Guest Workers

I'd definitely recommend that you give Kerry Howley's Reason article on guest workers in Singapore a read. It's a very thorough and balanced discussion of the way it works. That said, given that the crux of the opposition to such programs for the United States is "it's repugnant and un-American, violating everything this country stands for" to say in reply but look at how well it works in a small, regimented, highly inegalitarian Asian dictatorship doesn't seem very persuasive.

The experience of a more similar society, Germany, is not something that many Americans look at and would desire to replicate. Meanwhile, I have no desire to see the United States become more like Singapore. We are, however, in the midst of a burgeoning libertarians against democracy moment (a return to classical liberalism's traditional anti-democratic sentiments) of sorts, so maybe we'll start seeing more and more aspects of Singapore and Hong Kong recommended to us as models.

Comments

I did think it was a bit odd when the likes of Kristof started endorsing "The Myth of the Rational Voter." The author presented himself as a bit of a god of economists who knew the true answer to any economic question. He acted like that there was near-unanimous consent on the best policies over several economic issues where there is still lively debate among economists and they are still trying to separate the data from the noise. It's a little more than free-market Leninism or Socratism, i.e. rule by experts.

Posted by Reality Man | December 22, 2007 11:44 AM

Right wing economists have been pointing to Hong Kong and Singapore as models for "free trade" and "low taxes" for a long time. There's very little honesty going around right-wing circles about the applicability of such models to a country the size of the US...

Posted by Meh | December 22, 2007 11:51 AM

Considering that a large share of America's Establishment Libertarians refused to strongly denounce Bush's crazy policies, or even supported them, maybe the operative phrase should be "Why Anti-Democratic Libertarians Choose Bad Policies"...

Posted by RKU | December 22, 2007 11:55 AM

Matt, you know that we already have a lot of guest-worker programs in the US, right? It's almost certain that you were taught by some at Harvard as nearly all jr. professors on tenure-track who are not US citizens start out as H1-Bs, that is, on a guest-worker visa. Was this deeply repugnant, against everything the US stands for? I must admit that this discussion is really frustrating for me since people don't let the fact that they don't know anything about the issue stop them from spouting off about it. Only an idiot would think that it's _necessarily_ a part of a guest-worker program that it have the seriously ill-liberal aspects found in an already ill-liberal society like Singapore. You'd do well to read some more scholarly literature on this. I recommend Howard Chang's work in particular.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | December 22, 2007 12:02 PM

Bryan Caplan (author of Myth of the Rational Voter) is a kind of interesting guy, if that is you are interested in exploring the field of monomania. First of all his official webpage is garish beyond belief, I can't imagine any adult with any sense of self-awareness, still less a tenured professor of Economics, presenting what by all appearances is the production of some 14 year old manga fan boy as your public introduction, it literally has to be seen to be believed. Bryan Caplan Homepage. When you notice further that it is actually being hosted by the gmu.edu domain your jaw drops. But Wait! There's more! On this page he has posted the Intellectual Autobiography of Bryan Caplan which is kind of odd on its face. He is a youngish not particularly famous econ professor, why would he think anyone would care? Well it all comes out in the course of the autobiography, Prof Caplan from the time he was a teenager has simply defined 'rationality' as 'agreeing with Bryan Caplan'. I mean this very literally.

As I digested the stock of libertarian insight, I noticed a phenomenon central to my mature research: Most people violently rejected even my most truistic arguments. Yes, I was a shrill teen-ager, but it seems like anyone should have recognized the potential downside of drug regulation once I pointed it out.

We see this a lot in the blogosphere, I call it the 'smartest Sophomore on the dorm floor' phenomenon, some people have so much self-assurance that they simply demand authority for their pronouncements despite the fact that all they really have is a screen name and an assertion. I try to point them to Caplan's autobiography as a kind of shock treatment for self-obsession but it never seems to work.

In all seriousness Caplan's autobiography is worth a read. It explains a lot about the certainty you often see among the economic right, many of them don't see the value of coming to agreement through rational argumentation, instead they tend to assert the Will to See Truth, often enough under the auspices of their Leaders. Caplan sees capital T Truth so clearly that he is willing to deny me the right to vote based on my support of minimum wage. Because in doing so I am clearly denying one of his "most truistic arguments". In the end they don't have to Understand, they just need to Know (as in 'I heard it on Rush')

Posted by Bruce Webb | December 22, 2007 12:16 PM

Bruce Webb:

I thought you must be wildly exaggerating about Caplan's Home Page...but you weren't!

The phrase "infantile libertarianism" comes to mind...

Posted by RKU | December 22, 2007 12:30 PM

Yes, your average American HATES H1-B's. They take the best jobs and hand them directly to foriegners. Companies outright lie about trying to find applicants here, and then just go straight to the cheap foreign labor.

So anyone who thinks using H1-B's as a starting point to argue for more quest worker programs are idiots. There is a reason why all the guest worker plutocrats don't bring it up.

Posted by Soullite | December 22, 2007 12:31 PM

Medical Savings Accounts: The Singapore Experience Supporters of Health Savings Accounts and private accounts under Social Security often like to point to Singapore as a model of a thriving 'free market' health and retirement plan. And really the Singapore plan is worth examination for what it is and not for what some people here are trying to project on it. Because what it turns out to be is government mandated universal health coverage with a combination of mandatory and voluntary mechanisms to minimize unnecessary utilization. In Singapore your lifetime savings by not overusing the medical care system carries right over into your pension. But in point of fact the entire system is strictly regulated by the government, this is the farthest thing from a libertarian fairyland. If the government requires you to deposit a certain percentage of your income into a 'private account' is that really different than a 'tax'?

The only thing that separates Singapore's medical system from one that is totally socialistic is that the more money you have the better level of hospital room you get. It's like hotels or trains overseas, accommodations range from student hostel to luxury suite, from standing room to sleeper car. But except for that level of choice (because if you are rich and cheap you can choose an open ward to save money) this is not exactly Uncle Miltie's medical playground, change a couple of details and it is not a bad model for Universal Coverage right here in the US.

Posted by Bruce Webb | December 22, 2007 12:38 PM

In the United States, opponents of guest worker programs point to .... seemingly threatened ideals of political equality,..... They question whether the United States can invest in such a program without losing the very values that make it a place worth breaking into. Such moral probity may be heartfelt and is surely anguished, but it ultimately does little to help the poor in the developing world make their lives even a little less wretched.

Theoretically I would expect a libertarian to be a little less blase and ironic about the creation of an underclass without citizenship or rights, except that I already knew that for libertarians the only rights are property ownership and freedom of contract, and that for them any attempts by the jackbooted thugs of The State to guarantee more rights than that are in fact violations of human freedom.

Singapore seems to be moving toward the freemarket Utopia: a dwindling population of pesky citizens and a large poor of indentured laborers without rights from which new citizens can be recruited as needed after a long probationary period.

It is true that there are hundreds of millions of people for whom almost anything would be better than their present fate. This fact can be used to leverage a justification for almost anything, for example sex slavery: "Bebe may be a slave having sex with twenty strangers a day six days a week, but she gets medical care, has a roof over her head, and has an adequate diet for the first time ever. Why do the dogooders want to ruin her life ? "That kind of Pareto-equality utilitarianism is a temptation to be resisted by anyone interested in freedom. Working out the philosophu of exactly why it's wrong is a rather secondary task; contemporary philosophy seems to have relegated itself to uselessness when it comes to discussing "the big questions", which many philosoohers snigger about as folkish undergraduate obsessions and distraction.

If Howley were a pure market-worshipper, the article would be much worse than it is, but if he or she were actually primarily concerned for human freedom (rather than just baiting liberals, the main libertarian activity), the article would be much different than it is.

The freedom of citizenship and the freedom of the market are not entirely unrelated, but they're distinguishable, not identical, and sometimes in conflict. With their kneejerk anti-state bias, almost all ibertarians get the relationship wrong.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 12:46 PM

Great comment, John.

Posted by abb1 | December 22, 2007 12:51 PM

What's most interesting to me is how well the officially non-existent guest worker program works in the US, all while irritating the heck out of those most opposed to immigration precisely because said guest worker program is officially non-existent. It's as if the town drunk is up in arms over the failure of prohibitionist policies.

It's clear the Singapore model for immigrant labor is pretty unappealing to American tastes. It's also clear that the Singapore model, as awful as it is, is beneficial to the many immigrants who willfully partake of the program. The US problem is an unwillingness to acknowledge it's demand for foreign labor, and an unwillingness to fix it's immigration policy to reflect market forces.

For Singapore and it's immigrants, the Singapore model is better than nothing. The best policy for the US is one that treats labor like what it is: a market force just like any other, rather than a program of indentured servants. Even the current de facto policy of mostly ignoring illegal immigrant labor is likely better than the regulation that would inevitably come with any realistic legal guest worker status.

Posted by shecky | December 22, 2007 12:54 PM

To follow up on John Emerson, I'd say that it's become cliche to suggest that authoritarian capitalist city-states such as Singapore (or Hong Kong, or Dubai...) are the direction the rest of the world is headed in. In libertarian circles, this is the bright and shiny future that awaits us when we slip the shackles of socialism. On the left, this was the late-capitalist dystopian cyberpunk nightmare that Thatcher and Reagan were dragging us into.

What's always been striking to me, however, is the way that it's impossible to replicate this type of open-borders offshore haven environment anywhere except on an island, or in some other geographically constrained region. It's clear that Singaporeans are under no illusions about the level of bureaucracy and regimental control that's necessary to maintain social order and property rights amidst so much inequality, strangle labor radicalism in the cradle, track and deport any laborer who tries to stay without a job, etc.

It also seems clear to me that scaling such a model up to a large, sparsely populated nation requires a militarized hierarchy. Fascism, in other words. Good old-fashioned right-wing fascism, of the sort that Jonah Goldberg might call "freedom" and contrast favorably with the terrible tyranny of seatbelt laws.

Howley, like Bryan Caplan, seems to be suggesting in her piece that Americans are too wedded to democratic egalitarianism and all of its messy economic inefficiencies, knee-jerk populism, nativism, etc. The future, they suggest, is a market with the state having only the power to protect the market. What I don't think they, or any libertarian, ever seems to grasp is that protecting the market from the political externalities of inequality requires a massive, intrusive state. And this impulse, in fact, is the very essence of what fascism was all about.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 22, 2007 1:02 PM

John neatly dodges the fundamental issue of whether a guest worker program is better for the immigrants by suggesting that it's like sex work.

But, of course, it isn't. The analogy is flawed. We aren't asking anyone to have sex with twenty strangers a day. Can John address the actual question? Does he feel that it's an offense to basic human dignity to say to someone, "You can come here, work, with guarantees as to minimum wage, health care, and basic treatment, but only temporarily and only within restrictions"? If you do feel that's something that's too awful to contemplate, what's your solution to the issue? Surely the current situation is the worst of both worlds: more exploitation, less of a chance to move towards greater enfranchisement.

I'm uncomfortable with guest worker programs. They do seem fundamentally un-American. I would be particularly opposed to the "if you get pregnant, you can get an abortion or get deported" business, which is just awful.

Short of a radical, and politically and economically unfeasible, open borders program, I can't think of any immigration system that doesn't strike me as making major compromises of morality and justice. Do you guys have one?

Posted by Michael B. Sullivan | December 22, 2007 1:25 PM

You missed the point, Michael. I made no such suggestion. What I suggested was that in the world we live in Pareto-equivalence utilitarianism can be used to justify almost anything -- for example, sex slavery. If you accept Pareto-equivalence act utilitarianism (as most freemarket ideologues do), you cannot oppose any kind of servile status whatsoever, if the slaves, indentured servants, etc. are recruited from the poorest of the third world poor.

However, by this method you will in the long term also diminish the status of the free labor competing with servile labor. That's a big issue in the US now.

When government actions harm some category of poor people, freemarketers care intensely about the poor and spring into action. When market forces harms some category of poor people, freemarketers explain that it's all for the best in the long run. Because in the free-market utopia, there will be no poor, any more than there were any poor in the Communist utopia.

The steep gradient between the wealthy nations and the poor ones is certainly one of the biggest and most intractible political problems today, and I don't have a simple solution any more than anyone else does. But I do not trust the freemarketers' panaceas.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 1:40 PM

Thankfully technology is rendering "guest worker programs" moot in more and more areas.

For example, Matt's Atlantic gig could be done by any English speaking person in China or India with Internet access at 20% of Matt's salary and with absolutely no loss in output quality.

Posted by kafka | December 22, 2007 1:51 PM

As far as the free market doctrine is concerned, the 'guest worker' idea is, of course a distortion. Why not pay market wages to the citizens/residents? They tell you that the minimum wage is a distortion because people would agree to work for less, but when people don't - bring the guest workers. That's just a sham.

Posted by abb1 | December 22, 2007 1:57 PM

John, you're continuing to dodge the question. I'm well aware of the problems of utilitarianism. I think everyone is aware that there are issues with it. But the point is, nobody here is suggesting the most servile status whatsoever, so you can quit talking about that. Let's take it as written that it would be deeply morally objectionable to import guest workers to be sex workers, or chattel slaves, regardless of what utilitarianism might have you believe. And then let's talk about what people are actually proposing, which is to import guest workers to work as ordinary paid workers, albeit ones who may under certain circumstances have to go back to their home countries.

And I'm not waving away the objections to that! It's an uncomfortable compromise.

You say that you don't have a "simple solution." But I don't see anything to suggest that you have even the first steps of a complex solution. It seems a bit disingenuous to throw out spurious objections to someone else's complex plan, and then dismiss it as a panacea, if you can't argue that their plan isn't better than the current situation, and don't have a counterproposal of your own.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 2:08 PM

any american who worries more about the effects of a guest worker program on the immigrants than they do of the effects on the most economically insecure Americans is missing the entire point of leadership. Hint: It involves those you actually have leadership of.

If you want to help the less fortunate in other countries, pick the pockets of the wealthy to do it. Don't make those who are already weak in our society even more so. It's disgusting that you make Mexico's poor the enemy of our own.

Posted by Soullite | December 22, 2007 2:11 PM

Of course it's a more servile status, Michael, don't kid yourself. That's the whole point.

Posted by abb1 | December 22, 2007 2:11 PM

When I was was in Taiwan, a familiar sight was the "Wanted" posters for escaped Southeast Asian guest workers. And a familiar read was the horror stories inevitably appearing in the Philippino section of one of the English papers.

Posted by godoggo | December 22, 2007 2:19 PM

Michael, I think the single biggest problem is that we do, in fact, have a de facto guest worker program, as Shecky put it. It's a fraudulent, grey market guest worker program. But I don't think you can hold a democratic majority together for very long to support such a political model. The American conservative movement is coming apart at the seams over the contradictions within their coalition of Wall Street libertarians who support open borders and nativist populists who want to drastically reduce immigration.

I think the broad outlines of the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform were fine. My objection is to the coercive and time-limited nature of the guest-worker program that was put forth. There are fundamental labor rights in play-- immigrants need the right to apply for other jobs, they need to be able to return home, and they need the freedom to either apply for permanent residence or return home. If we want to control the border, we need to provide a framework for people to do these things legally. And I do think most immigrants would be happy to follow the rules and sit on a waiting list in their home countries for a chance to work in America without risking their lives or sacrificing their dignity.

There's always going to be some illegality and exploitation around the edges of immigration, but the other options on the table are open borders and deregulation, a massive militarized crackdown, or a Singapore-style guest worker program. Simply establishing a legal framework for the informal system we already have in place and working to reduce the externalities would seem to be the best short-term policy goal.

I'm sympathetic to Soullite's argument, but I'd also say that cutting off immigration overnight would be a tremendous shock to our economy, which would also primarily hurt the most vulnerable Americans. Improving the labor rights of immigrants pushes the costs of reform onto those who profit from the most exploitative business models.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 22, 2007 2:28 PM

Michael, I wasn't mostly writing about guest workers. I was mostly writing about Howley's article about guest workers, and about libertarianism in general, and you misrepresented the point I was trying to make.

And I did point out that the problem with guest worker programs is the production of a working class in the host country without political participation and with limited rights -- which of course is an ideal for freemarkters, but not for me. (This is the same prblem that we have with illegals, of course).

I didn't dodge any question. I didn't talk about a question that you wanted me to talk about, but I have no obligation to you in that regard. but I would prefer an immigration-and-citizenship program to a guest worker program, if that's what you want to here me say. I would also like to see better government enforcement of labor laws protecting workers, so that illegals or immigrants can't underbid regular workers by working without benefits or below minimum wage.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 2:41 PM

Soullite's comments: I'm unsympathetic as a matter of morality and justice towards arguments that say, "Screw people who were born elsewhere, your only duty is to American citizens." I'm also dubious that trying to protect low-end jobs in America is helpful to anyone in the medium-term, much less the long term.

Abb1's comments: You're shifting the goalposts. John said sex slavery and the most servile status whatsoever. Of course guest workers end up being in a second class, and of course that's problematic. I'd be thrilled to hear any plan that didn't involve such a tiered system. But pretending that doing a normal job at a normal wage with your residency riding on keeping the job is equivalent to having sex with twenty men a day is simply ludicrous.

LaFollette Progressive: I don't think that we're in major disagreement. I agree that the time-limited nature of the proposed program is problematic, and provide for a path to permenant residence (and citizenship, if that's what's desired). I think that Howley is actually gently pointing out that these things wouldn't be as disastrous as the nativist movement thinks when she points out that the idea that every immigrant wants to stay is a myth.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 2:43 PM

The whole purpose of guest worker programs is to establish a category of labor with limited rights and no political participation, and that's why oppose them.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 2:45 PM

Michael, I don't really cared. i'm unsympathetic to people who want to screw over the poor here and claim they want to help the poor elsewhere, but really just want cheap labor and cheap goods

that's what I think about your claims of morality. It's awfully convenient that your moral views also help you economically.

Posted by Soullite | December 22, 2007 2:48 PM

Make no mistake, a progressive party that tries to pass a 'gues worker' program will be a dead party within a decade of it's passing. You will have effectively killed every union in the country. You will have rendered everyone who makes under ok into a slave worker who can be 'replaced' at the slightest notice by people with no votes and rights.

Posted by Soullite | December 22, 2007 2:53 PM

There you go, John, it wasn't that hard to say, was it? Did you really need to go multiple posts of strawmen before managing to get out that immigration-to-citizenship is preferable to guest workers? I agree with you, for the record.

If you were truly commenting on Howley's article, I think she addresses this quite well, perhaps in a part you glossed over in your eagerness to read malevolence into it: she points out that a major loosening of immigration requirements is simply politically unfeasible, and that guest worker programs represent a compromise which have some hope of happening.

I wish that weren't the case, but you have loud, influential voices for nativism on both the right and (less so) the left. (You can see some of the latter in this thread. Hi, Soullite!) A program big enough to meaningfully affect illegal immigration numbers is just simply not going to happen any time soon. So we're left with compromise.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 2:53 PM

Michael, misrepresenting my point again after having been corrected makes you seem like a stupid person. Quit seeming like a stupid person! Be all that you can be!

As for the irrelevance of my points about utilitarianism, they were directed at the closing sentence of the article: But if they lock down the borders and slam shut the gates, it won’t be Sri they are protecting.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 2:54 PM

"classical liberalism's traditional anti-democratic sentiments" - Matt

This sounds like a paradox but is just a confusion of homonyms. So-called 'classical liberalism' is actually neither classical nor liberal. The classical word 'liberalis' meant generous, just as the ordinary English word 'liberal' means generous. On the other hand, the special economic term 'liberal' was invented in 18th century Britain and never meant generous.

Posted by Gary Sugar | December 22, 2007 2:59 PM

Id Michael thinks a guest worker program will be part of any 'compromise' meant to shut populists up, he's very mistaken. Guest Workers effectively doom any piece of legislation in the same way Amnesty does. People like corrupt businesses being rewarded for keeping wages stagnant for last 30 years a lot less than they like ignoring that people broke the law in search of a better life.

Posted by Soullite | December 22, 2007 2:59 PM

Screw you, Sullivan. You seem to think that you're running a seminar for us here, but you're not. You're just a generic blog commenter with stupidity and arrogance problems.

I never evaded anything, any more than I equated all guest work with sex slaver. I said what I wanted to say, and what I wanted to talk about was libertarianism, as displayed in Howley's article.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 3:01 PM

John, I'm not worried about sounding like the stupid person in this thread, since Soullite's got that covered. He's working on "evil," too.

You, on the other hand, are sounding like what you are: the smart person who's trying to obfuscate his total lack of a point behind clever rhetoric.

You don't need to buy into a totally utilitarian worldview to suggest that helping people is good, and that making the perfect the enemy of the good doesn't help anyone. But, hey, maybe you've got a point somewhere in there. Can you explain, without reference to sex slavery or some other ridiculous strawman, why it is that Howley's point in that last sentence is wrong? Not why extreme utilitarianism is wrong, but the actual point she's making: that Singapore's guest worker program is better for Sri (and those like Sri) than a totally closed border.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 3:06 PM

Sullivan, did you read any of my posts? I made the point I made. I didn't make the points you wanted me to make, because it was you who wanted them made, not me. When asked, I responded to you quite reasonably, though now that I understand what your game is I regret having done so.

You could have made all the points you have made on this thread without dragging me into it, simply by stating them directly rather than starting off by complaining that I hadn't said them for you already.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 3:13 PM

John: I did, in fact, read all of your posts.

It is perhaps true that I could have more profitably made some general points less directly as a response to you.

Your writing reads, to me, like you are constantly accusing everyone who isn't wholly in your camp of out-and-out evil. In all fairness, having seen your interactions long term here, on Unfogged, Crooked Timber, and a few other sites, I'm guessing that your actual views are more nuanced. But it sure as hell doesn't come across in any given post. And that tends to irritate me and make me want to rebut you.

The fact that you instantly grow defensive, then just as quickly descend to personal attacks, whenever you're challenged in any way, does not help.

I really don't think that this is an idiosyncratic response of mine to you. I think I see evidence of it in most people's interactions with you.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 3:29 PM

Re: Make no mistake, a progressive party that tries to pass a 'gues worker' program will be a dead party within a decade of it's passing.

That horse is already long out of the barn. It's called the H1B visa program.

Posted by JonF | December 22, 2007 3:34 PM

Most people defend themselves against false accusations, Michael. People react to me in various ways, including favorably (see above). I found your response annoying.

But we're boring all these nice people.

Posted by John Emerson | December 22, 2007 3:45 PM

Your first comment was good, but it went downhill from there. You should've insisted that the guest worker thing is indeed the equivalent of sex slavery in some significant respect. I am disappointed.

Posted by abb1 | December 22, 2007 3:54 PM

We are boring all these nice people, and I do apologize, nice people. I promise after this I'll shut the hell up or get back on topic.

John, I would really like to be able to converse with you without having an argument. If you're interested in talking this over further, drop me an email at sullivanmb at gmail dot com.

Posted by Michael B Sullivan | December 22, 2007 3:59 PM

"Make no mistake, a progressive party that tries to pass a 'guest worker' program will be a dead party..."

A progressive party wouldn't try to do that in the first place. But a reactionary corporate whoring party, or better yet 2 reactionary corporate whoring parties, well.....

Posted by kafka | December 22, 2007 4:45 PM

"For example, Matt's Atlantic gig could be done by any English speaking person in China or India with Internet access at 20% of Matt's salary and with absolutely no loss in output quality."

From a webpage of hinese manufacturer of brewery equipment (seems inactive now), a caption to the picture of "30bbl Fermentation Tank":

The hotel, the guesthouse from ferments the beer equipment is suitable for the large and middle scale hotel; the guesthouse; the recreation area. Its characteristic is: From ferments from sells has the German imperial family flavor the pure fresh high-quality entire wheat beer and the raw juice original taste grape wine, not only satisfied the psychology which the consumer sought novelty, also enhanced the hotel scale by its luxurious outward appearance, simultaneously, it lowly put

Somehow, the paragraph ended there, without a period. The picture shows three tanks shaped like huge concrete mixers in vertical position, with an industrial building in the background.

By the way, China approximates the Singapore model, because people have to have a registration to live legally in a municipality, and workers from rural regions are typically illegal, and mistreated pretty much according to their status. This is a great invention, because it gives ordinary people a stake in authoritarian system. If you want the migrant labor to stay in their place rather than being uppity, nobody will do it better than an authoritarian government. It is important to dispense some justice to first class citizens (well, more like third class, after the Leader, and the Insiders), and a mockery of justice to the lower grade of people.

Posted by piotr | December 22, 2007 4:52 PM

No time to read through the thread at present, so, perhaps this point has already been made, but, it seems to me there are bad guest worker programs and good guest worker programs.

Bad = when there's no path to permanent residency/citizenship.

Good = when there is such a path.

Undoubtedly some will make the argument that the latter isn't a guest worker program as such, but rather just a conduit to permanent immigration. But the thing is, you can invite a guest to stay with you as a trial basis to see whether or not it's going to work out, and then convert their status from "guest" to "immigrant" if it indeed works out (ie., no criminal record, payment of taxes, G.E.D., etc.).

Posted by Jasper | December 22, 2007 5:11 PM

Michael B Sullivan, you make some good points, but why do you think you are running this thread? Nobody is under any obligation to talk about the issues you want to talk about and to address the points you want addressed. It's rather odd and makes you seem like an egomaniac.

Posted by Reality Man | December 22, 2007 10:07 PM

1)The problem with foreign labor is that the profits flow to a few and the huge costs (which immigration advocates dishonestly ignore ) are dumped off onto the many.

2) I think our huge growth in population --due largely to immigration over the past 2 decades -- is going to become a national security problem at some point. America was heavily favored by nature for agriculture but that relative advantage is declining.

3) See this article for how the global food supply is coming under strain. Our food supply is vulnerable to many changes -- global warming,droughts, etc. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php . Wheat is the basic foodstuff -- look at how its price has risen in the past 10 years.

4) The Anazasi ruins in New Mexico are a warning against unlimited population growth. Many of the immigrants are Catholics and have a religious imperative to overpopulate the land -- and damm the consequences. Including such consequences as starving childern that they chose to have even though they could not feed them.

5) That's why immigrants are having to come here --they fucked their own countries into ruin. And they will eventually do the same to this country.

Posted by Don Williams | December 22, 2007 11:33 PM

As George Borjas explains, an american guest-worker program is almost certain to really be a permanent immigration program being sold as a guest-worker program. http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/2007/05/on_guest_worker.html

Posted by pjgoober | December 22, 2007 11:39 PM

Re Michael Sullivan's comment "John, I'm not worried about sounding like the stupid person in this thread, since Soullite's got that covered. He's working on "evil," too."
------------
In my opinion, Michael has the vote for (a) Most dishonest and (b) most disloyal to America.

It's too bad that Michael's sorry, self-serving traitorous ass isn't serving in the military in Iraq or Afghanistan -- he might be less willing to sell America's poor down the river in such a casual manner. The poor who are drafted to fight this country's wars when things get tough.

Soulite made the valid point that foreign labor takes opportunity away from the very US citizens who need it most. Michael evades this point with a chickenshit sneer.

Posted by Don Williams | December 22, 2007 11:46 PM

Gee, Don, that was certainly a thoughtful post that elevated the level of the discussion.

Posted by martin | December 23, 2007 12:12 AM

Re: Many of the immigrants are Catholics and have a religious imperative to overpopulate the land

You need to rethink that. Catholics nowadays generally flout the Church's teaching on birth control, and sexual ethics in general. And yes, that includes Latin Catholics who are not quite the rock-ribbed social conservatives the Right pretends they are.

Re: That's why immigrants are having to come here --they fucked their own countries into ruin.

This is borderline racist, perhaps even misanthopric in general. Many Latin American countries are a mess because they are run by and for the elites and to hell with the common people. Under a more just social order they would not be experiencing the problems that drive people to emigrate.

Posted by JonF | December 23, 2007 1:25 AM

Yes, your average American HATES H1-B's.

Your average American has no idea what an H1-B is. Chances are, they'll think you're talking about the B-1 bomber.

Posted by Kevin | December 23, 2007 1:44 AM

"This is borderline racist, perhaps even misanthopric in general. Many Latin American countries are a mess because they are run by and for the elites and to hell with the common people."

Mexico is a democracy. If its white elites weren't able to export their poorest, brownest, and least-educated citizens to the United States, perhaps that underclass would become more politically active and demand reforms. Then again, they'd probably just vote for race-based socialism like their cousins in Bolivia did, and Mexico would be even worse off for it. What Mexico needs is to open up its corrupt monopolies (in telecom, oil, etc.) to competition, foreign and otherwise, but there is no real constituency for this. The elites profit from the current crony system, and the underclass can just walk here.

Posted by Harry | December 23, 2007 1:55 AM

"The experience of a more similar society, Germany, is not something that many Americans look at and would desire to replicate."

Whenever American liberals talk about guest workers in Germany, my impression is that they are really not very well informed. All the guest workers who came to Germany in the big wave of the 1960's and 1970's became permanent residents a long time ago. They have the same non-political rights and benefits as everyone else and their stay (and that of their families) is not dependent on having work. It is by now a mere formality for such 'guest workers' to acquire citizenship if they want to.

The claim that this is some unspeakably immoral scheme of exploitation was never more than a feel-good device for American liberals who don't mind having their lawns cut by Mexicans without health care.

Posted by gr | December 23, 2007 3:38 AM

gr, the key phrase in your post is "non-political rights." Until earlier this decade, a German Turk who was born in Germany to Turkish parents, had never visited Turkey and knew no home but Germany could not become a German citizen. The German model was based on the assumption that no Turks would stay in Germany and they would all go home. Fareed Zakaria had a good column up a while ago in which European, including German, politicians were talking with him over how Europe could increase its labor supply and Zakaria mentioned a path to citizenship would likely have to be part of it to make it work. The European response was always, "but we don't want them to stay permanently!" Europe needs immigration, but its guest-worker problem isn't going to cut it because the path to citizenship is too hard and it doesn't really allow immigrants to integrate into the larger society to the degree that happens in the US.

Also gr, it is liberals that have been trying for decades to get universal healthcare in this country, but have been thwarted by the filibuster and insurance companies. Our liberal host has advocated allowing illegal immigrants to pursue paths to citizenship and to have access to social services like free public education, as well as universal healthcare. It is certain types of conservatives (Bush, etc.) that have been happy to have immigration in this country but in a way that ensures much of it will be illegal and that illegal immigrants can thus be exploited for cheap labor.

Posted by Reality Man | December 23, 2007 3:50 AM

Something like 15% of Americans are of German ancestry. There are also ethnic German communities in Latin America (e.g., Southern Brazil). Most of these ethnic Germans are descendants of farmers who emigrated from Germany in the 19th Century when agricultural land was scarce. Maybe Germany would have been better off recruiting its guest workers from among these groups?

Incidentally, this has been an approach taken by Japan. Brazil has, along with its ethnic German communities, a large ethnic Japanese community (the largest outside of Japan). For years, Japanese companies have recruited Brazilian Japanese to work in factories in Japan.

Posted by Fred | December 23, 2007 4:20 AM

Very true about Japan, Fred. However, I'm not sure sure that really is a good model. Japan needs a lot of immigration to keep its aging population stable and supportable. In addition, Japanese-South Americans who have come Japan recently have more rights than Japanese-born ethnic Koreans, many whose families have been there for generations, with some forced to come as slaves during Japanese imperialism, who often lack a path to citizenship because in Japan that requires Japanese blood. Racism in Japan is such a problem that, for instance, a memorial to the 20,000 Korean indentured servants killed at Hiroshima is still controversial and often moved around because it commemorates non-Japanese. The former mayor of Japan was notorious for warning that one day the Koreans were just going to start rioting like animals because they are inferior. Is that really a model worth emulating? If Japan doesn't embrace immigration, I don't see it having much future in the long-term as a major power (including economically) in either Asia or the world as more Asian countries, Australia, Russia and Latin American countries (especially Brazil) become more powerful.

Posted by Reality Man | December 23, 2007 9:56 AM

Whatever the case with the larger point about libertarians and anti-democratic models, Hong Kong is quite the odd place to bring up in a discussion of guest worker programs. Hong Kong's immigration law is at least as generous as the US: Any person legally living in Hong Kong for over 7 years can petition for permanent residency (aptly named "Right of Abode") if he or she declares Hong Kong to be his or her permanent home. (http://www.immd.gov.hk/ehtml/topical_3_4.htm item d)

Posted by mike s. | December 23, 2007 12:21 PM

5) That's why immigrants are having to come here --they fucked their own countries into ruin. And they will eventually do the same to this country.

To put it mildly, it is an oversimplification.

I am an immigrant from a country that is doing OK, although the unemployment remains one of the highest in Europe. Nevertheless, economy is growing at a nice clip, corruption is moderate, democracy survived a recent experiment to introduce police state -- a hard thing to do for a member of EU, courts are independent etc.

People from my country do not raise large emotions even in places where there is a lot of them working illegally like metro areas of Chicago and New York.

Mexico provides more immigrants, but it does not fit a definition of a fucked up country either. Perhaps Mexico would be doing better if NAFTA was more like EU, rather than making Mexico a parking spot for jobs that eventually move to China. And if some institutions were created like in Europe that would improve human rights and decrease corruption in North America. Americans chose a different approach, with different results.

Central America was fucked-up with huge help from USA. When a government is friendly, we exercise no influence on it to be more genuinely democratic, and before we actively supported very nasty regimes, and engineered coups against democratically elected governments.

Posted by piotr | December 23, 2007 3:58 PM

Re: it is liberals that have been trying for decades to get universal healthcare in this country, but have been thwarted by the filibuster and insurance companies.

Insurance companies, yes. But when was the filibuster used to defeat a universal healthcare bill? Not during Clinton's presidency-- his proposal never even got that far. And Nixon's was voted down as insufficiently liberal. Were Truman's proposals filibustered?

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