Remember how we recruited Chinese nationals to come here and build our railroads for us? Because Americans didn't want to go stand out in the sun and drive railway spikes? Well, we got someone else to build our railroads for us, which revolutionized the economy, causing it to expand by about a thousand fold, and, in return for this service the Chinese provided us, we treated them like shit, with even our courts describing them as subhuman (see Chae Chan Ping), and barred them from bringing their families to the US. But that's cool, right? After all, they were just "guests."

I think what Americans need to better understand is the benefits they derive from immigration of which they are not aware. Many people seem to believe that American workers really want to stand out under the blazing sun and pick vegetables. If that's so, then why is it that American farmers advertise for pickers and no American ever shows up to perform the job? American farmers don't discriminate, they're happy to hire anyone who shows up. But no American worker wants to do that kind of backbreaking labor for $10/hour.

"Right," we all proclaim, "the problem is that American farmers don't pay enough to attract US workers!" Okay. I'm not sure whether that's strictly true given that American workers choose to work in places like MalWart that pay far less than migrant workers receive for picking vegetables, but, nevertheless, let's say that's true and that you could get American workers to pick produce if you only paid them enough to make it worth their while. Fine, so, the $10/hr prevailing wage plainly isn't enough, so we're going to have to increase the wage to... what? $15/hr? $20/hr? How much would it take to get you to go out and stand under the blazing sun and break your back for 10 hours straight? $25/hr? Let's split the difference, let's say $20/hr.

Okay, so we're now paying pickers $20/hr. Well and good. Except that labor is the number 1 cost in agriculture and, unlike the banking industry, agriculture doesn't have any huge profit margins they can play around with - not too many multi-million dollar junkets, billion dollar a year executive salaries, caviar stocked yachts, or golden lear jets for these guys. So by doubling the wage you pay to workers, you're now going to have to double the cost to consumers. So tomatoes are now selling for $8/lb instead of $4/lb.

The only catch is, we're still allowing in imports from places like Mexico, Chile, Argentina, etc. And they aren't paying their workers $20/hr, which means that they can still sell tomatoes for $4/lb instead of $8/lb. Now you as a consumer go into your local grocery store and can choose between $8/lb American-grown tomatoes or $4/lb Chilean imported tomatoes, which are you going to choose? If you choose the more expensive home grown tomatoes, my hat's off to you for your patriotism, but I guarantee that you will be one of the very few who makes that choice. So what will happen will be that no one will buy American grown produce, and then there will be no jobs for anyone in American agriculture, paying either $20/hr or $10/hr. Congratulations, you just dismantled an entire sector of the American economy.

Now ask yourself, what's going to happen to all of the jobs that existed supporting American agriculture? How many tractors will John Deere be selling? How many truckers will need to be employed to transport vegetables that are no longer being produced? So what will happen to all of those people whose jobs you just eliminated? What will happen to all of those businesses? I'll tell you what will happen to them: they will be outsourced to those countries whose export agricultural businesses have just received a huge shot in the arm through the abandonment of the US agricultural sector. Why not? Congress these days gives businesses tax credits for firing US workers and moving their businesses off shore, why should agriculture and the businesses which support it be any different? What do you suppose is going to happen to the foreign trade balance if we suddenly have to import 100% of the food we eat?

You see, you just opened up a huge Pandora's Box here, with far-reaching consequences most people never consider. With all of that said, I'm not sure I disagree that immigration should be curtailed. Many developed countries do pay their agricultural workers more, offer better benefits, and employ a greater percentage of native workers in that sector of the economy. But they do so in ways that are not terribly popular in this country. They employ protectionist trade policies, they publicly subsidize agriculture, funded by higher income taxes and closure of loopholes for businesses, in other words, they engage in all of that commie pinko, wealth redistribution, social engineering stuff which is so horrifying to the libertarian, free market, anti-government regulation mindset in this country. Personally, I think we would be a whole lot better off it we embraced more of that commie pinko stuff and told the libertarians to shut the fuck up.

As a percentage of our income, we pay FAR less than any other country on earth to feed ourselves. And that's the way Americans like it - cheap prices for everything. Cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap houses, cheap plastic crap, cheap taxes, cheap everything, cheap, cheap, cheap, keep it coming. Well, there's a price for that imperative, which is that we aren't going to curb the flow of low cost imports, we aren't going to pay workers decent wages, we aren't going to offer reasonable benefits, and we're going to be perpetually hemorrhaging jobs to countries that pay their workers even less than we pay ours, and offer even fewer worker and environmental protections than we do. That is the inescapable price tag of our obsession with cheap goods.

And I for one think that we need to wake up and smell the coffee and undertake some serious reconsideration of our entire economy and trade practices. But until we're ready to do that, attacking immigration is attacking just one part of an economic system which creates the problems which appropriately worry you. And if you attack that one issue without first addressing all of the other issues, you're going to destabilize the economy and have no mechanisms with which to restore stability. In conclusion, immigration is one of those areas where you really need to look carefully before you leap.