Getting snowed--by the Times

The St. Petersburg Times has an ad campaign running concurrent with its redesign: "In the know--in the Times." It's a short little jingle, and "Getting snowed--by the Times" is intended to fit to the same tune.

Robyn Blumner writes editorials for the Times, and she's been one of my favorite targets for criticism over the years, though sometimes she's more libertarian than liberal resulting in some common ground between us. Blumner is a former ACLU lawyer.

I went hunting for trouble today, since I'm not in the habit of reading the Times lately.

PAY US ENOUGH, AND WE'LL DO IT

Inevitably, during a debate on illegal immigration, someone will claim that we need this population because they will do the work that no American will do. President Bush said it Monday in Yuma, Ariz., while pushing his new guest worker program. Temporary workers, he said, are needed so the Border Patrol "will not have to try to chase people who are coming here to do work Americans are not doing."

This argument infuriates me. There is no such thing as work that Americans won't do. (Bush neatly arabesqued around what "Americans won't do" by saying what "Americans are not doing." Same message.)

Americans will do any kind of work. They dig coal miles underground in dangerous mines, they pick up garbage on the street, they work in sewers, they harvest fruits and vegetables on their own farms and they fill mind-numbing assembly-line jobs.

(St. Petersburg Times)

It's a solid thesis, so far as it goes, but Blumner leaves some bus-sized holes in her column.

Legal immigrants do much of the work that Blumner talks about. They're Americans, and they're willing to do the work for what they're getting paid. When companies go to flesh out the work force, they can't find enough people like what they've already got, since--as Blumner notes--many Americans aren't willing to work difficult and unpleasant jobs for low pay.

Blumner's column implies that she sees a simple solution to this problem. Allow the free market to drive up the price of labor, and let the illegals go ... back to their native lands? To jail? Or to a high-paying job as amnestized legal immigrants?

I haven't read Blumner often enough to know her position on illegal immigration.

And here's the problem with allowing the wage increase caused by a labor shortage: Inflation.
Over at my companion blog (Bad Blogs' Blood), I recently covered the topic of the economic effects of cutting income taxes. One of the studies I dealt with came from the Congressional Budget Office, and it forthrightly noted that an increase in demand for manufactured goods resulted in an increase in demand for labor, and that a labor shortage would raise prices and potentially touch off spiraling inflation (inflation does tend to spiral once it gets momentum).

Yet, as I noted in that post, those who advocate raising the minimum wage appear to reflect little to no concern over providing a government-induced factor promoting inflation.

Blumner's not writing about the minimum wage, of course, so we won't bark up that tree.

So what's her point?
I think this is it:

John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies says Bush's plan is "sanctioning a serf class of workers." I agree. It also keeps around a group of vulnerable workers who will continue to exert a downward pressure on wages.

An illegal with a low-paying job is more vulnerable than a z-visa worker, no?

And there is no downward pressure on wages. Illegals might be getting less than minimum wage as it stands, and a z-visa would--no doubt--help ensure that legal immigrant workers qualified for the anti-market wage floor also known as the minimum wage. Wages can't realistically be driven below that point.
And here's the point that Blumner seems to intentionally overlook. The illegal immigrants want to be in the United States doing their jobs at the market rate (even if it's under-the-table and below minimum wage).
Naturally that doesn't apply to illegals who have fallen into human trafficking operations, such as the one busted in Minnesota recently.

The wages in the United States are higher than the wages in Mexico. That's the bottom line, and that's what drives illegal immigration (and legal immigration, for that matter). It's also easier to find a job in the first place.

Once this missing element is uncovered, we have a potential window into liberal thinking on Blumner's part. Perhaps immigration should be routinely granted, and a wage floor sustained. That will mean that wages in the United States will be relatively less (same money buys less), the nation will risk spiraling inflation, but we will have effectively hooked up Mexico to an economic umbilical cord where U.S. employers pay unskilled immigrant workers more than the market value of their labor.

Is that good for Mexico? Probably not, since their best workers will end up in the United States, but there's some support for Mexicans receiving income from workers in the U.S. Arguably, Mexico improves as a nation more through its own initiative rather than by applying for welfare, however.

A better solution would be for Mexico to make itself friendly to foreign investment. Unfortunately, Mexico is so corrupt that the best solution probably isn't practical for the present.
A guest-worker program potentially strikes a helpful balance, but conservatives justifiably express concern over the willingness of the U.S. government to enforce its laws.

But at least we still have Robyn Blumner to kick around.