Thursday, January 26, 2017

Economics of Illegal Immigration

The Wall Street Journal just published an article about labor shortages in United States. agricultural, construction companies, restaurants and their complaint about labor shortages due to a shortage of illegal immigrants. They complained how they had to keep increasing wages in order to keep the employees they have.

Throughout history businesses have sought-out cheap labor. It's some of the extremes businesses have taken that brought on the rise of unions, communism, and socialism. Everyone is aware the part slavery played in the early USA and the world. In the USA, agriculture required cheap labor, so they brought in mostly African slaves. Slaves had little value for many industries because they needed higher skilled labor. Even after slavery ended, Africans still did a majority of the field work. This continued until the late 60's when African-Americans became better educated and sought out higher paying jobs.