Krikorian’s position is economically obtuse and morally repugnant.
It’s economically obtuse because he evidently believes that he knows how much labor the U.S. needs. But how much labor a country (or state, county, or individual company) needs is one of those things that should be left to spontaneous order. Krikorian no more knows how many workers the US needs than he knows how many computers we need.
It’s morally repugnant because it rests on the tribalistic notion that Americans are somehow better and more important than other people.
Let’s suppose Krikorian’s worst case — a worker comes into the US illegally and manages to convince an employer to hire him instead of a US citizen. “Taking jobs from Americans!” If you probe for an answer to the question why this is bad, the deep down, ugly answer is that Americans are better than those foreigners. We’re supposed to think it’s tragic for an American — one of US — to have to look a while for a job, but care not a whit about the poor individual in, say, Guatemala who ekes out a bare living and could improve his lot in life greatly by coming to the US.
If it weren’t unconstitutional to block the movement of labor within the country, we’d have Krikorians in many states and even counties, blathering away about how “we” already have enough workers and should stop or at least control to their liking the in-migration of workers who might take jobs away from “our” workers.
