On Friday SbyNEWS ran a post about a new North Carolina law that will require all employers with 25 or more employees to use E-Verify to check the residency / citizenship status of all applicants. A pretty straight forward post, but the comments were surprising.
“Are illegal immigrants a burden to our economy?” quickly became the overriding theme of the comment thread. If you take out the snide comments to one another, the comments were pretty thoughtful. They just weren’t as well thought out as they could be. So … I figured that I would take a shot.
WE NEED A NATIONAL SOLUTION
As you will see below, we need a NATIONAL solution to this problem. Many claims that illegal immigrants are necessary for our economy use anecdotal evidence from states which have stepped up their own immigration enforcement efforts.
The image of produce rotting in Georgia fields is the latest anecdotal example supporting the claim that we need illegal immigrants. The catch all claim is '”there are certain jobs that we can’t get Americans to do”.
The bottom line is that we need a national solution to this problem. State-by-state solutions merely serve to make one state more competitive than another because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. States that crack down on illegal immigration find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in some industries (primarily agribusiness and construction) while other states take advantage of a lower prevailing wage rate.
WE CAN’T GET PEOPLE TO WORK
The single biggest argument AGAINST strong enforcement of immigration laws claims that we have jobs that citizens will not do. Hogwash! We have jobs that Americans won’t do for the prevailing wage.
Why should they? If the government pays you NOT to work, why should you take a job that is difficult AND pays less or only marginally more than you can collect on the dole. Growing up in a family of small business owners it never ceased to amaze me how people of seemingly poor education could quickly calculate how many hours they could work without losing X welfare benefit. If you ever examined the welfare system and the byzantine system of benefits, you would realize that it takes someone of above average intelligence to navigate. I always wondered what many of these people could accomplish if they put their sizable talents to entrepreneurship rather than scamming the system.
If Employer X paid $20 an hour to clean toilets or $30 an hour to pick produce AND if welfare benefits were cut back to only those actually unable to work and genuinely in need, there would be an ample labor pool.
However, this would only work if NATIONAL immigration laws were enforced. It’s pretty obvious that a farmer in Georgia can’t pay a significantly higher wage rate for pickers than his neighbors in Florida do. We also have to accept the fact that prices would rise. Therein lies the problem.
Are you willing to pay higher prices for food, rent, etc. in order to assure border security?
ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS A BURDEN?
This brings us back to the original question. Obviously the answer isn’t simple. Opponents of enforcing our laws argue that they pay taxes and don’t receive any government benefit. Any person who has been around a hospital emergency room or stood in line at Wal-Mart knows that illegal immigrants DO receive government benefit. Marylanders also know that their state tax dollars go to fund organizations like CASA de Maryland.
Yes, illegals do USUALLY pay taxes. They primarily pay the payroll tax (FICA and Medicare), but don’t pay income taxes.
Do the benefits illegal immigrants receive outweigh what they pay in? No one can know for sure. We won’t even take the extra space to discuss the negative economic implications of large segments of our society who cannot or refuse to learn English.
Ultimately, we have to conclude that illegal immigration is an economic bag of mixed results. It results in lower prices. It’s difficult to quantify the costs of illegal immigration. However, we know that a porous border is good for neither our national security or nor our national sovereignty.
I would argue that our country would be better off if we cut back on welfare benefits (necessary to fill jobs that many illegals do now), secured our borders, AND deported every illegal immigrant. If they have anchor babies, then the child could return when he or she reached majority. However, simply having a relative who is a citizen should allow family to live here legally.
Your thoughts?
G. A. Harrison is the Managing Editor of “Salisbury News”. “Delmarva Dealings” appears each Wednesday and Sunday at SbyNEWS.com.
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