Right now, in my part of Florida, the unemployment rate is around 2%, which means that just about anyone who wants to work can find a job. Apartment vacancy rates are nearly as low as the unemployment rate. And — this shouldn’t surprise anyone — an awful lot of these jobs and apartments are have been taken by illegal immigrants. Some sectors of our local economy, notably agriculture, construction, and food service, have become totally dependent on these immigrants. Right now, with the economy going full-tilt, everyone sort of winks at this illegality and accepts the fact that we have lots of people driving without licenses, jamming 10 people into dwellings designed to hold three or four, and generally acting as a “below the law” underclass. The theory is that the illegals do jobs Americans and legitimate immigrants refuse to do, so we need to let them stay. But what will happen during our next recession? Will Americans still refuse low-wage work? I don’t think so.

First, let’s examine the “Americans refuse to do these jobs” thought.

If you have a choice between a no-benefits job picking tomatoes in the hot Florida sun and working in an air-conditioned store or office, you are going to choose air conditioning — especially if the office or retail job pays better than outdoor work. To get that indoor job, you need to speak, read, and write English, and “better” white-collar jobs usually require at least a little computer experience. Most Americans (and most legal inmmigrants) have these qualification, so they gravitate toward these jobs unless they like working outdoors (which many do) or have trade-type skills that allow them to earn substantial incomes doing physical work.

Not long ago, I proposed a Trickle-Down Theory of Real Estate Economics. I wrote that as people with substantial incomes are priced out of desirable neighborhoods by too-high real estate prices, they move into slightly less-desirable neighborhoods and displace people with smaller incomes, who then move into neighborhoods traditionally occupied by people even farther down the economic scale, and so on down to the people jamming whole families into travel trailer or motel rooms, which displaces winos and druggies, who end up on the streets or in jail.

Now let’s apply the same theory to jobs. If there’s an economic slowdown, people will apply for (and some will get) jobs they wouldn’t accept in better times. This effect will trickle down the economic chain until it gets to restaurant kitchens, construction sites, and farms, where it will run into a wall of illegal immigrants.

That’s when you’ll see a serious public outcry about illegal immigration. Elected officials who don’t heed the screams will soon be unelected — and replaced by ones who will happily round up anyone with poor English skills and no legal I.D. and put them on buses bound for the Mexican border.

You’ll see humanitarians picketing detention facilities that hold illegal immigrants, and there will be vocal blasts about economic unfairness from Mexican politicians. TV reporters will give us heart-rending tales about families torn apart and immigrants’ children who are used to life in the U.S. suddenly thrown into poverty in Mexico and other (mostly Latin American) countries. But the deportations will continue.

I suspect that any “guest worker” bill Congress passes will have some sort of provision for returning said workers to their home countries if our economy weakens. One recently introduced in the Senate by Pennsylvania’s Arlen Spector says they must leave if they are unemployed for more than 45 days.

Whatever legal pretext we use, we will deport immigrant workers if they become a liability, as opposed to an asset, to our economy — and I mean the economy in which most of us live, not the one occupied by the top 5% of our society where capital is considered more valuable than work.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 6:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.