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Originally published in the May 30, 2004 issue of the Alamance Independent
IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHO IS ON YOUR TEAM
June 1, 2004
Suppose you are a professional basketball player on an all-star national team. Not only are you being paid a six figure annual salary, but your job looks pretty stable as the qualification criteria for new candidates are really hard to meet. Now, imagine that the management of your team dropped most of these stringent criteria and are willing to hire about anyone who is willing to play for less money. Your first reaction would be that your salary might be at stake because for you to keep your job, you would have to accept a pay cut in order to avoid your position being "outsourced" to a cheaper player. But that's only half of the bad news. Once the owners hired several cheaper but less talented players, your team begun to lose. The long uninterrupted sequence of spectacular victories that your team used to be known for quickly fades away, and with it the earning potential of the team as well as the management's ability to pay the competitive wages to its players. So, you are cooked and may as well ask someone to stick a fork in you.
And that is exactly what matching of foreign "willing workers" with American "willing employers", proposed by President Bush and vigorously supported by several lawmakers and the open border lobby, will do to this country. As a matter of fact, the negative effects of mass importation of cheap, talentless (and uneducated) labor are already visible. As millions of "migrant" workers pour into America, not only the wages of American workers are headed South, but also it's economy, once undisputed king on the hill when it comes to technological innovation and profitable manufacturing, is quickly losing its edge to other nations that learned how to duplicate our success while avoiding our mistakes. Just look what happened to entire industries, like computer manufacturing and consumer electronics, that just a few decades ago were dominated by American companies but now are a domain of countries that in the not so distant past were known for their economic insolvency and technological backwardness.
In his seminal article [1] (see [2] for a slightly extended version), George J. Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard and a highly acclaimed expert on economic impact of immigration, debunked a myth perpetuated by the open border lobby that mass immigration has "zero effect" on wages of American workers. Based on census data and results of their statistical analysis, Borjas proved intuitively obvious economic fact that an increased supply of foreign labor does drive the wages of domestic workers down, particularly those of the poorest segment of the American society. Both the author's academic reputation and irrefutable logic of his article made it difficult for the open border lobby to dismiss it, although they have already claimed that Borjas paper, as based on past data (as opposed to future data, I suppose), may not be indicative of what the impact of mass immigration will be. Ironically, all this "criticism" comes from a lobby that never presented even a shade of scientific evidence, that would withstand scholarly scrutiny, for their common sense defying, wishful thinking utopian visions that promise happiness and prosperity but deliver disappointment and misery.
As in the above example of our professional basketball player, stagnant or decreasing wages are only half of the bad news that mass and mostly illegal immigration means to America. The other half originates from the fact that a vast majority of "migrating" masses not only come from backward countries, but also from the least educated and least talented segments of their societies. And this is dramatically different from what we had seen in the past when immigration brought to this country many exceptional talents, best educated professionals, and highly successful entrepreneurs. Following influential report [3] by Vannevar Bush in 1945, U.S. immigration policy used to encourage the most talented individuals to immigrate to America in order to boost progress in American science and technology. That trend, referred by its opponents to as "brain drain", greatly contributed to our astonishing accomplishments that made us what we still are: the most technologically advanced and, therefore, most affluent society of the world.
I remember a Cambridge, England, professor complaining that his school was losing some of their most productive faculty to places like Iowa State University, and certainly, career of Cuban-born professor Borjas may serve as an example of what this country used to get from immigration. Not anymore. After the cold war was won, Vannevar Bush Report went to oblivion and America is no longer a magnet for the most talented people of the world. Now, entire villages of peasants, many of who not even speak Spanish, from most rural areas in countries like Mexico and Salvador are moving to America, instead. If this insane trend continues, it's only a matter of time when all the progress that resulted from decades of "brain drain" is reversed and the U.S. loses its position of the world economic and technological leader. And this, I am afraid, will spell out lean times for most of us who have vested their interest in the United States of America.
Happy Memorial Day!
REFERENCES
[1] Borjas, George J., "The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2003, pp. 1359 - 1368.
[2] Increasing the Supply of Labor through Immigration: Measuring Impact on Native-born workers
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back504.pdf[3] A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945
http://www1.umn.edu/scitech/VBush1945.html
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