If you ask them whether they prefer that situation to their lives in Mexico, you might be surprised by their answer. They must have seen the potential for a better life in the United States or they would not have made the risky trip. What's more, in time they might have achieved a better life. Earlier generations of immigrants had it tough, but they came here willingly, and they or their children prospered.

Nevertheless, there is no denying that those wretched souls were at the mercy of those who smuggled them into the United States and those for whom they worked.

What has not been noticed, however, is that the smugglers and exploiters had accomplices without whom they could not have carried out their schemes: Congress, the president, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The indispensable assistance these officials rendered was in the form of a legal barrier to the free movement of people into the United States, the right to emigrate here.

We see many instances of what can be called the Law of Black Markets. If government attempts to outlaw a peaceful activity that people want to engage in, that activity will continue but under more horrendous conditions than previously. Take the 1920s Prohibition. People didn't stop drinking alcohol. But the liquor industry moved into the underworld. Violence connected with the trade abounded. Law-enforcement was corrupted by the black-market profits that reflected the risks of making and distributing liquor. The same can be said of the prohibition of narcotics and other drugs.

How does this relate to immigration? Although immigration is not outlawed, it is restricted. Many people who want to come to the United States cannot do so legally. Yet human nature pushes people to strive for better lives, and they don't stop just because government says so. They will merely seek other ways to get here. As a result, immigrant smugglers will arise to provide a service for which people will be eager to pay dearly. Employers will offer them low-level jobs when they reach the United States. This is simply a matter of supply and demand.

The problem is that because the activity is illegal, smugglers and employers have a handy means of exploitation at their disposal: they can threaten either to report the immigrants to the INS or to return them back to their native countries and living conditions. A penniless person in a strange land with a strange language would find it difficult to resist exploitative demands made by someone with that kind of power. It puts immigrants at a steep disadvantage regarding the terms of employment and living conditions. Promises can be broken with impunity. Illegals obviously have no recourse to the legal system unless they wish to be sent home.

But let us be clear about the source of that power to exploit those vulnerable people: it is the immigration laws passed by Congress and enforced by the INS. Thus, they are accessories before the fact in the exploitation of the Mexicans in New York City, as well as in the deaths of other illegal immigrants who, for example, suffocate in cattle cars while hiding from immigration agents. Without the immigration laws, those victims of government policy would be alive today.

The debate over immigration has raged for years. Opponents attempt to worry the American people with tales of immigrants committing crimes and taking welfare. The culture of the immigrants is said to be a threat to American culture. These are red herrings. If the government didn't tax productive American people to provide welfare, no one could go on the dole. Immigrant crime should be treated the same as citizen crime. As for the culture, it is robust precisely because it is an open mixture of so many elements. Immigrants enrich American culture.

The policy debate, mired as it is in statistics, misses the key points. First, the freedom to move about peacefully is a natural right. Second, it is human nature to strive to better one's condition. As long the government tries to thwart that natural inclination through immigration controls, we will continue to see the degradation, exploitation, and death that surfaces from time to time. And the federal government will continue to be an accomplice in those offenses.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, editor of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (The Foundation for Economic Education), and author of Separating School & State: How to Liberate America's Families (1995) and Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax (1998).

Send to a friend