Supply and Demand of Labor

It’s all well and good to let market forces (such as they are) define supply and demand on the capital/corporate side. This, supposedly, is what makes capitalism as we know it work.

What I would like to know is this: Whatever happened to supply and demand when it comes to labor? If businesses cannot fill low-paying jobs, they obviously could get takers by simply raising wages and improving working conditions.

In today’s struggling economy, there would be plenty of job applicants if the wages and working conditions were improved. Yet what we see instead are proposals for “guest worker” programs to enable these very same industries to bring in aliens legally, yet in such a way as to render them little more than low-paid serfs without any hope for a future here. Shame on us.

Sally Deveze

San Dimas

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What price are we willing to pay to stop people from entering the country illegally? Fence the whole border? Have a 100,000 Border Patrol force? And then, pay $12-plus per hour for laborers to pick vegetables, wash our cars, mow our lawns, clean our houses? The list goes on. Illegal immigration exists because we the American people have a demand for cheap labor, just as we do for cheap drugs.

Rey Topete

Chino Hills

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Re “Bush to Weigh Residency for Illegal Mexican Immigrants,” Sept. 7: Why is President Bush deferring to President Vicente Fox and Mexican government officials in forming our immigration policy, rather than to Americans who know a great deal about this issue?

Immigration is a public policy problem, and as with all public policy, it should represent the interests of American citizens, not foreign countries. Mexican leaders should not be telling us how to handle immigration; they would resent us doing the same to them.

This is a question for Americans to decide.

Mark A. Mendlovitz

Los Angeles

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While I was out of the country recently the current Mexican president must have won an election to be the U.S. president. From the way Fox pushes George around, it seems that way. Especially since he is demanding an illegal-immigration settlement.

My solution is to have our “new” president demand that all illegals return and stand in line with those who want to enter legally.

Joseph J. Grady Jr.

Fullerton