Be Careful What You Bitch For

That's it. I'm sick of the sniveling. And the whining. And the absurd histrionics. So let's just do it. Let's build our wall. Let's deport every illegal that can be found. Let's sanction any and all employers we find hiring illegals. I'm ready, but I'm betting the anti-Mexicans aren't.

Let's see how well the right-wing lustre on the immigration restrictionists arguments holds up when the government starts sanctioning farmers out of business by the hundreds and thousands. After all, a majority of Americans oppose "amnesty," right? Let's see how well the thousands of middle-aged construction sector small businessmen like picking up a hammer again after all of their help is deported. Sure, it might pay a little more than it did when they were younger, but will they be more likely to vote Republican? And will the market be affected when housing starts don't merely slow but disappear? Let's watch how the poor and working classes deal with doubling grocery prices to go along with the fuel inflation they've already been struggling against. The inflation won't come because unemployed Americans will demand more than illegal Mexican workers for picking produce and manning feedlots. Prices will go up due to shortages of these goods, at least until foreign agricultural imports can grow enough to take up the slack. From countries like China and...Mexico.

And I'm all for a 2000 mile wall. Let's build it. That is, let us build it, not Mexicans. Let's pass a law banning any Mexican labor or materials from being used to build our all-American wall. And then let's see if it gets built. Let's see how much money it takes to get enough middle-class, legal Americans from behind their PCs in their air-conditioned cubicles and home offices to man a shovel in the Chihuahuan Desert.

I understand that most people are unaccustomed to the idea of actual labor scarcity and the implications of true full employment. The history of the human condition has until now been one of surplus labor punctuated by periods of intense job scarcity known as recessions. Thus many can't get their heads around today's employment reality: We. Are. Out. Of. Workers. Those that used to be on the low end of the totem pole have moved up, and now there is a shortage at the bottom. The problem we have is that the laws of supply and demand don't care if we can figure it out or not. They are going to do what they always do, regardless. Like all natural laws, they have no conscience.

Now some may be thinking to yourselves, "but I thought all you free-market types said that keeping illegals out is impossible? How are farms going to go out of business unless these barriers to immigration actually work?" Well ultimately they won't be kept out, or at least not most of them after they discover the holes in the new system and fake documents become more ubiquitous. What will cause the economic damage is the disruption caused by enforcement. When the INS comes and rounds up all the illegals picking your lettuce, what is the lettuce going to do? Patiently wait until you can scrounge up other workers to resume the harvest? No, it's going to quickly become unsalable, which means you aren't going to make this season's payments. To many farmers, it won't matter that enough illegals will figure out how to get here in time to pick next year's crop. For these farmers (and meatpackers, and landscapers, and contractors, and small restaurant owners, etc.), there won't be a next year.