An extract from a TV interview in Florida featuring Rep. Alan Grayson, a Congressman from Florida, who is talking about regularizing undocumented immigrants in his State:
“We have a lot of people here locally who are undocumented and not paying taxes; now they’ll have to pay taxes. We have a lot of people here locally who drive on the roads without any form of insurance for their cars, a danger to us all. Now they’ll have to get insurance for their cars. So as we make progress in normalizing the lives of these people, whose only real crime is that ……they want to live here.”
Interviewer: What do you say to those who are on the opposite side of this? I’ve seen people protesting that if we provide a path to citizenship, “who’s going to work on our farms?”
AMG: Well, in fact, what’s happened is that the undocumented have eroded labor standards throughout the entire local economy, and that is unfortunate. There’s no practical way to solve that problem except to bring them into the local economy in the same way that everyone else is. The result of that is that they’re often not paid the minimum wage; that drags down labor markets for everyone else. They work without benefits; that drags down the labor market for everyone else. And in general, because of their undocumented legal status, they provide unfair competition to everyone else. Now we’ll see an end to that, as they become normalized and legalised”. (from Alan Grayson’s website)
Mexican immigration has declined as the Mexican economy has improved, owing mainly to the NAFTA treaty. This suggests that, if you want to moderate immigration you give migrants an incentive to stay in their own countries. All very well, but the very trade treaty that has helped Mexico, is also under bitter fire for having destroyed large numbers of jobs in the US. How you boost the economies of poorer countries while not damaging your own is a conundrum. “Aid” has more or less failed as an instrument. Unless the individual countries can change their own cultures (and in some cases their birth rates) it seems difficult to provide an answer. Epicurus would probably advocate staying in your own country, but not jobless, desperately poor, and discontented.
Most of the undocumented immigrants are not from Mexico, they are from countries in central and south America. Many of them move to the US to escape the world’s highest violent crime rates- if they stay, they will probably be killed one way or another. The truth is, there is not very much the US can do to improve the situation of those counties. As you point out, yet more free trade deals will result in a loss of American jobs. I think Epicurus would have urged compassion; after all, he welcomed foreigners into his garden, in a society where only native born Athenians could vote in the assembly.
The issue I have with mass immigration wherever it may be is two-fold: it tends to lower the wages of the lowest paid by increasing competition for jobs, and it can rapidly chance the culture of an area, making the indigenous people feel as if they don’t belong there anyone. I’ve experienced this personally, having visited parts of London that just seem completely foreign to me.
So in regards to the American situation with the illegals, I don’t believe that mass deportation is either moral or practical, but a blanket amnesty could result in further illegal immigration by sending out a message that the laws won’t be enforced. It should be done on a case by case basis, with the distinction made between economic immigrants and those who are basically seeking asylum.