Slaves Needed to Do Jobs Americans Won't Do

President Bush came up with the brilliant observation that illegal immigrants are necessary to do jobs that Americans will not do. This is not a new idea. It was originally put forth by slaveowners before the Civil War.

Southern slave owners claimed that the importation of black slaves was necessary in order to do work that Americans would not do: Picking cotton for slave wages.

If slaves had not been available to do the work for free, the Southern plantation owners would have been required to get off their fat, lazy, asses and do the cotton-picking themselves. Boo hoo. Wouldn't THAT have been too bad!

But did freeing the slaves and ending the slave trade destroy the Southern economy? No. Not in the long run.

For a Harvard MBA, George Bush seems to be astoundingly un-aware of free market forces. He is always talking about the "free market" when it comes to allowing Megacorporations to use cheap labor in non-tax-paying foreign countries.

But what about the "free market" dictating American wages? While Americans might not do certain jobs for minimum wages, they WOULD do those same jobs, and always HAVE done those jobs, for wages dictated by the free market system (supply and demand).

Without illegal immigrant workers flooding the American labor market, the free market system would dictate what wages were necessary to get Americans to do ALL jobs. There are no jobs that Americans will not do, if the salary is attractive enough.

If these wages are too high to support the particular business, then tough patooties. Those businesses will just have to endure lower profit margins, or else go out of business. This is not a new phenomenon. It is the nature of business.

In point of fact, many employers of slave-wage illegal immigrants are multi-billion-dollar corporations. These corporations can well afford to pay American workers competitive wages. But they would rather hire illegal immigrants, drive down the cost of labor, and reap higher profits.