Yesterday I linked to a post by Radley Balko regarding a Nick Kristof column on foreign “sweatshops.” I think that post has lessons for Americans regarding illegal immigration.

The point of the post (and of Kristof’s column) was that so-called “sweatshops” run by American corporations often offer opportunities to the locals that are a hell of a lot better than their other options. For example, Kristof notes, many young women in Cambodia are stuck in the sex trade, and dream of working in the factories for $2 a day. Such a job — seen as repugnant to most Americans — offers such women some measure of equality, and an “alternative to the sex industry.”

People who boycott companies that run such factories do not realize the real-world consequences of their views and acts. The moral: just because Americans find someone else’s situation unenviable doesn’t mean that people across the world feel that way.

We would do well to keep this in mind when thinking about issues of illegal immigration here at home.

As I have argued recently (see here and here), Americans can afford to be arrogant about the jobs they are “willing to do,” because of the safety net available to Americans. If you are going to survive whether you work or not, you might as well not work hard at an unsatisfying, unskilled job.

Illegal immigrants have no such luxury, and therefore have an incentive to do the “jobs Americans won’t do.” For illegal immigrants, such jobs — which are viewed as pure “exploitation” to Americans — represent a real improvement in their lives. People who insist that illegal aliens not be “exploited” are expressing a noble sentiment, but the real-world consequence of their position may be to increase the misery of economically disadvantaged Hispanics.

I was reminded of this when I got around to reading Steve Lopez’s latest column, titled Amnesty Proposal Doesn’t Add Up. Lopez says some things that make sense: if we are going to cut a break to illegals already in the country, we should then “raise the fences and man the border as if we actually mean it.” (It won’t happen, but the sentiment is right.) But Lopez misses the lesson of the Balko post and Kristof column, when he laments the (admittedly pathetic) existence of some illegals he met on the street:

But what’s a “good” job?

Not cleaning houses for $50 a day, or standing out here on a corner, wondering whether you’ll go home hungry and penniless. . . .What kind of life is this, standing on a corner day after day, no guarantees?”

The answer is, of course, a better life than these folks would have in Mexico. That’s why, when Lopez explains Bush’s amnesty program to a man who has been here illegally for six years, the man gives it a thumbs down — because it would make him leave the country in three years.

Don’t you get it, S. Lo.? These people want to be here. Standing on that street corner offers them a shot at a better life than they would have in Mexico (or Guatemala or El Salvador). That’s why that guy has been here for six years. Otherwise, a threat to send him back to his home country would not bother him.

Any responsible immigration proposal must take into account the fact that illegal aliens risk their lives for the opportunity to do jobs that Americans consider “exploitation.” They will not stop coming unless it becomes less attractive to come to this county.

I have previously argued that the minimum wage and safety net create a black market for low-wage jobs. This black market can be filled only by non-citizens willing to settle for illegally low wages because of their illegal status. Proposals such as Lopez advocates — to “impos[e] huge fines and sanctions against companies that recruit or exploit illegal immigrants” — will not help matters without a corresponding abolition of the minimum wage and our socialist welfare state. Moreover, such proposals will increase — not decrease — the misery of poor Hispanics, who are only too eager to be “exploited” by the companies Lopez wants to punish.