Immigrants to US workforce: "Want your jobs back? Come get them!"

[WildCat]

...and then most of those jobs disappear because Chinese producers can still sell lettuce profitably at $1.39 a head.

I had no idea China had so much spare arable land as to become a lettuce exporter... nor that they could ship it fresh to the other side of the world so cheaply.

Fact is, they don't and they can't.

Nor can Joe's Diner send his dirty dishes to China to get cleaned. Nor can you send your lawn to India to get mowed.

These are jobs which cannot be easily exported. It makes no economic sense to import unskilled workers for the sole purpose of driving down wages and benefits, as you are apparently supporting? There is certainly no shortage of unskilled labor in the US... what do you suppose the real unemployment rate of high school dropouts is in the US?

 

[mumblethrax]

If I started selling cigarettes with no tax stamps for $2 in a booth outside 7-11, and 7-11 complained because no one was buying their cigarettes for $9, is that the "market seeking economic equilibrium"?

Sure. If you can keep selling them at that price after the 7-11 manager calls the cops.

Governments don't always have the power to eliminate black/gray markets by fiat. There shouldn't be any market for recreational use of marijuana at all in the US. Does that mean there isn't?

Our immigration policy with respect to Mexico is about as realistic as our drug policy is.

 

[WildCat]

Sure. If you can keep selling them at that price after the 7-11 manager calls the cops.

Governments don't always have the power to eliminate black/gray markets by fiat. There shouldn't be any market for recreational use of marijuana at all in the US. Does that mean there isn't?

Are you claiming enforcing immigration laws is as difficult as enforcing drug laws? Are other western countries having such a difficult time enforcing their immigration and employment laws?

Our immigration policy with respect to Mexico is about as realistic as our drug policy is.

And what immigration policy would you like to see with Mexico?

And is the purpose of said immigration policy solely to keep wages and benefits low in the US? If so, what's in it for the US?

 

[mumblethrax]

I had no idea China had so much spare arable land as to become a lettuce exporter... nor that they could ship it fresh to the other side of the world so cheaply.

Fact is, they don't and they can't.

Agricultural jobs are generally tradable. China doesn't need any more arable land--if we drive the price of lettuce up worldwide, people will just eat less of it (assuming that it's an elastic good).

Nor can Joe's Diner send his dirty dishes to China to get cleaned. Nor can you send
your lawn to India to get mowed.

Locally based service jobs are non-tradable.

It makes no economic sense to import unskilled workers for the sole purpose of driving down wages and benefits, as you are apparently supporting? There is certainly no shortage of unskilled labor in the US... what do you suppose the real unemployment rate of high school dropouts is in the US?

There's no shortage of people with the purchasing power to buy pet rocks, either.

What's missing, these days, are people willing to purchase them at a price that makes the market viable. As drkitten said, it's not stealing if nobody wants it.

I can tell you what I have no interest in--trying to induce people to do a job they aren't willing to do so that I can pay more for food while would-be immigrants end up worse off as a result.

 

[mumblethrax]

Are you claiming enforcing immigration laws is as difficult as enforcing drug laws?

I'm claiming that they're both difficult to enforce, and (in their current form) largely undesirable and unjust in the first place.

Are other western countries having such a difficult time enforcing their immigration and employment laws?

How many other western countries share a 2,000 mile border with a country where the median wage differs by a ratio of 5:1?

It might as well be force of nature. We might as well lash the sea.

And what immigration policy would you like to see with Mexico?

What I'd like to see, long term, is free movement of people between the North American states. NAFTA liberalized one or two of the classical factors of production...it would be nice to see about the third.

What I'll settle for, short term, is a rational immigration policy that acknowledges that there's going to be a lot of migration between Mexico and the US, sets realistic targets, and ends the stigma associated with illegal immigration.

And is the purpose of said immigration policy solely to keep wages and benefits low in the US? If so, what's in it for the US?

I don't really care about lowering the wages and benefits for Americans willing to do this job at sustainable wages, because I don't think these people exist in significant numbers. As for the benefits for the US: lower prices for goods and services, avoidance of catastrophic population decline, improved relationships with an important neighbor, and hippy stuff like enriching our cultural tableau.

And for Mexican immigrants, a general improvement in quality of life. Because I don't actually think Americans are that parochial.

 

[GreNME]

You both are arguing about which type of government mandate should be put in place to artificially affect the market, as if that's going to fix the obvious problem in the labor force. You're both approaching it wrong.

The fact is that the market isn't going to try to establish any sort of equilibrium outside of maximization of profitability-- that's always been the result-- and right now the maximum profitability is in low-paid manual labor from a grey/black market labor pool. Forcing higher wages isn't going to solve that, it's just going to create another illegal activity as a result of government mandate (in other words, more under-the-table pay). Keeping the status quo isn't going to solve anything, because there really is a disparity being maintained by the situation as it stands (it's just mainly a disparity in our favor). So, if it's an actual solution that's being called for, both approaches mentioned above are untenable.

The reason that the freeing of slaves altered the labor market in the 19th century was not that it forced plantations and farms to pay former slaves for work-- sharecropping and similarly disreputable practices continued for decades afterward-- it was the period following emancipation where innovations in tools used for harvesting and farm work started advancing that brought change. Better harvesting machines, tractors, and other technical advances had a great impact on the ability of farms to produce, but they weren't going to happen inevitably just because they happened eventually. This is where emancipation-- taking a cheap labor force and legalizing their right to demand compensation-- played a key role in the desire for and eventual creation of innovation. Since we're not dealing with slavery in the modern day there's no "emancipation" equivalent, but from a legal perspective there is a clear equivalent: guest worker visas for the current undocumented workforce. From a legal perspective guest worker visas give the same type of rights that emancipation gave to many slaves, which would be the right to demand (better) compensation. This is more advantageous than the government trying to play nanny for every single worker on every single farm because there's less administrative overhead (smaller government, which the right should like) while still providing a mechanism where underpaid workers have a recourse and legal protection (which the left should like). This also provides a more level playing field for any domestic workforce that would like to join in the competition, particularly for any domestic workforce that can provide what a generic labor force (foreign or domestic) can't: innovations to current methods. Right now, as things stand, there's no room for such a thing (as innovation) because there's sufficient profitability to preclude a need; additionally, government intervention at the payrolls on farms would hinder any investment in techniques or technologies that are innovative because government interference (in the form of mandates and regulations) would give the farms just enough of an excuse to avoid taking risks on anything new (come on, center-right folks, this has to be a familiar line of thinking). Making the current grey/black market workforce a legal entity undercuts those flaws and actually provides a more "free" (as in open to competition) labor market than the status quo or with government mandates on farm wages, while also addressing the issue of immigration policy in a manner that isn't just ignoring the existent market or demanding an unrealistic scenario (where all "illegals" somehow go away). In addition, it creates a whole slew of new sources of tax revenue (in the form of legal wage earners) that can and definitely will be tapped by the federal government as well as the states (where the states have applicable income tax).

It won't "solve" the problem of illegal border crossers, not by a long shot, but it reduces the incentives for crossing illegally-- effectively knee-capping the groups profiting most from border crossing (drug traffickers) in a substantial manner. It gives the "free market" types an environment where actual competition for services exists for them to use as a reference (instead of artificial manipulation which already isn't working, and just creates another criminal charge). It provides a platform where the current workforce can actually have protections against mistreatment, atrocious living conditions, and/or insufficient wages, which should be attractive to the "worker's rights" types. In fact, the only types that it would seem unattractive to are the "illegals get out" types, because that stance is primarily demanding an unrealistic situation that has not and will not ever be possible no matter how many laws the government makes, no matter how many walls get built, and no matter how many wannabe-cowboys go patrolling the border in their SUVs trying to catch border crossers. The reality is that there is a huge labor force in the United States that is questionable at best, outright illegal and under dehumanizing conditions at worst. The problem is that there are too many folks trying to tie the border crossers doing cheap manual labor (whether picking lettuce or getting picked up for day work at the Home Depot) with the border crossers selling drugs, fighting gang wars, or running weapons for the cartels, and then spouting statistics about the millions of "illegals" as if they were all or mostly the latter when every indication (based on what little info we can gather) that they're almost entirely the former. And as long as that mis-association continues to be made in the public discourse about immigration policy, any guest worker program for the majority of the undocumented folks that already exist is about as likely as Richard Dawkins becoming an Evangelical Christian.

 

[mumblethrax]

You both are arguing about which type of government mandate should be put in place to artificially affect the market, as if that's going to fix the obvious problem in the labor force. You're both approaching it wrong.

Didn't you just suggest a third?

Guest worker programs generally promote corruption and exploitation, so I don't favor them over citizenship-path immigration.

 

[Dymanic]

People greatly overstate the effect labor costs have on the price of fresh vegetables. IIRC it's only 6% or so. I'd bet it's far less for fruit, which is more mechanized.

That little tidbit is all over the net (in case you can't recall where you recalled it from). It usually looks something like this:

"According to Philip E. Martin, Professor of Immigration and farm labor at the University of California, Davis, consumers who pay $1 for a head of lettuce are giving 19 cents to the farmer and 6 cents to the farm worker."

Some of those who have passed that gem along appear to be either unaware that not all vegetables are lettuce or unaware that labor costs vary widely from one crop to another:

"The hand harvesting of fruit and vegetable crops in the United States is a labor-intensive operation that accounts for about 50 percent of total production costs. The number of crops and percentage of crop acreage that are mechanically harvested today have increased somewhat since the late 1970s. Most of these crops are used for processing. However, at least 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. vegetable acreage and 40 to 45 percent of the U.S. fruit acreage is totally dependent on hand harvesting. [Good thing we didn't bet, eh?] The crops represent about 30 percent of the U.S. fruit, nut, and vegetable acreage and have an annual farm-gate value of over $13 billion. Declining labor availability and increasing labor costs are reducing U.S. growers competitiveness with foreign suppliers. Harvest mechanization and improved production technologies show promise for keeping U.S. growers in business."

http://www.cis.org/FarmMechanization-ImmigrationAlternative

 

[quixotecoyote]

It would be nice if Wildcat could cite a source, and you could cite one less than 10 years old.

 

[WildCat]

It would be nice if Wildcat could cite a source, and you could cite one less than 10 years old.

We've been through all this in other threads.

The fact is, no other western antion pays their ag workers as poorly as the US does. They make far more money in western Europe, for example, yet we don't see the mythical $5 head of lettuce or $10 tomatoes.

It's astonishing to me that Americans will pay $1/lb extra for a happy, free range chicken but won't pay an extra 25 cents for vegetables picked by fairly compensated human beings.

 

[WildCat]

I'm claiming that they're both difficult to enforce, and (in their current form) largely undesirable and unjust in the first place.

It's only politically difficult to enforce immigration and labor laws. It's ridiculously easy for employers to ensure taht they are hiring legal workers using the E-Verify system, for example. Crack down on the employers, and illegal workers won't come in the first place.

I bet a mandatory $200/day fine for every day an illegal worker is employed without the employer making a reasonable effort to ensure legality (such as using E-Verify) would go a long, long way towards getting employer compliance.

Is this really more difficult than keeping mining companies from hiring 12 year olds?

How many other western countries share a 2,000 mile border with a country where the median wage differs by a ratio of 5:1?

And you want to close that wage gap by lowering wages in the US?

It might as well be force of nature. We might as well lash the sea.

You greatly exagerrate the difficulty. Does Canada have such problems enforcing its immigration laws? What makes the US so special?

What I'd like to see, long term, is free movement of people between the North American states. NAFTA liberalized one or two of the classical factors of production...it would be nice to see about the third.

Why would it be "nice" to lower wages and benefits inside the US? Since when is worker exploitation the "nice" thing to do?

Do you know why migrant farm workers tend to be so small in stature? It's because they were severely malnourished as children. It's not genetic. You want to prolong a system that literally starves children.

What I'll settle for, short term, is a rational immigration policy that acknowledges that there's going to be a lot of migration between Mexico and the US, sets realistic targets, and ends the stigma associated with illegal immigration.

Why do no other countries find this necessary? Are the tomato farms in Spain staffed by illegal migrants from North Africa?

I don't really care about lowering the wages and benefits for Americans willing to do this job at sustainable wages, because I don't think these people exist in significant numbers.

You're claiming now that there's no wage which will attract legal workers to these jobs? And therefore we may as well exploit poor migrants and starve their children?

As for the benefits for the US: lower prices for goods and services, avoidance of catastrophic population decline, improved relationships with an important neighbor, and hippy stuff like enriching our cultural tableau.

My oh my, you make exploiting workers sound all warm and squishy... why not bring back indentured servitude or slavery while we're at it? And it's Mexico's responsibility to improve the quality of life for Mexicans. By allowing them to continually dump their poorest citizens into the US we only enable the corruption and ineptness that permeates every level of Mexican government and makes life hard for Mexicans. There's no reason a country as rich in resources as Mexico should be an economic basket case.

And whatever money we save on the price of vegetables or lawn care we lose a multipler of that paying for health care, housing, food assistance, lower tax receipts, etc. And not just from illegal immigrants, but from the low-skilled legal residents who refuse to work for less than subsistence wages and thus stay home on government assistance.

And for Mexican immigrants, a general improvement in quality of life. Because I don't actually think Americans are that parochial.

Go look at the shantys migrant workers liove in, see the outhouse they have to share with 25 other people, and tell me you're doing them a favor.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mumblethrax, you are actually claiming that artificially lowering wages and benefits below the market value of legal labor is good for the US economy... how does this work?

1. Lower worker wages
2. Eliminate worker benefits
3. ???
4. Prosperity!

 

[WildCat]

That little tidbit is all over the net (in case you can't recall where you recalled it from). It usually looks something like this:

"According to Philip E. Martin, Professor of Immigration and farm labor at the University of California, Davis, consumers who pay $1 for a head of lettuce are giving 19 cents to the farmer and 6 cents to the farm worker."

Some of those who have passed that gem along appear to be either unaware that not all vegetables are lettuce or unaware that labor costs vary widely from one crop to another:

"The hand harvesting of fruit and vegetable crops in the United States is a labor-intensive operation that accounts for about 50 percent of total production costs. The number of crops and percentage of crop acreage that are mechanically harvested today have increased somewhat since the late 1970s. Most of these crops are used for processing. However, at least 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. vegetable acreage and 40 to 45 percent of the U.S. fruit acreage is totally dependent on hand harvesting. [Good thing we didn't bet, eh?] The crops represent about 30 percent of the U.S. fruit, nut, and vegetable acreage and have an annual farm-gate value of over $13 billion. Declining labor availability and increasing labor costs are reducing U.S. growers competitiveness with foreign suppliers. Harvest mechanization and improved production technologies show promise for keeping U.S. growers in business."

http://www.cis.org/FarmMechanization-ImmigrationAlternative

What do you think you've proven here?

If US farmers really can't compete with foreign suppliers of certain products then they should grow something else. US taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing farm labor paying for their food assistance, medical care, housing, etc. It is not a net benefit to the economy to insist on producing products we can't produce as efficiently as other places, this is ECON 101.

But as I already pointed out, you can't ship fresh vegetables from the other side of the planet cheaply. You can with some things, like apples which will store for months, but certainly not others like lettuce which has a shelf life of just a few days.

And you certainly can't wash the dishes from a restaurant in Milwaukee in China, nor mow a St. Louis lawn from India, nor paint a soffit in Omaha from Honduras.

 

[GreNME]

Guest worker programs generally promote corruption and exploitation, so I don't favor them over citizenship-path immigration.

You're referring to the current guest worker program, which includes ridiculous fees and legal hoops that contributes to the illegal border crossing that takes place. Reduce the bureaucracy and fees, as well as increasing the number of workers allowed for certain pools of labor (all things that currently contribute to the corruption), and you reduce the problems you're referring to. There are models outside of our current (faulty) H2A and H2B programs to build on, and I would agree that our current models are not workable. It's not like there aren't alternatives (example [PDF]) and programs trying to address the current problems (example [PDF]), it's instead that these parts of the conversation never make it into the mainstream because the general American population can't get past the stupidity of conflating migrant workers with cartel gangsters or assuming that the migrant workers are only doing this work because no one else will do them-- both positions that are flawed and dismissive of the actual conditions.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It's not that illegal (did you forget that word Joe?) immigrants are taking the low-skill jobs, it's that they're driving down the wage scale.

This thread is directed to those who claim "they're taking our jobs".

If this isn't your claim, then it doesn't apply to you.

 

[drkitten]

If US farmers really can't compete with foreign suppliers of certain products then they should grow something else. US taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing farm labor paying for their food assistance, medical care, housing, etc. It is not a net benefit to the economy to insist on producing products we can't produce as efficiently as other places, this is ECON 101.

So protectionism is bad, except when it is "the duty of the government to protect their legal residents and their general welfare" by arbitrarily restricting the supply of imported goods and therefore forcing people to pay a higher price for goods than they could obtain on the free market.

... as long as the imported "good" happens to be labor and people are paying for lettuce.

Protectionism is bad, unless what you're protecting is labor, in which case it's good.

Once again, American conservatism demonstrates its compete hostility to rational thinking.

 

[Dymanic]

If US farmers really can't compete with foreign suppliers of certain products then they should grow something else. US taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing farm labor paying for their food assistance, medical care, housing, etc. It is not a net benefit to the economy to insist on producing products we can't produce as efficiently as other places, this is ECON 101.

The insights gained in ECON 101 are not to be lightly dismissed, but those students who progress to actual application of those insights often find the real world to be a bit more complicated.

I'm glad you mentioned subsidies. Farmers struggling to make a profit don't always have as much freedom to simply "grow something else" as you seem to think. When they can't compete, what they tend to do is go broke -- and about seven decades of US farm policy says that helping to prevent that IS of net benefit to our economy (among other things), even if it does mean artificially manipulating the market. Between 1995 and 2009, US taxpayers paid almost fourteen billion dollars in agricultural subsidies. For just corn. In Iowa alone.

It's astonishing to me that Americans will pay $1/lb extra for a happy, free range chicken but won't pay an extra 25 cents for vegetables picked by fairly compensated human beings.

And even more astonishing that many of the very same Americans -- who may so often be seen pounding their fists on the table in their outrage at the idea that they might in any way be called upon to participate in providing food assistance, medical care, housing, etc to farm laborers -- quietly accept (or are oblivious to) the amount of their tax dollar that goes to providing such niceties to farm management, in the form of direct payment subsidies provided without regard to the economic need of the recipients or the financial condition of the farm economy.

 

[Lurker]

People greatly overstate the effect labor costs have on the price of fresh vegetables. IIRC it's only 6% or so. I'd bet it's far less for fruit, which is more mechanized.

So you could triple wages, and that head of lettuce that sells for $1.39 sells for $1.64 instead.

The math wonk has arrived. Labor accounts for 6% of the $1.39 cost for the lettuce. That is $0.0834. Cost without labor is then $1.3066. If we triple the cost of labor we arrive at 3 x 0.0834 = $0.2502. Adding that to the cost without labor we get $1.3066 + 0.2502 = $1.5568

Let's round that to $1.56, which is different than what you got (because you did not subtract out the cost of the labor from the product initially).

Continue the discussion, math wonk is finished.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

Damn Wildcat, inflating the cost of labor to support his pinko pro-immigration ideas!

 

[WildCat]

The insights gained in ECON 101 are not to be lightly dismissed, but those students who progress to actual application of those insights often find the real world to be a bit more complicated.

Oh, do elaborate on this particular instance.

I'm glad you mentioned subsidies. Farmers struggling to make a profit don't always have as much freedom to simply "grow something else" as you seem to think. When they can't compete, what they tend to do is go broke -- and about seven decades of US farm policy says that helping to prevent that IS of net benefit to our economy (among other things), even if it does mean artificially manipulating the market. Between 1995 and 2009, US taxpayers paid almost fourteen billion dollars in agricultural subsidies. For just corn. In Iowa alone.

And even more astonishing that many of the very same Americans -- who may so often be seen pounding their fists on the table in their outrage at the idea that they might in any way be called upon to participate in providing food assistance, medical care, housing, etc to farm laborers -- quietly accept (or are oblivious to) the amount of their tax dollar that goes to providing such niceties to farm management, in the form of direct payment subsidies provided without regard to the economic need of the recipients or the financial condition of the farm economy.

You'll find I'm on the record here as being against agriculture subsidies of all types. We could argue forever about whether ag subsidies actually help small family farmers (I don't think they do) or go instead to ginormous corporate-owned farms (which get most of the subsidies) but it's not really relevant to this thread.

You know who suffer worse than US taxpayers for US ag subsidies? Farmers in developing countries.

We subsidize farmers to produce far more food than we could ever sell legitimately, and then dump it on the world market for below the cost of production and in many cases give it away for free.

How does a farmer from a developing country compete with that? Their government can't subsidize his crops, and he can't produce crops that can compete with the artificially low (because of subsidies) foreign crops.

This absolutely devastates the market prospects for the one commodity many developing countries can actually produce - agricultural goods. They are unable to take that first step up the ladder of economic improvement.

In fact, if I had to rate the causes of poverty in the developing world ag subsidies by the US and others would rank near the top of the list. They really are evil in ways most people don't think about.

 

[Thunder]

I used to work with folks who cut vines/weeds and planted trees all year long.

If we can do that, we can also pick vegetables and fruit.