Dems want to important cheap labor rather than compete with it

Rich Lowry:

Democrats opposed the ratification of the Central America Free Trade Agreement last year for fear that it would undercut American workers made to compete with cheap Latin American labor. The problem the Democrats must have had with this effect on American workers was that it was too indirect. The party now favors importing lots of that same cheap Latin American labor directly into the United States.

Bizarrely, it is the Democrats who most strongly support a lax immigration system that acts as a subsidy to business interests eager to hire workers at the lowest wages possible and to upper-middle-class Americans who don’t want to pay too much to have someone mow their lawns. And this subsidy comes at the expense of American low-skill workers, many of them African-American and Hispanic, who are supposed to be the heart of the Democratic party.

The thesis of the Thomas Frank book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? has become gospel for Democrats — that working-class voters in the heartland are misled into voting against their economic interests by supporting Republicans. That argument needs an overhaul now that it is clear that Democrats think there’s nothing the matter with Kansas, or anywhere else, that can’t be solved by more wage-competition from a flood of foreign low-skill workers.

“This is the one issue,” said Rosemary Jenks of the pro-enforcement group Numbers USA, “where Democrats sell out all their principles.” The party, and its allies in the unions, no doubt see potential new voters and members in the influx of Hispanic newcomers. They are also increasingly in the grip of a grievance-based ethnic politics that champions the rights of illegals, and of a post-national “we are the world” ideology that has little use for nationhood and borders.

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