The necessary hypocrisy of America's migrant workers
Barack Obama's solo attempt at immigration reform makes for great political theatre if nothing else
Moral hazard is something to be avoided in public policy. Where it exists, a good outcome is difficult.
The term is used by economists to describe baked-in incentives that encourage bad behaviour, thus thwarting the intent of the policies they inhabit.
Bank bailouts, for example, encourage banks to keep behaving badly, knowing that government will step in and clean up their wreckage next time.
Paying ransoms to extremist groups in order to free your kidnapped citizens just encourages more kidnappings. You get the idea.
And without much question, Barack Obama's decision not to deport millions of illegal immigrants sends a message to other economic refugees contemplating an illegal border crossing that there might be a similar break for them somewhere down the road.
Republicans are right: With the stroke of his executive pen, Obama effectively made chumps of anyone who's been following the rules, applying from abroad for a treasured American green card.
And the conservative Republican solution — deport all 11 million "illegals," as conservatives so charitably refer to them — is actually the most moral-hazard-free approach, strictly speaking.
But given the American reality, it's also political lunacy, and a perfect example of the far-right's cognitive dissonance with American capitalism.
Craving for cheap labour
Simply put, the American economy — the American way of life, really — demands a pool of cheap labour, and doesn't care where it comes from.
That's why those 11 million, mostly Latin American migrants, are here in the first place.
And that hypocrisy, not Obama's executive order to immunize about a third of them from deportation (those with jobs and children who were born in the U.S.) is the real moral hazard that saturates this issue.
Native-born American workers generally won't consider digging ditches or cleaning toilets or picking vegetables. It's actually something of a class issue here.
America first fed its craving for cheap labour with slavery, then turned to what was effectively indentured black and Irish and Chinese labour.
As those groups moved into America's middle class, Latino immigrants took over.
Doubtless, someday, the Latinos will take their legal place under the American sun, and some other region of the world will be providing America with its labourer underclass.
Of course, the whole picture would change if American business were willing to pay better wages and benefits for unskilled labour.
But any government effort to impose those conditions is met with angry accusations of socialism from conservatives — the same people who want to begin the mass deportations.
According to Republican dogma, if government would just get off the back of business and stop imposing ruinous payroll taxes, minimum wage and worker safety regulations, everything would be fine. And, of course, even cheaper for consumers.
The race to rock bottom prices in America has already wiped mom-and-pop businesses off the country's main streets, and is rendering extinct the sort of well-paid union jobs that lifted millions into the middle class during the last century.
The employment of illegal immigrants, people who will break their backs for poverty wages and won't complain to the authorities, is just a natural action of the unshackled market forces to which conservatives attribute almost magical abilities to solve any issue.
And of course, many households here (including conservative households) are happy to overlook the lack of a green card or social security number when hiring a maid or nanny.
But Tea-Party aligned Republicans and their champions are deliberately blind to that sort of law-breaking.
Instead, they demonize the "illegals," and accuse Obama of ripping up the Constitution and behaving like a dictator for trying to alleviate the social pressure of keeping millions in the shadows.
Obama's trap
Republicans will soon control both houses of Congress, and the party's hard-right faction is threatening dire retaliation: shut down the government, says the crusading House Republican Steven King of Iowa.
Starve the administration of its funding, thunders Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
But the Republican Party's leadership, while making sympathetic noises, isn't as stupid as its political base or right-wing fringe.
People like House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming Senate majority leader, not only understand America's necessary hypocrisy on immigrant workers, they can see the political trap Obama has set for them.
They know that simply by doing something — whether his executive order is eventually judged legal or not — Obama is daring Republicans to come up with an alternative they'd rather not offer.
They also know that Obama has mightily pleased Latino voters, who, incidentally, happens to be the single fastest-growing voter demographic in the U.S., and one the GOP establishment badly wants to bring over to its side.
None of that matters to House Republicans, whose districts have been painstakingly gerrymandered by state legislatures to maximize white voters and minimize minorities.
But for Senators and presidential candidates, who are elected at large, this is a different story. They need those Latino votes.
That's why the Senate, with Republican and Democratic support, has already passed a proper immigration reform bill, the one that was stopped dead in the House.
And that is why you will not see the next Republican presidential candidate vowing to tear up Obama's executive order on deportations.
There will, instead, be vague mutterings about a comprehensive Republican plan to "fix" the issue (just as the GOP promised a plan, never presented, to replace Obamacare).
One thing is certain, though: Republicans will never deprive Americans of their cheap, exploitable labour. That would be un-American.
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