America in recent years-- the question is whether it filters down beyond the elite. But immigrants don't come to the US if they don't think they can get jobs-- the cost of living is high and family networks are often used in finding jobs. If those jobs don't exist, the "pull" of family ties will diminish immigration.
But the key point is that if jobs are paying decently, there won't be downward pressure on wages from those immigrants. And as stated, raising wages in the US should go hand in hand with improving conditions south of the border.
March 28, 2006 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
What union do you belong to?
It's hard to stay relevant when government policy undercuts the union.
March 28, 2006 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given that lillegals have less-than zero negotiating power you should not phrase this way---"...these illegals are absolutely terrible for labor standards and wages."
Ask yourself why we tolerate such exploitation.
March 28, 2006 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Both were very expensive and ineffective.
Actually, no. Both walls were quite effective as long as a strong government manned and maintained them. The walls were breached only when they were not adequetely defended.
March 28, 2006 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
You previous comments had some value, but at this point you are ignoring the entire point of Nathan's argument and adding nothing new to the conversation while insulting the integrity of union leaders without providing any evidence to support your position.
The whole point of approach Nathan is describing here is to use a variety of methods, including minimum wage laws, union organizing rights and triple damages in civil suits for labor law violations to reduce the incentive for employers to use illegal immigrants as a way to drive down wages and working conditions.
In my opinion, border controls, deportation of undocumented workers and penalties for employers that knowingly hire such workers (over and above damages for cheating them) still have a place in such a system. If we completely abandoned those parts of the system, we could see even more workers flowing into the country and they would put less downward pressure on wages but would still impact unemployment rates. In addition, border enforcement is also worthwhile to control all kinds of smuggling and to make it more difficult for terrorists or other serious criminals to enter the country.
However, Nathan is right that simply increasing such enforcement without taking the profit motive away from unscrupulous employers will never eliminate and will probably not even signifcantly reduce undocumented workers. On the other hand, policies such as those Nathan describes here should help the situation even with current levels of enforcement. Additional monitoring of the situation can determine whether border enforcement still requires more resources or even if they can be reduced (if illegal immigration drops because workers aren't trying to enter, it would free up the resources being used to chase them for other uses).
Where both Nathan and Michael Lind would seem to agree is that the current laws coming from the House and Senate are disastrous. By declaring all people in the country illegally to be felons and criminalizing any form of assistance to them, they increase the imbalance of power that lets these people be used against legal workers. By including those whose immigration status has lapsed due to the arcane rules and inneficient beauracracy of the INS in such sanctions, they creates major issues of fairness. By institutionalizing a two-tiered worker system through the guest-worker program, they make permanent the conflict between foreign workers and citizens and legal permanent residents in the workforce.
March 28, 2006 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
March 28, 2006 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well your opinion is different from Nathan's. He seems indifferent at best and hostile at worst to enforcing the border.
As for the notion that increasing enforcement without taking the "profit motive" away won't solve the problem, all I can say is that it's never been tried, so how would we know? There has never been a commitment to proper border enforcement in this country, mostly because we can't seem to decide how seriously to take this problem.
I also believe it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the labor market to think that greater labor law enforcement or unionization will reduce the incentive to hire illegals. As I keep saying, the whole reason illegals are attractive to employers is that they won't complain. I have yet to hear a response to this basic question: how can the government enforce new labor laws if the "victim" doesn't make himself known? Furthermore, the whole notion of civil damages is laughable. Illegal immigrants aren't going to sue in court for damages. And unions or others that sued on their behalf would quickly lose whatever dwindling public support they currently have.
Nathan's approach is so illogical that you can't help wonder whether there's something else going on. And in fact there is. Unions have apparently decided to advocate for illegal immigrants because they see them as potential new members once they are inevitably given amnesty as well as allies of current members. It's nothing but an act of desperation by leaders who have failed spectacularly in all their other goals.
March 28, 2006 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
And what are we going to do about employing the people who cannot produce enough to justify paying them the new, higher minimum wage? I suppose generous welfare benefits?
500 immigrants die each year trying to cross the border-- a degree of motivation that will overcome almost any increased enforcement efforts.
Increased enforcement would make it much harder for people to come across and would reduce immigration a lot. And if the immigrants persisted, and 5000 died each year in the desert, that would also probably start to discourage them from coming. Although I suppose it's our responsibility to make certain that those who invade us don't die in the attempt.
It's not that increased enforecemnt won't work. It's that no one in power is willing to really enforce the law.
"You say I'm a dreamer. We're two of a kind. Looking for some perfect world that we both know that we'll never find." - Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"
March 28, 2006 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Several lines of evidence (as well as other theoretical considerations) indicate that minimum wage laws reduce employment among the least skilled or least favored. Historical evidence demonstrates that those who first proposed the Federal minimum wage law in the US sought to protect unionized, northern white workers and manufacturers from non-union, southern black labor. This was an explicit reason given in Congress, according to Walter Williams (The State Against Blacks) . Leading Black community papers opposed the law. Williams (iirc) also asserts that it was unionized white workers who supported a minimum wage law in South Africa, again, to reduce competition from black workers. There is voluminous empirical research on the effect of minimum wage laws, of two types: a) comparisons of contemporaneous economies, relating the magnitude of the legislated minimum wage to the rate of employment (overall and by category) and of GDP growth, and b) intertemporal comparisons of employment and growth rates before and after enactment of minimum wage laws. Some successful economies do not operate under minimum wage laws. Neither Hong Kong nor Switzerland has a minimum wage law. Unemployment in Hong Kong rose after the handover, when the PRC mandated employee benefits (raising the cost of employees), according to the WSJ. Google-search "minimum wage legislation" AND "employment effects" or similar, and you get hundreds of referenes. Another line of evidence is the increase in the gap between the employment rate of whites and blacks over time in the US as the mandated minimum wage has increased. The evidence is mixed, as one would expect from effects due to multiple causes.
Another, theoretical, line of argument is as follows. Suppose someone seeks training as a machinist (for example). Suppose s/he argees to apprentice to a machinist and agrees to pay, say, $12/hr to the machinist for his time, broken mill bits, and wasted bar stock used in practice. As the trainee improves, the cost of training falls, and the wage which the trainee pays to the instructor falls. Eventually, the trainee develops salable skills, and the machinist can afford to pay the trainee. There is a continuum, -$________o_________+$. A minimum wage law of, say, $6.00/hr. puts an interval $12 wide -$____(____o____)____ +$ off limits to both parties.
Homeschool if you can.
March 28, 2006 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
And yet 70-80% of voters who get a chance to vote on minimum wage legislation support raising it. And why?
Because the evidence that minimum wage laws cut employment is non-existent. As this Economic Policy Institute study pointed out:
And MR. KIRKPATRICK-- since most black leaders support raising the minimum wage, doesn't it take a bit of gall to play the race card to try to lower the wages of the working poor, many of them black workers who would see a raise under minimum wage laws? The cynicism of rightwing pundits has no limit, I know, but this gambit is a bit over the top.March 29, 2006 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't also forget that by tacitly allowing low-risk illegal immigration, you drastically reduce our capacity to allow high skill, high wage LEGAL immigrants in. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of willing immigrants waiting in line who must wait their turn in line to come here due to contraints on how many immigrants we can absorb on a yearly basis. Increased enforcement of border controls would allow for a greater number of those individuals to come here sooner and get down to the work of contributing to America on both a cultural and economic basis.
March 29, 2006 7:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
a) "And why? Because..."I doubt that the people polled were familiar with the evidence.
b) Earthquakes have been economically important. Viral pneumonia has neen economically important.
c) If "modest increases in state minimum wages in the range of $1.00 or $2.00 can significantly improve the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed", why not enact 100 such wage inceases over the next 100 hours, hmmm? If there is no adverse impact, why be stingy?
d) If I'm "playing the race card" so is Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.
e) Minimum wage laws lower the cost of discrimination against unfavored workers, whether they are unfavored by reason of race, disability, or age. This is a standard feature of economic analysis of minimum wage laws.
f) "Rightwing" indicates a one-dimensional view of the political continuum.
Homeschool if you can.
March 29, 2006 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, as Armstrong Williams demonstrated, the corporate rightwing happily subsidizes black commentators to attack other black leaders and civil rights movements.
Also, the "why not raise the minimum wage to $100 per hour" argument is the silliest argument made, marking one as an idiot not worth talking to. Extrapolation to adsurdem results is the mark of someone engaging only in rhetoric, not honest debate.
March 29, 2006 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is true that there has been more investment in Latin America of late, and that's generally a positive development. Whether that's foreign investment or retention of domestic capital I really don't know. As a note, in order to have a balanced assessment of the state of the whole region, you'd probably need to do something to equalize the effects of Brazil - its economy is far larger than any other Latin American country, as is its inequality problem. And Brazil sends far fewer low-wage immigrants to the US than Mexico and Central America, so you can have increased investment that has little bearing on the folks who are choosing to come to the States.
But here's where I'd say you're being a little too optimistic:
The second half of the first sentence is definitely true, but a huge number of people I met in Latin America could not be convinced that they wouldn't be "rich" in the States. Over time that image might change, but it will take a long, long time, and a lot of unsuccessful immigration. I find it hard to believe that you won't see some combination of increased immigration, unemployment, and a nwe "grey market" in labor as a result of this kind of change. Bringing indocumentados out of the twilight they currently are in will almost certainly prompt an avalanche of usage of government services, and I doubt we're really ready for that. If its possible to keep jobs paying decently, I agree that downward pressure on wages will be vastly reduced, and one of the likely effects is to look for ways to outsource that labor. One can only hope that some of that outsourcing promotes capital investment and wage growth in Latin America.
I'm not against what you're proposing, but I'm still unconvinced it's going to have all the effects you claim. My point overall is that while justice definitely requires trying to make improvements to the "root" problem, I'm not convinced that opening up the spigot to even more immigration from Latin America is all that great way to go about that.
March 29, 2006 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Congratulations; that descent into ad hominem didn't take long. The pro-legislation side of this argument went from complaining about an abstract argument and asking for real-world data to "idiot", "bought", "racist", "sophist", and "liar" in three steps. Boring ad hominem at that. Why not "ethically-challenged, cum-guzzling mental midget"? Let's get creative, people!
The pro-legislation side has not addressed any one of the three abstract arguments ("Who gains, who loses?", the machinist trainee scenario, the blunt instrument, $4.00 here, $6.00 there agrument). The only objection raised was the observation that there should be real-world evidence.
If the pro-legislation argument is that sufficiently small increases at sufficiently large intervals enhance overall social welfare or degrade aggregate material welfare yet enhance the material welfare of the least among us sufficiently to compensate (charity being a public good) that sounds like a concession that sufficiently large increases at sufficiently close intervals will reduce employment among low-skill or unfavored workers. Why is it not permitted to construct the continuum and to ask where the break-even point is?
Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are academic Econ PhD's. If they are bought then so is every academic economist who signed the EPI statement.
Homeschool if you can.
March 29, 2006 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink