Posted by
crosspatch on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:42:16 AM
I hear a lot of highly charged rhetoric when it comes to the proposed immigration bill and I sense a lot of emotion in the argument from all sides. I want to take a moment to share a view from a different perspective that is not based so much on political position and is one of basic mathematics and economics.
The unemployment rate in the US is currently a little under 5%. When unemployment drops too low, business has a hard time growing because they can not expand without difficulty. When all people in a given field are working, a business must raise wages to attract a worker away from another business. This results in everyone raising their wages to keep the workers they have and raising their prices to pay for it. And so begins a spiral of inflation as wages and prices go up but one's standard of living doesn't improve in real terms. A pool of unemployed acts as a lubricant on the economy to allow business to operate without causing wage-based inflation.
There are 6.8 million unemployed Americans according to the Department of Labor. Depending on who you listen to there are 12 to 20 million illegal workers here. If they were deported, our economy would face a disaster. We don't have enough unemployed to take the jobs of the illegals. In fact, America is going to be facing an increasing worker shortage as the boomers leave the workforce. The generation coming up to replace them is smaller in number. The boomers are still the largest single generation in our population.
I understand that people should not benefit from breaking a law and it bothers me that we might be letting some off the immediate hook with this proposed legislation but to do otherwise at this point might be cutting off our nose to spite our face. We can turn the Mexican border into a fortress but that solves nothing. We still have 12-20 million undocumented workers here and the influx of them would be cut in half but their numbers would still continue to increase. Only half of illegals cross that border. You can not deport them because it would hurt the economy and cost a lot of money. You can't imprison them because we don't have the prison space. You can't fine them because most are already living hand to mouth.
We need to know who is here. We need to have them documented. We need to create some serious incentive for them to get registered. They need to pay their share of tax, particularly social security tax. The boomers are going to be needing it. As much as I hate the thought of allowing someone to skate, I also believe that there is a time and a place where an adult must look at things and decide on a course that might be unpleasant but in the long term interest of the country. I believe this proposal is better than anything I have seen to date in finding a way not to wreck our economy yet getting those people some kind of status where they can be kept track of.
In the 1970's and early 1980's our economy struggled as the boomers started coming into the workforce in great numbers. Unemployment was high. Business was unable to expand at the pace that new workers were entering the workforce. Many of our attitudes toward foreign labor are based on that era that we lived through. Things are changing and in a hurry. We are soon going to be faced with exactly the opposite problem. Our economy is going to shrink if we don't find a source of additional workers. A guest worker program is the best option that I can see available at the moment. Tossing out 12 million workers would leave about 6 million unfilled jobs in this country. There is simply no way any of us can afford that.