Former Mexican President Fox: Americans are wrong about immigration
October 30, 2007 – 5:56 pmI have to agree with Mexico’s former president Vincente Fox. In a speech to Syracuse University crowd he said:
“There is a lot of misinterpretation, a lot of misinformation…Immigration is an asset to any nation, not just the United States, but to Mexico or any country. It is an asset everywhere. Economies need that kind of working force, productive, loyal, quality.”
This is especially true in the United States where there is a shortage of not only unskilled labor, but also of highly-skilled labor in certain industries. United States has a dynamic economy that expands and contracts based on supply and demand. It is a place where most people aim to have the marketplace decide what is needed. Why do we let politicians decide that only 85,000 H-1B visas should be available? Why don’t we let the market decide the proper number of needed immigrants? This is only one example. I believe that if employers in the United States need laborers, they should be able to get them. Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I do want to preserve salary levels at livable wages, but I don’t think that placing irrational barriers to legal immigration will somehow help our country. There are many people in the United States who claim that immigrants are stealing jobs from U.S. workers, if this is true how come the unemployment rate is only at 4.7%? The truth of the matter is that immigrants, whether documented or undocumented are not taking jobs from anyone. The employers simply choose to hire certain foreign nationals because it is a smarter business decisions – either because they work harder, or because they are willing to work jobs that nobody else is willing to work at the market rate. We all make decisions. I am sure that the farmers who need to hire workers would prefer to hire hard-working U.S. citizens who speak perfect English, but guess what? There are not enough hard-working U.S. citizens for those jobs. Our country has a choice – either we expand our legal immigration system or we decide that it is OK to let our economy contract only because we are affraid of the brown people that come to this country. If you think that it is not an issue of race – I suggest you wake up and smell the roses. Because if we suddenly had an influx of Dutch people to our country, I am sure that people would not raise as big of a stink.
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2 Responses to “Former Mexican President Fox: Americans are wrong about immigration”
Fox is Foxey. He knows, as well as everybody else, that industry will never get enough of illegal labor. It’s cheap and it drives down wages while driving up the cost of everything else. More people more demand. Labor is labor, it doesn’t matter what their ethnic background is.
By Don Campbell on Oct 31, 2007
The problem is that you cannot avoid low wages. There are certain industries that will never be high wage industries, such as farm labor. So what will farmers that cannot get enough labor do? Move their operation elsewhere or sell their land to developers. Either way certain industries cannot afford to pay their workers $15-20/hour. It is true that labor is labor and perhaps that is all that it should be – if our industry needs more labor why do we stop them from getting it?
By admin on Oct 31, 2007