Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [24]
In fact, the trends point toward the United States needing more of these workers, not fewer, if our economy is to continue expanding. A 2007 Urban Institute study looking at working-age adults without a high school degree found a large drop among natives who fit this profile but an offsetting rise among their immigrant counterparts. Specifically, between 2000 and 2005 the number of native-born adults who lacked a high school diploma fell by about 1 million, while the number of immigrants rose by 900,000. And almost all of that growth in immigrant numbers came by way of illegal aliens.
Foreign-born workers may be only 15 percent of the labor force, but they comprise a disproportionate share of lower-skill occupations like farming (47 percent), construction (27 percent), custodial workers (36 percent), manufacturing (23 percent), and food preparation (24 percent). With the exception of the manufacturing sector, which is expected to continue contracting, these are growth industries that will need more workers in coming years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment in all occupations to rise by more than 21 million between 2002 and 2012, and higher-than -average demand for jobs that require lower levels of formal education and training. Factor in turnover due to people changing occupations and retiring, and the BLS projection jumps to 56 million new jobs by 2012, or 2.6 job openings for each net new position.
These are the so-called “jobs Americans won’t do,” a phrase that never fails to get a rise out of restrictionists, who insist that natives would gladly maintain golf courses, chop off chicken heads, and pick cotton in the noonday sun if the pay was better. Their point is well taken but it’s still wide of the mark. The issue isn’t whether, in the absence of immigrants, we would take it upon ourselves to perform these tasks. If we were to seal off the borders, the market eventually would adjust to the shrinking supply of labor, and wages and prices would adapt. After all, the United States manages to cope when there are shortages of sugar, steel, beef, and other goods.
But as the economic journalist Henry Hazlitt explained, when studying the effects of economic proposals, “we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone.” Which is to say that economics is about trade-offs, or making decisions by comparing the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. So the real question isn’t whether living in a closed economy is possible. It’s whether the United States is better off moving in a protectionist direction.
Nobel economist Edward Prescott once wrote that protectionism “is seductive, but countries that succumb to its allure will soon have their economic hearts broken.” The role of government is not to shield industries and workers from international competition. Latin America and Europe abound with states that have yet to learn this lesson, but restricting the movement of labor and goods can only retard economic growth. Protected goods are more expensive. If Ford and General Motors didn’t have competition from Toyota and Honda, cars would be more expensive and fewer people could afford them.
Closing off the U.S. economy to foreign labor likewise would have negative consequences, primarily because the country would have less human capital overall. What’s more, we’d be a poorer society because we’d be using the human capital we did have less efficiently. Low-skilled immigrants fill millions of jobs in agriculture, construction, hotels, health care, light manufacturing, and retail. These are big and important sectors of the U.S. economy, and businesses depend on immigrant labor to stay competitive. Again, the issue isn’t so much the viability of removing foreign labor from the U.S. economy. We’d manage. The issue is whether America would be better off with an immigration policy