Inimitable Mark Helprin applied his considerable skills today to the deep well of dishonest debate over uncontrolled immigration.
Other than simple sovereignty and the control of borders, which should be beyond debate and would if properly approached immediately contain and stabilize the problem, the essence of the illegal-immigration question, muddled though it may be by sophistry and peripheral claims, is the importation of labor.To assert as some have that illegal immigrants do not depress wages because they do the jobs Americans refuse is the kind of nonsense economists speak when they strain to be counterintuitive. It is similar to saying that cheap imports do not hold down prices. If employers paid higher than substandard wages, Americans (who famously do almost anything for money, including eating worms, shooting themselves from cannons and listening to Barbra Streisand sing) would take these jobs.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Alan at May 21, 2006 03:42 PM