Immigration, Automation, Migrant Workers
Here’s a comment from an interesting person I found in the newsgroups giving a response to another (not so interesting) person who was trying to make the case that a certain quota for immigration was vital to US innovation and growth:
[photo taken in Farmingville, NY this week on my way to work. About 25 day laborers (not shown) were waiting for work nearby.]
“It might be as plausibly argued that in the absence of a flood of immigrants
into the US, it will be necessary to pursue advances in automation which
would not be a worthwhile investment if there is a ready supply of
near-slave labor. I argue that if you remove the avilability of near-slave
labor, people will have to develop automation to do the necessary work
formerly done by the near-slaves. I believe that it can be successfully
argued that there would be spin-off technology transfers similar to those
which have benefitted our culture after having spun-off from the Moon Race.
In fact I believe that there can be no better way to accelerate the
advancement of the American culture than to utterly eliminate all
labor-class immigration, and to permit immigration of intelligentsia and
professionals only on the condition that they have the goal of becoming
citizens.”
To some degree I agree. The steady stream of cheap labor over the years provided by German/Black/Chinese/Irish/Italian immigrants helped build the infrastructure of this country in the early years of industrialization. However, in the post-war and post-cold-war world of the information age, the immigration of intelligencia (evidence German/Jewish scientists after WWII and Russian scientists after the cold war) has proven a more valuable asset.
And lest you retort that migrant farm workers are essential to our food supply: This is simply not true. The wheat/corn farms in the midwest have long been automated (running most of the small farms out of business), and the fruit crop farms are next. Automatic grape and berry harvesting is a booming business in Europe now (I found three automatic grape harvester manufacturers in one google search just in Italy alone) and farms in the US are beginning to look at it as well. To a friend at work’s observation that all construction workers and lawn care people use migrant workers, I can attest that is not true in my experience although the folks running a totally legal business may be in the minority. I would prefer to patronize hard working Americans any day.
I certainly do not blame the hundreds of migrants who wait patiently for work at the local 7-11s every morning 2 miles from here, but I do sympathize with householders who are afraid to send their children out to wait for the bus to stand in the crowd of young men at the end of the driveway or complain that they cannot sell their home when showing the house you have to wade through a sea of flannel clad men milling about on the lawn. Images of men milling about on the corners and walking up and down the streets in the mornings are hard to find on the internet. The only thing you will find are stories about how two were savagely beaten last year. There is one controversial (many liberals would call them “racist”, but I’m on the fence) organization called the Sachem Quality of Life Organization that had some pics. I’m thinking of grabbing my camera this morning since I daily count easily three to four times the number seen in these photos on each of 4 corners in that area.
I think the business owners using migrants are too damn busy making themselves rich to worry about breaking the law or living up to the legal responsibilities of being an employer in the US (ensuring the employee is of legal age for employment - remember child welfare laws? providing health insurance, insuring that taxes are collected, etc.). To forgive these employers with the excuse that “everyone does it” or that “its necessary for the economy” is to permit a double standard which the civil rights movement of the 60s exposed as unconstitutional and frankly, I find shameful. And I haven’t even started an argument that the lawn care industry is an ecological disaster (pesticides and nitrates dumped in excess and to harvest GRASS of all things! The most worthless of all crops - unless you raise livestock and even then its not the right kind of grass) and totally unnecessary anyway. Is keeping every sellable 1/2 acre plot of land trimmed and wood-chipped with nary a fallen branch or leaf supposed to be more aesthetically pleasing than the rural aspects that enticed these people here in the first place? Bah!
Comment posted on 11-13-2003
On a somewhat related but different note, manufacturing moving to the far east has been a topic of much interest for me for several years. The company I work for has debated and struggled with our competition gaining an advantage by having things manufactured in China. In the end, we are having one component of a new product made there, but what is very interesting is this:
We bought a highly automated CNC milling machine that can make parts so fast and so cheap, with flexibility in design changes, that it beats the Chinese option hands down. It\’s like a big psycho super robot.
Our owner has already said that nobody will ever lose a job at our company to someone over-seas, but what is really exciting here is that the option that was most cost effective was one that was domestic, and in fact added a job here.
http://www.wybron.com/Entertainment/Fixtures/index.html
Comment posted on 11-14-2003
Our company has started to outsource to China as well. The CNC machines we use are great (and NOT made in the states), but the injection molding process is WAY too expensive in the states and Chinese companies (who do not have to comply with the same types of environmental restrictions US companies do) can do the job cheaper than anyone here. Our experience so far (after much soul searching to be sure - and we\’re only targeting parts that are not efficient to machine or cast here) is that the quality has been great (that might just be because we could never afford injection moldings before!) and the deliveries have been timely. We have 7 CNC machines and more work than we can handle. We even have a night crew in the shop, as well as consistent overtime and weekend hours.
Comment posted on 11-15-2003
We\’re getting the glass reflectors (thing that holds the bulb) made in China because there isn\’t a cost effective option here at all. We\’re scared to death about quality though. We have a Chinese born optical engineering consultant (who usually lives in Indianapolis) living over there now and he\’s working with several casting companies. He\’s scared to death about quality as well. Once we find a decent process everything should be cool, but so far our only experience with China burned us badly.
Back when I was working on giant speakers we decided to have our speaker cabinets manufactured over there. These speakers are like furniture, cost between $2k -> $30K a pair retail, and we went through all of the rigga-ma-ral to have a company make 300 pairs of various finishes and models. The samples were perfect and wonderful. What was delivered was nicked/dented/horribly finished and only about 20% was sellable. That was a major factor in the company dying a painful death. (life support was removed)
Even so, we\’re doing it again. We don\’t have that much choice.
On a more positive note, there is a clear benefit to us all in manufacturing in the far east. Looking around my living room I see a whole lot of stuff. I have a room packed with cool electronics, computers, big TV etc. It\’s much more stuff than my parents ever had when I was growing up. I can go buy a DVD player for ~$89. That\’s about 3 hours of my wages, post tax. That, is amazing.
Comment posted on 11-18-2003
Considering that you shared your hourly rate in the last post, isn\’t it obvious to you why the US can\’t make stuff as cheaply? Does it really amaze you? I wonder how many Chinese can afford that player. It is almost impossible to find a product that does not carry the \"Made in China\" brand anymore, but I remember someone said once that everytime you get a good deal, you did so at the expense of someone else\’s labor. This story\’s paradox is that until we (Americans) are willing to settle for LESS (which is not the American way), we will continue to use the labor of others to finance our luxury lifestyles and that in so doing, we will likely lose our traditionally high paying manufacturing jobs to other nations and lower our incomes until we can\’t afford to buy all the luxury stuff anymore. But don\’t worry, we\’ll eventually be able to find work assembling the next gadget for the Chinese who will be happy to finance our serfdom!
Comment posted on 11-18-2003
( Smiley\’s implied all around, my poking is meant to be playful and satiric, not personal.)
Maybe you can be the first of us to volunteer to buy nothing but domestic goods and help save us from Chinese serfdom?
Yes, an $89 DVD player is amazing. It\’s not just because of cheap labor though. Most of it has to with semicondutor advances and advances in automation. How many hours of cheap labor do you think goes into manufacturing a DVD player?
I used a RISC processor that costs ~$4.00/piece in a recent design. The thing is amazing, it has onboard flash, peripherals, ram, eeprom, a/d converter and 16MIPS. It\’s one of the most popular microcontrollers in the world. I never dreamed I\’d have that much power and stuff for $4. How can they make them for that little? I don\’t know, but it\’s made here in Colorado Springs.
I find fear of the far east by materialistic americans, clutching their beloved gadgets, kind of ironic actually. This is a system we played a huge part in creating. If we sink and die we\’ve lost in a game for which we made up the rules.
In many ways our participation in GATT and the WTO ties our hands in such matters. That\’s a topic that can really get me going.
Comment posted on 11-19-2003
Perhaps a better argument might have been from the standpoint of a member of a society that values individual freedoms. Americans may be materialistic (no argument there), but a bigger difference is our selfishness. Here I don\’t mean that we only care about ourselves, but rather that we care about our individual freedoms (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, et al.). This is NOT a typical consideration in the far east. Values in the east (and this comes from many conversations with Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Maylasian folks at work) center duty and obligations to family, employer and country. The only thing that might enable those in the far east to make a cheaper DVD player today is that the new economies over there do NOT have the same environmental restrictions that we do and their employees will not organize and fight for clean air/water for themselves. Competing against others when you are following different rules is not easy. I only argue that you shouldn\’t offer FREE TRADE to those who won\’t play the game fairly (ie: offer some protections to their employees and the environment). Its win for them and lose for us.
Comment posted on 6-5-2004
On a follow up note, we’ve found that the parts we got from China made in
the injection molding process use a grade of aluminum so choked with zinc
that the pieces are rusting on the shelf even before we can use them! Its a
disaster, and has easily lost us much more money than we thought we
would save by outsourcing the work.