Business, Conservatism, and the Law - Letters



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February 16, 2009 4:00 A.M.

Business, Conservatism, and the Law

Richard Nadler asks conservatives to rethink their opposition to such plans as the comprehensive-immigration-reform bill that was defeated last year. Instead, he says, they should view lax restrictions as a benefit to business, and as a way to further the conservative agenda.

But conservatives should remember that when proponents of mass immigration cite the benefits to business, they’re spinning the issue: Currently, businesses get those benefits by subverting the law, and by lobbying against measures that would make the law easier to enforce. Relaxing the law would make these subversive measures unnecessary, but would dramatically increase immigration—and rather than furthering the conservative agenda, such an influx would bring in people unlikely to support it.

Regarding business’s interest in subverting the law, one of the most flagrant examples is the opposition of the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests to E-Verify, an electronic means of verifying an individual’s eligibility to work in the United States. This system is similar to the ones businesses already use to keep track of credit-card accounts and other business operations. Business interests oppose E-Verify simply because it works, thus standing in their way of employing cheap, exploitable labor for higher profit in defiance of the law.

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American workers at the lower end of the income scale bear the costs of this lack of enforcement, especially in these harsh economic times—poorer Americans are more willing than ever to take jobs that immigrants are doing. Also affected are the illegal immigrants themselves, who cannot claim the protection of laws designed to protect workers from predatory employers.

Some in business, and conservatives with a libertarian orientation, may argue that in order to avoid such abuse we should relax immigration laws or even opt for an open-borders policy. But imagine how many people from countries everywhere would come here if they knew the borders were open. What kind of burden would this put on America’s society, economy, and political system?

Also, advocates of limited government should realize that a massive influx would hurt their cause. Said cause is more popular in America than just about anywhere else in the world, so it’s unlikely that mass immigration will help its political prospects. It doesn’t help that many of the newcomers will be Third Worlders with no understanding of or sympathy with such ideals. Today’s immigrants, and the descendants of recent immigrants, solidly vote Democratic, as Mark Krikorian noted in his response to Nadler.

Instead of obeying the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, as Nadler would have it, conservatives should ask them to stop thwarting E-Verify and other such measures, to stop supporting worker exploitation and the denial of jobs to Americans who need them, and to quit undermining the rule of law.

Glynn Custred