The Right Discovers a New Immigration Theory to Exploit
January 10, 2008
The labor shortages that immigrants generally address are in the menial service sector and the low-paid agriculture and factory sectors. These are stressful and often dangerous jobs which have few benefits over and above the wages made, and which don’t allow families which depend on them any surplus to build social capital (via saving for their children’s education) without extraordinary sacrifice. This is hugely difficult, and the immigrant families that do it anyway are admirable in their tenacity. Nobody wants to have these jobs if they could have better ones, whether they are native citizens or immigrants.
If there are more native-born citizens, the economy will expand due to their consumption demands, and none of them will want to work menial jobs unless they have no other options. So there will still be gaps for immigrants to fill, always, in the hope that their children will have a more financially secure life than they do and won’t have to work menial jobs either.
Of course, there is one way to ensure that an increase in native-born citizens doesn’t result in an increase in either the blue-collar or white-collar middle class who raise their children to refuse menial jobs unless absolutely desparate - implement social policies which squeeze the middle class like the last decades of Chicago School/Monetarism/Economic Rationalism policies have done. Push more and more families out of the financial security of the middle class and watch your supply of workers willing to take on menial, stressful and dangerous work grow!
I’m seeing more and more variations of this argument lately, especially on American sites:
World immigration is a direct response to abortion throughout Europe and North America. Workers from poorer countries are always going to come to replace our lack of labor due to abortion here.Talk about a reductio ad absurdum.
[…]
Abortion and birth control are the culprits, not immigrants wanting to work. So, blame ourselves. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too.
The labor shortages that immigrants generally address are in the menial service sector and the low-paid agriculture and factory sectors. These are stressful and often dangerous jobs which have few benefits over and above the wages made, and which don’t allow families which depend on them any surplus to build social capital (via saving for their children’s education) without extraordinary sacrifice. This is hugely difficult, and the immigrant families that do it anyway are admirable in their tenacity. Nobody wants to have these jobs if they could have better ones, whether they are native citizens or immigrants.
If there are more native-born citizens, the economy will expand due to their consumption demands, and none of them will want to work menial jobs unless they have no other options. So there will still be gaps for immigrants to fill, always, in the hope that their children will have a more financially secure life than they do and won’t have to work menial jobs either.
Of course, there is one way to ensure that an increase in native-born citizens doesn’t result in an increase in either the blue-collar or white-collar middle class who raise their children to refuse menial jobs unless absolutely desparate - implement social policies which squeeze the middle class like the last decades of Chicago School/Monetarism/Economic Rationalism policies have done. Push more and more families out of the financial security of the middle class and watch your supply of workers willing to take on menial, stressful and dangerous work grow!
