Why Elites Love Illegal Immigration: Cheap Labor

When it comes to immigration reform, the real divide lies not between Republicans and Democrats, but between elites and non-elites, writes Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review. "For the corporate echelon, creating a guest-worker program and granting amnesty—without worrying about securing the border first—ensures continued access to millions of cheap laborers from Latin America." This isn't fair to anyone: not the unemployed minority youths that employers pass over when handing jobs to undocumented immigrants, and not the immigrants themselves, who never have any hope of career advancement and whose health suffers from the backbreaking work they perform.

And when that happens, employers need a new influx of young, cheap laborers. They don't even want to hire the children of undocumented immigrants, because they're thought to be less industrious than their parents. So the cycle continues, driving down US entry-level wages, keeping the unemployment rate high, and forcing the state to subsidize the lives of undocumented immigrants and their families. "For those who profit both materially and psychologically from something that largely benefits the elite and hurts the mass, spare us the hypocritical aspersions and bottled pieties," Hanson writes. Click for his full column. (More illegal immigration stories.)