John Kenneth Galbraith on Immigration (Pt. 2 of 2)

Unlike the European democracies, American agriculture and other large segments of the country's economy are reliant not just on immigrant labor for unskilled jobs, but specifically on illegal immigrant labor. This phenomemon has only recently become significant in western European countries in sectors like textiles. But illegal immigration in western Europe is nothing approaching the economic pillar it is to the American economy.

Referring to the legal provisions in the US that were already in place for agricultural workers to legally immigrate, Galbraith notes that this was "very specific acknowledgement that this [farm labor] is something native-born Americans cannot be persuaded in the necessary numbers to do. There is here, somewhat exceptionally, a clear legal perception of the role of the underclass."

It's already largely forgotten, but during the first Bush Administration, there actually was a bipartisan agreement on some immigration issues. It fell far short of solving the problems of illegal immigration, of course. But we're unlikely to see anything of the kind actually enacted under this Bush Administration. Galbraith comments on that earlier legislation:

In the immigration legislation of 1990, there was at last some official recognition of the more general and continuing need for immigrant labor. Although much of the discussion of this measure turned on the opening of the door to needed skilled workers (and compassionately to relatives of earlier migrants), the larger purpose was not in doubt. There would be a new and necessary recruitment of men and women to do the tasks of the underclass. Avoided only was mention of such seemingly brutal truth. It is not though appropriate [in the Culture of Contentment] to say that the modern economy - the market system - requires such an underclass, and certainly not that it must reach out to other countries to sustain and refresh it.

I posted these excerpts because of the direct way in which Galbraith characterizes the needs of the modern developed economies of Europe and America for immigrant labor. And also because of how he defines the often mystified way that immigration issues get debated in the "culture of contentment."