So, I'm riding back in one of the "micros" that have apparently replaced
converted school buses out here in recent years...
For those of you unfamiliar with Latin American travel, the way this
works is as follows:
They take a 15 passenger van, add a snorkel kit and a roof rack for
luggage, chemical fertilizer, pigs, chickens, and baskets of vegetables,
and they make a couple of wooden, removable seats to put in the places
where there is not (and, Por Díos, there should not be) seating in these
vans. Then, they cram in nineteen adults, three small children, a
couple (three? four?) people on the roof, plus a couple 150 lb. bags of
rice and sugar, and enough chemical fertilizer to blow up the Oklahoma
City federal building, then they take the whole thing and drive it down
a washed-out road that's a major transportation artery here, but
wouldn't count as a forest service road in the states. Meanwhile, you
listen to wise-cracking ladino farmers insulting the van, the driver,
and one another...
Incidentally, though I have been known to exaggerate from time to time
(it runs in the family), I exaggerate nothing here, except for the part
about domestic terrorism. On the other hand, I'm not up on my Ragnar
Benson, and it is entirely possible that the piles of fertilizer in that
van today might have been enough to build a fairly sizeable bomb in a
Ryder truck.
But I digress.
So I'm riding back in the "micro," and the peace corps worker who took
me out to the rural village to do an interview tells me a story about
immigration...
Traditionally, the poor indigenous people of the Guatemalan highlands
have worked in the rainy season up on their property in the highlands,
then they go down, during the dry season, to work picking coffee and
other agricultural products in the estates of large landowners to earn
enough cash to make ends meet. Rigoberta Menchú chronicles this in her
book.
In any event, the Peace Corps guy tells me that the landowners have, as
of late, had to pay higher wages to their workers, and improve the
working conditions under which they labor. The reason is immigration.
Just as O'Rourke and Williamson predict (what year was that?),
immigration draws excess labor from the poor countries, where cheap
labor is plentiful, and it deposits it in the rich countries, where
labor is scarce and costly. In doing so, it drives up the cost of labor
in the poor places (like the Coffee Fincas of Guatemala), and decreases
it in the rich countries (like in Detroit).
Of course, since the average poor Guatemalan is a hell of a lot poorer
than the average poor American, I think we should encourage this. God
only knows that the living conditions of even the poorest of the poor up
in Gringolandia are better than the average moderately prosperous
Guatemalan, who lives without potable water, without a car or other mode
of transport, certainly without central heating, and probably without
sewage. Most likely also with a dirt floor, thatched roof, intestinal
parasites and enough refried beans to drive me insane...
But, of course, there are costs of immigration in the rich countries.
It hurts the people in Michigan. It hurts the factory workers. But we
are a rich country, with a well-developed taxation infrastructure, and
we can afford to help out the people who are harmed by the adjustment
effects.
We should be allowing more immigration. But we should also be working
much harder to help out the unemployed people in Detroit retrain,
re-educate, and re-locate, if they so choose.
I don't know about you, but I'm perfectly willing to pay a little bit
more in taxes so that the average Guatemalan highlander doesn't need to
be abused and exploited, and so that the average Detroit assembly-line
worker doesn't have to sit around, unemployed, with insufficient
education and no hope.
If we believe in free markets, free trade, and the free movement of
goods across borders, it would be ideologically inconsistent to oppose
the free movement of people.
But it would also be stupid to trust that the market itself will fix
everything for us. Government needs to step up to the plate, so that
the frustration of the "Discontents of Globalization" doesn't threaten
the gains of the Guatemalans and all of the other poor, hard-working
people in this world.
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