… Fortunately, markets do work, so there’s no need to fear doing that.

“You are mistaken. Perhaps you looked at studies that only take into account direct government aid, and do not consider costs like education, health care and infrastructure. Education costs alone, for the children of poor immigrant workers, far exceed the money those families contribute in taxes.”

False. Studies such as Rea and Parker’s or Donald Huddle’s that show net tax deficits from immigrants suffer from numerous errors in estimating both cost and revenue, and inflate costs through the use of phony “job displacement” costs to social services. Perhaps you are looking at studies such as these, which routinely ignore revenues from taxes such as FICA, unemployment insurance, vehicle registrations and fees, state and federal gasoline taxes, etc., which simply ignores nearly $30,000,000,000 in taxes paid by immigrants every year.

In fact, accurate counts show that the annual cost of government schooling for immigrants’ children comes out to about $11,000,000,000 per annum. That’s a lot of bread, but certainly not more than the $70,000,000,000 or so paid in taxes. It turns out that immigrants cause a net local tax deficit due to educational costs; but so do native-born families. State-level impacts vary from state to state; the overall affect at all levels of taxes and spending, including such factors as education costs, comes out to a net annual tax surplus of $25,000,000,000 to $30,000,000,000 per annum once you’ve actually counted up all the taxes that immigrants actually paid. (You can see studies by, e.g., Michael Passel and Michael Fix. (Some of the research is dated, having been produced during the immigration debates in the mid-1990s. But if anything costs of immigrants to taxpayers have largely decreased as a result of measures such as the 1996 welfare reform bill.)

But set all that aside for a moment, in any case. Suppose immigrants did, in fact, cause a net tax deficit. What would follow? That might be a reason to push for measures that restrict the availability of government-funded services to immigrants (and save a cool $4,000,000,000 annually that was formerly spent on La Migra, while you’re at it); but it wouldn’t be any reason at all to justify further enforcing draconian immigration restrictions. So why aren’t you lobbying for restrictions on government benefits to immigrants rather than restrictions on immigration?

“Fruit pickers wages are several times higher in the U.S. than in Mexico. Why do you think that is?”

Because the agriculture industry in the United States is much larger and more productive than in Mexico, and because the percentage of the population willing to do hard farm labor at prevailing wages is higher in Mexico than it is in the United States. Thus the marginal productivity of another farm worker in the United States is considerably higher than in Mexico. This is true in several hard working-class jobs outside of agriculture as well.

“What do you think would happen to wages in this sector”

I don’t know. Mises demonstrated that socialist economic calculation is impossible; so while I can take some guesses from the data on the table, there isn’t any definitive way to know other than to open up the market and see what happens.

That said, let’s take some guesses about general trends based on what we know about the factors at hand.

“if the US Government did not intervene to…

• enforce a general minimum wage?”

The U.S. government does NOT enforce a general minimum wage. It enforces a minimum wage in some industries, a different minimum wage in others, and none at all in some. In point of fact, several classes of agricultural workers (those working for employers who use 500 man-days of farm labor per year, those employed on the range for production livestock, and seasonal hand-pickers paid on a piece-rate basis, inter alia) are completely exempted from the federal minimum wage. No agricultural employees are covered under federal overtime requirements. As I’m sure you know, employers of undocumented immigrants often pay them under the table, and when they do so aren’t constrained by the federal law in what they pay.

”- control the flow of Mexican pickers into the U.S.?”

The supply of Mexican laborers in the United States would most likely increase. All things being equal this would cause wages to tend to decrease. But of course all things are not equal. Freeing undocumented workers from threats of La Migra substantially increases their bargaining power with employers, their ability to go to the court to report labor abuses such as debt bondage and outright slavery (there have recently been major cases uncovered in South Carolina and Central Florida). It would also open up many jobs other than traditional farm labor to immigrants (since finding a job would no longer require them to seek out low-visibility labor where payment under the table is common), which would tend to countervail against the increase in supply.

Short answer to a long list of worries: I think that there’s actually reason to think that government action keeps wages below where they would be on a free market. But there are countervailing factors and there’s no good way to know for sure which would prevail, short of actually letting the market work and seeing what happens. Fortunately, markets do work, so there’s no need t

mac: “Rad Geek, are you completely oblivious to reality? People are NOT shot, they are merely detained, and transported back to their country of legal residence.”

Again: try declining to be “detained” (this is also known as being “imprisoned”) and see what happens to you. You will have guns waved in your face, cuffs and other restraining devices used, and if all that does not work you will be overpowered by physical force, using whatever means the agent deems to be necessary and appropriate. Do you think that it matters, or should matter, to me whether someone who has done nothing other than try to come here to work is shot dead, shot with painful “non-lethal” weapons, or merely beaten, wrestled to the ground, and restrained until they comply? If so, why?

Government action is essentially tied to the use of force or the threat of force. If government agents do not use and do not threaten force against you, then they are not enforcing the laws that you claim you want them to enforce. Laws against peaceful immigrants require the direct use of force to attack people who have not violated anyone’s rights. If you want such laws on the books, then you had better be willing to cop to what that involves.

mac in japan: “Obviously, there’s a difference between hard work and productive work.”

Whether work is economically productive or not is determined by the preferences that it satisfies. Of course, not all hard work is productive work—digging ditches and filling them back in again is hard work, but it’s completely unproductive. But picking tomatoes is not like digging a ditch and filling it back in again. It is extremely productive labor: the people who do it are being paid to do work that you very highly disvalue doing yourself. That’s what we call productive labor.

As it turns out, they are mostly not being paid very well to do that work. But that’s because (1) government intervention suppresses wages in this sector (the threat of government force against undocumented immigrants undermines their bargaining power, and that lowers prevailing market wages for everyone) and (2) even on a completely free market, prevailing wages would be determined by the marginal productivity of individual workers, not the total productivity of the workers as a whole. (If you don’t see why that makes an important difference, review the diamond-water paradox.)

“A person for whom fruit and vegetable picking is the primary source of income can not generally make enough money to support their family, or pay enough taxes to offset the cost of government services they receive. No matter how hard they work, they will be a net financial drain on society.”

(1) This is in fact false. Immigrants, even low-skilled immigrants receiving low wages, are net taxpayers, not net tax recipients. This has been confirmed repeatedly by economic research.

(2) Even if it were true that low-income immigrants were net tax recipients, that would not mean that they are “a net financial drain on society”. It would mean that they are a net drain on state and federal treasuries. But that’s not the same thing as being a net economic liability.

(3) Even if it were true that they were a net economic liability, you have to contrast it with the net economic liability of maintaining an expansive immigration restriction regime—which is, in fact, huge and pervasive.

“Their work is better done by machine.”

Then go into business selling automated solutions for tomato-picking. If they do the work at less cost to tomato farmers (and thus less cost to tomato buyers, i.e., you and I), I’m sure you’ll make a mint.

toolpusher: “I still don’t see why the US has an obligation to take care of Mexico’s poor at the expense of our nationals in the bottom two quintiles.”

Nobody in the US has any obligation to take care of Mexico’s poor, whether at the expense of American nationals or not. We’re not talking about whether it’s a good idea to give away tax money to poor people. We’re talking about whether it’s a good idea to attack innocent people for coming here to live peacefully and do work.

“I am really trying hard not to get personal, but I strongly suspect that you do not live in any part of the US with a major illegal alien population.”

I don’t at the moment (I’ve lived in Michigan for the past couple years), but I happen to have been born in San Antonio and spent much of my life in Texas (as well as a short stint in California and about seven years in Florida). I have family in San Antonio, Dallas, and Corpus, among other places. Now what? What has any of this got to do with whether or not it’s justified to attack people for coming here to work?

“The people coming now are not the people coming 30 years ago — they are far more poorly educated,”

Shooting them will not improve their educational opportunities.

“in many cases they don’t like the US and are only here for the money,”

Good for them. I don’t like the US either, and I’m only here for the money, too.

“they don’t want their kids to become Americans,”

Who cares? If they don’t want their kids to become Americans, let them move back with their kids when they’re ready to.

“they want Texas to be more like Mexico because they like it more,”

Most people try to make the place that they live more like places that they like. If it’s too much for you, there are plenty of communities in Idaho where land is cheap.

“they will not hire US nationals (they will not even hire assimilated Mexicans)”

Most Mexican immigrants are not in any position to make hiring decisions at all. As for those that are, well, who said they had any obligation to hire Americans? Not doing so may be foolish, but I’m fairly tolerant of foolishness when I have the option to take my business and my talents elsewhere.

None of this, incidentally, goes at all to show that Mexican immigrants are a net economic burden, or even a net burden on the government budget. (Economic research by Julian Simon and George Borjas has shown that they are neither.)

And none of it has anything to do with whether or not it’s justified to shoot people for coming here to work.

… as “innocent”. That, for example, is gc’s opinion:

gc: ‘I should also note that this border crossing is hardly the “innocent” activity you imagine. Here’s a mirror of the recent TIME magazine article, “Who Left the Door Open?”.

[several nasty activities engaged in by immigrants passing through in order to evade the Border Patrol and La Migra follow]

‘Hmmmm…doesn’t sound so “innocent” any more, does it? Would you like thousands of people per day walking over your lawn, defecating on your property, killing your animals, and cutting your fences?’

But that, of course, is not the issue. As you well know, there are already laws against trespassing, destruction of property, grand larceny, etc. As you also well know, immigration restrictions are enforced against would-be immigrants whether or not they commit any of these crimes, because the purpose of immigration restrictions is to limit the volume of immigration. Simply demanding that the police enforce laws against littering, trespassing, theft, destruction of property, grand larceny, etc., would be enough for you if your only concern were with the fact that some immigrants happen to violate property rights in the course of making their way into the United States.

You would also, of course, recognize and account for the fact that most of these crimes are committed precisely because the immigrants have to dodge armed men who are willing to kill them if necessary in order to stop them from living and working in the United States. If you eliminate those restrictions, you will also eliminate most of the reasons to sneak through, hide, consort with criminals, etc.

If you want to have an intelligent discussion, I strongly suggest you stick to the point rather than introducing red herrings that have nothing to do with the enforcement of immigration law.

Let’s take things a little bit out of order, because one of mac’s first points is more closely connected to gc’s point than to the rest of his argument.

RG: Who cares if we are “integrated”?

mac: “My hand is up. Racially and ethnically balkanized societies tend not to work very well.”

The horror! We might end up like Switzerland, or Belgium!

“Especially when the various population groups differ in their level of economic productivity.”

If you don’t think immigrant farm labor is economically productive, then try picking your own damn tomatoes and see how much you like it. In any case, however, open immigration also means that immigrants will have access to many sectors of the economy (including those that you might think of as “productive”) that they do not now.

In any case, again, at the worst it’s still not worth shooting innocent people over.

RG: Immigrant labor is an economic boon…

mac: “It’s a boon all right… for the immigrants themselves, their relatives back home, and their American employers. For everyone else it is a net bust.”

False. Why do putative Rightists start imbibing economic theory from the AFL-CIO when workers’ skin turns brown?

Using force to prevent people from going to work for an employer at a market wage is not economically productive. It is a wealth transfer, enforced by the government, primarily from those prevented from working to those who hold the jobs. That helps out, e.g., American janitors or computer scientists who can reap artificially inflated wages; but it’s a drain not only on employers and the immigrants forcibly excluded from the jobs, but also on everyone who (for example) buys products from the company that employs the janitors, or software from the company that makes it at an artificially high labor cost.

Government force is destructive, not constructive. Markets work.

And even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be worth shooting innocent people over.

mac in japan: “Good news, Rad Geek. The authorities do not in fact shoot innocent people for crossing borders. So with your overriding moral concern allayed, you are free to think about this topic consequentially”

Government immigration restrictions are enforced by agents of the law, and enforced without regard to whether or not the targets of the restrictions have trespassed, stolen, assaulted, or otherwise violated anyone’s rights to life, liberty, or property. If you do not believe that innocent people will get shot, beaten, shocked with electricity, or otherwise attacked, up to and including the use of lethal force, then feel free to disregard the orders of an INS or Border Patrol agent and see what happens to you.

(N.B.: I think it’s wrong to beat the shit out of innocent people, too. The specific choice of armaments is not the issue.)

Perhaps your issue isn’t the tactics used, but rather that you don’t think of immigrant workers as

‘That’s a only a “solution” if you are OK with the massive changes it would bring.’

Since I’m not a consequentialist, I think it’s completely immaterial to government policy decisions what changes it will bring. Shooting innocent people for crossing borders to do a job is an injustice, and there is no possible excuse for it.

As for the alleged consequences:

“… more crowded …”

If there is one thing this country has, it’s lots of empty space, and lots of low-density communities. If you don’t like crowded cities, feel free to move to Idaho. In any case, why should the government have a role in forcing people to live further apart or closer together than they normally would choose to?

“… less well integrated …”

Who cares if we are “integrated”?

“… version of present day Brazil, with a similar standard of living …”

There is no good economic reason to believe this. Immigrant labor is an economic boon, and will be that much better for all concerned once it is no longer consigned to the ugly, brutal world of the black market in labor.

“If that is the America you want, then repealing immigration laws is the way to go.”

Again, the America I “want” isn’t the issue here. The issue is whether or not it’s morally acceptable to shoot innocent people for crossing borders in order to do a job. If it’s is, then good God, why? If it isn’t, then you are better off living with whatever consequences come, your vision for America notwithstanding.

toolpusher, you mistake my purpose. The point here is not to offer support either for the bracero program, or for the present situation (which is in some ways not as bad, and in other ways worse, for immigrant workers). Nor is it to suggest that there is some “natural” dependence of agribusiness on immigrant labor: economics is a matter of human choices, not natural forces. I’m well aware of how brutal and exploitative the bracero program allowed some farmers and ranchers to be, and how brutal and exploitative the current immigration regime allows bosses to be towards undocumented workers. (And, often, documented immigrant workers, too.)

The point here is that no-one is served by engaging in economic fabulism, and people who imagine that U.S. agribusiness did NOT make heavy use of immigrant labor prior to 1965—as mac in japan did above—are doing just that. Ever since there has been serious large-scale agribusiness in the United States there it has depended on immigrant labor, and the bracero program was one of the ways that dependency was supplied (for good or ill—and often for ill) during the post war period until 1964. (That some ranchers didn’t like it or use it is beside the point; enough did take advantage of the program to bring millions of Mexican immigrants across the border to live and work in the United States. My family knows it well; my dad spent the summer of 1964 picking tomatoes to help keep his mother’s family’s farm from going under after they could no longer find farmhands.)

I sympathize, and agree with, most of your criticisms of the situation that both the bracero program and the present immigration regime cause. I think that the present situation is shameful, and brutal towards immigrants whose only crime has been to work very hard to make a better life for themselves and their families. But I suspect that we disagree about the economics and the morality of some of the factors in the present situation. I do not think that a large immigrant population from Mexico is a “distortion” of the labor market; I think that the market distortion is the use of government intervention to ban peaceful immigrants from coming to live and work in the country (which, inter alia, gives employers of undocumented immigrants an immense amount of control over them and effectively relegates undocumented immigrants to a few sectors of the economy where the work is typically low-paying and the conditions brutal). Nor do I think there is any sense in blaming La Migra for not being harsh enough towards immigrants; the solution is to repeal the immigration laws, not to enforce them even more.

mac in japan finds it “Odd how the fruit always got picked, and the toilets cleaned before 1965, when only Americans were around to do it.”

Think what you will about Mexican immigrants and the work that they do; but this is pure bunk. American agribusiness has always been dependent on immigrant labor; from 1942-1964 that dependency was supplied, in the hundreds of thousands every year, under the bracero program. Braceros lived and worked in the United States for the term of their contract, then returned to their homes in Mexico when the contract expired at the end of the season.

To make accurate economic judgments, you have to start with an accurate accounting of the facts.