Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Will Hurt Economy

Jonathon Moseley
Keynote Remarks
Freedom Leadership Conference, July 17, 2013, Northern Virginia

 Tonight at the Freedom Leadership Conference we are going to consider amnesty and the economy.   Should Congress legalize illegal aliens in our country?

Since we have to focus somewhere, I believe that the controversies about the economy bubble up to the top of my list.  Maybe we can discuss other topics in questions.  Remember of course that American Border Control is a non-partisan public policy organization.

Promoters of amnesty claim that it will help the economy grow.  I say that amnesty for illegal aliens will seriously harm the United States economy, and cause other problems.

First of all, illegal aliens will be exempt from ObamaCare when they receive amnesty and the right to work.  This was presented as keeping trespassers from receiving the benefits of ObamaCare.  However, the result is that employers who hire amnesty recipients won’t have to give those employees health insurance but they will have to give citizens health insurance.

Employers won’t be subject to paying the penalty for ObamaCare for amnesty recipients, because they aren’t covered by ObamaCare.

Therefore, it will be vastly cheaper for businesses to hire amnesty recipients than to hire American citizens such as Black youth or legal Hispanic-Americans.  Employers will be very tempted to fire you, your children, your grandchildren, or your nieces and nephews and hire an amnesty recipient instead.

Employers can save a lot of money.  They will have to pay for expensive ObamaCare for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.  But they won’t have to pay ObamaCare for the amnesty recipients.  So the obvious thing to do is to fire many U.S. citizens on the payroll and hire the amnesty recipients instead.  And of course they will be politically popular with liberals doing that.

Now, the “Gang of Eight” promises that illegal aliens won’t get a “Green Card” until the border is secure.  They are lying.  How do you know when a politician is lying?

The old “Green Card” is now irrelevant.  A new “Blue Card” replaces the famous “Green Card.”   In order to lie to you, Members of Congress talk about the old Green Card that no longer matters under the “Gang of Eight” bill.

Illegal aliens will immediately receive the new “RPI” status or Registered Provisional Immigrant status.  RPI status offers the right to live and work in the U.S.A. – immediately.  Even if nothing happens to secure the border, illegal aliens get everything they want.

The new RPI “Blue Card” does everything a Green Card does except it isn’t green.  Well, okay, my friend over there (POINT) made up the “Blue Card” name for RPI status, but I bet the name sticks.   It is blue to represent the States that vote for the Democrat Party.

Now because of chain migration  — that is, family unification rules — an estimated 11 to 20 million amnesty-recipients who are in the country now will also be able to bring in to join them their fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, etc.   So an estimated 33 to 40 million new workers will flood the U.S. labor force.

In fact, illegal aliens who have already been deported will be eligible to COME ON BACK!

There are about 104 million people employed in the U.S.A.  So we would add another 40 million new workers.  40 on top of only 104.

As an attorney, I have filed immigration cases.  I am helping one friend with paperwork to convert her green card into citizenship.

One of the goals of immigration laws, which my friend faithfully obeyed, is to put limits on how fast our country is swamped with new workers.  The laws allow our economy to absorb new workers at a manageable rate, not to be flooded.

Our laws are designed to include those who can succeed here and hold back those who would fail.  My friend is a hard-working, smart, capable, skilled worker who obeyed the law.  My friend studied highly-technical medical training in English, not her native language.

Under amnesty we will be flooded by those who don’t know English, who don’t have the education or skills to contribute.   Remember:  That’s the purpose of our immigration laws to select those who can make a contribution, not be a burden.

Those who break our laws are automatically the wrong kind of people to contribute to our society.  They have already proven that they will bend the law whenever they feel like it.  They will take what they want even if it is against the law.

Remember after the ENRON disaster all the talk about the need for improved business ethics?  How will the economy be affected by 11 to 20 million new citizens who feel the law can simply be ignored when inconvenient?  How many more scams and dishonest businesses will plague our economy?

I also hold a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree with a major in Finance.  The reason I mention that is that politicos in both parties talk about business and economics.  But they really have no clue what the bleep they are talking about.

Elected officials and political commentators throw around simple-minded clichés about the economy that are cartoon-like caricatures.

Some claim that amnesty will grow the economy.

Well if the number of workers in the country increases, technically the economy will be larger.  The number of people is larger.  But everyone individually will be worse off.  A larger economy (i.e., more people) does not mean a better economy.

Gross Domestic Product measures the total size of economic activity.  A growing economy is good if the number of people remains the same.  But you and your family could be worse off as individuals, among a larger, more crowded country.

On another issue, the U.S.A. already has a surplus of low-skill workers.  The economy will not grow by adding more of what we already have too much of.  When the economy is missing something, that lack can hold our economy back.  If you add what is missing that can unleash a stalled economy.  Making a surplus bigger won’t help.

One thing is certain:  Amnesty will drive down salaries.  Salaries will go down especially among the most vulnerable, lowest-skilled, least educated Americans.  Many Black workers, especially Black youth, and legal Hispanic-American citizens, will be hurt the worst.   That’s why we had the Black American Leadership Alliance held the DC March for Jobs on Monday.

That’s obviously the purpose behind amnesty:  To pay you less money for doing your job.  Employers won’t have to pay as much to your children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc.

Remember:  Blacks in America now suffer 14.1 percent unemployment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August 2012.

88.8 million Americans over 16 have given up looking for a job. Discouraged workers who no longer have any hope of finding a job have increased by 8.3 million since Obama took office.

By contrast, the unemployment rate in Mexico was only 4.7 percent in September 2012, the prestigious Financial Times reported on October 19, 2012.

From 1994 to 2012, Mexico’s unemployment rate averaged 3.68 percent, ranging from 2.22 percent in November 2002 to 5.93 percent in May 2009, Trading Economics  reported.

Incredibly, politicians and lobbyists who know only a little about economics say that employers such as farmers are having to pay “too much” to hire agriculture workers.

So first they decide what salary they hope to pay, out of the clear blue sky, then they try to fill the jobs at an arbitrary and capricious salary.   Then they can’t find enough workers at that arbitrary salary.

Anyone with the slightest understanding of economics will want to scream.

It’s simple:  If you can’t hire enough workers, you’re not paying enough.  How do you know if you’re paying enough?  If you can’t find enough workers, you’re offering too little.

Now this is not just one idea, or one opinion, or one point of view.  This is the only point of view.  This is economics.  There is no other way of looking at it, unless you are a communist.

Economics runs on supply and demand.  Yet many calling themselves conservatives talk as if they’ve never heard of supply and demand.

Crony capitalists and their dishonest lobbyists cannot pretend to be in favor of free enterprise or a free market.  They trash the very foundation of a free market.

The argument for amnesty is a fundamental rejection of the free market.  Market forces, supply and demand, are signaling that the correct wage should be $X.  But we don’t want to pay $X, we want to pay $Y instead.

That’s the whole issue.  The political world – lobbied by crony capitalists – want the prevailing wage for picking cabbage to be something other than the free-floating equilibrium intersection of supply and demand.

They want the government to interfere in the market place and force the wage down below the “equilibrium” market wage.  That is command-and-control communism.  And these people claim to be conservatives who argue this.

There will always be enough workers to do any job as long as the job pays enough. There will never be enough workers – and THERE SHOULD NOT BE – if employers refuse to pay a sufficiently interesting wage.  The only “correct” wage is where supply intersects demand.  Any other wage is profoundly damaging to the economy.

Now, people will try to play on conservative themes that they do really not understand.  Should we just open the borders to anyone?

We don’t have a single world government.  We just don’t.  We have separate countries.  Talking as if the entire planet is one big country is just silly.

Trying to manipulate prices and salaries through immigration is the government meddling in the economy.   Our country consists of those who are born here and those the government admits.

Many Blacks and legal Hispanics will lose their jobs if the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill passes the U.S. House of Representatives.   Black leaders know this.  Yet Republicans and Democrats in Congress simply don’t care.

The Black American Leadership Alliance puts it like this:

Quote:  Despite sluggish economic conditions, some in Congress have put forth immigration proposals to increase legal immigration levels by 50% and provide amnesty to over 11 million people who have entered the country illegally. We stand against these proposals, as they will result in adding millions more to the U.S. labor force, putting millions of American citizens out of work.  Unquote:

Not only would legalizing illegal aliens be bad for America, but the arguments offered reflect a shocking rejection of the free enterprise system our country was built on.

Jon Moseley is Executive Director of American Border Control (ABC), which sponsored this month’s Freedom Leadership Conference where he was the keynote speaker.  Articles published by Jon Moseley can be found HERE.

   Send article as PDF