Ron Unz

A Conservative's Answer to Illegal Immigration: Raise the Minimum Wage - A Lot

September 28, 2011 by Left in Alabama

This month's issue of the American Conservative magazine has a compelling cover story: Immigration, Republicans, & the End of White America.  The author, Ron Unz, plays it straight, warning that Republicans hostile to the minimum wage "have substituted dogma for thinking."

As an example, conservative firebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann recently hinted that the solution to America’s current economic problems might involve substantially reducing our existing minimum-wage rates. Presumably, she believes our country would prosper by cutting its wages to Sub-Saharan African levels, then naturally importing millions of Sub-Saharan Africans happy to work at those rates.

Unz argues for a higher minimum wage and ties it to the issue of immigration.  He argues that increasing the mimimum is a tactic to reduce immigration instead of building a low wage economy that encourages it: