Immigration "reform"

As a nation, we scarcely have an immigration policy--certainly nothing that commands any widespread consensus. My own views on immigration have been all over the map over the decades. Congress makes noises about "comprehensive" reform, which seems to be a euphemism for legislating the border out of existence. Before the second Trump administration we routinely heard that the existing legislative structure was unsustainable, though conservatives argued that it was merely unenforced, a conclusion that seems to have been borne out by events of the last six months.

I used to be rather a fan of amnesty for anyone with a clean rap sheet and a credible work record. Later, I came to believe that there must be a third requirement, which was demonstrating that the illegal immigrant was not on the dole. I believe we cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. I concluded some time back that the welfare state can't be eliminated, at least for citizens, which left only sealing the border to all but immigrants we reasonably concluded were not here for the purpose of launching a criminal career and/or a lifetime habit of going on the dole.

In the background, there always were the arguments about the impact of cheap illegal immigrant labor on the wage scale for working citizens, especially on the low end of the scale. These arguments echoed the endless debate over the minimum wage. I've never favored a minimum wage, believing it only converts low-paying jobs into outright unemployment. As a result, I was never swayed much by complaints, coming from the progressive side of the debate in the past, that the real problem with open borders (legal or otherwise) was the downward pressure on wages, and my views didn't change when, to my surprise, the same argument was embraced by the newly populist GOP.

My views changed when it became obvious that the solution proposed for the downward pressure on wages was to blow the doors off the welfare state. Imagine my amazement when Congress began to inch toward legislation withholding welfare from illegal immigrants and beginning to deport them in serious numbers.

I read an article today accusing the GOP of misrepresenting its rationale for deporting illegal immigrants. The thinking goes: we can't deport immigrants because we can't get citizens to do their jobs at the prices employers want to pay. But hasn't that always been the argument for the minimum wage? Who says employers are entitled to a supply of laborers who are willing to work for an infinitely low wage? If the business can't be sustained without workers willing to work at that low wage, the business will not stay in business. Whatever Americans wanted offered at that price won't be available. That's always been true; it's why we can't afford house-servants of the sort that rich people used to think were necessary to a civilized life. Nor are we likely to solve the problem by making up the difference by paying lots more taxes so that impoverished workers can afford to work for us and still have a lot of basic but expensive needs met by welfare. We can't legislate a free lunch into existence; anything "free" is paid for somewhere, by someone. Not even confiscating all the wealth of Bill Gates or Elon Musk will change that more than temporarily.

What I'm left with is this: we'll find out what jobs free Americans will do at the price employers can afford to pay. If those jobs can't be done, we'll figure out how to adjust to new prices for goods and services that used to be available to us at the old price, which depended on a combination of crippling levels of taxes to support a welfare state and unfair employer leverage over a workforce required to live in the shadows. We'll alter our priorities about the goods and services we are and are not willing to forgo. Maybe we can't have as many avocados or houses as large as have become customary in recent decades. But also maybe a lot of teenagers and adults new to the workforce will be able to find work for a change. People don't tend to stay in entry-level jobs at entry-level wages forever, but they sure can stay in the unemployed welfare underclass forever.