Flying from Chicago to Tokyo earlier today I had a long discussion with my neighbor about the effects of illegal immigrants on the US economy. Our conversation become so involved that I started taking notes on cocktail napkins, and I’ve noted some of our conversation points below. The nature and location of the conversation didn’t allow us to delve into numbers or specifics, so these are all general, theoretical points.
- – Illegal immigrants play a major role in domestic farming. Even with migrant workers, we would see produce that requires handpicking to go to waste in the fields. Prices for consumers would skyrocket, and farms would face real hardships as they had to raise wages to get low-skilled Americans into the fields.
- – Classrooms in cities such as Miami and San Diego would empty out.
- – Some will say we will save on in taxes. There may be some truth to that. But social security would be in grave danger. Plenty of illegal immigrants pay into the social security system be being employed, but because they are not in the country legally they can never claim the benefits.
- – Countless thousands of professional career women would have to leave work as the supply of illegal immigrant nannies dried up.
- – The housing sector would be hit even harder as large numbers of workers went off the market.
Additional comments are naturally most welcome.
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Comments to this entry
Benjamin Walthrop
July 10, 2008
2:22 pm
A positive outcome regarding the domestic farming impacts might be the development of the required technology to harvest produce currently harvested by hand. After all, the elimination of slavery certainly did not sound the death knell for the domestic cotton and tobacco industries.
Dan tdaxp
July 10, 2008
2:30 pm
* farming would become more efficient
* third-world farmers would be better off
* american children in miami and san diego would receive better educations
* the traditional family structure would be strengthened
* housing would become more affordable
Hardly a persuasive list!
Smitten Eagle
July 10, 2008
2:49 pm
-Legitimacy of the government would increase, as the government would be serious about enforcement of its own laws.
-America's claim to its Southwestern States would be buttressed.
-The economy would be white-market, with consequent dividends to be paid because companies will no longer have to hedge against prospects of immigration raids.
-Human traffic would be reduced.
JustADude
July 10, 2008
3:57 pm
Florida has an estimated 1 million illegals. Take that in to account when you look at loading of sewage, water and other utilities to support them that would be reduced if they were not here. Overloading of housing units beyond normal occupancy rates to minimize their costs lead to congestion and usage for systems beyond their design capacity which utilized nominal occupancy rates.
Look at the reduction in law enforcement , jail and court costs and school overcrowding and holding citizen students back as they drag on the classroom environment.
For social security , don't bet on the issue there, another amnesty of major proportion and you only magnify the problem.
How many citizens have had their social security accounts screwed up with id thefts corrupting their accounts. Why do no match letters going to employers not get forwarded for information to the 'real' SS number holders? Why are they left in the dark that their account has issues until they try to retire?
Nanny types could be replaced by discouraged workers from the workforce or a new equilibrium would be established.
Look at all the indirect support that has to exist for 20 to 40 million illegals just to house , feed and cloth them and you will see it is not something that lives in it's own isolation.
zeezil
July 10, 2008
4:09 pm
America was built with native born citizens and LEGAL immigrants. The millions of illegals here are costing the American taxpayer over $100 billion every year on health care and other services including education, law enforcement, welfare and housing. It is in the best interest of America, her citizens and LEGAL immigrants to reject illegal immigration and force the illegals to depart. Honoring America’s values don’t include embracing illegal immigration, in fact, honoring America’s values involves honoring the rule of law.
We have allowed ourselves to become a fractured society, with citizens who have to obey the law and illegal aliens who don’t. Anyone with even a modicum of logic can see that this is anarchy. I embrace legal immigration as we have the right and duty as a sovereign nation to decide whom we let in and whom we keep out and illegal immigration voids both of those precepts.
lirelou
July 10, 2008
6:56 pm
They wouldn't have to leave work. They would merely have to pay an American a decent wage to take care of their children. Of course, they might have to forego that second BMW and buy a Saturn, but that's life.
For the record, from the mid-70s to mid-80s my mother worked as a housekeeper for an Israeli couple in Boston who were both psychiatrists. They paid her a decent wage and also contributed to her social security and workman's compensation funds. And when my sister was widowed, she opened up a Daycare Center which she successfully ran for more than ten years.
lirelou
July 10, 2008
7:05 pm
Arlo
July 11, 2008
12:04 am
Joe Jones
July 11, 2008
12:45 am
- San Diego, yes. Miami, not so much. (Most of those kids are Cubans who are legal refugees, not illegal immigrants... though the Haitians would definitely disappear.)
- I'm not sure whether illegal immigrants really pay into social security. Doesn't their salary kind of necessarily have to be under the table?
- Farming would become less efficient and third world farmers would benefit at the expense of American farmers, thus destroying our agricultural sector and leaving us with basically nothing but a service sector.
- The gestapo raids necessary to get rid of existing illegal immigrants would probably eat up what few civil liberties Americans have left.
Durf
July 11, 2008
2:56 am
I was under the impression that large chunks of it were built with Manifest Destiny and smallpox.
Alacazaba
July 11, 2008
4:19 am
Look at the low birth rates for Americans - even in rural areas. Why do you think so many small farms went belly up in the 80's? It's largely because of the lack of labor which forced farmers to turn to loans for technologies to help harvest crops. We used to have a farm in rural Alabama and in the 40's, 50's, 60's, and most of the 70's you could find plenty of hands at harvest time. however the generational gap caught up - the smaller families that people started to have in the 60's meant fewer workers. Gradually when age hobbled my grandparents and the lure of better jobs pulled other family away from the region we just let the land go fallow. We couldn't even find someone to lease the land such was the difficulty of finding hands to tend the land.
There are two things I can point to which highlight the extreme reliance we have upon illegals in this country. I'm sure most are aware of the relative abundance of organic and boutique foods even in today's largest supermarkets. This growth in small farms and the ability of large farms to produce this has happened in unison with the virtual explosion of illegals into this country the past 15 years. The other is the many circumstances of unsafe food - such as the spinach scare last summer. I don't think it is much of a coincidence that it also happened not long after the government started to increase it's presence on the border by having National Guard troops there. I met the owner of one of the farms involved with the spinach scare and he frankly confessed that they were had a hard time ensuring quality because of the squeeze on illegals that this had placed. Need I point to similar outbreaks in the meat packing and cattle industry that have happened in this time frame?
Only 50% of ilegals are Mexican, the rest are largely Hispanic but about 10-15% Asian and European. Not only would the Ag industry wither, forcing us to depend on foreign countries for our food much like we do oil, small businesses would be doomed because they, too, would be up against a labor shortage once the farmer's fields emptied out. You'd be hard pressed to find a restaurant in this country which hasn't had at some time a Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Central, or South American fella washin' the dishes, if not cooking the food.
William Millan
July 11, 2008
9:19 am
Smitten Eagle
July 11, 2008
1:53 pm
I was not speaking in jest.
And yes, we do exercise sovereignty in the American SW to the extent that we refuse to exercise our own laws.
We exercise sovereignty there to the extent that drug cartel cross the border with impunity:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/mexican_cartels_and_fallout_phoenix
We exercise sovereignty there to the extent that political correctness allows.
The view from my nest shows a southern American border in the early, gradual stages of dissolution, and the demographic pressures on that dissolving border will not favor the United States. As borders dissolve, and states lose their legitimacy, cultural factors take precidence. Much of the SW is already culturally Mexican. You cannot cross the US-Mexican border and see areas of Mexico that are culturally American. Cultural, and demographic pressures therefore favor Mexico.
A counterexample from history is Texas: What was Mexican territory was facing cultural and demographic pressures from the United States. US citizens moved there, and refused to abide by Mexican law. With enough US-born population living there, all it took was a small war to midwife Texas to independence, and then to admission to the Union. The same thing is happening now, except Mexico has favorable demographic pressures now. (I am not saying that this will lead to war, by the way. Interstate war is now passe.)
Joe Jones
July 11, 2008
3:22 pm
Lexington Green
July 11, 2008
7:35 pm
Ha. Good one.
And muskets and tomahawks and Bowie knives in the hands of our land-hungry Scots-Irish backcountry folk.
They cleared out Indians as just one more species of pestiferous fauna.
Not sure they were all "legal" immigrants, since they usually went wherever they wanted without regard to international treaties, or treaties with the Indian tribes.
Taking over the continent was not a pretty process. But some well-armed community was going to do it, so I am glad it was ours.
Michael
July 12, 2008
12:29 am
@JustADude: I'll take your word on the effects on black laborers in your area, but I also recall stories from my Mom. Standing in the unemployment line in CA in the '70s, she saw blacks turning down jobs recent migrants eagerly snapped up. I don't pass that on to diss blacks or to praise immigrants, just to point out the need for solid research on who's taking what jobs before we point any fingers. In the grand scheme of things, our respective anecdotes are worth about the same.
A non-rhetorical question for the anti-illegal crowd here: Given that immigrants (legal and otherwise) typically come here as much to get away from back conditions at home as to seek good conditions here, what should our government do to help their conditions at home improve so they don't have to come here?
A last, non-rhetorical question for everybody. Do we really want an economic situation where we're dependent on a permanent underclass? I'm antipathetic to the minuteman crowd, and think McCain-Kennedy to be a good idea but I do have to admit that that's what the farm worker and social security arguments add up to. With them, we need ever-increasing numbers of young immigrants, a permanent underclass that is denied benefits or a new model.
Arlo
July 12, 2008
8:15 pm
Can't control the border. Can't drill for oil. Soon you will pay 10 dollars for gas and you will need armed escorts to walk the streets. All because we can't and will just wither away. This and more will most definetely come about. And the only conclusion is, as history has proven, will be for the government to go into dictator mode. This whole service industry promotion thing amuses me. Who you going to service? The government employee's? Ha.
America the land of 'Can Do' and 'Ingenuity' Ha.
There is no England anymore. There is no America anymore. Life is GRAND!
TDL
July 12, 2008
9:45 pm
Regards,
TDL
alacazaba
July 15, 2008
6:04 am
Given that there is currently no other large industry that experiences a rate of change on par with the IT world, it does not seem likely that capital investment will supplant the need for labor any time soon in Ag industries. If such an event were to happen, however, you would find that the increase in investment and growth of Ag related businesses would in itself create a drain on legal Ag labor. Legal workers would be drawn to the higher paying jobs and career futures that a dynamic era of Ag innovation would cause, again furthering reliance on illegal labor for the jobs that remained.
Reducing the supply of labor illegals currently provide in this country would have long term effects on the Ag business, even given the unlikely possibility that capital investment could alleviate significantly the demand for labor. Access to capital usually means access to credit, so to offset these costs of running huge industrial outfits, Ag producers would be more dependent upon futures markets to ensure they can make their loan payments. When you speak of marginal farms, given the inherent risk that even the largest farms may face in any season, unless nearly all farms are owned or backed up by the government, any of them could become marginal in a even a season given the right mix of debt from investment in capital and low crop yields or even excess production in world markets. They would have to be very responsive to trends in food prices and food production levels just to stay ahead of fluctuating futures commodity prices, all in order to satisfy their loan agreements. The problem is then that not every crop will sell for the same amount year after year. What got a lot of money one season may not get the next, so if you have just invested millions of dollars in the latest machine used to harvest a particular fruit which previously had been a very valuable crop but now trades for pennies, you could find yourself in a whole lot of financial hurt very quickly.
As I am sure any student of economic history can attest, government involvement in any business - especially a time critical business – is hardly a recipe for efficiency and success. For an industry to remain robust, policies which promote self sufficiency are best. Once farmers are beholden to the vagaries of political discourse, the market warping relationship of Ag business and big government would become even more extreme than we see with many growers and Ag companies now. Who you supported last election becomes more important than what you’ve got growing in your fields. A flexible, available labor pool is the only true hedge that someone in the Ag business has. Restrict that and you will see the futures price of all Ag commodities surge, surging while the farms are failing because they cannot produce because of their labor shortage, creating the perfect opportunity for foreign producers to edge out their domestic competitors.
ry
July 15, 2008
4:18 pm
Yet, someone is running some dis-information. It doesn't take mega computing power to displace human labor in ag. Sorry, it doesn't. Similar arguments were floated over robotics in auto manufacturing. Now it's the norm. Having gone to UCD, which started as an Ag school and has a decent engineering component now, I know there's designs out there to automate harvesting of things like lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower, and also for things on fruit trees that don't require so much as an old, old 286 chipset. The capability is there---the industry just doesn't want to go there, the one time buy cost is pretty high. There's not the need for labor as it was back in the day. Someone has stepped across the rails of history and shouted stop, but it isn't Bill Buckley.
It's the defence of those who refuse to change and cling to an outdated model. The citizen farmer, akin to something VD Hanson would write about, is of little utility.
On the SocSec front. It strikes me as applying a short term solution with massive longterm downside to a long term problem. Right now, with the max influx of cash from people who cannot collect, it's still going insolvent. Yeah, that's a brilliant plan. I've heard this one before, and it strikes me as silly. It's still going to break and all the illegals aren't going to fix it. NOt in the long term it won't.
@Micheal; What should we do for countries that have major problems and so people immigrate here to escape it? Well, for one, get off the Obama train of hate on globalization and outsourcing. Industry going there makes there better with a small hit for us. People will suffer here, that's not in question, but the amount of suffering and the duration is short by comparison. They'll have to transition to something new and we need the means to speed that up. It's simple, but even the simple things are hard.
Ultimately, this comes down to a question of do we want to keep a busted system that doesn't work or make the painful effort to move to something that does? The rest is just filler in the hot dog. Immigration system is muy busted, needs to be updated to reflect real needs, and people who don't get everything they want out of realignment are giong to have to shut up and like it(the free borders and cheap labor people along with the Pat Buchanon and MIcheal Savage types).
TDL
July 16, 2008
6:29 pm
The vagaries of which you speak are not only political, but the vagaries of the market place as well. No business or industry can what the price of their good or service will be the following year, they can only make certain assumptions and remain adaptive. The hypothetical I was responding to was if all illegals were somehow forced out of the country tomorrow, then "something" will have to replace that lost labor. That "something" can be one of two things, labor or capital. Capital will be more cost efficient than labor in this new paradigm. Capital will replace labor (maybe it will not 100% labor for capital replacement, but capital will move into agriculture.)
Regards,
TDL
arloray
July 16, 2008
10:13 pm
ry
July 18, 2008
7:30 pm
He and Buchanon are very much opposed to immigration, and not just illegal. They see it as the over-run of America, the Vandals and Goths crossing into Roman lands before the sacking. But the US has gone thru, what three of these periods without falling? (The mass immigration of the 1800s, turn of the century from 19th to 20th, and one in the 1960s). So, I think the man is an alarmist, and only mildly silly. The nation didn't fall then because the national character bounded by a handful of ideas was maintained while the culture changed dramatically(farmer to industry at turn of century, all those Scots-Irish coming over in the 19th). it won't fall if that handful are maintained even if the culture changes, which it has many times in this country.
And, hey, i used to be part of the Paul Revere Society, but then I woke up.
Obama's an idiot in my book. His anti-trade, socialism-lite plans make me gag. But, if the options are hang with Obama or Savage, I'll pick Obama. He's an empty suit you can alter while Savage is a demagouge you can't. (ANd if you think I was quoting Obama on the 'transition to other jobs' thing, you'd better go back and look at a couple of McCain speeches up in Michigan.)
grey sidhe
July 19, 2008
4:24 pm
Don't get me wrong as I am a advocate of a free market economy, but it's hardly free when pregnant women work themselves to death picking tomatoes for pennies, not so we don't have to pay more at the market, but so some commodity speculator can skim millions off the top while not adding one nickel of value to the product that comes to my table.
As long as we allow currencies to be manipulated and traded, devaluing the worth of people's work, and base wages on something other than the value it adds to a commodity, or society, we are going to have this problem. Nasty work should command more wages not less, because it is nasty and people willing to do it deserve to be paid more, just as education and learned skills should likewise command more. They never will because wages only respond to supply and demand in a closed system.
As long as we can bring in a semi load of "illegals" from wherever and get the survivors of that ride from hell to work for a dollar, because that dollar is a years worth of labor back home, the greedy of this country and world will continue to manipulate us all to their advantage. Until the day that a man's or woman's labor is based on effort and skill rather than currency that is being traded like baseball cards this issue is not going away.
Ship them all back home all you want. Unless the root cause of this problem is dealt with it is a giant waste of time and more tax dollars. A true free market economy will never be free as long as it is run by parasitic entities, be they governments or mega corps, instead of the people who do the work. If people could make a living for their families based on their sweat, skill and knowledge then the only reasons they'd have to immigrate is for a change in scenery or the opportunity to fill a real void somewhere they were needed and welcomed.
arloray
July 19, 2008
8:06 pm
I'm not sure that I can say that I am still new at surfing the internet. Maybe a year and half now. And I am not an academic. I have come to conclusion that it is amazing that some of these pundits make the decision to get out of bed. But I do not say this to diss people. But in reflection on the atmosphere of how people want the gov. to make policy and who they vote for. And the end result of all these goofballs in our so called leadership positions for the so called people.
I'm gonna have to look up demagouge.
In any event. 20 yrs ago McCain would of been called a democrat and Obama a communist...
CTDeLude
July 22, 2008
4:59 pm