The Left’s Strange Love Affair with Cheap Illegal Labor

Either we value American work enough to pay natives what the legal market will bear, or we continue importing slaves to subsidize industries unwilling to raise wages.

There’s an internal contradiction at the heart of leftist immigration policy. The chittering progressive hordes demand ever climbing minimum wages ($15! No $25! No $50 an hour!) while rejecting any meaningful border enforcement.

This contradiction is on full display in a Los Angeles Times article titled, “How the federal immigration raids could disrupt California’s economy.” The piece notes that Trump’s immigration crackdown is disrupting the economic outlook in California.

“The crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California that have become increasingly dependent on immigrants, here legally or not,” the Times reports.

To muddy the waters between legal and illegal immigrants, the Times adds “Foreign-born Californians account for one-third of all workers at restaurants and warehouses; about 40% in home healthcare and child day care; almost 50% at trucking and lodging businesses; and 60% at services for landscaping and cleaning buildings.” As if all of these “foreign-born” are here illegally.

Regardless, the Times never asks the obvious question: If California’s economy depends on underpaying immigrants, is that a system worth defending at all? It’s utterly incoherent for leftists to argue for “living wages” while praising illegal immigrants for taking dirt pay.

These positions are mutually exclusive. They can’t ignore immigration law, flood the labor market with cheap workers, and still expect wages to miraculously rise. Indeed, a higher minimum wage would fuel desire for more illegal immigrants as companies would balk at paying the premium for an American.

The ideas that American workers should earn what the legal market supports is deeply laudable. Thus, if the argument is that Americans won’t do the jobs illegals do for their pitiable wages, the solution isn’t to import slave labor, it’s to offer more compensation for the work.

Yet leftists continue defending an economic model relying on a shadowy underclass doing the “menial” work Americans supposedly won’t touch. Who can forget that painfully cringeworthy viral moment when Kelly Osbourne implied that only Latinos clean toilets on The View?

It’s saying the quiet part out loud; the implication that jobs stereotypically held by illegals are beneath Americans and thus require immigrants to fill. Antebellum slave owners also argued they needed the free labor to pick the cotton because no free white would do the work.

Not only is that argument morally bankrupt, it’s total nonsense. When illegal workers are removed or deterred, legal Americans step up to fill the gap.

NBC News highlighted the state of play in Omaha, Nebraska after an immigration raid saw nearly half of a local meatpacking plant’s workforce detained. “Every seat in the waiting area of Glenn Valley Foods was occupied with people filling out job applications early Thursday afternoon,” the outlet wrote, “two days after the meatpacking plant became the center of the largest worksite immigration raid in the state of Nebraska so far this year.”

Is it possible that these applicants are also illegals? Sure, but it seems far less likely given that NBC, along with several other leftist outlets, are implying illegal migrants are laying low for fear of ICE.

That said, there are troubling signs from the White House that could undermine the momentum on deportations. President Trump briefly exempted agriculture and hotels from ICE raids before quickly changing course.

It was a baffling decision and the fact it happened at all is a troubling indication that the administration might be less aggressive on this topic than it needs to.

Morality, economics, and national integrity all depend on the swift deportation of illegal migrants. Either we value American work enough to pay natives what the legal market will bear, or we continue importing slaves to subsidize industries unwilling to raise wages. It’s that simple.

It’s far past time to enforce the law and stop pretending contradictions are good policy.