Jonathan, I'm glad you commented. You'll find discussion more civil here than on most blogs because we're among the few that insist that commenters use their real names (that goes a long way toward promoting accountability and decency in discourse). Not that it doesn't sometime get hot under the collar here, too, but it doesn't deteriorate into flame wars like what happens on message boards with anonymous users. Everybody here has proved his and her identity one way or another.

Anyway, I'd love to address your point...

Jonathan writes:

"To me, the key point is that low-skilled immigration harms the poorest 'natives' in any society..."

I reply:

I'll sidestep the overly used and errant term "unskilled" (nobody that's ever picked crops or done heavy lifting would refer to such work that way or think that one doesn't have to develop skills to do it) and go directly to the meat of Jonathan's comment.

It is certain that a cheaper labor pool undercuts other workers. But you know what really drives wages down much more? The answer is: a cheap labor pool that has zero rights to organize for better pay and better working conditions.

The anti-immigrant forces take one set of circumstances (i.e. "when a worker can't organize, join a union, try to form a union, negotiate, or sue over harm caused him/her by unsafe working conditions") and misstate the nature of that worker (i.e. as "unskilled" or "illegal"). That's a bass-ackwards way of looking at it.

The problem is not that the worker does manual labor "cheaper than other workers would." The problem is that if he and she try to improve their lot - raising wages, with better conditions, which would help all workers everywhere because it won't be as cheap - the employer can call in Homeland Security and provoke a raid. I've reported some hard examples of that in recent weeks here. What keeps this harmful dynamic in place is precisely the "illegality" assigned to the worker.

It's very similar to the "war on drugs," in which the government and media recite harms caused by drugs being prohibited (again, "illegal") and then blames those harms on the use of the drugs themselves. But it is the making of a behavior illegal - and in this case more expensive, forcing addicts and dealers to resort to violences and other crimes that simply don't occur between alcohol and tobacco users and dealers - that makes the harm so much greater even to those that don't use illegal drugs.

In the same vein, not even leading immigrant-basher Tom Tancredo has been able to convince anyone that the USA can successfully locate and deport 12 million undocumented workers, or even most of them (and any economist worth his salt can explain the recessionary tailspin that would cause to the entire US economy if someone suddenly figured out a way to do it). So whether you like it or not, you're stuck with most of the "illegal" immigrants continuing to work in the United States.

The more harshly you penalize them for being "illegal", the lower their pay plummets, and the lower the wages of "legal" workers then follows that downward trend.

The only sensible way to minimize the harm done by having a cheaper labor pool is to make that labor pool "less cheap." You do that by legalizing the worker's presence, allowing him and her to fight for and win better wages and conditions. Then all boats rise under all workers. (And new generations of immigrants throughout American history have shown they often know better than most how to organize and win better pay and better work conditions.)

Those that benefit from the "illegality" of 12 million workers (here's a hint: most are so wealthy as to not have to be skilled" at any kind of real work; they're the owners of the modern-day sweatshops and plantations - you don't need a university degree or any other kind of "training" to be an owner) do seek to divide and conquer the poor white manual laborer from the poor black manual laborer, they've done that for almost a century and a half now. And those same kinds of members of the owners' class seek to divide both groups, and others, from Mexican-American and other newer immigrant workers toward the same end.

If you care, as you profess to do, about the plight of the "legal" underpaid workers in the US, then you are working against their interests by seeking to keep 12 million newer immigrants "illegal," thus ensuring the status quo: the continued poverty of all.

It's just like the drug war. You have to rethink it in the same way.

Al Giordano