Temporary Foreign Workers

[TruthKillSheep]

Hello, I was wondering if you folks might help me out with some logical arguments surrounding the idea of open borders (either for or against). There is quite a lot of backlash in Canada here recently about the temporary foreign workers program which a lot of people here seem to be quite against because many jobs are going to "foreign workers" instead of "canadians" and 'they' are taking "our" resources out of the country.

 

Here's a short video clip and article talking about the issue; one waitress who worked for a company for 30 years was replaced by a foreign worker (it's quite sad but an appeal to emotion). http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/waitresses-in-saskatchewan-lose-jobs-to-foreign-workers-1.2615157 I find it interesting how the main gripe with all the stories and arguments I've seen is that Canadians deserve the jobs first because they are Canadian (which seems like a sort of meaningless circular argument?).

 

In addition, people are calling for a boycot of many businesses who take advantage of the temporary foreign workers program to hire foreign labor (including many fast food chains such as mcdonalds).

 

I fail to see why what patch of dirt you were accidently born on should exclude you from being able to freely choose where you want to work or live. However, this idea is alien to everyone I talk to about this issue because the idea of nationalism is not something that is questioned. Interestingly, when you press people on this, they don't seem to take the same anti-stance with immigration as they do with temp workers.

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[dsayers]

Borders are imaginary but the bigotry people engage in to honor them is very real. I can't think of a single job that could/would/should need to be done by people being stolen from by a specific violent psychopath, which is all foreign really means (stolen from by different violent psychopath).

 

Such a plea, properly translated, looks something like this: "I can/will not compete, so I seek coercion to artificially cull the competition." It IS the initiation of the use of force.

 

It's also arrogant. Unless you're the one doing the hiring, you have absolutely no say in who gets hired. If you don't want person X to be hired, start a competing company, don't hire person X, and advertise that the reason why customers should patronize you instead of your competitor is that you refused to hire person X. In a free market, this would be financial suicide and rightly so.

[cynicist]

Hello, I was wondering if you folks might help me out with some logical arguments surrounding the idea of open borders (either for or against). There is quite a lot of backlash in Canada here recently about the temporary foreign workers program which a lot of people here seem to be quite against because many jobs are going to "foreign workers" instead of "canadians" and 'they' are taking "our" resources out of the country.

 

People should obviously be allowed to work and move freely, but I can sympathize with their argument in a statist society to some degree because temporary workers are used to the advantage of corporations to depress wages. So they can import cheap, temporary labor relatively pain free while doing the equivalent for an individual requires a visa or even worse, citizenship. It's also a valid point to say that the money they earn is not going back into the local economy at all if they are taking it with them to their previous country.

 

Now the logical arguments for open borders involves their imaginary properties, and that other imaginary entity we call government. Since the borders aren't even there, the argument that they shouldn't restrict movement is pretty simple lol. Good luck getting people to hear it though.

[TruthKillSheep]

I just also realized that one of the main concerns or objections surrounding this issue is that companies take advantage of the foreign workers in a sense because the workers may be threatened by deportation or whatever if they aren't perfect employees; whereas domestic employees don't face those same pressures. Personally, when I have been someones employee I try my best to be the best employee but it is very obvious to me when observing other workers, both in companies I have worked for and in other businesses (particularly the low paid ones), that many workers lack a good work ethic (they slack off on the job, don't show up, call in sick often, etc).

 

 

Upon further conversations with my friends on this topic, it is still very difficult to break through the us/we/them/nationalistic conditioning. "These jobs should be given to Canadians first." "They are taking our jobs, our resources, out of our country." And, I'm still not quite sure how to tactfully explain my case to them. I try to explain the idea that I have no more loyalty to a "Canadian" than I do to a "Philipino" because of the fact that we are all human beings and there is no fundamental difference between us other than the random patch of dirt we happened to be born on but this idea is still too weird for people to understand.

People should obviously be allowed to work and move freely, but I can sympathize with their argument in a statist society to some degree because temporary workers are used to the advantage of corporations to depress wages. So they can import cheap, temporary labor relatively pain free while doing the equivalent for an individual requires a visa or even worse, citizenship. It's also a valid point to say that the money they earn is not going back into the local economy at all if they are taking it with them to their previous country.

 

Now the logical arguments for open borders involves their imaginary properties, and that other imaginary entity we call government. Since the borders aren't even there, the argument that they shouldn't restrict movement is pretty simple lol. Good luck getting people to hear it though.

Interestingly enough, companies are paying the foreign workers MORE than domestic workers in some cases, I assume it's because they are overal more productive and thus earn more profits in the long term despite being paid more per hour.

[dsayers]

I just also realized that one of the main concerns or objections surrounding this issue is that companies take advantage of the foreign workers in a sense because the workers may be threatened by deportation or whatever if they aren't perfect employees

 

Well I don't know what perfect employee means, but this would be State "taking advantage" (pleasant way of saying initiating the use of force against) of those people, not their employer.

 

"They are taking our jobs, our resources, out of our country." And, I'm still not quite sure how to tactfully explain my case to them.

 

I thought I had made a good case. Allow me to try once more. The part in quotation marks implies collective ownership, which is inaccurate. Unless a person had the job or resource in question, somebody else getting/owning/making use of it could not be described as taking. Competition is a part of any market, including the job market. If they want the job, they can try to get it. If they're not the best person for the job, then that's a reflection of them, not the employer or the person who did get the job. This what I meant by the interpretation being an artificial culling. It's a confession of the inability to compete on a level playing field.

[tiepolo]

I think a libertarian argument against 'open borders' (aka the undercutting of indigenous workers) would centre on the idea of collective property, and the idea that the citizens of a nation collectively inherit a right to possess their land (and for the land to be run and governed in their interests). If my father left a car to my sister and I, then that would be our joint property. We would both have a right to drive it. We would not be violating anyone else's rights by not letting them drive it or ride in it. The same principle applies with nation states, which are the hereditary, collective property of their established or native people. 

 

Your nationality may be an accident of birth, but so, sometimes, are other forms of property, since you might happen to be born to someone who has something to leave you. Inherited property arrives by a similar flue of birth, but it is still valid property. 

[dsayers]

I'm willing to hear the case for joint property, but it doesn't sound right to me. You cannot drive it simultaneously, or one sell it while the other keeps it, etc.

 

Even if you could, it wouldn't mean you have a claim to a different car. Not even one parked right next to it. So the idea that because we were born here, we have more of a claim to the collective land that those not born here is absurd.

 

I think a libertarian argument against 'open borders'

 

How could something that promoted restriction be called a libertarian argument?

[tiepolo]

The criteria for joint ownership of a car is not whether all its owners can drive it at once. Joint ownership often involves coming to an arrangement, but it doesn't undermine the fact that the thing in question is jointly owned by its co-owners, and not owned at all by anyone else in the world. Jointly owned property cannot be disposed of without the consent of its co-owners, but that doesn't mean it is not property. So it is with sovereign nations. 

 

Britain is collectively owned by the British, no Briton has a claim to any ownership of France, despite it being parked right next to it. France belongs to the French. It should be run for the benefit of the French. (Such is a reasonable expectation on the part of the French). A territorial nation facilitates the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. That is its primary purpose, rather as any other jointly owned commodity (be it a house or a car or a boat) might exist for the mutual benefit of its joint owners.

 

Liberty is not absolute. You can't justify intruding in someone else's home because 'liberty'. That is a violation of their freedom to be left alone in their own space. 

 

If you are against restrictions, by what principle would you oppose, say, Germans invading Poland? 

[dsayers]

Jointly owned property cannot be disposed of without the consent of its co-owners, but that doesn't mean it is not property.

 

Actually, I've seen property defined as exclusive rights to something. I don't feel as if you've made a case for joint property.

 

If you are against restrictions, by what principle would you oppose, say, Germans invading Poland? 

 

Straw man. I never said I was against restrictions. I never said I opposed Germans invading Poland. What I said was: How could something that promoted restriction be called a libertarian argument? You haven't answered that.

[tiepolo]

The idea of collective property seems always to have been accepted. We always had village commons, companies owned by shareholders, joint bank-accounts for married couples, and time shares on cottages by the sea. It's arbitrary to insist that property all of a sudden means just one owner. (I suspect it is a notion encouraged by the big businesses who support mass immigration at the expense of established populations, and who seek to deprive people of an ideological basis on which to oppose such influxes, and to assert their right, as natural born citizens, to retain their country as a homeland for the benefit of themselves and their posterity.) 

 

The obvious libertarian argument for restrictions would be to defend a free society from being swamped by people who would make it less free, by dint of having habits and ideologies of their own that are inimical to liberty. 

[dsayers]

Commons are non-owned, not mutli-owned. Companies are concepts. Married couples are considered legally one person, but this doesn't mean that problems couldn't arise as I've explained. Time shares are owned by their owners and rented out to people who pay money for the opportunity. It's called ownership as a marketing ploy.

 

The obvious libertarian argument for restrictions would be to defend a free society from being swamped by people who would make it less free,

 

Vague, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Here, you're not talking about open borders, you're talking about aggression. This is different from "opposing open borders." The contradiction I observed was in your misrepresentation.

[tasmlab]

My current thoughts on open borders:

 

1. What do I care which group of poor strangers gets the wellfare, the free schooling or the jobs?  If I advocate for these things, than it doesn't matter if the strangers who get them were born here or there.    If i don't like these things, than I still don't regardless of what group of poor strangers is getting them.  I have equal sympathy or respect for someone I don't know who was born in Alberta that I do if they were born in Mexico.  

 

2. Incoming lower-costs labor will probably make me richer as the goods and services I consume will be cheaper to produce.

[tiepolo]

 I have equal sympathy or respect for someone I don't know who was born in Alberta that I do if they were born in Mexico.  

 

 

1. You may find people to echo those sentiments in Alberta, but you won't in Mexico! Members of la Raza obviously have no problem with expressing ethnic solidarity! Peoples have a right to prefer their own kind, all else being equal. (Gasp! Controversial- but only among well-heeled white 'liberals' who don't mind shafting the white working class!) 

 

2. Lower-cost immigrant workers won't necessarily make goods and services cheaper for consumers, as the bosses will probably just pocket the difference and continue to charge the customer as much as before. Meanwhile there will be less money in the economy as a whole, as the immigrants will take or send money back to their own countries whereas native workers will be deprived of an income. Taxes may have to be raised to pay them welfare. So much for you getting richer!

[tasmlab]

2. Lower-cost immigrant workers won't necessarily make goods and services cheaper for consumers, as the bosses will probably just pocket the difference and continue to charge the customer as much as before. Meanwhile there will be less money in the economy as a whole, as the immigrants will take or send money back to their own countries whereas native workers will be deprived of an income. Taxes may have to be raised to pay them welfare. So much for you getting richer!

 

Well, we don't really know, of course.

 

If the bosses have competitors, than prices would drop, just as if a commodity became cheaper or a technology improved productivity.  Someone will undercut the boss who just pockets all of the extra profits.  At least that's how it seems to work with just about everything else, and is one of the basic phenomena that Austrian economists agree on.

 

The money they send back to their relatives will be in US (or Canadian, in the example) dollars and will have to ultimately be spent here.  There wouldn't be less money in the economy unless the foreigners decided not to consume anything with it.

 

But the macro-economic performance doesn't interest me personally.  If the immigrant works and makes money they should get to do with it as they please.  I want that for myself.  The desire of the collective shouldn't trump the right of the individual.  That native workers take pay cuts is, again, just one group of strangers vs. another to me.  There's nothing special about being 'native', it's an arbitrary birthright that nobody gets to choose.

 

It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, either.  Historically, immigrants have a huge disadvantage in terms of language and skills.  They don't necessarily compete for jobs with the natives. At least not in a lot of categories.

 

Would taxes rise?  Yea, no, probably, maybe, probably so.  But that's not a market reaction to immigration, it's the government making arbitrary decisions like they may do for a thousand other reasons.