Border Theater

Via Kevin Drum, a great article by Jack Herrera in Texas Monthly about the US southern border and why current policies will never stop the flow of migrants:

The current border crisis is a symptom of a much deeper transformation in the U.S. and across much of the Western Hemisphere. It won’t be solved by tough-talking politicians posing next to coils of razor wire. There are greater forces at play.

One of those forces is the worsening economic and political calamity across much of Latin America and the Caribbean. Violence committed by gangs and corrupt cops in Marco’s native Honduras—and in Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, and Venezuela—has also driven tens of thousands northward. But arguably the most important factor—one too rarely considered—is the interplay of supply and demand. In 2021, as the pandemic began to ease, “We’re Hiring” signs started to appear in the windows of businesses across the U.S. Acute labor shortages hobbled entire industries, interrupting supply chains and fueling inflation. In response, a record number of workers crossed the southern border.

Many industries have slowly recovered from the COVID-era labor crisis. Economists generally agree that the surge in immigration played a huge role in that recovery. But across the country, employers still say they can’t fill vacancies, even as some have increased wages to varying degrees. “America is facing a worker shortage crisis: There are too many open jobs without people to fill them,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned in September. According to the chamber, Texas has just eighty workers for every hundred open jobs.

The deficit in construction is historic, by some measures. Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade association, reported that in 2022 the industry averaged more job openings per month than it had ever recorded. Texas building executives are speaking in apocalyptic terms about the labor shortage they’re still facing. Behind closed doors, they bluntly acknowledge that countless new projects won’t get off the ground unless they hire workers who are in the country illegally.

Of course the construction industry could raise wages and hope to recruit more of the native born, but that would not be a simple fix. They have gotten used to relying on cheap migrant labor and have been setting their prices accordingly; having to raise wages suddenly would pinch them hard when they are often tied into multi-year contracts. Also, fewer and fewer native born Americans are going into construction. I remember discussing this with my sons. My brother and I both did some construction in our youths, but none of my sons have. When I asked them about it, they waved off the idea; they simply don't regard it as work people like them do. Herrera says that across the rich nations of the world, "the children of accountants and schoolteachers don’t seem to want to lay bricks, even if laying bricks were to pay better than accounting and teaching." So for the construction industry,

Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber. Far fewer homes and businesses would be built in the next few decades. It would push up the prices paid by those who buy homes and office buildings. So an inviolable relationship has developed between new construction and migrants: If you build, they will come.

Whenever Texas politicians threaten to pass laws that would make it harder for businesses to employ undocumented workers, phones in the Capitol start ringing. Stuck with the need to show their base that they’re cracking down on migrants, politicians, including Abbott, have instead found a middle ground: They keep up their bombast regarding the border, but they avoid stringing any razor wire between undocumented immigrants and jobs in the state’s interior.

The Texas economy is booming largely because of affordable housing, and new housing is being built in Texas at a remarkable rate thanks largely to the state's 1.6 million undocumented workers; one recent survey of construction sites in the state found that 50 percent of workers were undocumented.

So the measures that would really end illegal migration – nationwide eVerify, and real penalties for employers who hire the undocumented – will never be put in place, and the migrant flows will continue, despite all the sound and fury of "border theater."