Pay them and they will come

There's a fairly interesting article in today's NYTimes about employers' reactions to the recent spate of immigration raids.

The article, written by the Times' immigration beat reporter, Julia Preston, dances around an issue that I think has garnered much too little attention: that employers, not workers, bear most of the responsibility for the "problem" of illegal immigration, as they're the ones driving the market forces that make it happen.

One of the most revealing passages appears early in the article:

Though the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year. Businesses, generally Republican stalwarts, are standing up to others within the party who accuse them of undercutting border enforcement and jeopardizing American jobs by hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor.

What is strangest about this is that it is the Nativist wing- in standard, MSM terms, the wingnuts- that, ostensibly carry the flag of anger over wage suppression, a legitimate, and, in some ways, liberal position.

I think this issue basically reveals the cynicism and selfishness of the major forces at work in the immigration debate. Employers, terrified of a cost to their bottom line, or even worse, being accused of actively soliciting undocumented employees, want either no enforcement of current laws or some sort of guest-worker program, a solution that would deliver a steady population of docile workers whose very right to stay in the country would depend on their bosses' say-so.

Employers could do the right thing-- campaign for amnesty and drastically increased legal immigration quotas-- but their standard-bearer Chamber of Commerce party, the GOP, just isn't willing to spend that kind of political capital.

As a side note, look how the employers, according to Preston, use the "market" to defend their position:

Mike Gilsdorf, the owner of a 37-year-old landscaping nursery in Littleton, Colo., saw the need for action by businesses last winter when he advertised with the Labor Department, as he does every year, for 40 seasonal workers at market-rate wages to plant, prune and carry his shrubs in the summer heat. Only one local worker responded to the notice, he said, and then did not show up for the job.

and then...

“I can’t replace those people,” the executive said. She said that despite offering competitive wages from $9 to $17 an hour, the company had failed over the years in repeated efforts to attract non-immigrant workers because of the state’s tight technology labor market and because of the nature of the work, exacting and tedious. If the workers were fired or arrested, she said, she could fail to meet her contracts.

What do terms like "market rate" and "competitive wages" mean in this context? Shouldn't "market rate" or "competitive" refer to the price you'd actually have to pay a legally protected employee to do a job? Why do we accept the employers' definition, which seems to be a Platonic notion of what they feel they ought to pay?

More later...

Ain't no one gonna change my Jersey mind

I love posts like this that expose the hidden architecture of our political system. Who knew it was such a bear to run a modern presidential campaign in Jersey? Or Delaware?

But it does make me a little mad that Nate Silver is always so goddamn smart. Who does he think he is?

A scandal to run with

You can be a peace-loving freedom warrior, and, because you're a little bit of a lefty, you get thrown on the terror watch list. But support batshit crazy right-wing terrorist death squads and no one really cares. This shit is mind-boggling.

Question for the Neighbors

Is 7 a.m. really the best time to be operating your chainsaw?

A fun fact I learned today...

Over the past couple days, I've been doing preliminary reporting on a couple stories relating to immigration that I'm hoping to write this summer, and I've already stumbled across some harrowing facts about our jalopy of a national immigration system.

Did you know, for instance, that citizens from any country that has seen over 50,000 people immigrate to the U.S. in the last 5 years are forbidden from taking part in our visa lottery? (There are other ways to get in, but the lottery is the only one available to people without family connections, a highly marketable skill, or a documented case for asylum).

Excluded countries include Mexico, Canada, India, China, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Haiti, Russia, the UK and Poland, i.e. the world's two largest countries, the entire northern hemisphere, and most of our closest allies.

WTF?

This also means that when people say Mexican construction and agricultural workers should "just get in line," they are asking them to do something that is, in many cases...impossible.