Illegal Immigration and the Free Market

Well, der Fuhrer has spoken. Heeding the voices of those who did not vote, Barack Obama is going to pursue his agenda by extra-Constitutional means. He's not even as scrupulous as Adolf Hitler was, since Hitler got an Emergency Powers decree through the Reichstag in 1933 before he started ruling Germany by edict. The most imminent threat to the nation (besides Obamaism itself) is B.O.'s threat to sign an executive order “fixing” our immigration policy in much the same way a veterinarian fixes a male dog.

At this point in B.O.'s Presidency, I feel silly pointing out that he has no Constitutional authority to do what he is threatening to do. The legislative power under the Constitution is granted solely to the legislative branch, meaning the Senate and the House of Representatives. The executive is charged with seeing that the laws be “faithfully executed”. All of them; not the ones that the President or Attorney General likes.

The great imposture in this is B.O.'s declaration that he is forced to act because Congress has not. To believe that, you have to believe that every session of Congress is a tabula rasa, with no laws carried over from previous session. Do you see any evidence of that?

Every immigration law passed by Congress and not subsequently repealed is still in effect. Congress has acted – repeatedly. Sometimes wisely, more often recently foolishly and against the will of the people, but they have acted, and it is blatant mendacity to claim otherwise.

That is not to say that the people are not demanding change. They are – it's just that the people are vehemently against the change that President B.O. is threatening. They want illegal immiration stopped at the border; they want the sleazy “catch and release” policy of giving illegal immigrants the freedom to melt into society afer apprehension stopped, and they want someone to stop businesses and individuals form knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

We are told ad nauseum that the illegals are here “doing jobs Americans just won't do”. What too few people understand is that their presence keeps the market from providing the remedy to the wage imbalance. These jobs are not jobs American citizens won't do; they are currently jobs that Americans won't do for the wages currently offered.

Anyone who know elementary economics knows that a labor glut forces wages down. Conversely, a shortage of labor drives wages up, as employers compete to obtain the labor they need for the work they need to have performed. By constantly importing what will inevitably be cheap labor, the pro open borders/amnesty crowd is preventing the market from functioning.

Imagine there are no illegal immigrants (it's easy if you try). The number of rich people who need their lawns manicured and their pools cleaned will not decline. There will still be tables to be waited, dishes to be bussed and washed, etc. In a labor market not flooded with illegal immigrants, the equation swings toward the worker. If rich liberals like Barbara Streisand and Nancy Pelosi want people trimming their grass, they will have to offer a wage that labor is willing to accept, or they can practice swinging a machete. That's how the free market works!

Minimum wage laws make the situation worse. By attempting to force wages up while illegal immigration forces them down, you encourage “off the books” hiring. Otherwise you find yourself legally bound to provide wages and benefits above what the labor itself is worth. Meanwhile jobs for American citizens evaporate, discouraged people drop out of the labor force, and welfare and disability rolls swell, ballooning the debt.

In the old days, people enering the United States had to confirm that they would not become “a public charge” (a useful phrase we need to revive). Now we find our government (if we can still call it ours) importing welfare cases, criminals, and almost certainly terrorists as well.

We seem to have reached a situation where it is easier for people to take up permanent residency in our country illegally than it is to move here legally. This is unacceptable.

The citizens of this nation are now demanding that the government closes the border first, and they are opposed to amnesty for lawbreakers who entered this country illegally, in effect cutting in front of the good people who have been willing to enter the country legally. They are correct to do so.