According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States has plummeted, to the tune of about a quarter-million people, a 25 percent decline. The article states:
“The trend emerged clearly with the onset of the recession and, demographers say, provides new evidence that illegal immigrants from Mexico, by far the biggest source of unauthorized migration to the United States, are drawn by jobs and respond to a sinking labor market by staying away. ‘If jobs are available, people come,’ said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “If jobs are not available, people don’t come.”
Wait a minute! How is that possible? Haven’t the immigration warriors told us for years that illegal aliens come to America to get on welfare, not to work? Well, given the worldwide recession, wouldn’t it stand to reason then that illegal immigration should be soaring instead of plummeting? Given bad economic times, wouldn’t this be the time when people would be going on welfare more than ever?
My hunch is that deep down the immigration warriors have known the entire time that their welfare argument was bogus. Illegal immigrants risk their lives and their liberty in an effort to sustain and improve their lives and the lives of their families through labor. The notion that they’re going to risk their lives and liberty in order to walk into a welfare office in an attempt to defraud U.S. officials is ridiculous. These people are scared to death of public officials and will do everything they can to avoid contact with them, for fear of being caught and deported. All they want to do is work for American employers, who, by the way, recognize their value by hiring them.
In fact, take a look at this Washington Post article that appeared last Wednesday. It’s entitled “Vermont Dairy Farms Count on Illegal Immigrants.” A New Hampshire citizen, Nancy Sabin, puts the matter succinctly: “If it wasn’t for the Hispanics, there would be no family farms. There would be no farms, period.” The article goes on to speak the truth about illegal immigration in Vermont;
“This is the open secret behind the black-and-white Holsteins, rolling hills and postcard images: Unable to attract local workers for the grueling job of milking cows and working the farm, Vermont, the nation’s 14th-largest dairy state, props up its dairy industry with perhaps thousands of immigrant laborers, many of whom are in the U.S. illegally. ‘Everyone knows some of these people are illegal,’ says Vermont Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee. But, he says, ‘The system is broken. There’s the need for labor.’”
The system is indeed broken, as are so many other federal programs that have placed law in contradiction to moral principles. But the good news is that there is a way to fix the system: by restoring the principles of economic liberty, freedom of contract, freedom of association, and open immigration to our land.