Illegal Immigration: Seen and Not Seen

Frederic Bastiat

As with most things in Western politics, America's illegal immigration question is argued within contending narratives.  The Marxist Left points to cultural enrichment, tolerance, virtuous altruism, abundant and cheap labor and "diversity".  Conservatives point to enormous burdens on Federal and local governments in the areas of healthcare, public education, law enforcement and revenues.  Given that both are imperfect, which narrative is more correct?  Does either go beyond what is easily seen?

 Typically, the Left supports its positions with emotionally charged anecdote carefully designed to elicit public sympathy.  Usually an easy-sell.  The Right, on the other hand, tends to concentrate on founding principles together with information and data that are empirically verifiable -- statistics and balance sheets.  Not an easy-sell to a public that has been conditioned to prefer feeling good to knowing.

Despite the difficulty of articulating the conservative message (too often attempted by inept advocates) it seems to me that under growing economic pressures the public today has gradually come to an understanding of the downside of illegal immigration.

I have two purposes in writing this essay.  The original (Part II) one is to point out one long-term consequence of illegal immigration that seems to have escaped most of its critics.  The second -- derived from my thinking about the first (counter-intuitively, Part I) -- is to promote a way of arguing conservative positions that was pioneered more than a century ago by an incisive but under-appreciated French thinker.

Part I (The Value of Bastiat's Methodology in Understanding and Argument)
Frederic Bastiat  persuasively argued that the legislative actions of governments have consequences that may find favor with voters (things that are seen) and others that have pernicious effects on society that are not apparent (things that are not seen). [1]  The former are seen because government initiatives are easily visible and simple to describe (say the building of highways or railroads) and because legislators want it so.  The latter -- government's growth in power at the expense of personal sovereignty, economic plunder and the perversion of the law -- are not obvious because they are deceptively incremental and distributed across the entire polity.

Bastiat took a minimalist view of the proper scope and function of law, asserting that its only purpose was to protect the life, liberty and property of the people.  Anything beyond that encouraged the use of force (the necessary instrument of enforcement) by government to favor some political faction at the expense of tax-paying public at large.  This he called plunder.  Bastiat's argument, much the same as that of the American Founders who preceded him, lies at the heart of the debate over negative and positive rights. He cites innumerable examples of government plunder, from philanthropy, protectionism, to various kinds of public works, agriculture, arts and educational policy.  In every case he approaches his analysis with considerations of things seen and not seen. [2]  In every case he demonstrates that parties able to obtain government preferment through the writing of law make gains for themselves and their cohort to the detriment and expense of everyone else.  Protectionist legislation provides a good example, and one that captures the spirit of play in serious matters.

A French iron manufacturer is upset and financially threatened by the fact that his government allows competing materials to be imported from Belgium at prices lower than his own.  He knows he must act.  It occurs to him that he could assemble and lead an armed force of men to the border and intimidate of shoot buyers and sellers of Belgian iron.  On reflection he realizes the possibility that he or his men might be injured or killed and that the whole affair might become intolerably expensive.  Eventually he has a stunningly clever idea; he will petition government to pass a law that penalizes the importation of foreign iron.  In order to do that he will have to persuade legislators that the law he recommends will inure to the benefit of the French economy writ large.  If he is successful, great benefits will follow for a number of parties; particularly himself (no risk, no cost of enforcement), the legislators and the general government who will be seen as patriotic and concerned with the welfare of the French economy and the welfare of French labor.  That is what will be seen.  And it will have an attractive face.

What is not seen?  The price of iron and every product that depends upon it -- agricultural implements, building materials, armaments, appliances, cookware... -- all will increase.  So also will the rise in taxation necessary to monitor and enforce the law.  But, as I said earlier, the costs are raised in small increments over the general population.  They are not seen.

When one reads Bastiat [3] he can easily imagine him to be a contemporary; what he says is not only perfectly relevant to present legislative and economic problems, but it also provides a powerful and clarifying method of argument and analysis.  As an example of his relevance, I offer the following quotation in which he refers to the misuse of law and its consequences:

Nothing can be more clear and simple, more perfectly defined and bounded, or more visible to every eye; for justice is a given quantity, immutable and unchangeable, and which admits of neither increase or diminution.
Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, industrial, literary or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced Utopia, or, what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending Utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law and to impose it upon you, for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has.  Where will you stop?  Where is the law to stop?

Part II (Illegal Immigration and the True Cost of Cheap Labor)
At first blush cheap labor looks to be a good thing, and in some ways it is.  But only in the short term.  It seems very likely that our costs for produce -- items that require stoop labor, picking, digging or chopping to harvest -- as well as that of poultry products would be higher than they presently are if illegal immigrants were not available in fields, ranches and chicken processing plants.  Businesses and consumers prosper where cheap labor is available.  Likewise, the homeowner who wants yard work, landscaping, housecleaning, nanny services and myriad other chores done is pleased by low costs.  These benefits are things seen.  Among many things not seen are the costs of public assistance, unfair competition and -- perhaps most importantly -- the freezing of productivity.

Illegal aliens are disproportionately engaged in hard physical labor, and, as Victor Davis Hanson points out in his book, Mexifornia, their productive lives are foreshortened by disability.  Many in early middle age apply for and are granted disability benefits under Social Security. [4]


The Left insists, dipping into the well of orthodox dogma, that illegal immigrants do the work that Americans will not do.  There is a kernel of truth in that, but it would be more accurate to say that they are willing to do work that Americans will not do for the same low wages.  In fact, competition from illegal immigrants has forced many businesses (landscaping being the most visible) either to retire from the field or hire illegals in order to survive. 

I come now to the point I had in mind when I thought to write this essay; what may be one of the most serious consequences of the availability of cheap labor is the lapse of productivity incentives.  Readers who are not instinctively skeptical of Marxist mainstream house organs may believe the dominant narrative that productivity is mainly the result of hard work and efficient methods.  As in most cases, there is some truth in that idea, but it is a truth that dwells at the margins of the concept.  I'll try to explain.


Productivity, rightly understood, is almost exclusively a function of management rather than labor.  While an individual or a team of workers can improve output, that improvement is always limited by human capacity.  Investment in automation, information technology and systems design are the great drivers of productivity. I was surprised to learn that the French (two-hour lunches, 35 hour work-weeks and all) are in some areas the most productive workers in Europe.  How can this be?

The burdens of hiring workers in France are cumbersome and costly.  Given legal mandates for short work-weeks, generous benefits, long vacations, high tolerance for absenteeism and onerous limitations on the ability to fire or lay-off workers without pay, there is a huge incentive to automate.  And automate they have.  Fewer workers are hired and output per worker rises.

But what if labor is cheap?  Why design, improve or invest in, say, a new harvesting machine when you can put labor in the fields at a tiny fraction of the cost?  The abundance of cheap labor is a temporary condition that distorts the marketplace and suspends incentives toward long-term innovation and competitiveness.  When cheap labor goes away we will find ourselves at a disadvantage vis-a-vis other nations which have continued apace to enhance productivity.  Yes, even France. [5]


--------------------------
1.  A brilliant 19th Century political economist in France, Bastiat does not enjoy anything near the attention he deserves.  In what is probably his best-known work, The Law, he analyzes with disarmingly readable style and profound clarity the social and political costs to society of newly ascendant socialist influences in French government.
Bastiat's work shows some signs of a revival among libertarian (Mises Institute) and conservative (Chicago School economists) thinkers and writers.  Its influence is acknowledged by Nicholas Nassim Taleb's epistemology in his Black Swan, and it may have been the basis for William Graham Sumner's idea of the "Forgotten Man". 
2.  As Bastiat makes clear, what is seen is what is promoted and advertized by government, and what is not seen is often deliberately concealed, obfuscated or simply not discussed by legislators.
3.  If, as I hope, I have managed to kindle in some readers an interest in Bastiat's work, the wonderful Gutenberg Project has some on his published writings available for free download.
4.  When confronted with this fact talking-head Marxists, in order to placate the outrage of commonsense citizens, will declare mendaciously and categorically that "undocumented workers" cannot collect disability benefits.  But Permanent Residents Under Color of Law, so-called PRUCOL aliens, among many others who fraudulently qualify, do in fact receive disability benefits.
5.  Some concluding thoughts. 

• Productivity is essential to the accumulation of wealth only in free-market economies. The consequence of productive investment in a socialist economy is often high unemployment without off-setting economic growth.  In the socialist countries of Western Europe increasing productivity seems entirely a defensive measure, designed only to postpone inevitable fiscal collapse.  Moreover, It does nothing to create wealth.  In free markets where the value of labor is determined by pricing and where excessive regulation does not destroy incentive, productivity is a means of creating and expanding economic prosperity.  For the rich parasites, Marxists will ask?  Trouble is, poor parasites aren't hiring.  Bien amicalement.
  
• The good news is that in America industries that are not labor-intensive may suffer little or no loss of productivity improvement.   Agriculture, services and warehouse production will likely be hit hardest, and when the joy-ride ends prices will rise.
• In regard to depressing the drive toward productivity it seems to me that a super-abundance of natural resources is analogous to that of cheap labor.  I think of oil in Arab and Latin American countries.