THE RIGHT BOOKS

The economic aspect of the debate over illegal immigration to the United States is far from being the whole or, to my mind, even the determinative part of it; yet it is the one most accessible to objective investigation: Viewed as an economic problem, an otherwise confused and perplexing subject appears to offer at least the possibility of rational comprehension. Perhaps that is why it has so often been the target of obfuscators like Professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland and the Heritage Foundation, whose parti pris arguments and sometimes obsolete data have happily begun to yield to those set forth by more responsible investigators—such as Philip L. Martin, professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of California-Davis and author of a thoughtful and well-argued monograph, Illegal Immigration and the Colonization of the American Labor Market (Center for Immigration Studies, 1424 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $6.95).

According to Professor Martin, a longtime student of the vicissitudes of the American labor market, the availability of illegal aliens to major industries in certain regions of the United States has had—and continues to have —significant and frequently unlooked-for effects upon investment, employment, and competitive trends in the nation as a whole. Martin describes the displacement of American workers by undocumented ones in agriculture, food processing, services, and construction, a process largely forwarded by network recruiting and subcontracting; he concludes that Congress’s reluctance to move against the flow of illegals across America’s borders has had the effect of granting a selective labor subsidy that, over the past two decades, has disrupted domestic investment decisions, slowed economic growth, and led to the proliferation of low-skilled, low-productivity jobs (many of them of an “artificial” nature: i.e., housekeeping and landscaping jobs that, in the absence of cheap and hungry illegals, would largely be performed by householders themselves) in an economy that ought rather to be modernizing and sophisticating itself.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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The economic aspect of the debate over illegal immigration to the United States is far from being the whole or, to my mind, even the determinative part of it; yet it is the one most accessible to objective investigation: Viewed as an economic problem, an otherwise confused and perplexing subject appears to offer at least the possibility of rational comprehension. Perhaps that is why it has so often been the target of obfuscators like Professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland and the Heritage Foundation, whose parti pris arguments and sometimes obsolete data have happily begun to yield to those set forth by more responsible investigators—such as Philip L. Martin, professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of California-Davis and author of a thoughtful and well-argued monograph, Illegal Immigration and the Colonization of the American Labor Market (Center for Immigration Studies, 1424 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $6.95).

According to Professor Martin, a longtime student of the vicissitudes of the American labor market, the availability of illegal aliens to major industries in certain regions of the United States has had—and continues to have —significant and frequently unlooked-for effects upon investment, employment, and competitive trends in the nation as a whole. Martin describes the displacement of American workers by undocumented ones in agriculture, food processing, services, and construction, a process largely forwarded by network recruiting and subcontracting; he concludes that Congress’s reluctance to move against the flow of illegals across America’s borders has had the effect of granting a selective labor subsidy that, over the past two decades, has disrupted domestic investment decisions, slowed economic growth, and led to the proliferation of low-skilled, low-productivity jobs (many of them of an “artificial” nature: i.e., housekeeping and landscaping jobs that, in the absence of cheap and hungry illegals, would largely be performed by householders themselves) in an economy that ought rather to be modernizing and sophisticating itself.