Liberty and Tyranny (18 page)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests in the United States are economic enablers for this mentality. It is hard to believe that the Chamber uses its considerable clout with Congress to urge the importation of even more low-skilled and unskilled laborers. After all, who else will cut lawns, wash dishes, and pick lettuce? Of course, Americans will, if the price is right. The Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell writes, “Virtually any job is a job that Americans will not take if the pay is low enough. Nor is there any reason for pay to rise if illegal immigrants are available at low pay.”
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Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian adds, “If the supply of foreign workers were to dry up…employers would respond to this new, tighter, labor market in two ways. One, they would offer higher wages, increased benefits, and improved working conditions, so as to recruit and retain people from the remaining pool of workers. At the same time, the same employers would look for ways to eliminate some of the jobs they now are having trouble filling. The result would be a new equilibrium, with blue-collar workers making somewhat better money, but each one of those workers being more productive.” He adds, “by holding down natural wage growth in labor-intensive industries, immigration serves as a subsidy for low-wage, low-productivity ways of doing business, retarding technological progress and productivity growth.”
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American immigration policy also has the perverse effect of upholding the dysfunctional status quo in Mexico. Johns Hopkins University professor Steve H. Hanke argues that Mexico’s labor policies mirror those of communist Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito. “Rather than modernize the economy, Mexico’s politicos have embraced a Tito-inspired strategy: When incapable of fostering productive jobs, export the labor force. As a result, over 27 percent of Mexico’s labor force [was] working in the U.S. [in 2006] and these workers are sending home $20 billion in remittances. That equals one-third of the total wage earnings in the formal sector of the Mexican economy and 10% of Mexico’s exports.”
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The law of supply and demand through the importation of low-skilled and unskilled labor has had exactly the consequences Cesar Chavez originally feared—namely, it reduces the availability of entry-level or low-skill jobs for Americans and drives down wages for unskilled American workers who find jobs. Harvard University professor George J. Borjas found that “by increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent.” In addition, “the negative effect on native-born black and Hispanic workers is significantly larger than on whites because a much larger share of minorities are in direct competition with immigrants.”
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The
American Thinker
’s Lee Cary wondered what demand might exist for unskilled labor in the future. He looked at U.S. Department of Labor statistics and concluded it was not very promising. “From 2006 to 2016, the portion of Hispanics in the labor force is projected to grow from 13.7 percent to 16.4 percent. Meanwhile, the vocational supersectors expected to experience the greatest growth (‘education and health services’ and ‘professional and business services’) will generally require, at a minimum, a high-school education. Supersectors where unskilled Hispanics experience the highest level of employment today, construction and agriculture, are expected to grow a modest 10.6 percent and decline 2.8 percent, respectively.”
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In a modern economy with growing emphasis on education and higher skills, the surplus of unskilled foreign labor will further strain and expand social services while keeping wages low for those who find entry-level and low-skill jobs.

Although certain businesses related to agriculture, hotel and restaurant services, lawn services, and construction may benefit from an endless supply of poor and unskilled foreign labor willing to work below the minimum wage and without the panoply of benefits employers are compelled to provide for legal employees, the rest of society is forced to subsidize these businesses by paying for benefits the foreign laborers and their families receive through public education, health care, and a menu of welfare state offerings. For this reason, Milton Friedman declared, “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”
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And, again, the proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 33 percent. As Professor Borjas has said, “Being without work [in the United States] is still far better for most people than being employed in Central America.”
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Robert Rector notes, “In FY 2004, low-skill immigrant households received $30,160 per household in immediate [government] benefits and services (direct benefits, means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services). In general, low-skill immigrant households received about $10,000 more in government benefits than did the average U.S. household, largely because of the higher level of means-tested welfare benefits received by low-skill immigrant households. In contrast, low-skill immigrant households paid only $10,573 in taxes in 2004. Thus, low-skill immigrant households received nearly three dollars in immediate benefits and services for each dollar in taxes paid.”
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The late Minnesota senator and Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy wrote, “The United States cannot regain its competitive standing in the world by importing low wage workers from other countries. On the one hand, it engenders conditions this country cannot and should not tolerate…. On the other hand, in the modern age a nation’s wealth and prosperity is secured by high worker productivity and capital investment, not by the availability of low-wage labor.”
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There are other costs to society resulting from open immigration, including crime. The National Youth Gang Survey 1999–2001, published by the Department of Justice, reported that approximately half of all gang members were Hispanic/Latino in 2001.
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In 2005, Assistant FBI director Chris Swecker told Congress that “gangs from California, particularly in the Los Angeles area, have a major influence on Mexican-Americans and Central American gangs in this country and in Latin America…. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, is a violent gang composed primarily of Central American immigrants which originated in Los Angeles and has now spread across the country. MS-13 gang members are primarily from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala…[They] now have a presence in more than 31 states and the District of Columbia.
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In 2005, the Government Accountability Office reported that “at the federal level, the number of criminal aliens incarcerated increased from about 42,000 at the end of calendar year 2001 to about 49,000 at the end of calendar year 2004—a 15 percent increase. The percentage of all federal prisoners who are criminal aliens has remained the same over the last three years—about 27 percent. The majority of criminal aliens incarcerated at the end of calendar year 2004 were identified as citizens of Mexico.” At the state level, “the 50 states received [partial] reimbursement for incarcerating about 77,000 criminal aliens in fiscal year 2002…. At the local level,…[i]n fiscal year 2003 [the federal government partially] reimbursed about 700 local governments for [incarcerating] about 147,000 criminal aliens.”
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“Some state and local governments have expressed concerns about the impact that criminal aliens have on already overcrowded prisons and jails and that the federal government reimburses them for only a portion of their costs for incarcerating criminal aliens.”
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Health costs and risks are also growing throughout the nation. The late Madeleine Pelner Cosman wrote, “By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.”
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Cosman noted, “The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires every emergency department (ED) to treat anyone who enters with an ‘emergency,’ including cough, headache, hangnail, cardiac arrest, herniated lumbar disc, drug addition, alcohol overdose, gunshot wound, automobile trauma, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–positive infection, mental problem, or personality disorder. The definition of emergency is flexible and vague enough to include almost any condition. Any patient coming to a hospital ED requesting ‘emergency’ care must be screened and treated until ready for discharge, or stabilized for transfer—whether or not insured, ‘documented,’ or able to pay. A woman in labor must remain to deliver her child.”
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“High-technology EDs have degenerated into free medical offices. Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because half their services became unpaid. Another 24 California hospitals verge on closure. Even ambulances from Mexico come to American EDs with indigents because the drivers know that EMTALA requires accepting patients who come
within 250 yards of a hospital
. That geographic limit has figured in many lawsuits.”
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These costs are obviously extremely burdensome to hospitals and physicians. They are either passed on to patients who have insurance or the hospitals and physicians must absorb them. Moreover, the threat of reemerging diseases is real and serious.

Making matters worse is the government of Mexico. Columbia University professor Claudio Lomnitz argues that in Mexico “corruption has also played a central role in conserving privilege, in keeping competitors out of specific markets, in creating an organized labor sector that stands apart from other sectors of the working class and in conserving the prerogatives of lineage.”
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Furthermore, the economic model of centralized socialism has led to widespread disparities in income. It is, therefore, the goal of Mexican authorities to export to the United States the foot soldiers of potential revolution to preserve their society’s culture of corruption and privilege.

One of the ways in which this is accomplished is by the Mexican government promoting the idea of
extraterritorial nationalism
among its citizens—that is, the notion that Mexican citizens have an indigenous claim to large swaths of the United States. On July 23, 1997, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo declared that “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders [the southwestern United States] and that Mexican migrants are an important—a very important—part of it.”
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This attitude is not confined to Mexican leadership, but rather is shared by the country at large. According to a 2002 survey conducted by Zogby International, 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement “The territory of the United States’ southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.”
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And the Mexican government is not leaving anything to chance. It is aggressively interfering with the internal affairs of the United States. As Heather Mac Donald writes, “Mexican leaders have…tasked their nation’s U.S. consulates with spreading Mexican culture into American schools and communities.”
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There are forty-seven Mexican consulates in the United States. They publish guides advising their citizens on ways to illegally enter the United States and avoid detection. They help hire lawyers and coordinate with Mexican-American groups to assist illegal immigrants in the United States. They issue [matricula] consular cards “as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits. The only type of Mexican who would need such identification is an illegal one; legal aliens already have sufficient documentation to get driver’s licenses or bank accounts….”
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Mac Donald adds, “Since 1990, Mexico has embarked on a series of initiatives to import Mexican culture into the U.S. Mexico’s five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the ‘Mexican nation extends…its border’—into the United States. Accordingly, the government would ‘strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and teaching of the history, values, and traditions of our country.’”
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It seems the Mexican population in the United States has gotten the message. In 2001, just 34 percent of eligible Mexicans became citizens, compared with 58 percent of other Latin Americans, 65 percent of Canadians and Europeans, and 67 percent of Asians.
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What is the Conservative to make of all this?

The evidence of the civil society’s degradation cannot be ignored. A confluence of government policies, both long-standing and more recent, is transforming the nation in ways that threaten its survival. The Statist, of course, looks over the horizon and sees opportunity. The demographic changes he is importing and protecting empower him. The poor and uneducated enhance the Statist’s electoral and welfare-state constituency.

The Statist finds common ground with the neo-Statist, which is best exemplified by this statement by former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp: “We are going to make sure that America is open to legal immigration because that is the wealth and the talent and the entrepreneurial skills for the 21st Century.”
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Of course, if legal immigration emphasized wealth, talent, and entrepreneurial skills, American society would be the better for it. Instead, it emphasizes birthright citizenship and chain migration and encourages illegal immigration, which have led to the current state of immigration anarchy.