Illegal immigration and the colonization of the American labor market

Illegal Immigration and the Colonization of the American Labor market

THE ECONOMIC aspect of the debate over illegal immigration to the United States is far from being the whole or, to my mind, even the determinative part of it; yet it is the one most accessible to objective investigation: Viewed as an economic problem, an otherwise confused and perplexing subject appears to offer at least the possibility of rational comprehension. Perhaps that is why it has so often been the target of obfuscators like Professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland and the Heritage Foundation, whose parti pris arguments and sometimes obsolete data have happily begun to yield to those set forth by more responsible investigators--such as Philip L. Martin, professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of California-Davis and author of a thoughtful and well-argued monograph, Illegal Immigration and the Colonization of the American Labor Market (Center for Immigration Studies, 1424 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $6.95).

According to Professor Martin, a longtime student of the vicissitudes of the American labor market, the availability of illegal aliens to major industries in certain regions of the United States has had--and continues to have --significant and frequently unlooked-for effects upon investment, employment, and competitive trends in the nation as a whole. Martin describes the displacement of American workers by undocumented ones in agriculture, food processing, services, and construction, a process largely forwarded by network recruiting and subcontracting; he concludes that Congress's reluctance to move against the flow of illegals across America's borders has had the effect of granting a selective labor subsidy that, over the past two decades, has disrupted domestic investment decisions, slowed economic growth, and led to the proliferation of low-skilled, low-productivity jobs (many of them of an "artificial' nature: i.e., housekeeping and landscaping jobs that, in the absence of cheap and hungry illegals, would largely be performed by householders themselves) in an economy that ought rather to be modernizing and sophisticating itself.

In making these and related assertions, Martin flies in the face of many of the cherished axioms of the proimmigration side, such as that adding so many people to the population spurs growth by that much; that the United States has need of more of a certain type of low-skilled or unskilled worker; that the presence of additional workers, by depressing wages and holding down consumer prices, generates business profits that in turn are used to underwrite investments, resulting in new firms and factories, new jobs, and higher wages and productivity, hence expanding the economy; and that moving against illegal workers (as the INS did in 1982 in Operation Jobs) has as its primary effect the destruction of companies dependent on those workers and a decline therefore in the delivery of goods and services.

Having placed himself directly within enemy fire, however, Martin proceeds to give still better than he gets. Yes, additional people can spur growth, but they are not essential to it: An alternative is to provide "more and better capital for each person employed and [to push] back technological frontiers'--which, by the way, has the effect of raising the GNP without at the same time lowering GNP per capita. No, we do not need more lowskilled workers, making possible larger industries with greater output and lower unit costs, since having at one's beck and call a pool of readily available cheap labor is ultimately less likely to lead to business investment in high-technology production than to outmoded labor-intensive production processes, to the detriment of American productivity. No, the INS does not go abroad at night dressed in white sheets and seeking to put honest American companies out of business--nor is that the effect of its operations, since nearly all companies that are unable to compete for workers at the national free-market standard are already on the skids and doomed to eventual disintegration. And so on, and so forth.

In Professor Martin's opinion, immigration reform must be enacted soon, before "the availability of low-wage immigrant workers becomes a resource that gets capitalized into the values of land and business assets.' Already, "some of the service establishments, factories, and farms of the most sophisticated economy in the world are dependent on the most remote Mexican or Central American villages for unskilled labor'--with serious distortions accruing to each of those economies. "The American economy,' Martin concedes, "will have more jobs and businesses if illegal-alien workers are allowed to enter freely and work in the United States. But the number of jobs and businesses alone is not an accurate measure of the soundness of economic development or quality of life. Tolerating heavy illegal immigration introduces distortions into the economy that are difficult to remedy, while imposing environmental and social costs that must be borne by the society as a whole.'

COPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc.
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