More Slaves, Please

"By shutting off illegal immigration and resisting the temptations of a new guest-worker program, the nation would force growers to make do with the labor supply that currently exists - and to do whatever it takes to recruit and retain workers. When the Bracero Program was finally eliminated in 1964, for instance, growers of Bracero-dependent crops had to increase wages for farm workers 40 percent."

- Mark Krikorian, Executive Director at CIS


An op-ed in yesterday's Post is titled "Immigration Pitfall: Why 'Legalization Only' Won't Fly" and I thought to myself it'd be worth a look to see what pro-enforcement arguments might have made it into the paper. Then I saw the authors and figured out what was up. Penned by former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda and amnesty czarina Tamar Jacoby, now head of a business-oriented open-borders lobby, the piece argues that amnesty must be coupled with increases in future guest-worker programs if it is to be acceptable to business or to Mexico. (The word "enforcement" appears just once in the whole piece.) It's actually a good sign politically, because it signals the deep disaffection between the right and left wings of the "comprehensive immigration reform" crowd, with the lefties figuring their man is in charge now so they can stop pretending to care what rope-selling businesses think. That makes both amnesty and increased immigration less likely, and thus America better off.