Do you have permission to hold that job?

From the Arizona Republic:

Following the lead of at least 11 states, including Arizona, President Bush signed an executive order requiring contractors that do business with the government to use an electronic system to ensure their employees are eligible to work in the United States.

The order, announced Monday, is unlikely to influence defense contractors who already have to confirm an employee's status to work in the United States. However, it would force a gamut of businesses to use E-Verify, the Employment Eligibility Verification Program that critics say is flawed because it doesn't detect identify theft.

Identity theft isn't the only concern, I'll add. We should all be concerned that the government is rapidly turning doing business and seeking jobs into privileges to be dispensed by government officials. Forget land of the free, this is becoming the land of "do you have permission to do that?"

Even if you think we should all have to ask "mother, may I" of government officials before we're allowed to make a living, you probably want mother's grant or denial of permission to be based on something with a degree of accuracy -- not flawed information. But last year's Westat report (PDF) on E-Verify, commissioned by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, found:

The accuracy of the USCIS database used for verification has improved substantially since the start of the Basic Pilot program. However, further improvements are needed, especially if the Web Basic Pilot becomes a mandated national program – improvements that USCIS personnel report are currently underway. Most importantly, the database used for verification is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the IIRIRA requirement for accurate verification, especially for naturalized citizens.

Most troubling: "Among U.S. citizens who received tentative nonconfirmations, approximately 10 percent (9,900) contested and were found to be work-authorized."

Wow. That's ... not good.

And yet, that's the system all new hires must go through in Arizona, and which all employees of federal contractors must go through nationally.

Middlemen grease E-Verify's wheels

The federal E-Verify scheme has been criticized (by me, among others) as intrusive, unreliable and a threat to privacy. Now, it turns out that it's such a pain in the ass to use that businesses are hiring specialists -- registered agents -- to run the names of employees and prospective hires through the system for an extra fee. Says the Arizona Republic:

Mehr is among the dozens of business owners who have decided to hire registered agents to use the federal government's E-Verify system, a Web-based program that electronically checks the employment eligibility of newly hired employees. Though E-Verify is free, agents say they have found an entrepreneurial niche because businesses are willing to pay a small fee to have someone help them with government regulations. ...

Just what are businesses' complaints about this oh-so-easy-to-use barrier against the sinister forces of eager and affordable labor?

Laura Kendall, co-owner of Intricate Builders LLC in Phoenix, said in an interview that she, too, has had problems with E-Verify after spending nearly seven hours over two days last week trying to get just one employee verified. She said the frustration might lead her to hire a registered agent.

Kendall, who has background as a real-estate agent and office manager, said she tried to log on to the E-Verify system on three different computers but was unsuccessful one day, and when she finally got on the following day it took her two hours to go through the tutorial.

"They put all this responsibility on us and threaten us if we don't comply," said Kendall, who runs a small construction framing company. "The thing that upset me the most is when I couldn't go on the system, there's nothing in Arizona to help an employer. The answer I seemed to get was that it's a federal program."

This reminds me of the peculiar New York City practice of hiring expediters to deal with the city's byzantine regulatory apparatus. The New York Times reported on this fascinating development in 1991.

[W]hat, you may be wondering, is an expediter? They are the people who are hired by architects and building owners to get permits for construction and renovation -- by figuring out which forms to fill out, which lines to stand in and what will satisfy a particular building examiner. That's right, the process of getting a building permit is considered so complicated and time-consuming that an entire industry has been spawned to deal with it, even to the point where expediters hire their own expediters. ...

While the act of permit-getting may sound straightforward enough, in New York City it definitely is not. There is an old building code (which applies to certain applications for buildings built before the end of 1968) and a new building code. There are fire-safety codes, zoning ordinances, a housing-maintenance code, a multiple-dwelling law, a handicap law and asbestos-removal requirements, to name but a few obstacles for expediters. The building code and zoning regulations have been modified and amplified so many times since the 1960's that they have grown from 400 to 3,000 pages in that time.

"Our system of rules and regulations are so complicated that the average person just can't deal with them," said Judith A. Faulkner, who has been an expediter for more than 11 years.

In Arizona, as in New York, the problem of a bureaucratic barrier has become a business opportunity for those willing and able to negotiate government processes that baffle many other people.

Experts in bureaucracy often bring a little extra to the table, besides their skill in dealing with red tape. When I hired an expediter-like service to get me a New York City pistol permit in the mid 1990s, I was charged a substantial fee in addition to the cost of the permit itself. While I was never explicitly told so, it was implied that part of the fee went to the expediter, and part was used to grease palms at One Police Plaza so that the paperwork would go through without a hitch.

That's not unusual. As the Times pointed out, "Expediters have been arrested for bribe-paying in the past, and Mr. O'Brien says he believes that a number of the 14 Buildings Department inspectors who were arrested on bribery charges last year took payoffs from expediters."

A knowledge of who and how much to bribe is, frankly, one of the services expediters sell.

The registered agents handling E-Verify cases haven't been accused of such improprieties -- not yet, anyway. But they do have a special advantage, since it's easier for them to get the results that employers want from the system.

Julie Pace, a Phoenix immigration lawyer who specializes in the employer-sanctions law, said she is not surprised companies are using registered agents who have a lower level of accountability in using E-Verify.

While employers who use E-Verify are required to check photos of authorized non-citizens on a government database, registered agents, Pace said, are not subject to that requirement. And, she said, agents do not have to make photocopies of documents and keep them.

"We are all baffled the government would come out with two sets of standards," Pace said. "They (agents) do not have to comply with the same requirements as businesses."

A lower hurdle to overcome for registered agents? That's just asking employers to use the middlemen to increase the likelihood that they'll be able to hire workers without a hassle.

As much as I admire the entrepreneurial ambition of registered agents and expediters, the need for their services adds unnecessary costs to doing business. Everything becomes just a little bit more expensive, a little bit more to be avoided if possible and, perhaps, going into business at all becomes just a bit more unattractive.

Registered agents, expediters, extra costs and a whiff of corruption are understandable reactions to burdensome bureaucracy. But we'd be better off without the red tape that makes it all so necessary.

Are you sure you're not illegal?

Could Arizona's jihad against folks with Spanish surnames be reaching just a tad too far -- embracing people holding actual U.S. citizenship? That seems to be the case, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Juan Carlos Ochoa, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in an upper-middle-class subdivision near Phoenix named Laguna Hills, can't find a job because a government database classifies him as a possible illegal immigrant. ...

Because many did not register their citizenship with the Social Security Administration, they are often listed as possible illegal workers.

That's what apparently happened to Ochoa, 47, who became a citizen in 2000. He quit his job as a car salesman at the end of last year and got hired by a local Dodge dealership in February. Days later, his new employers called him with bad news -- E-Verify classified him as a possible illegal immigrant. He only had a couple of days to convince Social Security that he wasn't.

He had lost his naturalization certificate, so Ochoa took his U.S. passport, Social Security card, driver's license and Arizona voter identification card to the local Social Security office. He was told he'd have to request new papers from the Department of Homeland Security, which could take up to 10 months.

"I love this country, I'm happy in this country," said Ochoa, a father of two, who escaped eviction this month only because a church group paid his rent. "The guy who made this law, I don't know him. He's started destroying a lot of families."

American citizens mistaken for illegal immigrants are only a subset of the problems caused by the anti-immigrant frenzy. Other problems include families impoverished, people thrown out of employment, economic damage and the right to engage in business treated as a privilege that can be revoked by the government. But they make for especially poignant victims because there's no pretending at an excuse for ensnaring them in the net of sanctions and penalties, unless you're just out to inconvenience Hispanics.

I've written before that the best possible reaction to the sanctions law, short of outright repeal, would be enormous growth in the size of the state's underground economy. That would guarantee jobs for immigrants, employees for businesses, and somewhat offset the damage done by the law. But life in the shadows is cold comfort for people who've actually jumped through the hoops required for full access to the American dream -- and find themselves denied the fruits of their efforts.

Phoenix pastor monitors police abuse of immigrants

First off, I know nothing about God's Army church or Pastor Richard Tamayo beyond what appears in an Arizona Republic article. But I have to respect anybody who responds to reports of abuse of immigrants -- particularly abuse committed by police -- by strapping on a gun and grabbing a video recorder.

Standing in the shade of a young paloverde tree, Pastor Richard Tamayo talks about Christianity with eight day laborers in the parking lot near a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Instead of a Bible, the former New York Police Department undercover officer has a gun in a holster and a mini Sony digital camcorder in his left hand.

Tamayo, of God's Army church in northeast Phoenix, is investigating allegations of abuse against undocumented immigrants in his congregation. These men in denim jeans and grass-stained shoes don't speak out for fear of being deported, he said.

"We're out here ministering, and they're speaking to people they feel comfortable with, the church," Tamayo said. "Contractors will hire them for two weeks then not pay them. We're looking into that. Police officers are abusing their authority, assaulting people. What these people need most is a voice. God's Army will be their voice."

Tamayo addressed a Phoenix City Council subcommittee Tuesday on behalf of his congregation, which spans 32nd Street to Cave Creek Road and Bell to Greenway roads.

At the meeting, Tamayo told the subcommittee that he will be gathering witnesses and investigating allegations against Valley police departments. Phoenix police representatives could not be reached for comment.

The phenomenon of video recording as a weapon for use against out-of-bounds officials is becoming increasingly important. The amazing combination of cheap recording technology and easy distribution via the Internet ensure that incidents that used to disappear into civilian oversight filing cabinets (at best) will now become sources of public outrage.

Tamayo appears to be taking matters a step further by putting his church behind the monitoring effort and strapping on a gun to let his targets know that he won't be intimidated. Variations of that model can easily be implemented by organizations acrss the country.

In St. Louis, the ACLU has distributed video cameras for exactly this use, and has provided training to volunteers. The effort has already had results. Orlando CopWatch volunteers patrol with video cameras to record police interactions with the public. Even police retaliation against a CopWatch activist helped the group's cause, since it drew press coverage.

So whether or not Pastor Tamayo is able to do as he promises, he's probably a pace-setter for future organized efforts to monitor authorities.

Fun with E-verify

Over at Coyote Blog, Arizona businessman Warren Meyer details his state-mandated venture into the federally run E-verify system for determining the employment status of new hires. The dual-jurisdiction issue leads to some ... err ... interesting problems with conflicting rules.

Right now, I am going through a 6000 screen required tutorial that I have to endure before I can use a system that requires me to fill in about 3 blanks and hit enter.  (Of course, since this is a government system, the tutorial has already crashed twice three five times and I have had to restart it each time).  Somewhere in the midst of the training, I reach this admonition:

You may not discriminate against applicants and employees based upon their citizenship or immigration status with respect to hiring, firing, or recruitment or referral for a fee. This includes treating citizens and non-citizens differently during the hiring process, such as screening out non-citizens or not hiring lawful immigrants based upon their immigration status.

WHAT?  Personally, I am all for living by this, but isn't this EXACTLY what the law is requiring me to do?  To discriminate against people, and ban my hiring of them, based on their immigration status?  How can I possibly keep my actions legal if I am required to discriminate based on citizenship status but I am also banned from discriminating in hiring based on citizenship status.  How Orwellian can we get?

More on Arizona's experiment with xenophobia enacted through business regulations here.

Go, no stay, oh I just don't know ...

Even as Arizona lawmakers are trying to drive (mostly) Mexican immigrants from the state with a harsh employer sanction law that threatens dire economic consequences, they're also trying to lure those same immigrants to the state with a proposed guest worker program intended to off-set the effects of that sanction law.

Hmmm ... politicians seeing a need to fix a problem that they created. Who'd have guessed?

Anti-immigrant victory threatens us all

Arizona's threat to strip employers of their business licenses if they knowingly hire illegal immigrants survived yet another legal challenge. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake ruled that the law does not infringe on the federal government's power to regulate immigration since it doesn't apply to immigration directly, but instead to permission granted by the state to employers to do business.

The battle isn't over yet -- this challenge will join another awaiting the attention of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit is unpredictable, so it's anybody's guess as to the ultimate outcome.

But even if you're a cheerleader for the sanctions law and firmly in the camp that wants to see a crackdown on illegal immigration, this ruling should give you pause. Judge Wake has effectively given the nod to Arizona's implicit argument that doing business and seeking employment are privileges to be dispensed by the state according to whatever criteria officials may set. Licenses, then, become little more than levers with which to force businesses into compliance with the wishes of government officials. The E-Verify database that employers are required to consult becomes a means to grant or withhold permission to work to those seeking employment.

This isn't the rationale that was originally used to sell the idea of licensing businesses. It's increasingly hard to find a jurisdiction that still bothers to justify requiring licenses of businesses, but a few still go through the effort. The town of Cave Creek, Arizona, keeps a document online (PDF) that says:

Purpose: The purpose of the Business License is to provide an additional protection to the citizens and visitors of the Town from fraud and misrepresentation; to ensure that sales tax revenues are reported equitably; and to provide a database of the commercial activities within the community.

So the stated purpose of the business license is to ensure that businesses aren't scam artists, that they pay their taxes and to keep track of how many businesses are in the community. That seems a stretch to me -- especially the part about weeding out scammers (how is that supposed to work?), but this rationale is at least related to the fundamentals of doing business -- and paying protection money to the politicians doling out the licenses.

Cave Creek's reasons for revoking business licenses get a bit stretchier, but are still related to the fundamentals of conducting business honestly:

Licenses issued under the provisions of this chapter may be restricted, suspended or revoked by the Town Clerk, after notice and an opportunity for a hearing, for any of the following causes:
A. Fraud, misrepresentation or false statement contained in the application for license.
B. Fraud, misrepresentation or false statement made in the course of carrying on the business.
C. Any violation of this chapter.
D. Conviction of any crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude.
E. Conducting business in violation of any Town ordinance, county ordinance or state law relating to the public health, safety and welfare.

So no fraud or misrepresentation, and you can't do business in such a way as to harm the public. Honestly, you could drive a truck through the moral turpitude clause -- and probably through the bit about "public health, safety and welfare," too. But the overall implication is that the license is supposed to make sure that businesses operate in an honest and above-board fashion. There's no implication that threats of revocation are intended to be used as a bludgeon to enforce compliance with every whim of the political class.

So how did we get here?

It was probably inevitable the moment that licenses were first required. No matter how well-intentioned and closely related to the business of doing business the original requirements for licenses may have been, they still converted doing business into a privilege. Once you require permission to engage in an activity, the conditions for that permission can always change. Permission was originally granted so long as you didn't fleece the yokels and gave politicians their take. Now permission is conditional on compliance with a law that has nothing to do with the integrity of the business itself. Licenses then become just another enforcement tool to guarantee public submission to government authority.

So it is with the E-Verify database. The requirement that all job applicants (and, potentially, even job-holders) be vetted through the database makes employment a privilege to be doled out only to those who have government permission to work. The conditions for that permission now depend on residency status, but there's no reason they can't be expanded in the future. Depending on political trends down the road, permission to work could be denied to tax resisters, convicted drug dealers, political radicals or any other disfavored class of people.

In its fervor to drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona and, eventually, out of the United States, the nativist movement is making it increasingly necessary for all of us to avoid offending government officials, simply so we can continue to put food on the table.

Arizona starts to see nativist fallout

Barron's magazine predicted that Arizona's move to impose tough sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants would result in an "Arizona apocalypse," and while it's too early to know if that dire forecast will come to pass, something is certainly in the works. Facing a ten-day suspension of their business licenses after a first offense, and a permanent revocation of licenses after a second transgression, companies are laying workers off, reassessing their ability to do business and even moving out of state.

Reports Agence France-Presse:

A crew leader who worked for Rick Robinson's Phoenix landscaping company left the state because his wife is an illegal worker. The worker was scared his wife would be deported.

"I've talked to other companies who have said they can't find anybody," Robinson said. "I've heard they're going to Utah or Texas or New Mexico because they don't have a law like this. We and other landscape companies are uncertain as to how far-reaching it will be. People don't know what they can and can't do. The whole thing is confusing, gross, and unfair."

David Jones, head of the Arizona Contractors Association, said he knows of three construction companies which have laid off 30, 40, and 70 employees respectively since the beginning of the year.

Unable to find jobs, or fearful that their loved ones will be caught and deported, illegal immigrants and their legal friends and relatives are fleeing the state in what the press has dubbed "Hispanic panic." In a state where illegals make up better than 10% of the workforce, the exodus promises to have a major impact. The vacancy rate in Tucson-area apartment complexes favored by illegal immigrants has jumped dramatically since the law went into effect. According to the Arizona Daily Star:

The vacancy rate on Tucson's South Side jumped to 11.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, up from 7.1 percent a year earlier, according to Phoenix-based RealData Inc., a real estate research and consulting firm.

That area of the city has more than twice the rate of foreign-born residents than the city as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

On the Southeast Side, 10.7 percent of apartments were empty, up from 5.9 percent a year before. That part of the city has a lower percentage of foreign-born residents.

As a whole, the metro area vacancy rate grew 1 percentage point to 8.3 percent, according to RealData.

Of course, advocates of the sanctions law will say that this is exactly the result they were hoping for; they want Hispanics to flee the state (usually, they'll claim that they just want the illegal ones to leave). But with workers leaving Arizona, taking their rent money, mortgage payments and shopping dollars with them, and with state employers facing rising labor costs -- if they can even find workers -- the economy is likely to take a major hit. In fact, the University of Arizona predicts a $29 billion economic loss if illegal workers are successfully purged from the state (full report here in PDF).

Of course, the law won't be universally successful. Faced with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't choice, many businesses will just take their chances with illegal workers, and many will slip under the radar. At least one immigration expert -- Marc Rosenblum of the University of New Orleans -- predicts major growth in the underground economy, with more workers than ever before getting paid off the books.

Black markets have dulled the economic effects of stupid policies in the past, and will likely do so this time around too. But off-the-books workers will have less security and less money than they would if allowed to function in the official economy, and they'll contribute less than they would otherwise. That's especially true since workers have the option of going where they're welcome -- already there are reports that Mexicans intent on seeking work in the U.S. are bypassing the increasingly unfriendly border states. Why take an uncertain cash job in unwelcoming Arizona when you can get a job with benefits in Oregon or Virginia?

The real losers will be the people of Arizona -- the nativists tightening the screws, the workers and employers getting the shaft and the disinterested rest who find making a living increasingly treated as a privilege to be withdrawn at the whim of government officials.

Arizonans resistant to hiring law

Arizona employers may now be subject to penalties for "knowingly" hiring illegal aliens, but they aren't rushing to comply with the law.

A new law penalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants took effect at midnight on Tuesday.

But thousands of Arizona employers have yet to use the free government service to determine if their workers are legal...

Only 7 percent of all employers in Arizona have registered for e-Verify.

Business owners seem to be waiting to see if the intrusive law will actually be enforced, or whether one of the legal challenges to the nativist measure will successfully toss it into the dustbin.

Arizona risks all with a nativist plunge

Starting with the new year, Arizona employers will be on the hook for "knowingly" hiring illegal immigrants in a state with a growing economy and a squeaky-low unemployment rate. Businesses fingered for hiring workers who informally crossed the border in search of a better life -- and Maricopa County officials, among others, have promised mob-pleasing strict enforcement -- face the loss of their business licenses for ten days after a first offense, and permanently after a second offense. It's no wonder that businesses are nervous about the potential impact of the new law. So are illegal immigrants; they've begun an exodus from the state, heading for friendlier U.S. jurisdictions, or back home to Mexico.

That's a big problem, because illegals represent about 11.6% of the Arizona workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. That's a lot of workers leaving the state, and a lot of customers taking their shopping dollars along with them.

No wonder Barron's accuses the state of "strangling its own economy," further saying:

...threatening businesses with extinction for hiring people hungry for work may be the most self-defeating legislative enterprise since the Volstead Act, which enforced national Prohibition.

It will overwhelm or corrupt the officers who are supposed to enforce it. It will disrupt Arizona business, reduce the profits of its most lucrative industries, raise unemployment and lower economic output. It will enrich New Mexico and Nevada and the state of Sonora in Mexico, site of Arizona's outsourcing, at Arizona's expense.

That's the power of misguided democracy: Satisfy a vocal minority, and everybody gets it -- good and hard.

Businesses that bite the bullet, swallow the economic disruption and try to screen all of their new hires in accordance with the law face uncertain prospects. The law strongly pressures employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check the status of job applicants. But the free federal service is a pilot program that has never been tested by heavy demand from employers. Even the pilot version of the program has shown an unsettling propensity for erroneously labeling workers ineligible for employment -- 4% of the time, according to a 2006 congressional report, and up to 10% of the time for naturalized citizens, according to a recent report prepared for the Department of Homeland Security by Maryland-based Westat.

That's a lot of people wrongly denied employment, all to keep brown folks from building houses, landscaping yards and pumping the economy along to a heady pace.

There's more at stake here than economic fallout, of course. The new employer sanctions law seems based on some very dangerous premises: that doing business and taking jobs are privileges to be doled out only at the pleasure of government bureaucrats. Do we really want this country to turn (more) into a place where earning a living and hanging out a shingle are favors to be gained only by going hat-in-hand to a government office and asking "mother may I"?

And do we really want the details of our employment status -- and whatever other data may accrue in the years to come -- to be centralized and easily accessible in a government database?

When Barron's editorial writers predict an "apocalypse," they're more right than they know. It's not just the health of one state's economy at risk, but a strong dose of economic and civil liberty sacrificed for the sake of pure bigotry.

Can second-class (non)citizenship be a good thing?

Starting January 1, 2008, Arizona businesses face draconian new sanctions if they hire job-applicants who don't have the government's permission to be in the U.S., and they'll be mandated to use the feds' controversial and remarkably unreliable E-Verify system to check on the status of workers. So it's with some interest that I read "Guests in the Machine," an article in January's Reason magazine by Kerry Howley on Singapore's use of guest worker programs as an alternative to reliance on illegal workers and the possibility of implementing such a program in the United States.

Howley's piece isn't yet up at the Reason site, which is a shame because it's a important treatment of a contentious issue is available here. Bypassing all the political hype about "amnesty" and the racist mutterings about brown folks taking our jobs, she outlines Singapore's flawed, sometimes heartbreaking, but overall successful program for integrating a large class of foreign workers (42.6% of the city-state's population is foreign-born) into a nation that doesn't really want to open its borders to permanent immigrants. The result has been a flood of construction workers and household maids who help power Singapore's booming economy even as they are sometimes abused by employers, denied access to basic legal protections and made always-aware that they are guests who can be booted out of the country at short notice. Even so, they come for economic opportunities that don't exist back home, and they channel vast sums to families left behind, providing seed capital to build new homes and businesses and to buy education that makes previously undreamed-of opportunities available to the next generation.

Call it an imperfect, morally hazardous win-win.

As Howley makes clear, this example elicits both temptation and revulsion in a country like the United States, with a history of mixed feelings about immigration, as well as a mythology that suggests that everybody who comes here wants to be (and should become) American. Can Americans live with a large population of economically productive second-class (non)citizens eternally denied a soak in the melting pot? (Never mind that many past immigrants -- as many as half of all Italians who landed on these shores -- eventually took their earnings back to the old country.)

I'll admit to being extremely torn on this issue. On the one hand, I'm an open-borders guy. I don't care about government-drawn borders (or about governments, for that matter). I believe that people have the right to go where they wish, seek jobs from willing employers and enjoy the full protection of their rights no matter where they were born. I don't believe they should be a burden on others, but my opposition to reliance on a welfare state applies across the board, to the native-born as well as immigrants.

But I don't expect to see open borders anytime soon. The idea is essentially a political non-starter in a nativist age.

So, that leaves us with limited options.

1. There's continuing reliance on illegal workers who, because of their illegal status, are vulnerable to abusive employers, have little legal recourse, and are forever at risk of arrest, deportation, and the loss of whatever wealth they may have accumulated with their labor, but not yet sent home. That option may satisfy labor needs as well as immigrants' need for money (and their home countries' hunger for capital) but it comes at a high moral cost.

2. We could pursue a Lou Dobbs-style crackdown, imposing tough sanctions on employers, militarizing the border and rounding up illegals for shipment home. If it's successful, labor costs, and resulting costs of goods and services, rise. American businesses then operate, permanently, under an increasingly nerve-wracking regime of intrusive inspections and reliance on government-quality databases, with opening the door to customers every day treated ever-more as a privilege to be doled out for obedience to politicians and bureaucrats. Those who would have been immigrant workers stay at home, with few opportunities in their own poorer countries. Everybody loses, except for nativist rabble-rousers.

If it's unsuccessful, we end up with option one, but with less economic freedom and more tension at the border.

3. Or we could try a guest-worker program, providing access to labor, and opportunities for residents of poorer countries to accumulate skills and capital -- at the risk of creating a class of workers who can never hope to enjoy full rights or settle on a permanent basis.

I'm still holding out for open borders, but I think a guest-worker program deserves consideration.

In praise of illegal immigration

A statewide boycott of shopping and work by (mostly) Mexican immigrants to protest Arizona's draconian new law which punishes business that hire illegal workers appears to be sputtering. I'm not surprised. Mexican immigrants, legal or illegal, are probably too busy working and raising families to stand on corners waving placards.

I've recently admitted the obvious limits of my home-improvement skills and hired professionals for three big renovation projects. In two of the cases, much of the work ended up being done by Mexican workers with limited language skills who put in long hours under the summer desert sun. I didn't inquire as to their immigration status--I don't really care. But I'm sufficiently plugged into the local building contractor community to make an educated guess that any green cards held by the workers who helped make my house so much nicer to live in are about as legit as the ID I used to get into bars back in the age of New Wave music.

Contractors and skilled craftsmen I know tell me that there are two groups of preferred workers in the construction trades in this area: "older" Anglos who've seen their 40th birthdays come and go (and it pains me to refer to 40-plus as "older") and Mexicans of any age. That's because those workers tend to be stable and reliable--they show up on time and give value for the money they're paid. Younger Anglos, on the other hand, have a reputation for disappearing after they get their first paychecks. I have no doubt that it's unfair to paint all twenty-something carpenters named "Smith" as meth-heads and layabouts, but that's the stereotype.

There aren't enough older Anglos to go around, and some of them are, perhaps, not as spry as they once were, so that leaves the other preferred group. Tradespeople I've spoken with are convinced that the industry would collapse without the flow of illegal immigrants from across the border.

What does that all mean?

It means that, at least in the small area in which I live, illegal immigrants are largely seen by employers as a vital boon to the economy--they're high-quality imported labor for a region that is no longer so good at producing decent labor on its own. They come to an area where the jobs are ripe for the plucking, leaving behind a country that may produce good laborers and tradespeople, but which fails to produce a sufficient stock of well-paying jobs.

It seems to me that both Mexico and Arizona are benefiting from a cross-border flow that wouldn't exist if the two places didn't have complementary assets--and deficits.

So, while I don't expect the current boycott to have much effect, I do appreciate its message. I wish more Americans were fully appreciative of the willingness of some people to risk arrest and even death to sneak into a foreign country, just so they can work.