A 'free market' includes labor

There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of U.S. relations with Mexico. Together, our nations have created an integrated market characterized by the relatively free flow of capital, goods, services and information across our borders. Since 1986, the volume of trade with Mexico has increased eightfold. But we also have sought, since 1986, to block the movement of workers by criminalizing the hiring of undocumented laborers. The size of the Border Patrol has tripled, and its budget has risen tenfold.

A change in the rate of undocumented Mexican migration did not prompt this escalation of border enforcement. Rather, it was the attempt by U.S. policymakers to finesse the contradiction created by integrating all markets except labor. The result is that migration has continued under terms harmful to the U.S., damaging to Mexico, injurious to U.S. workers and inhumane to migrants.

The militarization of the Mexico-U.S. border has not increased the rate of arrest. Rather, it has reduced the probability of catching migrants to a 40-year low by channeling them to remote areas where their chances of capture are very small. . At remote border locations, however, the risk of death is greater. The mortality rate has tripled; 300 to 400 migrants die annually.

U.S. efforts have failed to discourage undocumented migrants from coming -- and have kept migrants here from going home. Reluctant to again face the gantlet at the border, they ask family members to join them. The result has been an unprecedented increase in the size of the undocumented population in the U.S.

By 2000, what had been a circular flow of able-bodied workers into three states became a settled population of families scattered across 50 states, at a significant increase in the social costs of migration for U.S. taxpayers. The criminalization of undocumented hiring inadvertently exacerbated the economic costs to U.S. workers. Rather than eliminate the magnet of U.S. jobs, this policy has encouraged employers to shift from direct hiring to subcontracting. Intermediaries now handle the paperwork burden and absorb the risks of prosecution. In return, these subcontractors pocket a portion of the wages that formerly went to migrants, thereby lowering the wages of all workers. In this new regime, everyone works through a subcontractor, undermining the bargaining advantage once enjoyed by U.S. citizens and legal resident aliens.