Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [43]
Normally, it’s liberals who traffic in class-envy statistics, fretting about “income inequality,” “stagnant wages,” “rising poverty,” “the disappearing middle class,” and the plight of the “working poor.” A 2004 BusinessWeek story was typical of this thinking. It noted that “one in four workers earns $18,800 a year or less,” and went on to prescribe the usual left-wing remedies, including higher minimum wages and more unions. But free-market conservatives know that such income data is misleading. A third of those people are part-time workers and another third are under twenty-five. That leaves us with one-third of one-fourth—or roughly 8 percent of this subgroup—who are actually “working poor” in any long-term sense.
Poverty is transient for the overwhelming majority of Americans, so a snapshot of who’s in the bottom fifth of income earners at any one point in time doesn’t tell you much. Nearly 86 percent of tax filers in the bottom 20 percent in 1979 had exited that quintile by 1988. The corresponding mobility rates for the second-lowest, middle, second-highest, and highest quintiles are 71 percent, 67 percent, 62.5 percent and 35.3 percent, respectively. Overall, an absolute majority of the people in the bottom income quintile in 1975 have since also been in the top quintile.
All this mobility is one reason that Democratic attempts at class warfare are regularly rejected by most voters. Republicans, for their part, routinely chide the left for trying to play one earner against another. But when the subject turns to immigrants, conservatives can start to sound like John “Two Americas” Edwards. Robert Rector says we’re “importing poverty,” end of story. Journalist Heather Mac Donald says “we’re importing a second underclass,” “very, very low-skilled labor that’s driving down wages.” Mac Donald says that this is why “wages have been basically stagnant in low-skilled industries.”
National Review and any number of restrictionist lawmakers in the GOP have made similar remarks. But what undermines these claims, whether they come from the left or the right, is the fact that it’s difficult to work full-time and remain poor in the United States. Most people who are working are not poor. And most people who are poor are not working. We know from labor participation rates that low-skill immigrants are society’s hardest workers. Which means that even if they arrive poor, they’re not likely to stay that way.
Labor migrants are in search of a place where, given their skills, they can be more productive and earn more money. By heading north, a typical Mexican immigrant can nearly quadruple his hourly wage, and that’s even adjusting for cost-of-living differences in the two countries. Some come to make a better life for themselves in America. Others come to make a better life for their families back home, where they plan to return eventually. The average Mexican worker sends home 41 percent of his pay, making remittances Mexico’s second-largest source of external revenue, just behind oil exports.
But it’s not all about maximizing income. Immigrants from less-developed countries also migrate to diversify risk and gain access to capital. High inflation, sagging wages, and failing crops might result in a decision by the male head of household to go north in search of employment, while his wife and children stay behind and work in the local economy. If the situation back home doesn’t improve or turns worse, remittances can make up the difference. Similarly, capital and credit markets back home may be weak or non-existent for a Mexican who wants to start a business, build a home, or pay medical bills. A trip to the United States to work for a period of time may be the answer.
Which is to say that there are many reasons for immigrants to head our way, and one of the least likely lures is welfare. Immigrants tend to be motivated people looking to better their situation, not looking for hand-outs. For your typical Latino immigrant, being unemployed in the United States is far more expensive than being unemployed back