In that discussion I heard a particular example given when I asked a question. The question I had asked was that even if it is the case that immigrants send their kids to American public schools, and that immigrant taxes do not make up for how much the “society” pays for the provision of those public schools, wouldn’t one want to look at more than just the taxes versus spending, but rather how well the immigrant children do after leaving the school system?

To which I was told (my eyes popped out as I heard this), “well, but they don’t come out of the public schools any better off than when they went into them.” Now this leaves open a nice little paradox.

1. If I accept your claim that this indeed is true – then please remind me again why we have public schools? Isn’t the entire point of government schooling that the external (spillover) benefits of sending people to school are so large that “all of society” has an obligation to provide it freely to all? And wouldn’t we therefore all be very happy to send an immigrant to school because the whole point of it is that he should not have to pay for it in the first place? That’s the progressive argument, not mine. And if you wish to argue that people should have to pay for it, I’d like to see on what grounds schools then ought to be government run. Wouldn’t you be implying that … Oops.
2. If I do not accept your claim that this is true, i.e. that I think schools do improve the immigrant children, then tell me why, again, why you propose to ban immigrants from coming here? After all, if it is just a cost issue, isn’t the solution simply to ask immigrants to pay the costs? Not allowing them to come at all seems a bit draconian, no?  And reflecting on this for a moment longer, isn’t the typical argument for public support, progressive programs, and the like that we don’t like the inequality that results from accidents of birth? Wouldn’t allowing immigrants to come to use US public goods be precisely the sort of thing that remedies these accidents?

Note, this post is not a general analysis of immigration, I think there are some legitimate issues to bring to bear on the topic as a whole, I mean to focus on this particular aspect of the question.

The fruits of immigration

by Alex Tabarrok on July 12, 2011 at 7:31 am in Current Affairs, Economics | Permalink

A tough new law cracking down on illegal immigrants and those who hire or “harbor” them has created a severe shortage of agricultural labor in Georgia right at harvest time.

The head of a farmer’s group estimates that the state’s $1.1 billion fruit-and-vegetable industry could suffer a loss of $300 million.

Gary Paulk, a blackberry farmer interviewed by PRI’s the World, says he has lost $200,00-250,00 this season, as unpicked berries rot. “Having a fake ID, a first-time offense can be up to 10 years, and a $100,000 fine,” Paulk said. “I mean that’s, that’s like a felony. A felony to use a fake ID to get a job to support your family.”

To combat the shortage, Governor Nathan Deal has authorized using criminal offenders out on probation to replace the mostly Latino migrant workers. It’s not working out so well:

The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor…So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm.

“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, ‘Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”…

By law, each worker must earn minimum wage, or $7.25 an hour. But there’s an incentive system. Harvesters get a green ticket worth 50 cents every time they dump a bucket of cucumbers. If they collect more than 15 tickets an hour, they can beat minimum wage.

The Latino workers moved furiously Thursday for the extra pay.

Jose Ranye, 37, bragged he’s the best picker in Americus, the largest community near the farm. His whirling hands filled one bucket in 25 seconds. He said he dumped about 200 buckets of cucumbers before lunch, meaning he earned roughly $20 an hour. He expected to double his tickets before the end of the day.

None of the probationers could keep pace. Pay records showed the best filled only 134 buckets a day, and some as little as 20. They lingered at the water cooler behind the truck, sat on overturned red buckets for smoke breaks and stopped working to take cell phone calls.

In short, we have turned good workers into criminals and turned criminals into bad workers, losing on both ends of the deal. Incredible.

By the way, did you guys know the US imprisons more people (and at a considerably higher rate) than any other country on Earth? I am sure that is working out well.

if they are to be called evils, are not temporary. The direct descendants of the people who fought for and founded the Republic, and gave us a rich heritage of democratic institutions, are being displaced by …

Not Asian people. Not Latin American people. But …

Slavic, Balkan and Mediterranean peoples.

Source: Hunter, Robert. 1965. Poverty: Social Conscience in the Progressive Era, p. 313.

That was up near Massena, NY.

Two points – one unrelated to immigration.

1. Is it not odd that employers who actually hired these workers, albeit at lower wages than they feel they deserved, are the targets of lawsuits? After all, are not the the low wages of these workers caused by other employers choosing to NOT offer jobs to these same people?
   
2. American employers who end up hiring illegal immigrants and are subsequently caught face severe penalties for doing so.

In either case, employers in industries where wages and skills are low face very costly risks when they hire either American workers at low wages or illegal foreign workers at low wages. Whether they choose to hire at all is an interesting question. Even if they do hire, it is not clear which worker employers would prefer to hire. If we assume the same productivity levels of each worker – and if we assume that you pay each worker the same, whether you hire an illegal or not is a function of what the expected costs of getting caught with an illegal as compared to the expected costs of being investigated for discriminating. Add to the costs of hiring American workers payroll taxes and the uncertainty of government policy which may impose additional costs and penalties upon you for not offering health benefits or certain working conditions, and it seems that the balance is tilted in favor of immigrant hiring even if the money wages paid to each group were identical.

I had one more thought. Think about the humanity of all this. In one case, employers are vilified because they seem to not be doing enough to help a low-skill (native) worker. In another case, in what could very well be the same exact job paying the same exact wage, employers are vilified because they are doing too-much to help a low-skill (non-native) workers. I don’t want to hear about the “legality” of immigration – I just want to point out the absurd position employers often find themselves in. There’s a good reason why I wimped out and am working “for the man.”