Unauthorized Migration

Here's another good article from the Wharton School's online business journal. This week's topic is "unauthorized migration" and its impact on the U.S. economy. It might not settle the issue, but it asks the right questions, like: do illegal immigrants depress the wages paid to low-skill workers? Do they take jobs away from Americans? And, how dependent is the U.S. economy on unauthorized migrants?

A Wharton professor is quoted as saying the U.S. needs legislation that "faces up to the real economic issues. If you allow more unskilled workers into the U.S., it will lower costs for employers. It will also lower wages for people who do those jobs. It's clearly a political question. If you want to benefit low-skill American workers, you reduce illegal immigration. It's important to have a very clear conversation on the choice we want to make. And we are ducking that by saying these are 'jobs no one wants to do' (emphasis added)."

Unauthorized migration is a bigger problem than the outsourcing of American jobs -- economically and morally -- and has resulted in an insourcing of appalling labor law abuses.

Encouragingly, the call for temporary work permits for unskilled immigrant labor seems to have fizzled. Could there be anything more un-American than the formal and legal granting of what would be, in effect, second-class citizenship?