Damn Mexicans!

[xenologer]

So I read someone complaining about the reason so many people in the US are out of a job is that Mexicans have stolen them.

Now, the obvious first point is that many of these people supposedly believe in the free market above all else. For them to cry "wait that's not fair!" when they lose out to competition that's willing to work more for less... it's just a little disingenuous.

That's not what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the similarity between these claims and claims by various ethnic groups that they have to compete with other ethnic groups for marriage. I remember hearing men in my family complain when I was a child that lots of women want to date black men because they have bigger cocks. Really. That's the only reason. "That's just not fair, them comin' in with them huge cocks! They stealin' our wimminz!"

Even in Europe where they're supposedly so much more comfortable with other cultures than America is... there's a long history of warring ethnic groups putting out propaganda explicitly aimed at convincing like to marry like. "Our girls marry our girls. Your girls marry your girls." Yes, this is about ethnic and cultural purity, but it wouldn't be a problem if men in each culture weren't so afraid they would prove unable to "measure up" against (read: "compete with") the foreigners.

I have no sympathy for this. Women aren't refusing to date these white guys because their dicks aren't big enough. Women are probably refusing to date them because (like my father) they're narrow-minded blockheaded assholes. In short: they aren't succeeding in the market because they themselves aren't competitive, not because someone else has an unfair advantage. The solution is for these men to adjust to the market demands for guys who aren't assholes, not to bitch about how the ones who're succeeding don't really deserve it. When someone else offers something that makes them more competitive (whatever it may be), the rules of the free market state that they're not cheating. They're competing.

So to all those people bitching about how Mexicans are stealing your jobs (just like Irish people used to steal our jobs and Italians used to steal our jobs and Chinese people used to steal our jobs) ask yourself how badly you want that strawberry-picking job. Badly enough to compete for it as vigorously as the Mexicans? Badly enough to work for almost nothing with no job security and no benefits with an employer who will likely abuse you physically or sexually?

Do you really want that job you just lost to a Mexican?

No?

Then it's not their fault you don't have a job, is it? It's yours, for not being willing to flow with the market. No wonder you got left behind, eh?

Granted, this only applies to people who can simultaneously believe that A) the free market will solve all problems, but B) that they've somehow been slighted by the introduction of competition for jobs.

You guys. You wouldn't even be worried about this shit if we didn't have unions that pushed decades ago for things like minimum wage and job benefits. If this were the Industrial Revolution, you'd be willing to compete on an equal ground with the Mexicans because you'd be used to working the way they work: in unsafe conditions and for a pittance.

These people just annoy me because it doesn't seem like they're thinking very carefully about all these things they're claiming simultaneously. I want several things from them. If you're going to cry foul every time competition doesn't work out in your favor, maybe you could also adjust your own demands to make yourselves more competitive. Or, and here's a thought, you should re-evaluate how strong your faith in the free market really is now that you're the one losing out.

I don't care which you do. Just start making sense, please.

Comments

[archmage-brian.livejournal.com]

The common objection that I see to employing illegal immigrants is that it's, well, illegal. As you mentioned in a previous post, it becomes a matter of principles; you can't employ people who aren't legally able to work in this country just because they're willing to work for practically nothing.

I find it more curious that the same people who complain about outsourcing are the most devoted supporters of deregulated capitalism. I think that employing illegal immigrants is functionally equivalent to outsourcing--except that the workers are coming here. Some people bitch about both, but it's inconsistent to claim that immigrants are the biggest cause of a lack of jobs for American citizens when the Chinese are doing all our manufacturing and the Indians are all working in customer support for companies overseas.

[theglen.livejournal.com]

Before the 1980's Construction jobs paid $20 hour on average. Now they pay $8. Reason? Mexicans have destroyed the market. Even if you wanted that job, you can't work for those wages. They are disposable in that industry, meaning they have reason to do a good job. If they screw up they get fired and move to the next job site. No pride in the work, no reason to do a good job. They reduced wages and housing prices STILL went up. So it's not about the cheaper wages, it's about the higher profit margins.

That's the view from Houston.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Free market, man. These things happen. If they're willing to work for less, they haven't destroyed the market. They've merely changed what employers can expect, and when employers start expecting people to work for a pittance like the migrants do... well, you'd either better adapt or find a new business.

The alternative would be to regulate the economy more. It limits the free market to punish corporations who hire illegal immigrants, but if it's better for the economy overall, I'm happy to see it done. The problem is people who're so stuck on their starry-eyed love of the free market that they can't stand to see it regulated... even when it'll work to solve the problems they gripe about.

Again, my personal problem here is not that people find the effects of immigration on the economy undesirable. I just get sick of hearing it from people who also claim to be all about a deregulated magically-self-correcting free economy.

[theglen.livejournal.com]

Well they are illegal. But nobody punishes the builders. Free economy is a great thing as long as nobody cheats. But there's not enough space to cover my rant about the head honchos getting off scot free while employing the same people that's destroying the construction industry.

[archmage-brian.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that one of the hallmarks of a free economy is cheating when you can get away with it. There's no such thing as cheating in a truly laissez-faire capitalist economy. If breaking laws makes more money than obeying them (once you calculate the court fees and settlements, if applicable), it's in your best interest to break the law--companies can and do.

You're essentially trying to argue that free-market economies are great (and fair) as long as people are honest, but that can be said of any economic system.

[theglen.livejournal.com]

Teddy Roosevelt was the one that said a Free Economy is the best until somebody cheats. The government needs to be the guy that refs the game, not fixes it. Enforce the laws and enforce them harshly and people will be too scared to cheat. Or at least put some effort into it.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Definitions of "cheating" vary, though. Some would say that exploitative or deceptive practices are cheating even when they're not strictly illegal (yet). Some would say that introducing competition willing to work for too little is cheating. Some would say that in a truly laissez-faire system there's no cheating at all (which is what capitalism looked like in the age of the robber barons or the captains of capitalism depending on with whom you're speaking).

Where do you draw that line?

[theglen.livejournal.com]

From strictly the construction field (an area I have experience in) these are what are dirty pool:

Working unskilled labor to do trained jobs (shoddy work, leaves stuff the house owner finds years later)

Total disregard for safety laws (Mexican gets hurt? Fire him. Get another one)

Hiring without any background check (Theiving from houses under construction is rampant, and is 99% construction workers according to police reports.)

Under paying/violating agreements (Mexicans can't sue, no legal rights as illegals)

Rampant drug use among workers (dutifully noticed by just about any deputy working the burbs here.)

Companies don't care. As long as they get a guy that works for $5-$8/hr and that house gets built they don't care. If your foundation cracks in your second year, that's your problem.

Not saying that it's automatically better but the two best crews I've seen had no illegals. They were paid better, and the quality of their work was beyond question. When they made $20/hr the best men in the biz tried to get on that crew. Owners made a little less but the quality of their work was such that the repeat business made up for it.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

So don't blame "the Mexicans", blame the employers who are taking advantage of a bad situation.

If employers treated their illegal Mexican workers the same way they treated their US citizen workers, most of the problems you cite wouldn't exist. Obviously they don't -- that's the *point* of hiring illegal immigrants in the first place -- but the fault of this is not on the illegal immigrants, who are the ones getting screwed over the *most* in this situation.

[theglen.livejournal.com]

I blame them both. They are both breaking the law, neither are without fault. The illegal know they aren't supposed to be there, but they don't care about our laws. Not going to punish one and ignore the other. Hang 'em all.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I think the point here is: why do we even have a law against them working here? Because people don't want them to be undercutting American workers and creating a whole sector of cheap, desperate, disposable, underqualified laborers. Just punishing employers who disregard safety laws, fail to check workers' backgrounds, and underpay people would seem to address that issue at least as well as punishing the laborers themselves. Punishing illegal immigrants is likely to actually exacerbate the problem since illegals are less likely to complain to the police about workplace/pay violations.

"Punish them because it's illegal" is sort of like saying "I'm opposed to legalizing marijuana because it's illegal and associated with organized crime," instead of talking about legalization's effects on public health.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Pretty much no proponent of free markets has advocated lawlessness. From an economic perspective, the law has to be designed to prevent actors from inflicting external costs on others (say, by stealing instead of buying, or by destroying valuable stuff that belongs to other people), and legal penalties have to be large enough that breaking the law as a whole makes less money than obeying them. "Cheating" is just another word for behavior we've decided inflicts costs to society as a whole.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

I think the legality issue is an excuse. Yeah, they're not paying taxes on their $1-2,000 a year wages (unless you believe McCain that they make $50/hr), but no one pays taxes at that level. That's so far below the poverty line they'd get just about everything refunded everything, like I do.

That's why I think it's an excuse. The real problem seems to be in my view that a lot of people aren't willing to truly compete in a free market. They want the advantages unions got them but they don't want organized labor. They want a deregulated free market but they keep tacking on all these rules (you have to be here LEGALLY to compete!) to stack the game in their favor.

Really, it's the constant inconsistency that gets me. It shows a real lack of perspective into one's own motives when people can doublethink themselves into a corner like this, all so that they don't have to compete equally with ethnic/cultural "inferiors."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

I love your journal. I really do.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

High praise from you! Thanks!

[praxian2007.livejournal.com]

Couple of things.

1) Like Jerimiad, I love some of the stuff you post in here. Great. :)

2) I'm happy to compete with other people price-wise over my job if need be. Who knows how many times I have done that and been denied -and- hired, so it is a both-ways kinda deal. The important part comes in knowing how to talk to an employer that has the ability to hire illegals.

3) This is the kicker, the govt. needs to address illegal immigration and start dealing HARSH punishments to those that would hire them. It's one things to say "I'm hiring Esteban over here because well, he wants a job and is willing to take nothing for pay" - but it's another thing altogether to say that when Esteban is illegally here.

I enjoy the competitiveness of the market we live in, however my -only- gripe would be that illegal immigrants need to -NOT- be able to get jobs that are meant for people that have done the paper-work and are naturalized, have their green cards, or were born here in the US. These jobs we have in the states are for the people living Legally in the states, at least that's how I view it.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

I can't stand Asian guys who bitch about all the Asian girls going for white guys. It drives me crazy.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

It's because white men have the--

Actually I'm not sure what it is. o_o

[mdetapis.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU

[mdetapis.livejournal.com]

Great post as usual and very good point :)

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Many thanks. *hat tip*

[sammka.livejournal.com]

If this were the Industrial Revolution, you'd be willing to compete on an equal ground with the Mexicans because you'd be used to working the way they work: in unsafe conditions and for a pittance.

During the Industrial Revolution, weren't white workers moaning and complaining that black workers were stealing their jobs by undercutting them on wages? The first unions were famously whites-only, and black people were seen as union-busting scabs. I believe this also became a common complaint when women started working, because they could under-bid men as they "didn't have to support their families" or some bullshit like that. This is because both whites and men, even poor whites and men, were used to at least slightly higher standards of living than, say, single moms and black people, who were "supposed" to be prostitutes or living in disgusting, overcrowded slums full of rats, disease and violence. Basically nobody wants to have to compete with completely desperate people for jobs.

Of course, the response during the Industrial Revolution was unions and labor laws, not "the free market." So at least they were honest, as you pointed out.