Why U.S. Doesn't Need Guest Workers

By Robert Samuelson, Real Clear Politics

February 22, 2006

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/importing_poverty.html

Economist Philip Martin of the University of California likes to tell a story about the state's tomato industry. In the early 1960s, growers relied on seasonal Mexican laborers, brought in under the government's "bracero" program. The Mexicans picked the tomatoes that were then processed into ketchup and other products. In 1964, Congress killed the program despite growers' warnings that its abolition would doom their industry. What happened? Well, plant scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine. Since then, California's tomato output has risen five times.

It's a story worth remembering, because we're being warned again that we need huge numbers of "guest workers" -- meaning unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America -- to relieve American "labor shortages."...

... they're all bad ideas.

Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: we'd be importing poverty.... Since 1980, the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent.

What we have now -- and would with guest workers -- is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico. By and large, this is a bad bargain for the United States. It puts stresses on local schools, hospitals and housing; it feeds social tensions (witness the Minutemen).

The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers. The two simply aren't close substitutes for each other....

It's a myth that the U.S. economy "needs" more poor immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force, reports the Pew Hispanic Center. In no major occupation are they a majority. They're 36 percent of insulation workers, 28 percent of drywall installers and 20 percent of cooks. They're mainly drawn here by vast wage differences, not labor "shortages." In 2004, the median hourly wage in Mexico was $1.86 compared to $9 for Mexicans working in the United States, says Rakesh Kochhar of Pew.

...what would happen if, magically, new illegal immigration stopped and wasn't replaced by guest workers? Well, some employers would raise wages to attract U.S. workers....

President Bush says his guest worker program would "match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs." But at some higher wage, there would be willing Americans....

Business organizations understandably support guest worker programs. They like cheap labor and ignore the social consequences. What's more perplexing is why liberals support a program that worsens poverty and inequality.

...We've never tried a policy of real barriers and strict enforcement against companies that hire illegal immigrants. Until that's shown to be ineffective, we shouldn't adopt guest worker programs that don't solve serious social problems -- but add to them.

Read the complete article.