Republicans and the End of White America [American Conservative, The]
By Unz, Ron | |
Proquest LLC |
What immigration means for the
Last June the U.S. Census disclosed that non-white births in America were on the verge of surpassing the white total and might do so as early as the end of this year. Such an event marks an unprecedented racial watershed in American history. Over the last few years, various demographic projections from that same agency and independent analysts have provided somewhat fluctuating estimates of the date-perhaps 2042 or 2037 or 2050-at which white Americans will become a minority. This represents a remarkable, almost unimaginable, demographic change from our country of the early 1960s, when whites accounted for over 85 percent of the population and seemed likely to remain at that level indefinitely.
Many years of heavy foreign immigration have been the crucial element driving this transformation, but even if all immigration-legal and illegal-were halted tomorrow and the border completely sealed, these demographic trends would continue, although at a much slower pace. Today, the median age of American whites is over 40, putting most of them past their prime child-bearing years. Meanwhile,
As in most matters, public perceptions of
These national changes in racial distribution have been quite uneven and geographically skewed, with some parts of the country leading and others lagging. For example, during the 1970s when I was a teenager growing up in the
This sweeping racial shift, involving the movement or displacement of over ten million people, might easily rank as the largest in the peacetime history of the world and is probably matched by just a handful of the greatest population changes brought about by war. The racial transformation in
Republicans as the
It is a commonplace that politics in America is heavily influenced by race, and these enormous demographic changes since 1965 have certainly not gone unnoticed within the political world. For decades, white voters have tended to lean Republican while non-whites have been strongly Democratic, so the swiftly falling ratio of the former to the latter has become a source of major concern, even alarm, within the top ranks of the
During the mid-1990s there was a powerful strain of thought within conservative and Republican circles that the best means of coping with this looming political problem was to reduce or even halt the foreign immigration that was driving it But after several years of bitter internal conflict, this anti-immigrationist faction lost out almost completely to the pro-immigrationist camp, which was backed by the powerful business lobby. As a result, the
Rove invested huge resources in maximizing Bush's Hispanic numbers in 1998 during his easy
Part of the Bush/Rove political strategy was to take a leading role in passing a sweeping immigration-reform measure, aimed at legalizing the status of many millions of (overwhelmingly Hispanic) illegal immigrants, easing the restrictions on future legal immigration, while also tightening border enforcement. Leaving aside policy matters, the political theory was simple: if the
But does this political strategy actually make any sense? Or are there far more effective and more plausible paths to continued Republican political success? Although almost totally marginalized within Republican establishment ranks, the anti-immigrationist wing of the conservative movement has maintained a vigorous intellectual presence on the Internet. Over the years, its flagship organ, the VDare.com website run by
Consider, for example, Roves oft-repeated mantra that a Republican presidential candidate needs to win something approaching 40 percent of the national Hispanic vote or have no chance of reaching the
Even more importantly, Sailer argues that once we throw overboard the restrictive blinkers of modern "political correctness" on racial matters, certain aspects of the real world become obvious. For nearly the last half-century, the political core of the
In many cases, this was even true outside the Deep South, as the blue-collar whites of
Sailer suggests that a very similar approach would work equally well with regard to the hot-button issue of immigration and the rapidly growing Hispanic population, arguing that the votes of this group could be swamped by those of an angry white electorate energized along racial lines. He cites Pete Wilsons unexpected
An additional fact noted by Sailer is that the racial demographics of a given region can be completely misleading from a political perspective. As mentioned earlier, Hispanics and other immigrants tend to be much younger than whites and much less likely to hold citizenship. Therefore, a state or region in which whites have become a numerical minority may still possess a large white supermajority among the electorate. Once again, todays
The Sailer analysis is ruthlessly logical. Whites are still the overwhelming majority of voters, and will remain so for many decades to come, so raising your share of the white vote by just a couple of points has much more political impact than huge shifts in the non-white vote. As whites become a smaller and smaller portion of the local population in more and more regions, they will naturally become ripe for political polarization based on appeals to their interests as whites. And if Republicans focus their campaigning on racially charged issues such as immigration and affirmative action, they will promote this polarization, gradually transforming the two national political parties into crude proxies for direct racial interests, effectively becoming the "white party" and the "non-white party." Since white voters are still close to 80 percent of the national electorate, the "white party"-the Republicans-will end up controlling almost all political power and could enact whatever policies they desired, on both racial and non-racial issues.
Many might find this political scenario quite distasteful or unnerving, but that does not necessarily render it implausible. In fact, over the last couple of decades, this exact process has unfolded in many states across the Deep South, with elected white Democrats becoming an increasingly endangered species. Each election year, blacks overwhelmingly vote for the "black party," whites overwhelmingly vote for the "white party," and since whites are usually two-thirds or so of the electorate, they almost invariably win at the polls. Although Republican consultants and pundits make enormous efforts to camouflage or ignore this underlying racial reality, it exists nonetheless.
By contrast, appeals for white support based on racial cohesion would be almost total nonstarters in 95 percent white
Now I think a strong case can be made that such a process of deliberate racial polarization in American politics might have numerous adverse consequences for the future well-being of our country, sharply divided as it would become between hostile white and non-white political blocs of roughly equal size. But given the extremely utilitarian mentality of those who practice electoral politics for a living, the more important question we should explore is whether it would actually work, purely on the political level. Might this strategy of racial polarization be applicable across the country as a whole?
Non-Whites and Blacks
Consider an interesting datapoint. It is certainly true that the over the last century those states with the smallest white majorities have generally had names like
Whites were a minority in
Yet although the local
Perhaps
And although
These examples lead to the suspicion that the history of bitter racial politics across most of the Deep South may represent less a conflict of white vs. non-white than one of white vs. black, and this seems quite plausible. After all, slavery and its legacy have for centuries constituted the deepest wound in American society, provoking a bloody Civil War which cost the lives of almost one third of all white Southern men of military age. The history of black/ white racial relations is arguably the single most significant element in American political history, so we should hardly be surprised if it continues to heavily influence the politics of numerous states and cities, including those outside the South.
By contrast, although relations between whites and various other groups-Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians-have sometimes been hostile or even violent, these conflicts have never been nearly as long nor intense and are more like the often contentious relationships between various white ethnic groups. As our schoolbooks endlessly emphasize, black/white relations do indeed constitute a unique aspect of American history.
These alternate hypotheses about the underlying sources of white political behavior may be explored empirically by examining the electoral data across the 50 states. Like it or not, today's
Under the "Sailer Hypothesis," white alignment with the Republicans should be heavily influenced by the white share of the population, with the residents of lily-white states exhibiting little racial consciousness, while those living in states in which whites have slender or non-existent majorities would tilt much more heavily Republican. A second possibility to consider might be called the "Hispanic Hypoth- esis," in which the heavy influx of Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, pushes whites toward the harder-line Republicans; since the vast majority of today's Hispanics come from a relatively recent immigrant background, a states overall Hispanic population can be used as a good approximation for this independent variable. Finally, there is the "Black Hypothesis," in which the long history of black/white racial conflict is assumed to be the primary factor, and the percentage of blacks in the local population is what generally influences white political behavior.
For the sake of simplicity and to minimize the confounding impact of local political issues and personalities, the easiest output variable to examine would be the percentage of the white vote that supported the Republican presidential ticket over the last 20 years. On a population-weighted basis, the correlation results for elections from 1992 through 2008 across the 50 states are as shown in the chart at right.
The results seem conclusive. The correlations between the Hispanic percentage of each state and white voter preferences are approximately zero for all presidential elections, implying that the presence of large Hispanic populations appears to have virtually no impact upon white political alignment, either one way or the other.
By contrast, the evidence for apparent black/white racial conflict being the driving force that prompts whites to vote Republican seems very strong: the correlations between the size of the black population and the degree of white
The data regarding the "Sailer Hypothesis" is bit more interesting, with the correlations between a states overall non-white percentage and white Republican alignment being small but noticeable, ranging between 0.14 and 0.31, with a mean of 0.20. However, we must remember that a considerable fraction of
In many respects, this conclusion merely constitutes a quantitative confirmation of the conventional political wisdom, which stretches back for many decades. For example, in the aftermath of the successful Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, prominent journalists
In recent years, the
There is another, more subtle reason why so many of
D.C.'s population is much smaller than that of nearly all states, so including it in our weighted correlation calculation would have only slightly shifted the results. But in the real world of todays centralized political culture, the world of politicians and media pundits and political journalists, D.C. ranks as a colossus in mind share, playing a huge role in shaping ideological perceptions and therefore carrying a weight probably greater than that of
An Anti-Immigration Backlash
Let us consider the political implications of these striking results. Since the large-scale presence of non-black non-whites-primarily Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups-does not seem to produce much white political cohesion along racial lines, the continued growth of these populations can hardly represent a potential boon for the
A perfect example of this danger may be found in the recent political history of
Although Hispanic and Asian numbers had been growing steadily for years, their support for Republicans had been growing as well, and by the early 1990s, a
But all of this permanently changed following Wilsons harsh 1994 reelection campaign, whose television ads relentlessly scapegoated Hispanic immigrants for the state's terrible economic woes. Although his words were carefully chosen in lawyerly fashion to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, his message was perceived very differendy, and his loudest grassroots activist supporters certainly made no such distinction. Moreover, the resounding
As a direct consequence, Republican support sharply dropped among Hispanics and Asians and has never really recovered. Moreover, the immigration battle frightened and energized many traditionally apolitical Hispanics into finally naturalizing and registering, and during the 15 years that followed, their share of the state vote more than doubled to 22 percent, severely compounding the blow to Republican prospects.
The consequence was that gigantic
Consider the interesting case of
In Ahmanson's opinion, today's
There is no logical contradiction between the powerful backlash of
Similarly, most Hispanic and Asian newcomers have developed perfecdy amicable relations with their white counterparts, but still remain deeply suspicious of the
This can be seen in the details of the most recent
The result was that he lost the primary by 40 points. When you run as an immigration hardliner, spend
Afterwards, Whitman went on to spend an astonishing
Now consider the likely political future of a state such as
But buried near the bottom of a single one of the innumerable
Even in a rock-solid Deep South Republican state like
This pattern highlights a central dilemma faced by today's Republican leadership. In states or regions experiencing heavy waves of non-white immigration, the party's white conservative base tends to grow alarmed, and any particular spark-an economic downturn, a brutal crime widely publicized by the media-can lead to an explosion of racial hostility. At that point, thoughtful Republican candidates are faced with the choice of either following this populist appeal to immediate victory, often attracting the crossover support of large numbers of Democratic or independent voters in the process, or gritting their teeth and opposing it.
If they take the former approach, temporary electoral victories, no matter how sweeping, almost invariably become long-term disasters in political alignment. But>if they take the latter stance, they sac- rifice the sort of immediate opportunities that tend to figure very high in the minds of most politicians, and even risk losing primaries to harder-line rivals with shorter horizons or fewer scruples.
Since the
But when we consider the case of
Our Population Ponzi Scheme
This obviously leads into the endlessly contentious topic of immigration, and whether or not todays high levels provide benefits that outweigh their problems. There are few subjects so likely to provoke angry emotions in political circles, as well as sweeping ideological justifications, personal vilifications, and factual claims that have no basis in reality. Furthermore, this is one issue in which individuals quite frequendy feel compelled to take one position publicly while very clearly holding the opposite belief in private; and such dishonesty seems to occur in both directions of the debate.
Many of the leading factors driving populist opposition to immigration, such as perceptions of high crime rates or anti-white ethnic hostility, seem completely incorrect. As I demonstrated in a 2010 article, all available evidence indicates that most immigrant groups tend to have approximately the same crime rates as white Americans of a similar age, or perhaps even a bit lower. Similarly, there is overwhelming evidence that todays immigrants want to learn English, gain productive employment, assimilate into our society, and generally become "good Americans" at least as much as did their European counterparts of a century ago.
The notion that masses of non-white immigrants, legal or not, will turn our cities into violent battlefields or support ethnic separatist movements which shatter national unity are total absurdities, and the people who believe such claims are fools. And as we have seen above from the accumulated voting data of the last couple of decades, after a brief transition period, whites and non-white immigrant groups seem to coexist perfectly well, or at least as well as did the various white ethnic groups on the
However, the fact does remain that
The result of all this has been a quite remarkable rate of national population growth. During the early 1970s, when environmental concerns, such as depletion of resources and overpopulation, became leading causes among the liberal intelligentsia,
Such rapid and massive population growth is found nowhere else in the developed world and is rare even among the more successful developing countries. The European nations,
Large and growing populations certainly do produce national benefits as well as burdens, and
There are obvious reasons for this curious lack of national debate. The solvency of our
Meanwhile, consider the strange continued silence of the once vocal environmentalist groups, for whom massive housing growth and endless suburban sprawl are hardly cherished dreams. I strongly suspect that the difference between their energetic criticism a generation or so ago and their quiescence today centers on the matter of race: back then,
As a prime example of this dynamic, consider the case of the
Even without such explicit inducements, we should hardly be surprised that liberal, cosmopolitan, upper middle class environmentalists would be extremely uncomfortable enlisting in a political cause typically spearheaded by the sort of loud right-wing populists whom they personally detest as "racist rabble." Sometimes strange bedfellows do find it extremely difficult to share the same bed.
Meanwhile, many other powerful lobbies within our political system derive important real or perceived benefits from endless population growth. The massive inflow of often impoverished and desperate immigrants tends to weaken unions and drive down working-class wages, thereby increasing corporate profits, a slice of which is then rebated back to the campaign accounts of the elected officials who maintain such policies. Some of the more expansively-minded neoconservatives feel that if America must establish a hegemonic world empire, it necessarily requires a vast population to do so, especially given their expectation of an inevitable conflict with
But if we take a step back and ask ourselves to consider the current outcome of all these interlocked policies, we discover a very sorry situation. The massive immigration of the last couple of decades is certainly not the sole or even the leading cause, but it is an important contributing factor. Endless foreign wars, partly made possible by the availability of pliant immigrant cannon fodder, have ruined America's worldwide reputation and its finances. A gigantic housing bubble, inflated by heavy immigration-driven population growth, has collapsed, wrecking the American economy and endangering our financial system. And the extremes of American wealth and poverty have reached levels never previously seen in our society.
This last point is perhaps the most significant, but also the least often articulated, given that both political parties are largely funded by the same financial interests.
The Politics of Rich and Poor
In recent decades, American society has undergone an almost unprecedented concentration of wealth, now reaching the point at which the top 1 percent possess as much net wealth as the bottom 90-95 percent. This same top 1 percent received over 80 percent of the total increase in American personal income between 1980 and 2005, and that trend has almost certainly accelerated since then. Late last year
Furthermore, much of this economic decline has been absolute rather than merely relative. Adjusted for inflation, median personal income has been stagnant for the past 40 years, and a substantial fraction of the population has seen a sharp drop in its standard of living, a situation almost without precedent in American history. Meanwhile, the costs of numerous budget items such as healthcare or higher education have risen very rapidly, thereby forcing more and more families into what
To some extent, this long stagnation in financial well-being has been masked by the material benefits derived from the exponentially growing power of our electronic technologies and also by the false sense of wealth temporarily provided by the housing bubble. But with the collapse of the latter, many Americans are finally discovering just how poor they really have become. And in many respects, this economic situation seems far worse in America than in most of the other wealthy countries we have long regarded as our economic peers, so it cannot simply be blamed upon problems of technological displacement or the rise of
It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that this 40 year period of economic stagnation for most Americans coincides exactly with 40 years of rapidly rising immigration levels. After all, the concept that a huge influx of eager workers would tend to benefit Capital at the expense of Labor is hardly astonishing, nor does it require years of academic research into the intricacies of economic theory.
Consider, for example, the case of self-educated union activist
But today's union leaders have grown almost completely silent on the obvious impact that large increases in the supply of labor have on the economic well-being of ordinary workers. A crucial explanation is that for reasons of citizenship and language, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are employed in the private sector, particularly the smallscale non-unionized private sector. Meanwhile, population growth tends to increase the need for teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other government employees, thereby benefiting the powerful public-sector unions that today completely dominate the labor movement.
This relates to another perfectly valid criticism raised by anti-immigration activists, namely that the net fiscal impact of many immigrants is sub-stantially negative. The notion that large numbers of immigrants and their families subsist on welfare or that Mexican immigrant mothers often have five or ten children is sheer nonsense. Immigrants actually have very high labor force participation rates and relatively low rates of welfare dependency, while the vast majority of their families stop at two or three children, a number somewhat higher than that of today s nativeborn whites but really no different from the typical American family during the hallowed 1950s. And since, as mentioned earlier, immigrant crime rates are about average, there is no large additional cost for police or prisons.
The fiscal difficulty lies not on the expenditure side but on the tax side. Most immigrants, especially illegal ones, work at relatively low paid jobs, and the various taxes they pay simply cannot cover their share of the (extremely inflated) costs of
Immigration and the Political Trap
But even if we conclude that our high immigration levels represent a serious national problem, is there any possible solution? The political reality is that both major parties are enormously dependent upon the business interests that greatly benefit from the current system and are also dominated by disparate ideologies-libertarian open-borders and multicultural open-borders-whose positions tend to coincide on this issue.
As an extreme example of the bizarre ideological views of our current political elites, consider a less- publicized element of the immigration reform plan that President
Furthermore, while significant Democratic support for curtailing immigration appears almost unthinkable given the party's internal dynamics, a committed Republican effort-unlikely though it might be-would seem doomed to failure due to the racial aspects of the issue. Republicans would immediately be subjected to withering Democratic attacks in the media-whether or not these were fair or sincere-and as a result would lose much of whatever remaining non-white political support they still retained, while the
After all, even strictly enforcing existing immigration laws is almost impossible in our current political and media climate. Although the press has recently highlighted the hundreds of thousands of undocumented residents annually deported under the Obama administration-and this has sparked a sharp political backlash among his pro-immigrant supporters-such a number is negligible compared to the estimated total of 11 million or so. Only the most utterly egregious employers of those workers have ever paid serious penalties, and the dollars involved are usually trivial compared to the economic benefits of ignoring the law. In almost all cases, "employer sanctions" have amounted to just a (small) cost of doing business. When both worker and employer have a strong mutual interest in evading a law, enforcement becomes very difficult and cumbersome, just as we have seen in the case of our endlessly violated drug laws.
Even so, attacking the employment side of the equation remains the most effective approach. Virtually all immigrants come here for jobs, so eliminating government benefits would merely serve to further immiserate millions of families, who would remain in this country regardless. Having immigration agents conduct random sweeps through ethnic neighborhoods would engender enormous fear and anger and also deter immigrants from reporting crimes, while constituting a massive violation of traditional civil liberties. Even building a fence and doubling the border-patrol would probably have just a small impact across such an enormously long border, not least because an estimated one-half of all illegal immigrants enter the country legally and then overstay their visas. If the magnetic appeal of the American job market could somehow be reduced or eliminated, such ancillary measures might prove useful, but if the jobs remain, the immigrants will remain here as well.
Escaping the
So we are faced with several apparendy insoluble and reinforcing dilemmas. Passing legislation to curtail immigration seems a political non-starter with both parties, and enforcing such legislation even if passed is equally unlikely. Yet as an almost inevitable consequence of the current system, the bulk of the American population-including the vast majority of immigrants and their children-falls deeper and deeper into economic misery, while government finances steadily deteriorate, leading our country to a looming calamity whose outcome appears both dire and quite difficult to predict. Over the last century, the political consequences of a largely impoverished middle class and a bankrupt government-whether in
By contrast, the sharp constriction in the labor supply resulting from steep reductions in additional immigration would dramatically boost worker wages, especially at the low end, with current immigrants themselves being among the greatest beneficiaries. An increase of a couple of dollars per hour or more could make huge improvements in the difficult existence of the working poor, perhaps allowing them to exit the debt treadmill and stand a better chance of eventually rising into a revitalized middle class. Admittedly, corporate profits might suffer a little and some businesses at the lowest end might disappear; but corporate profits are already doing quite nicely these days, and it makes no sense for developed countries to desperately compete with the impoverished Third World for jobs that are only viable under Third World salaries. Immigration restrictions that raised working-class wages by a couple of dollars an hour would also do wonders for the fiscal health of the
But perhaps the obvious escape from this seemingly inescapable political trap is as simple as merely reversing the direction of cause and effect. Consider the consequences of a very substantial rise in the national minimum wage, perhaps to
The automatic rejoinder to proposals for hiking the minimum wage is that "jobs will be lost." But in today's America a huge fraction of jobs at or near the minimum wage are held by immigrants, often illegal ones. Eliminating those jobs is a central goal of the plan, a feature not a bug.
Let us explore the likely implications of this simple proposal. The analysis that follows should be regarded as impressionistic and plausible rather than based on any sort of rigorous and detailed research. It is intended to raise possibilities rather than provide answers. Also, let us assume for the moment that these higher wage requirements would be very strictly enforced.
First, the vast majority of workers in America's surviving manufacturing sector-whether in unionized Seatde or non-union
By contrast, the bulk of the low-wage jobs affected fall into the category of domestic non-tradeable service-sector jobs, which cannot be replaced by overseas workers. Many of these jobs would disappear, but a substantial fraction would remain viable at the higher wage level, with employers either raising prices or trimming profits or more likely a mixture of both. Perhaps consumers would pay 3 percent more for
Meanwhile, many millions of low-wage workers would see an immediate 20 percent or 30 percent boost in their take-home pay, producing a large increase in general economic activity, not to mention personal well-being. We must bear in mind that an increase in the hourly minimum wage from the current federal level of
The likely impact upon immigrant workers, whether legal or illegal, would be quite varied. Those most recently arrived, especially illegal ones with weak language or job skills, would probably lose their jobs, especially since many of these individuals are already forced to work (illegally) for sub-minimum wages. However, workers who have been here for some years and acquired reasonably good language and job skills and who had demonstrated their reliability over time would probably be kept on, even if their employer needed to boost their pay by a dollar or two an hour.
Thus, the force of the policy would fall over-whelmingly on those immigrants who possessed the weakest ties to American society and still retained the strongest links to their country of origin. By contrast, those immigrants-legal or otherwise-who had lived here for some years and therefore had gradually become part of the community would mostly emerge unscathed, probably receiving a very welcome boost to their family income. Some anti-immigration activists might find this prospect extremely distasteful, but half- or two-thirds of a loaf is better than none.
Moreover, although this wage structure would tend to "grandfather" a considerable fraction of existing illegal immigrants, it would constitute a very formidable barrier to future ones. Paying
In effect, a much higher minimum wage serves to remove the lowest rungs in the employment ladder, thus preventing newly arrived immigrants from gaining their initial foothold in the economy. As a natural consequence, these rungs would also disappear for the bottom-most American workers, such as youths seeking their first jobs or the least skilled in our soci- ety. But over the last few decades, these groups have already been largely displaced in the private-sector job market by immigrants, especially illegal ones. Whereas 40 years ago, teenagers and blacks tended to mow lawns and work as janitors, in most parts of the country these days, such jobs are now held by recent arrivals from south of the border. So the net loss of opportunity to Americans would not be large.
Furthermore, recently arrived illegal workers must very quickly find employment if they hope to cover their living expenses and remain here rather than being forced to return home instead. But first-time American job-seekers are already living with their families and anyway have no other home to draw them away, and consequently could spend months seeking an available job. Thus, a higher minimum wage would tend to disproportionately impact new immigrants rather than their American-born competitors.
The enforcement of these wage provisions would be quite easy compared with the complex web of current government requirements and restrictions. It is possible for business owners to claim they were "fooled" by obviously fraudulent legal documents or that they somehow neglected to run the confusing electronic background checks on their new temporary dishwasher. But it is very difficult for anyone to claim he "forgot" to pay his workers the legally mandated minimum wage. Furthermore, the former situation constitutes something of a "victimless crime" and usually arouses considerable sympathy among immigrant-rights advocates and within ethnic communities; but the latter would universally be seen as the case of a greedy boss who refused to pay his workers the money they were legally due and would attract no sympathy from the media, the police, juries, or anyone else.
Very stiff penalties, including mandatory prison terms, could assure near absolute compliance. Virtually no employer would be foolish enough to attempt to save a few hundred dollars a month in wages paid at the risk of a five-year prison sentence, especially since the workers he was cheating would immediately acquire enormous bargaining leverage over him by threatening to report his behavior to the police.
The proposed change would simply be in the rate of the minimum wage, rather than in the structure of the law, so certain relatively small modification and exceptions, such as including estimated tips for some restaurant employees, might be maintained, so long as these did not expand as a means of circumventing the statute.
Depending upon the state, the current American minimum wage ranges between
But suppose this boost in the minimum wage succeeded at one of its primary goals and eliminated the jobs of many millions of America s large undocumented population. Would these current workers and their families remain here anyway, perhaps turning to crime as they became financially desperate? After all, huge numbers of immigrants were employed in housing construction, and following the collapse of that industry their unemployment rates have soared, but most of them have stayed here anyway rather than going home again.
The central point to recognize is that most illegal immigrants, and a substantial fraction of legal ones, enter America with the original goal of short-term economic gain, intending to work for a few years, save as much money as possible, then go back home to their family and friends with a nice nest-egg. Frequendy, these plans are unrealistic-saving money proves more difficult than expected-and local ties develop. But except for financial factors, even those individuals who have lived here a decade or longer often still dream of returning to their native countries, sometimes even after they have married, had American-born children, and put down considerable roots.
Among other factors, the cost-structure of American society is extremely high compared with that in most of the developing world, where dollars go much farther. This is the primary reason that substantial numbers of non-Hispanic American retirees have chosen to relocate to
Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the fiscal costs to the American government of low-wage immigrant families can be enormous. A couple working jobs at or near the present minimum wage pays negligible taxes, while if they have two school-age children, the grossly inflated expense structure of American public education may easily result in an annual taxpayer burden of
The obvious solution, both humane and highly cost-effective, would be for the government to offer immigrants extremely generous financial relocation packages if they return home to their own countries. A tax-free cash payment perhaps as high as
An important aspect of all these proposals is that they are largely self-enforcing. Workers would be perfectly aware of the simple minimum wage laws, and harsh penalties would deter employers from taking the risk of violating them. The disappearance of low-wage jobs would remove the primary lure for new illegal immigrants, and generous cash relocation packages would lead many existing ones to eagerly turn themselves in and seek deportation. Although the
Even principled libertarians, fervently opposed to the very concept of a minimum wage, might find this system preferable to the status quo, which contains an enormously complex web of regulations and employment restrictions; the civil libertarian nightmares of identity cards, national databases, and workplace raids; and an existing minimum wage on top of all these other things.
The Political Balance Sheet
The political response to this package would obviously not be uniformly favorable, but would almost certainly be more so than for any typical immigration-restriction proposal.
Most of the larger corporations, especially those in the industrial sector, would be minimally affected by the wage changes, while benefiting from the (eventually) decreased burden of immigration-related reporting and paperwork requirements.
Many large retail establishments would be forced to pay higher wages, but since these requirements would be uniform, hitting all of them simultaneously, they would be able to raise prices in unison to cover much of the additional expense, a situation very different from one in which well-paid unionized companies are driven to the wall by their lower-paid non-unionized competitors. Furthermore, during the course of this severe recession, giant companies such as
Large agricultural interests are heavily reliant upon illegal labor, but while they might be unhappy about raising their workers' pay by a significant amount, they would find this situation vastly preferable to actual enforcement of todays immigration laws, which would immediately put them out of business. Anyway, although agricultural labor is difficult and unpleasant, most field workers already earn well above current minimum-wage levels, averaging just over
Many small textile manufacturers and other businesses that survive only by relying upon very low-paid immigrant labor, working in near-sweatshop conditions, would probably be driven out of business. But that is the intent of the proposal.
The reality is that most of the larger, more powerful business interests in America are much less heav- ily impacted by minimum wage laws than by all sorts of other regulatory and legal issues, not to mention healthcare and pension costs. A simple change in minimum-wage rates would provoke only a small fraction of the organized business opposition generated by many of the other sweeping national proposals of recent decades, notably healthcare reform. Small business interests, influential in Republican circles, would certainly oppose the measure, but they would largely stand alone.
A greater difficulty on the Republican side of the aisle would involve the entrenched ideological positions of many conservative elected officials and pundits, who over the years have come to vaguely regard minimum wage laws as being "bad," both economically and even spiritually, having substituted dogma for thinking. As an example, conservative firebrand Rep.
But we should also recognize that these days a crucial component of the Republican electorate consists of working-class whites, often strongly religious ones, who tend to live in non-unionized low-wage states or who otherwise generally subsist, sometimes with considerable difficulty, on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Proposing a large wage increase to a socially conservative evangelical Christian who works at
The minimum wage represents one of those political issues whose vast appeal to ordinary voters is matched by little if any interest among establishment political elites. As an example, in 1996, following years of unsuccessful attempts to attract the support of
Finally, we should remember that many of the most militant and ideologically fervent grassroots activists within conservative ranks are vehemently anti-immigration, often largely on racial grounds, and sometimes focus on that one issue to the exclusion of most others. For them, the very realistic prospect of dramatically cutting the numbers of
The political calculus among Democrats would be much simpler. Any neoliberal Democratic office-holder who balked at a large rise in the minimum wage by citing the economic theories of
A little over a century ago,
These days, times have changed. But perhaps a similarly bold step, which similarly raises the income of America's working class and similarly crosses many ideological lines, would help safeguard and maintain the national prosperity that men like Ford originally created.
The notion that masses of non-white immigrants will turn our cities into violent battlefields is a total absurdity.
Immigrants have very high labor-force participation rates and relatively low rates of welfare dependency.
The minimum wage represents one of those issues whose vast appeal to ordinary voters is matched by little interest among political elites.
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