The helot class

How much would it really affect us in the long run, financially, to pay all our workers minimum wage and not have illegal immigrants? Sure, prices would go up, but wouldn't taxes go down once we had a greater percentage of our population paying taxes? (Or their employers paying taxes on their legal employees?)

With all due respect, the email you cite is wrong. Many things are more expensive in Europe, not least the cost of fuel. Several of these things impact the cost of cabs, etc. It's a strawman to blame higher cab prices on nonimmigrant drivers. And, as demonstrated in an earlier post on produce, the labor cost is not the primary factor in the final cost of the product. You will need to find a better example for your contention than cab or produce prices.

"We have to pay for their health care, their education, their social services and the increased rates of crime." Legalization, of course, eliminates all of these concerns. Employers will pay for health care, their tax dollars will pay for education, the need for social services will be eliminated, and they already have a lower crime rate.

Legalization, of course, eliminates all of these concerns. Employers will pay for health care, their tax dollars will pay for education, the need for social services will be eliminated, and they already have a lower crime rate. No, Daniel, it won't. First, the people in question will still consume more in benefits than they will pay in taxes. We're not talking high-value labor. Most have less than high-school education and can barely speak English. Mind you, none of them are going to be paying back-taxes and a lot can claim a butt-load of dependents, when not only pretty much excludes them from paying any serious income taxes, but could qualify them for tax credits. Second, the bill allows them to bring in their families, who are just as educationally disadvantaged as they are, if not more. Third, it creates a tremendous incentive to suck in yet MORE illegal aliens, who know they can hang around waiting for the NEXT amnesty to come down the pipe. I hate to be personal, but the fact that you so glibly mention this tired bit of spin is evidence that you really haven't thought about this issue beyond the usual nostrums.

In case the humor-impaired missed it, I was being sarcastic in my last post the "/sarcasm tag" was eaten by haloscan.

Labor is now global and moves globally like so many other resources. Do you ever wonder why clothing is so cheap at the big box stores? A very good quality t-shirt for $7! Even if they don't use illegal labor here, they use very cheap labor over there.
We have to rethink labor, immigration, and citizenship for new realities. New policies must protect workers from abuse regardless of nationality, allow labor to move to where they are needed, and protect national boundaries and interest. A big order. Who is doing the creative thinking on this?

Well, Lilian, what you ve described would be most easily done if we had something like a democratic world government. Besides the theoretical obstacles to that, which certainly loom large for any Burkean, there is no such option on the table right now. Instead, with the WTO, Big Business is trying to create what amounts to an undemocratic world government, in order to circumvent or even overturn the decisions of semi-democratic national governments. That s the choice you have plutocratic world government, or more democratic national or subnational government. Generally the farther you get away from face-to-face communities, the less democracy you re going to get. Sure, if we could write more protection of foreign labor into our trade agreements, that would be a good thing. One of the main failings of anti-globalists on the Left, however, is that they alienate the average voter by thinking about the welfare of workers in the Third World first. Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanan s appeal to the welfare of the American worker first strikes me as much more effective. Altruism is a wonderful thing, but why make the weaker appeal to altruism before the stronger appeal to self-interest?

In the same vein as Astorian's comment: John O'Sullivan (very conservative, formerly of National Review) pointed out several years ago that the resistance to any real reduction of illegal immigration is an odd alliance of business and the left.

Do you ever wonder why clothing is so cheap at the big box stores? A very good quality t-shirt for $7! Forget the big box stores. They are picked on for making and selling clothes on the cheap, but in many ways, I think that they're more ethical than fancy brand stores that make them on the cheap, script a fancy logo onto them, and charge a small fortune to wealthy(but not so bright)consumers who pay for the logo. Not much to add to all of the above posts. American workers have had it rough for a long time. It started in textiles and is slowly/quickly moving through each and every industry. The Democratic party hasn't been any better for American workers than the Republican party. It's been lip service, but in their defense, it's not fashionable to stick up for American blue collar workers who are ofen unionized. Heck, union workers don't like to vote for someone with a history of favoring labor. Dick Gephardt comes to mind. He's always seen the free trade crap for what it is------crap to blue collar America.
We only get upset when it hits computer people. Oh nooooo, now the smart people can't find a job. NOW IT'S SERIOUS! Guess what? It was serious when Joe Blow lost his job making shirts. Amnesty stinks. People shouldn't be rewarded for breaking the law, but I don't have the heart to send them packing, so I guess that I have no choice but to support amnesty. It seems that this happens over and over. We don't enforce our laws, so the problem persists, and then we go and grant amnesty every decade or so.

In the last analysis, the driving force behind illegal immigration from Mexico and points south is poverty and political corruption in those countries. People are desperate, and are coming here, breaking our laws, to be able to live and to give their families some hope.
I'd do the same thing myself in similar circumstances, and I'm willing to bet that most of you here would too. Break the laws of some other country, one that is wealthy and which has in so many ways been profiting from the poverty of my own? This isn't going to keep me up at night, not if the welfare of my children is on the line. We have the longest unguarded border in the world between us and Canada, and yet illegal Canadian immigration is no problem. Why not? Because life is nice in Canada, and they don't want to come here. I don't know how this can be done, but the real solution to this whole problem is to make life tolerable for Mexicans in Mexico.

As I said on another thread, if so many Mexicans insist on coming here, perhaps we should compensate ourselves for absorbing so much of Mexico's population by seizing more of their territory. If so many of them are coming here, the ones who are left won't need as much land. And, really, how would they stop us? I think it's safe to say that it would an even more lopsided fight than it was in 1846. I mean, if we're going to be absorbing so many Mexicans into our population anyway, we might as well get some extra territory out of it. Maybe that's the way to get Mexico to deal with this problem finally: We tell them that unless you do something on your side of the border to cut illegal immigration by X percent over the next Y years, then we're annexing Chihuahua, Sonora, Baja California, and Nuevo Leon, and we dare you to stop us. *** Jay Leno had a funny quip the other night. He said that proponents of amnesty often like to say that immigrants do jobs that Americans won't do. But, he said, if we give them citizenship, then they'll be Americans and won't want to do those jobs anymore, so we'll have to import even *more* immigrants! ;-)

I don't know how this can be done, but the real solution to this whole problem is to make life tolerable for Mexicans in Mexico. I agree with this to a point. Rod is right that this ultimately a problem for the Mexican government, but I think we can still invest in improvement projects in Mexico--mandating certain labor and environment conditions with the aid (not U.S. standard, but better than Mexico's average). In the end, I'd like the border with Mexico to be like the border with Canada, but it's going to take a lot of time and patience.

Excessive immigration and the cheap labor dilemma go back to 1947, when Republicans in congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto. It made the labor organizing tactics of the 1930s illegal and stacked the deck in other ways against unionized labor.
Employees run the place, and when they are free to bring in the cheapest workers they can find, you get the situation we have now. Strong unions, although they have their flaws, are the only thing that can shut down the cheap labor cycle. The pro-immigrant stance that you see from unions today makes no difference whatsoever, because labor unions are by the very nature anti-low-wage-immigration. Unionized immigrants will fight against the wave to come in. Nor does ethnicity matter. Cesar Chavez himself arranged to have illegal aliens departed when they were being used as strikebreakers.

http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070501.html God bless.