New School Politics

No Visas, No Immigrants, No Service

Ryan | 14 03 2008

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This from today’s NYT:

For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth.

This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements.

“It’s a major crisis,” he said. “We’re very short on work force. We’ll be looking at opening a little later, closing a little earlier, looking at how we do our menus.”

Mr. Zammer is caught up in a Congressional standoff over immigration overhaul that is punishing employers who play by the rules and that, advocates of change say, could cost small companies billions in lost business.

In an effort to win support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its allies have blocked voting on legislation that would allow employers to rehire foreign seasonal nonagricultural workers independent of a 1991 quota.

As a result, the government is limited to issuing the 66,000 seasonal work visas set when the visa program, known as H-2B, became law — 33,000 for winter workers and 33,000 for summer workers. Last year, more than 120,000 foreign workers entered the country on H-2B visas.

The consequences of stricter quotas on immigration are pretty clear but not often talked about in political debate regarding the issue. Less immigration, be it legal or illegal (in this case its legal), will mean a smaller, less diversified labor force and rising costs for businesses. Economist (and food critic) Tyler Cowen attributes the growth in quality and value in the restaurante industry in recent years to the immigration boom.

In the more macro sense, more immigration makes our economy more productive by making more labor available and enhancing our ability to divide labor in this country. Simple enough, no?

But now rising anti-immigration sentiment is beginning to take its toll at a troublesome time for the economy, and it will take its toll directly on the pocketbooks of American consumers in the form of higher prices of goods and services.

Weighing the value of illegal immigration is a matter of costs and benefits: how the productive labor reaped by the economy compares to the losses attributed to wealfare benefits, etc. The thing is that the complaint about illegal immigration from Republicans generally amount to “it’s illegal.” But then, if it were legal would it be okay? The Democrats don’t even take much of a stand on the issue, which is why businesses such as the one in the article are in trouble now.

As far as I see it, as long as immigrants don’t consume a large amount of welfare benefits they unequivocally add to our economy and legislative stalemates should not stop that from happening. The result is that we feel the worst of consequences–the ones that no one is even talking about.