Cheap Labor
Illegal Aliens Depress Wages
By Daniel Muniz

The struggle to end poverty in the United States has often been fought between two polar opposites. Liberals contend that this nation suffers from dire infrastructure problems that require massive infusions of public investments (that is, more tax money) in schooling, public housing, child care, training programs, etc. Conservatives who are on the other side of the spectrum insist that liberals overlook cultural problems such as lousy parenting, truancy, drug use, high school dropouts, teenage mothers, absent fathers, etc.

Both sides have merit to their arguments but there is also another huge factor involved. A good economy does more to lift people out of poverty than any government program. Good paying jobs can tremendously reduce poverty and help move poor people into the great middle class.

So the real obstacle is how to maintain a tight labor market in our economy.

Unfortunately, illegal immigration has had the adverse effect of prolonging the depth and scope of poverty while ultimately keeping it in a perpetual cycle. And both Democrats and Republicans are equally at fault. Democrats see gigantic political opportunities with a massive influx of millions of illegal aliens in hopes that they will be attracted to their politics. Republicans see the almighty dollar in an endless supply of cheap labor. Elements of both parties want as many illegal immigrants in this country as possible and they never want it to end.

The truth of the problem is that this country is never going to be able to create any kind of tight labor market as long as there is a never ending stream of illegal aliens who are willing to work for subsistence wages. Factions from both parties are clawing as hard as they can to manipulate our political system so that they can to keep our national immigration policy as dysfunctional and as irreparably ineffective as possible.

But the bottom line is that illegal labor depresses wages and that brings a smile to the employers who hire them. People who cannot speak the English language, who have limited skills, and who do not have hardly any rights in this country happen to be the perfect employees to exploit. It is not as if they are going to complain to anybody about how badly they are treated or how they got ripped off with their pay.

In addition, cheap labor also stifles the technological revolutions that are needed in many industries because there will always be somebody willing to work at ridiculously low rates of pay.

Farmers complain that there will be no one willing to tend to their crops if there are no more illegal aliens. But what about the amazing technology that was developed in this past century that has completely changed the way that our farmland was tilled and our crops harvested?

Innovative technology has always found cheaper and better ways to get the job done.

And the same thing has already happened in so many other labor intensive industries.

When my first house was being built, I dropped by my lot on my day off to see what was going on. The foundation had already been poured and my new neighbor was also there as well checking out his empty lot. Then a flatbed truck arrived at my lot with two huge stacks of framing as its cargo. My neighbor and I were wondering how all of this was going to be unloaded because it was a lot of wood and there was only the driver of the 18 wheel flatbed. We assumed that a team of workers would be needed to spend a lot of time unloading this.

Instead, the driver hopped out of his truck and removed the straps that secured the framing. He then pulled one lever which raised the bed of the truck to a very steep angle. He pulled another lever that released a metal lip that was holding up the lower half of the framing which then slid off onto the ground. He lowered the flatbed and then drove up a bit and repeated the same procedure to slide off the other half of the framing. The driver then hopped back into his truck and drove off. He did all of the unloading by himself in about ten or fifteen minutes.

My neighbor and I looked at each other in stunned amazement. Something that we assumed that had to be a long and tedious labor intensive job was efficiently done in a snap by one person.

Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised. Technology has been improving by leaps and bounds in practically every industry. Technological revolutions take place all the time because there is always a smart person who is thinking of a better way to get something done.

As a result, I don’t believe for one moment all the ominous predictions of how our economy would be devastated if this country no longer had any more illegal aliens. We have lots of smart people who are creative enough to come up with clever innovative ideas to solve very complex problems and as a country; we are resilient enough to find new ways to get the job done.

So in order to make a big dent in poverty and dramatically raise wages, illegal aliens have to leave the United States and a robust immigration policy has to be implemented to prevent the employment of illegal labor. We can never achieve a tight labor market as long as we are continuously flooded with illegal immigrants.

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