http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060503/OPINION03/6050303 52/-1/ARCHIVE John Tierney
Why would immigrants risk their jobs with work boycott? The American proletariat celebrated May Day by taking to the streets to demand lower wages. That's effectively what immigrants across America were doing Monday, at least according to the economists who believe allowing more immigration would depress the wages of unskilled workers in America. If that's true, then the immigrants already working in low-paid jobs here will suffer if there's a surge of new arrivals. Yet immigrants on Monday skipped work, boycotted stores and attended rallies to support freer immigration. Some are illegal immigrants who want Congress to legalize their status, but many protesters already have green cards. Why do they welcome new competitors for their jobs? The clearest answers I've found come from the international panel of experts I consulted at the Sunrise Cafe, the deli near my office. It's staffed by immigrants from five countries in Central America and South America. They wonder if new immigrants are really much of an economic threat, and they're not alone. Although some economists calculate that immigrants have depressed wages for low-skilled workers by 8 percent, many others estimate the decline is only half that much. And others believe there's virtually no harm done, because businesses expand to create jobs. To the extent that anyone's hurt by immigration, the burden falls not so much on American-born workers -- but on the immigrants who are already here. The new immigrants have a harder time competing for jobs against English-speaking natives than against fellow immigrants. Patricia Cortes of MIT calculates that a 10 percent increase in immigration would reduce the wages of low-skilled natives by less than 1 percent, while causing an 8 percent reduction in the pay of the low-skilled immigrants already here. Some of the immigrants at the Sunrise Cafe suspect that their wages might be affected, but they're still committed to the pro-immigration cause. Although they went to work on Monday, they vowed not to do any shopping, and most planned to go to a rally or march after work. They told me they didn't see themselves as activists marching for Latino civil rights or political power. They said they supported freer immigration not to help themselves -- they were already citizens or had green cards -- but simply to give others the same chance they'd had. "People need to support their families," said one of the cashiers, Carmen Salcedo, who arrived three years ago from Panama. The reasoning at the deli makes more sense than what I've been hearing from some intellectuals who want to restrict immigration. But even if you accept the debatable economic premise that low-income workers are significantly harmed, the argument fails on moral grounds. Suppose you were setting immigration policy from behind a veil of ignorance. Which of these would you choose? * Restricting immigration to protect some lower-paid workers in America from a decline in wages that would be no more than 8 percent, if it occurred at all. * Expanding immigration to benefit most Americans while also giving some non-Americans living in dire poverty the chance to quadruple their income. You can get the answer at the Sunrise Cafe -- and an excellent sandwich, too. John Tierney is a New York Times columnist. C Copyright 2006 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.
