ILLEGAL ALIENS COME CHEAP

...Faced with this problem, employers have three choices: try to attract indigenous workers with higher pay, invest in more capital-intensive processes, or employ low-cost foreign labor...

...If they show any signs of becoming unruly, they can be conveniently controlled by threatening to revoke their work permits, if legal, or by reporting them to the authorities, if illegal...

...Illegal immigration is so much simpler...

...Make it legal and it's no good...

...Even were it implemented, liberal pressure would no doubt persuade the Government to offer a better deal to the migrants which, as European experience shows, would lead quickly to a loss of the advantages of hiring low-cost foreigners...

...has been to sour the...

...In essence, this is no different from the present situation in South Africa, but it attempts to wrap an international legal framework around the notorious pass laws that have provoked so much external criticism...

...They will have rights in the "homelands," the white government proclaims, but not where they work and spend most of their lives...

...The arrangement seemed to suit everyone, as Ian Hume, an economist at the World Bank, wrote in Finance and Development in March 1973: "The massive movement of manpower involved in migration in Europe since World War II has benefited both countries sending labor and those receiving it...

...There are now certain jobs that most Americans, northern Europeans, and white South Africans are not prepared to hold...

...No government is keen to face that issue head on...

...Without a major revision of the job structure, there are only two ways to meet the need for unskilled work: Either illegal immigration must continue, or it must be replaced with a policy of bringing in workers for fixed periods and without the full rights of permanent residents...

...Illegal immigrants are not entitled to fringe benefits or to the social insurance rights that the modern welfare state provides...

...Their own experience in the last ten to fifteen years, by contrast, demonstrates how the "benefits" of foreign labor to the advanced industrial nation can be quickly lost once it is recognized that the migrants are more than factors of production and concessions to their human rights are extended...

...In place of a serious immigration policy, we can expect to see measures designed to persuade the American public that the Government does mean to stop the illegals, while in reality it has no intention of doing any such thing...

...The consequences of the latter step have been considerable: More than a fifth of all the births in West Germany are now to migrant parents, and a vast system of bilingual and bicultural education is being established...

...The migrants' children are certainly not prepared to hold those jobs...

...Have everyone, American and foreign, carry work papers demonstrating his legality...

...That's an interesting paradox to think about...

...The issue is likely to be one of the most important in Western European society in the next decade...

...In South Africa, it also involves contracts with neighboring countries like Mozambique and Malawi and, the most extreme example, the forcing of "foreign" nationality (of the "homelands") onto black workers in the industrial cities...

...The prosperity of the last thirty years has not been accompanied by a change in the job structures of these countries...

...America, being a nation of immigrants, might not experience the social tension that occurred in Europe, but it would undoubtedly incur similar social expenditures...

...They will work for low wages...

...they have been brought up in affluence and tend to share the attitudes of their northern European contemporaries rather than those of their parents...

...industrial countries...

...Not so in the United States, where the employment of illegal immigrants solves the problem...

...Blacks will still work in white South African homes, factories, and farms, of course, but their "foreign" status means that, The effect of the social tension...

...It would force the Government to deal with an issue — the supply of unskilled labor — that it would rather avoid...

...Algerians were beaten and killed in southern France, a referendum was held in Switzerland on the subject of expelling immigrants, and a law was passed in Germany in 1975 — although it was repealed in 1977 — forbidding migrants from settling in areas where the migrant population exceeded a specified percentage of the total...

...Everywhere, however, the migrants' jobs include domestic and municipal cleaning and restaurant work...

...Employers would not stand for it...

...Hence the term "guest worker...

...The major sticking point in the negotiations to enlarge the European Community from nine to twelve members by including Greece, Portugal, and Spain is turning out to be not agriculture, though that is difficult enough, but the provision in the Treaty of Rome that mandates the free movement of workers within the Community...

...All ensure a supply of unskilled labor which, because it lacks a permaRichard Burnett is a free-lance writer in Washington, D. C. nent right of residence, remains docile and relatively cheap...

...The unskilled jobs that indigenous workers will not take vary from one industrial nation to another, depending on such factors as the degree of unionization in particular industries and local attitudes...

...by contrast, most South African miners are black...

...Because so long as it's illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don't qualify for social security, they don't qualify for all the other myriads of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket into our right pocket...

...There are various ways the supply of labor can be arranged to meet this key condition...

...In America, they also encompass agriculture and small industry, in Europe construction and much assembly-line manufacturing, in South Africa virtually all work that is not highly skilled...

...Coal-mining, for example, is unpleasant work but there are no migrant miners in America or Europe...

...the sending countries would — without the exodus of migrant labor — have experienced higher levels of unemployment and underemployment...

...Americans are increasingly reluctant to take on low-status, low-paid work...

...Immigrants were gradually made eligible for social security benefits and their families were permitted to join them...

...Prominent among the critics of the South African approach have been the members of the European Community...

...Regularize the status of those now here and then seal off the border with Mexico to prevent further entries...

...The control of illegal immigration is, therefore, an impossibility...

...And even legal immigrants, who may be entitled to such benefits, are likely to make few demands because they are usually young men without dependents and consequently have little need for medical, educational, and welfare services...

...Though not part of the enlargement talks, the specter of Turkey, with its much larger population, is also in the back of the Germans' minds...

...Friedman pinpoints the reason why no serious policy to control illegal immigration is wanted by American employers or likely to be implemented by any Administration...

...The United States is not alone in this...

...In service industries, the problem stems from the social attitudes of those who have grown up in the years of postwar affluence and education who would rather be unemployed than clean sewers or wait tables...

...Such control can be exercised, of course, only if the migrants have no permanent right to live in the country in which they are temporarily employed...

...They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take...

...First, pressure from such bodies as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Commission of the European Communities prodded the already somewhat guilty consciences of basically social-democratic European governments...

...Foreign workers are much the cheapest option...

...The result is that migrants, who used to 'The American employer has all the advantages of the South African system...

...Two developments, however, led most of the receiving countries to take advantage of the 1974 oil crisis and recession to prohibit further immigration, which had by then reached about fourteen million people, accounting for 5 per cent of the population and 10 per cent of the work force in most countries of the European Community and for even more in Switzerland...

...South Africa's granting of "independence" to the Transkei and to Bophuthatswana represent the first steps in the Nationalist government's homelands policy which, it is intended, will eventually turn all black South Africans into foreigners...

...Regularize the illegals, throw them out, or restrict new entries, and the consequence will be the same: There will be nobody to do society's undesirable work...

...It can be through the employment of illegal aliens, as with Mexicans, and to a much lesser extent other Latin Americans and Asians, in the United States...

...France is decidedly uneasy about what lurks over the Pyrenees: 25 per cent of the Portuguese labor force is unemployed, while 23 per cent of Spanish workers are still in agriculture...

...These are only some of the more common suggestions, often from unpredictable parts of the political spectrum, for dealing with the swelling tide of illegal immigrants, of whom there are now about eight million...

...Moreover, the ban on new immigration means that once a worker departs, he will not be able to reenter...

...It can be by contract between governments, as is usually the case in Europe, where, for example, West Germany has a contract with Turkey and the Netherlands with Yugoslavia...

...The American public is not concerned with the treatment of those who "areThere illegally...

...Europe has decided against more immigrants but it has left unanswered the question of who is going to do the work that the postwar generations disdain...

...Partly as a consequence of family reunions, the migrant populations grew quickly in the early 1970s...

...The "homelands" are designed to meet the charge that South Africa's blacks have no political rights...

...Employers need unskilled labor and have turned to "illegals" who now hold about one third of all full-time low-skilled jobs...

...If their services are no longer required, they can be summarily dismissed without redress...

...That would probably look too much like the South African system to be acceptable in the United States...

...This led to the second development that persuaded most host countries to ban immigration: Their native populations began to resent the Algerians, Turks, Italians, Portuguese, Yugoslavs, Greeks and others who tended to concentrate in particular regions of northern Europe...

...Yet none of these proposals is likely to be adopted, because employers don't want them...

...Enforce tough sanctions against employers who knowingly hire "undocumented" workers...

...The industrialized countries would otherwise have faced labor shortages providing a major obstacle to rapid economic growth...

...Opportunities in northern Europe and the impact of competition on the new members' agriculture could produce a major new migration...

...It's a good thing for the illegal immigrants, it's a good thing for the citizens of the United States, but it's only a good thing so long as it's illegal...

...Except in Britain, Europe's migrants in the 1960s were usually young men, admitted in the expectation that they would return to their home countries along the shores of the Mediterranean after one or two years' work in the cafes, sewers, building sites, and factories of northern Europe...

...A closer look at these examples shows that tacit acceptance of illegal immigration — the American route — is much the simplest way modern industrial nations have found to ensure an adequate labor supply...

...Migrants have tended to stay longer than the one or two years originally envisaged and, indeed, few have gone home despite the years of recession since 1974...

...Nobody has put this more clearly than Milton Friedman, the high priest of conservative economists, in the October 1978 Saturday Evening Post: "That Mexican immigration over the border is a good thing...

...Why leave if unemployment compensation in, say, Belgium, exceeds any possible income back home...

...Provide massive development aid to Mexico so that it will be able to employ all its citizens at home...

...In manufacturing, native workers may be prepared to work on assembly lines, though many find it too repetitive and boring for them, but they demand — and are usually entitled by law to receive — a full range of benefits in addition to their basic wages...

...against new immigration' like Mozambicans and Malawians today, they will be allowed to live near their workplace only while they are employed and their families will not be permitted to accompany them...

...The policy has quite rightly provoked worldwide censure, but its objective is similar to the migrant labor policies of Europe: to ensure that labor is available only as required by employers...

...The effect of the social tension and public expenditure requirements generated by the influx of migrants has been to sour the advanced industrial countries of Europe against any new immigration...

...draw little from the welfare state, are now making major demands on its social insurance, medical, and educational services...

...We may not like the comparison, but there is no avoiding the parallels among the use of illegal aliens here, the employment of Mediterranean "guest workers" in northern Europe, and, most striking of all, the "homelands" policy in South Africa...

...The American employer has all the advantages of the South African system — he need not pay the illegals anything beyond their basic wage — without being criticized for exploitation...

...Other industrial countries also use foreigners to meet their demand for unskilled labor...

...the residence permits of legal aliens are usually conditional on their being employed, and illegal foreigners can be easily intimidated so that they do not protest...

...minimum wage, for example, is about eight times what a Mexican might earn in his home country if he were lucky enough to find a job...

...So long as they don't qualify, they migrate to jobs...

...Racism flared...