Angry in the Great White North
Tightening up on immigration
Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 12:38 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
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Illegal immigrants seem to think they have a right to be here, and a right not be subjected to the law. The same goes for the United States. Perhaps more so:

Tens of thousands of immigrants from all over the Chicago area, many carrying U.S. flags, marched into downtown Chicago on Friday in a show of support for immigrant rights.

Shouts of "Si se puede" (Yes, it can be done) could be heard throughout city streets as the mostly Latino marchers descended upon the plaza across from the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, where they listened to speeches voicing support for pro-immigrant legislation and opposition to a measure that would toughen penalties for illegal immigrants.

The rally came as the U.S. Senate struggles with a bill to stiffen border enforcement and a new report estimates the illegal immigrant population has grown from about 8.4 million in 2000 to nearly 12 million.

You would think legitimate immigrants would support cracking down on illegals.

In any case, I love this quote:

"What are Americans going to do without the Latin people? We do the jobs white people don't want to do." - Mario Leguizamo, 21, of suburban Cicero.

Of course, this is nonsense. It also shows that the US should tighten up immigration rules such that successful immigrants have to have a basic understanding of capitalism.

There are job people don't want to do. Arguably, there is no job anyone wants to do -- that why we call them jobs and not hobbies.

But jobs are done in exchange for pay and other compensation. That pay is typically rated against the tightness of the labour market. Not too many people can do brain surgery, so brain surgeons are paid handsomely to reflect the rarity of brain surgeons. Mopping floors? Well, most of us can mop a floor, so the pay is lower.

But what if people don't want to mop floors? Then the money needed to be paid to a floor mopper in order to entice someone to take the job would rise. At some point, the compensation would attract sufficient numbers of floor moppers and the market stabilizes.

Labour is a commodity like anything else.

Like all commodities, we have anti-dumping laws. Dumping occurs when you sell a commodity at an unreasonably low price. Illegal immigrants who pay no taxes can charge less for their labour. Not paying taxes is unreasonable. So they set their labour rates unreasonably low. The potential for a vibrant and decent paying floor mopping market to provide employment for citizens and legal immigrants never forms as a result.

Mario has it wrong. Illegal immigrants don't do the jobs while people don't want to do. Illegal immigrants make it so the jobs won't pay enough to support a citizen or a legal immigrant (I won't go into that "white" thing -- this isn't about race).

Of course, the rate of pay is so low that it doesn't pay for an illegal immigrant to become legal. Once on the tax roll, the floor mopping job won't pay enough to meet the new financial obligation. All the other illegal immigrants who are still illegal will keep the pay rate for that job low.

Hence the resistance to any law to flush out illegals or otherwise deal with the situation -- one of the reasons, anyway. It's not all about families and being in America and "we're all immigrants" and so on and so forth. It is about keeping your expenses low and your job market protected.

Hardly inspirational reasons. Probably why they don't talk about it all that much.

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