America's Criminal Immigration Policy.

• Author: Tancredo, Tom
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

Jesse James DeConto's article "America's Criminal Immigration Policy" (February) was a cut above the usual plea for open borders and unlimited cheap labor. Legal H2A workers in agriculture and forestry do indeed work hard for their wages.

DeConto describes the hardships endured by these seasonal nonimmigrant workers, yet the emotional hardship of the worker leaving his family behind when he goes home in December is a hardship of his own making: He made the choice to bring his wife to the U.S. illegally, and they chose to have children here. I think economists call these choices "tradeoffs."

The H2A visa program for seasonal workers is plainly not an immigration program. Most of the hardships described by the author stem from expecting the same privileges for seasonal workers as are enjoyed by legal immigrants. If the number of such visas were increased, the workers would still be under these restrictions.

Strangely, the article glosses over the matter of the wages paid to these workers. What do they earn? How does the average wage of the legal H2A worker on these Christmas tree farms differ from that of the illegal workers? How do wages today compare to 20 years ago, before illegal workers became the mainstay of the growers? It would be a good thing if journalists and academics were more curious about the relationship between the black market in cheap foreign labor and the decline in wages in low-skilled jobs over the past decade.

Expansion of the visas available under the H2A program is feasible if agribusiness proponents will give up attempts to link that expansion to the right to a green card and a "path to citizenship." The attempt to guarantee green cards to all seasonal workers is not an economic proposal; it is a political one.

Sheep ranchers in Colorado and the West have a big problem with the shepherds they bring to the U.S. on contract from Peru and Portugal because many disappear within a year to seek other work, breaking those contracts. Why is no one writing stories about the hardships imposed on these ranchers by the lack of enforcement of the H2A visa?

There is a market solution to labor shortages: Employers can raise wages to attract more workers. Alternatively, employers can invest in new technology to develop more efficient production methods. Instead, the present non-enforcement of labor laws encourages employers to lower wages to the point where only foreign workers will do the job. Then they lobby for removing all...