Immigrants and wages

Immigrants and wages

I heard it on a mean-spirited Houston wake-up radio show about the "brown tide" some months back, and it is encouraging to see that even supercharged DJs can follow economic logic:

"Indeed, workers who are unlike immigrants see a net gain; more foreign doctors increases the demand for native hospital administrators. Borjas assumes that a native dropout (or a native anything) is interchangeable with an immigrant of the same skill level. Peri doesn't. If enough Mexicans go into construction, some native workers may be hurt, but a few will get promotions, because with more crews working there will be a greater demand for foremen, who most likely will be natives." (From the NYT Magazine article this week on immigrants' effect on wages.)

One thing I am learning as a read about Mexican culture, though, is that the following statement is far truer than people realize:

"But many Mexicans work jobs that are unappealing to most Americans; in this sense, they are not exactly like natives of their skill level either. Mexicans have replenished some occupations that would have become underpopulated; for instance, 40,000 people who became meat processors immigrated to the U.S. during the 1990's, shoring up the industry. Without them, some plants would have raised wages, but others would have closed or, indeed, relocated to Mexico."

Mexican culture values work, and in a way that our society no longer does. The general prosperity of this country has lifted even the poor to an attitude of airs -- "that is beneath me". By contrast, the rural poor of Mexico are ready to risk their lives and separate from family to work in brutally difficult circumstances (in meat plants, in orange orchards, whatever -- the jobs Americans won't do). In cities we see the luckiest immigrants, who get to work "easy" jobs in restaurants as support staff. Way off the radar is where you find the truly roughneck 'illegals'.