Mexican Slavery

I don't think I have ever brought up this topic before.  It is one of the most controversial topics today.  It also turns out that a vast majority of people, on both sides, have no clue what it really entails.  Today, I am going to discuss illegal immigration.

The other day, I was reading about illegal immigration, for a class I was taking.  I forget what the article was about, but I started reading through some of the comments left by readers.  One lady said that she was against illegal immigration, because it takes jobs away from legal American citizens.  She then showed her complete ignorance by stating that she has a friend who would gladly take one of the construction jobs currently held by an illegal Mexican immigrant.  The construction industry in the U.S. is fairly well regulated.  Certifications are required for many types of construction work, and most locales have at least three levels of construction code requirements (Federal, state, city, and/or county).  Even for construction jobs that do not have Federal requirements, many states require that anyone with less than journeyman status work under a journeyman as an apprentice (I did this on a few occasions doing insulating work with a friend).  On average, more than half of construction workers are skilled workers.  If they are Mexican, they are very much legal.  Maybe some shady backwoods construction jobs hire illegal immigrants, but reputable construction companies don't.

So, the question then is, if there are so many illegal immigrants here, what are the jobs that they are taking?  Many are working for small businesses that are not willing to pay minimum wage.  It is pretty hard for an illegal immigrant to complain that they are getting ripped off, when they will certainly be thrown out of the country if they do.  I wonder if this lady's friend is willing to work as a bagger or cashier at a small grocery store, for $2.50 an hour.  That is not where most of the jobs are though.  My research found that a vast majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. are working in one of two industries.  In Washington state, many work in the logging industry.  In general though, a vast majority work in agriculture.  Now, keep in mind that in the U.S., minimum wage does not apply to most agricultural work.  The vast majority of illegal workers (including those who return to Mexico after harvest season is over) in the U.S. are doing agricultural work, which pays $2 to $4 an hour and does not violate minimum wage.

Now we can say that Mexican immigrants are taking thousands of agricultural jobs from legal U.S. citizens right?  This is actually false.  It also turns out that most Americans will not do agricultural work, even if they cannot find any other work.  One farm workers organization listed jobs for agricultural work with some very large unemployment organizations, and out of tens to hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans notified of the openings, a grand total of three responded.  These are not jobs that Americans would have if the Mexicans did not do them for cheaper than minimum wage.  These are jobs that Americans refuse to do.  The evidence shows that most unemployed Americans would rather go on welfare than work in agriculture.  The immigrants are not stealing jobs.  They are filling a need for labor that no one else is willing to do.

It gets worse though.  It also turns out that the reason the above mentioned organization of farm workers started posting job openings is that many Mexicans won't do farm work anymore either.  Many of the jobs were filled by Mexicans who live in Mexico and come to the U.S. seasonally to do farm work.  The economy in Mexico has improved somewhat, and now many Mexican farm workers have found that they can get higher quality and better paying work staying in Mexico, than working on farms in the U.S.  One farmer complained that the lack of workers was going to cause part of his berry harvest to go bad before they could be picked.  Similar worries have been heard from other farmers as well.  As the economy in Mexico has improved, jobs on U.S. farms have opened up.  Unfortunately, few Americans (three, specifically) are willing to do that kind of work.  As the Mexican economy continues to improve, we can expect to loose more and more farm workers.  Here is the catch: Farm workers are essential to our ability to produce food.  Now, last time I checked, 60% of the food produced in the U.S. is exported.  So, decreasing production by 60% would not cause us to starve, but it would cause other countries to have food difficulties, and it would force a lot of farms to close, which would eliminate all of the administrative jobs that are held by legal American workers.  Obviously, if food production dropped more than that, people in the U.S. would start to starve.  In short, without Mexican farm workers, we would loose a large number of jobs that Americans are willing to do, we would loose a major export, we would probably have to start rationing food, and some people would starve because they would not be able to afford the new prices for food.

All of this brings up a lot of questions.  The obvious one is, how can we cut down on illegal immigration without destroying our ability to produce enough food for everyone?  The solution is even more obvious: Illegal immigration is only illegal because it is illegal.  Since it is defined by the fact that it is illegal, making it legal would eliminate the problem entirely.  Now, I am not necessarily for opening the borders and walking away.  We could, however, make it much easier for honest Mexicans to immigrate.  We could even just make it easier to get short term work visas for farm workers.

A second, less obvious question this brings up is, why is minimum wage different for agricultural work?  Also, farm workers don't get overtime pay either.  Why?  The idea with minimum wage is that it is designed to make sure that workers get enough wages for their work to pay for living expenses.  The idea with overtime is that more than 8 hours of work a day (or 40 hours a week) is excessive labor, and the employee deserves extra pay for the difficulties caused.  Do farm workers somehow have a lower cost of living, such that lower pay is justified?  Is farm work so easy that overtime should not apply?  The answer is very obviously "no."  If we limit farm workers to legal workers (whom the law is designed for), they have the same cost of living as anyone else.  Working in agriculture does not magically decrease cost of living.  The overtime thing is worse.  The reason Americans won't do farm work is that it is grueling labor.  Farm work is some of the hardest physical labor available in the U.S.  If anyone deserves extra pay for excessive work, it is farm workers.  So, the question "why" still stands.  The answer is, farming is not as profitable as many other businesses (or, it was not, back when this particular part of labor law was designed; modern industrial farming techniques have dramatically increased profitability of farming).  The justification is, this type of business needs the lower minimum wage, and farm workers work 12 to 16 hours a day, almost every day they work.  As such, the cost to pay workers fair wages is supposedly too much for farms to handle.  Does this really justify blatantly ripping them off though?

This reveals an ethical dilemma.  We need food.  In fact, food is one place where normal market profit maximization techniques are obviously wrong.  Profit maximization math balances demand with price.  The problem with doing this for food is that when demand decreases, it means that people are not buying the product, often because they cannot afford it.  For food this means that people starve.  So, if profit is maximized, around 25% of people will not be able to afford food (this be based on common trends with other products; in the U.S., given that a vast majority of people are in the lower class, it might be closer to 50% or more).  Maximizing profit for food forces people to starve.  So, the dilemma is this: Allow the food industry to be entirely capitalistic, require farms to pay fair wages, and have a significant percentage of the population starve, or allow farms to pay wages worth far less than the average compensation given to slaves in the Old South (they at least got room and board), to keep food costs low enough that everyone can afford it?

What this really comes down to is, when is the U.S. really going to outlaw slavery?  Americans recognize that farm work, at current legal wages, is not much different from slavery.  This is part of the reason Americans will not take farm jobs.  Many Mexicans are used to conditions worse than slavery, so seasonal slavery on a farm, that actually pays, is better than what they are used to.  That still does not make it right though.  (Note, if you are sitting there thinking, "It's only slavery if they are forced to work," look up "chattel slavery."  That is what you are comparing it to.  Chattel slavery is not the only kind of slavery.  Voluntary slavery is still slavery.)  We managed to outlaw blatant chattel slavery long ago.  Now we are battling a different kind of slavery that is much more insidious.  Until we recognize it as slavery, the American Dream will be a false hope available only to those who already have it.  Let's free the Mexican slaves!