Years ago, a small team of Agents from our station arrested some illegal aliens from out of state. We were constantly on the lookout for out-of-state tags, especially from states like Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. However, these aliens happened to be from New Jersey. This was shortly after Trump had come into office and we were back to actually making arrests. I asked one of the aliens why he had come our way knowing he was coming up near the Canadian border and he had probably heard that we were back to making arrests now that Trump was in office. The illegal alien told me that his sister had begged him not to go, but the employer offered him double the wage he was making in New Jersey to do construction, and assured him he would not have any trouble if he didn’t do anything to alert the local police to his presence. Well, the idiot got into not one but two fracases with the local cops; both involving drinking and driving before the cops called us and we picked a group of them up at a local motel.
So, at least anecdotally, I could tell right away that “Yes, a tightening labor pool does lead to increased wages.” It seems the New York Times has discovered the same thing.
The Times reported:
Tim Conlan, president of Reliant, a roofing company in Jacksonville, said a subcontractor had recently turned down a project after his workers refused to travel to Florida, preferring to stay in Georgia and the Carolinas. He also said that hourly rates for jobs had increased about 10 percent since the bill was signed into law in May. [Emphasis added]
[New York Times: Mandatory E-Verify Raises Wages for Florida Workers, by John Binder, Breitbart, August 6, 2023]
The Times’s spin: New Florida Immigration Rules Start to Strain Some Businesses, by Miriam Jordan, August 4, 2023.
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It probably hurts their feelings to have to tell the truth about immigration driving down wages, but let me reassure them a little bit: a lot of those who remain are going to be legal immigrants. They’ll be the ones who married a Green Cardholder despite coming in illegally, or they had an anchor baby. The anchor baby is supposed to turn 21 before they can petition for a parent to come to the U.S., but who needs laws when there are loopholes? A liberal immigration judge will say that he is the sole breadwinner for a U.S. citizen child, and give him a hardship exemption, so he can stay and work legally in the U.S.
Some wise man a century ago (De Tocqueville?) said that “When America becomes solely about money, it will cease to be a country.” (I’ve been trying to find who said it originally, but despite the internet, have not yet succeeded.)
Do any readers know?
