My first job in Washington was for pro-immigration hawk Ben Wattenberg. Ever since I’ve followed the immigration debate with a mixture of exasperation, boredom, and ambivalence. The exasperation and boredom stemmed from largely the same source. The arguments never change and the players stay relatively fixed. Neither screaming nor intelligent arguments on both sides ever seem to make a difference. My ambivalence stemmed from a general sympathy for the best arguments on both sides and my general conviction that there is a bi-partisan determination never to permit real progress to take place. I’m still very cynical, but I do think you can feel some actual movement we haven’t seen before. Obviously, the argument that immigrant jobs are “jobs Americans won’t do” has been thoughtfully critiqued for a long time. But I can’t remember when people like Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson did the critiquing. Perhaps Mark, Rich or Ramesh remember differently, but it seems like there’s growing respectability around the obvious argument that if you had fewer workers willing to be paid $1 dollar an hour you would have more jobs paying $2 an hour. And if such market forces were allowed to work themselves out, a lot more “Americans” would be willing to do work we’ve been told Americans won’t do. In other words, very few of us would refuse to clean toilets if cleaning toilets could make you rich. Similarly, if gardening paid closer to a middle-class wage, there would be plenty of “Anglo” middle class gardeners.

I don’t think this is a silver-bullet argument by any stretch of the imagination. Inflating the prices for things we’re used to paying very little for would have many negative consequences, particularly for working class Americans. But that’s a legitimate choice for Americans to make. No one has a right to a 99 cent cheeseburger. All I’m saying is that I find it pretty interesting that for the first time in my memory the “Jobs Americans won’t do” line is being treated to some skepticism in the mainstream and liberal press to a degree I haven’t seen before. It’s a welcome indication that maybe, just maybe, arguments are starting to matter in the immigration debate.