Jobs Americans Won’t Do, and the Economics of Mass Low-Skilled Immigration

"On the Laura Ingraham show, Thomas Sowell blasted Paul Ryan’s argument that we need immigration “reform” in order to avert labor shortages:

That’s incredible. I mean-—first of all to an economist, it is incredible to speak about shortages without talking about prices, in this case wages…You know there, there have been so many predictions of shortages of so many occupations and the shortages don’t materialize. And why not? Because if there is a shortage, the wage rate goes up. That attracts in more people and lo and behold, the jobs are filled.

In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage. And as long as there are an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much. They say Americans won’t do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries. And it’s a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense."     [Power Line]

This article goes on to describe why the CATO INSTITUTE's opposition to Sowell's thesis is wrong.  It gets quite complex.   HOWEVER !!!! Sowell's fundamental argument is that as long as a supply of abundant cheap labor is AVAILABLE (either legal or illegal) from outside our borders, the wages paid to these workers will be penurious.   If the el-cheapo labor were not available the farmers would simply raise wages until "American" workers felt they could do the work.

Sure. Some farmers would stop growing "unprofitable" crops ..... until there was a shortage of that crop that makes it profitable for Farmer Jones to get into growing it and paying the higher labor cost to "American" workers.  Yes. Our prices for that crop would rise, but we wouldn't be paying through our taxes, the cost of supporting those low image farm workers.

The FREE MARKET will win ...... as long as the Guvm't keeps its hands off !!!