Immigration Economics

This county was built on cheap labor. For that matter, every great civilization was built on cheap labor. For this country is was a struggle between slave labor and cheap immigrant labor. Immigrant labor won out but at the same time we realized at some point that there is a limit to how many people we want flooding into this country. The alternative was to export the work. A brilliant solution. The problem now is what about those jobs which can not be exported due to the fact that they are local based. The solution for that has been to turn a blind eye to deportation laws as the immigrants come in.

This is all well and good. Quiet honestly any citizen that finds himself competing with immigrant labor needs to go back to school or learn some technical skills. High school dropouts will not find sympathy with me. The problem starts when we start talking about legalizing the immigrants here. The problem with this is that while the immigrants are illegal they are not going to schools and competing for high paying jobs. Once you legalize them they will not be satisfied cleaning bathrooms for $3.50 per hour. They will want the jobs that pay $15 per hour. There presence in that market will bring down the market wage of those jobs to $10 per hour.

I feel that the best answer here is status quo. Keep exporting the low wage paying jobs so that people in those foreign countries can stay home and work. Keep the illegals that are here illegal so that they are not eligible for benefits and can not compete for higher level jobs.

As the low skill jobs are exported, perhaps the illegals that are here will go back home. Perhaps the highschool dropouts that we have here will emigrate to other countries for low wage paying work.