Down On The Farm
I have a new piece entitled Plantation America at the American Thinker today.
``How you gonna keep `em down on the farm`` was an old lament from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The industrialization of America sucked all of the labor out of rural areas, and the agricultural sector found itself with a terrible labor shortage as young people flocked to the cities. This forced the farm industry to mechanize and otherwise streamline their techniques, and this gave us an explosion in agricultural production. America now feeds the world thanks to urbanization.
This is one of the straw arguments being offered up by the ``jobs Americans won`t do`` lobby; they say we need illegal immigrants to maintain our standard of living, and that we face dire economic woe if we begin enforcing our borders. I argue in my latest at the American Thinker that this low paying substitute for the plantation system will work to our detriment in years to come for the same reasons that slavery and sharecropping weakened the antebellum South. The plantation system destroyed the initiative and enterprising spirit of the ruling class, and an economy steeped in cheap immigrant labor will, I believe, have the same effect.
Had illegal labor been available in Kansas or Iowa during the age of the Robber Barons, we would still be farming manually. Necessity IS the mother of invention, and a society supported by slave or serf (or migrant) labor has no need for enterprise or invention. This leads to decay.
The point is, America cannot afford illegal immigration.
``How you gonna keep `em down on the farm`` was an old lament from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The industrialization of America sucked all of the labor out of rural areas, and the agricultural sector found itself with a terrible labor shortage as young people flocked to the cities. This forced the farm industry to mechanize and otherwise streamline their techniques, and this gave us an explosion in agricultural production. America now feeds the world thanks to urbanization.
This is one of the straw arguments being offered up by the ``jobs Americans won`t do`` lobby; they say we need illegal immigrants to maintain our standard of living, and that we face dire economic woe if we begin enforcing our borders. I argue in my latest at the American Thinker that this low paying substitute for the plantation system will work to our detriment in years to come for the same reasons that slavery and sharecropping weakened the antebellum South. The plantation system destroyed the initiative and enterprising spirit of the ruling class, and an economy steeped in cheap immigrant labor will, I believe, have the same effect.
Had illegal labor been available in Kansas or Iowa during the age of the Robber Barons, we would still be farming manually. Necessity IS the mother of invention, and a society supported by slave or serf (or migrant) labor has no need for enterprise or invention. This leads to decay.
The point is, America cannot afford illegal immigration.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 10:35 AM
6 Comments:
People who claim to support the concept of freedom are being horribly inconsistent, at best, when they oppose the right of consenting adults to engage in capitalist acts.
The important point is that by importing 18th-century labor we prevent companies from developing 21st-century technology that would do the same work more efficiently. It dumbs down America and ensures America's children won't have access to these high-tech jobs.
I think you are confusing migrant workers with illegal aliens.
Bird said:
Government can encourage this by making college tuition grants contingent upon employment, say, or offering tax credits to the parents of employed minors.
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Add more rules to the current tax laws?
Why would our kids pick lettuce for $5.00 per hour when they can work anywhere else for that much or more?
(Read mall, fast food or supermarket).
We need legal workers, possibly at less than minimum wage, and legal immigration. I would deny citizenship to illegals.
Michael, I generally agree-provided people are not coming here illegally. My argument is that the massive flood of illegals (as opposed to a much smaller legal immigration) will destroy this nation in years to come (as, indeed, unenforced borders would destroy any nation-look what it did to Rome!) People who have come here illegally have no rights to engage in ANY acts (except maybe breathing)-they don`t belong here. They are here taking jobs Americans should be doing!
These people are trespassers; would these employers be willing to allow them to walk uninvited into their own homes and stay during the term of their employment here in America? America is ours, and they have no right to stroll in just because some cheapskate doesn`t want to pay market rate for services.
Thanks Pacrim Jim! I couldn`t agree more!
Hi Arthur Dent!
I have no problem with legal, permanent resident migrant workers-especially if they are trying to enculturate. Most of the people taking these ``jobs Americans won`t do`` are illegal aliens who are not here to enculturate but to profit off of America. (Can`t say I blame them.) This hardly invalidates my argument.
About adding more layers to the tax code; we may as well, since Congress and the President have not lifted a finger to remove a single line of the code; at least this would be doing something useful, instead of merely shafting us further. My point is that there are ways to encourage hard work (It needn`t be through taxes) and that America needs the dignity of doing her own labor.
Your point about kids not being willing to pick lettuce at $5 per hour proves my point; lettuce farmers need to pay more if they can`t find decent, legal help,or they need to find new ways of doing things. Invent a lettuce picker (or buy one, if such a thing exists). That is why American grain feeds the world, after all!
Your point;
We need legal workers, possibly at less than minimum wage, and legal immigration. I would deny citizenship to illegals.
missed the entire point of my piece; this cheap labor hurts us as a people. It`s a crutch. We start by using it because it`s convenient, then we can`t do without it. It`s a highly addictive drug. We become dependent on an endless supply of plantation labor. We become incapable of doing this work ourselves. We should just say no.
Oh, and another point for both Michael and Arthur to consider; would we have this situation were it not for government interference with things? Government run schools, government financed higher education, the Job Corps, welfare programs, etc. have all conspired to rob employers of part of the labor pool. The people who traditionally took some of the less desirable jobs are no longer compelled-thanks to the welfare state taking care of their needs. Kids who would have paid their way through college no longer have to take these jobs, those on the margins find it easier to accept welfare than to take these jobs, etc.
Also, abortion has reduced the ``surplus population`` as one would-be employer of illegal labor once told a certain Mr. Dickens. This is a government policy which was originally created for that very purpose; Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood as a tool for Eugenics, and they were the driving force behind abortion. We now reap what we have sewn. We are forced to bring in aliens to work for us, since we`ve killed off our own workforce here in America.
You’ve hit the nail on the head and driven it home, with this post and your “American Thinker” piece!
Economics and innovation were the keys then and they still are.
The situation of employing illegals is a virtual mirror image of what the large multi-national corporations did with “outsourcing” to cheaper foreign labor markets to cut costs that were so loudly decried in the last election cycle. Now it’s the small business owners “in sourcing” their labor via cheap illegal aliens. Unfortunately, both are short-term strategies that end with virtually the same result, a net loss of jobs for Americans to do and a growing dependency on government handouts. The people working so hard now to thwart any meaningful changes to our immigration laws are the very same ones who were howling mad at the big corporations for seeking their cost savings by looking overseas. The business owners that most often employ illegals will not let their conscience be bothered with the morality of exploiting the people here illegally, because they are just as fixated on the bottom line as any corporate giant is.
Until the enforcement efforts of the Federal Government become effective and harsh, enough to make it economic suicide to openly employ illegal aliens business operators will continue doing so. There is little incentive for them to comply with the law because the government from top to bottom is loath to do anything substantive about it. Market forces, which should drive the wages upward for these less than desirable jobs cannot operate normally because of the ready supply of complaint, and cheap laborers to fill those positions. With more streaming across our borders everyday with no end in sight they are suppressing the both costs and value of doing those jobs. There are no jobs that “we Americans” simply refuse to do, but there are prices businessmen refuse to pay.
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