RALF SEIFFE

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

SEIFFE:  A Thought On Illegal Immigration

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

By Ralf Seiffe

The immigration situation seems intractable.  On the one hand, conservatives demand that their government actually exercise its sovereignty and enforce our existing laws.  For this, they are called racist.  On the other, liberals, ignoring those same laws, propose to absolve anyone who can beat the border patrol and stir them into the melting pot.  For this, they are called opportunists.  Common to both sides is the imperative that the government be the arbiter of the issue.  This proposes another path.  

What is most interesting about this debate is that the opposing parties seem to be advocating counter-intuitive positions.  Conservatives usually abhor the heavy hand of government yet in this issue, they favor an 800 mile wall that is designed to frustrate individual choices.  Liberals, who think of themselves as guardians of the working class, subvert their very constituency by trifling with the laws of labor supply and demand.  Certainly if 12 million illegals were suddenly gone, the price of an hour of labor would hydraulically rise.  

Despite these reversed positions, there has not been a national debate with so much heat since the last real do-gooders emptied the saloons.  The result is extremely hard positions on both sides illustrated by the Senate compromise, seemingly a done deal last Thursday morning managing to attract only 38 votes by that afternoon.  

Both sides understand that the real problem is the economic attraction that has managed to convince some 30% of the Mexican work force to come north.  The simple solution would then appear to be to outlaw the hiring of anyone here illegally.  The only problem is that we’ve tried that and it does not work.  

The other problem with sticking it to employers is that it tacitly lets the federal government off the hook and permits it to use the excuse that the problem is “just too big.”  With states already usurping federal power--the tobacco settlement and the auto emissions agreements, for example--the last thing the federal government needs to demonstrate is impotence.  If the federal government were to outsource its most fundamental duty, it invites other attacks on its prerogatives. 
 
These very points will long be debated.  The likely result is continued stalemate until, perhaps, Arizona calls up it National Guard to protect the wayward while Texas Guard units fire on the Mexican Army escorting their narcotics smugglers across the border.

In the meantime, it’s time for a free-market solution.  Conservatives should borrow one of the liberal’s most important weapons and begin to boycott those companies who use illegal labor.  Like the boycott of South Africa and the grape-pickers advise to refrain from eating grapes in the 1970’s, folks that don’t like what’s going on in America fields or factories should express their rage by withholding their money.
 
Next week, any food producer observing the laws that make hiring undocumented workers a crime could create a market advantage by printing a notice on their labels that their products were “illegal worker free.”  Producers of all manner of goods and services could declare their compliance and, even more important, the compliance of their suppliers.

Think what the marketing departments could do with this idea.  I see Juan Valdez, his serape and donkey coming back to TV telling us that the fruit used to make Sunsmacked Orange Juice is picked by legal workers, only.  His image could appear on every can of Emerald Almonds and Illinois beef packer’s steaks assuring us that no one connected was a border jumper. 

Indeed, the case can be made that the only way the immigration mess can be solved would be through private action.  The feds have proven themselves uninterested in enforcing the immigration laws but consider this alternative.  A consumer relying on the “no illegals” certification on a head of lettuce would have a cause of action against the seller of the lettuce and its producer if that turned out to be untrue.  So, while these companies have no fear of the federal government when hiring illegals, they are terrified of the plaintiff’s bar.  This pressure would prove much more efficacious than any new version of Simpsom-Mazolli.

In the end, conservatives would feel good by paying a few cents more for their produce or two bits more for their fast food meal for “justice.”  They would understand the reward liberals find when they insist on organic.  Liberals could experience what conservatives find so appealing by acting in rational self-interest.  By rejecting certified labor products, they would be doing their part to maintain a permanent underclass and, thereby, eternal work for themselves and their friends correcting the problem.
 
You watch, it’ll happen.

© 2006 Ralf Seiffe

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.