With immigrants, U.S. could reclaim lost manufacturing
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Teaming entry level often immigrant labor with cutting edge equipment and American efficiency has made U.S. agriculture the envy of the world.
If the business model works on farms, why not in factories?
And not just any factories, but new modern ones dedicated to taking back industries and jobs lost to the U.S. in the past 15 years.
The outflow mostly to China and the Pacific Rim started as a trickle, now is a flood and we’ve got to do something about it.
They’re making our televisions, our clothes, our furniture, our rugs, our machine tools, many of our cars and more of our airplanes.
Ten years ago, this writer first proposed harnessing Yankee know-how with immigrant labor.
At the time, it was still possible to find “Made in the U.S.A.” consumer goods.
No more!
Trillions in retail sales and millions of jobs are gone.
Our construction industries and trades are not building the trillions of dollars worth of new plants and equipment that would have been built from 1990 onward had we been able to fuel our industrial growth by figuring out the loss-cost competition.
Our government units are not collecting the taxes to run programs.
We have an 11-million-strong illegal immigrant problem because we have greeted Hispanic agricultural workers without a system to keep them going or even send them home.
Nobody seems to be doing anything about that either.
Ten years ago, this writer asked Congress editorially in this space to do something and pass what might be thought of as a lost industries reclamation act – stating the country’s determination to fight back and outlining possible methods.
Tongue in cheek, I’d say such a law would need to restate at the top of every page that we are not talking about any product now made in America.
There’s no need to drive Big Labor’s bosses ballistic.
We’re targeting industries and jobs that are lost forever to foreigners unless we’re smart enough to get them back.
Here’s some specifics:
1. Pay immigrant labor an amount per hour that would be considered excellent wages for a similar factory job in Mexico City or Bogota. Or pay an immigrant factory wage equal to a farming wage.
2. Start with a pilot project targeting a popular electronics item, say televisions, and respectfully ask Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart and other retailers to stock the sets.
3. With private money, finance and build an enclave of factories, distribution warehouses, low-income housing and essential health services.
4. Train and funnel qualified legal immigrants now in this country into the new jobs.
5. Make a deal with Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere to take back their illegals, then if they like train them in basic skills, beginning English and let them reapply for admission for the factory program.
6. Create a plan guaranteeing U.S. citizenship for all who meet the criteria after five years of factory work.
The idea is to put manufacturing on the same footing as agriculture and avoid saddling the industry reclamation program with lethal legacy costs.
Eventually, these so-called “legacies” of advanced health care packages, pensions, profit-sharing will come. And with them, even more jobs as sub-industries grow.
A decade ago I predicted retaking lost industries and the construction that would go with them would pale the money spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.
We can delude ourselves that losing industries such as automobiles, steel, textiles, furniture and electronics will be offset by American brilliance with intellectual property and farming.
Not so!
Any determined highly industrialized foreign nation that needs our intellectual property and farming won’t need them for long.
They will simply steal one and take the other.
December, 2005
