The population of El Paso Texas is about 750,000, but the population of Ciudad Juarez Mexico which is basically the south side of El Paso, is 1,500,000 …and 500,000 more people arrive there every year. It’s presently Mexico’s third largest city, and is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Why is that do you think. Is it the wonderful weather, or pastoral beauty of the Chihuahua desert? Nope. In a word, it’s work. Companies that require large amounts of low skilled labor choose El Paso and Juarez because it allows them to skirt around the US Labor laws that are so disruptive to business.
So why isn’t it possible for the US to set up ‘free labor zones‘ inside the US that will allow companies to be exempted from US labor law? Allow them to set pay at any level they want and to set any terms for employment that they wish, with the single requirement that everyone they hire must be a documented US citizen. They will be exempted from all employee and payroll taxes, and any regulations other than those which refer to impact to their neighbors. They won’t for instance, be able to pump heavy metals into the water supply or arsenic into the air, but if it doesn’t effect their neighbors then they’re off the hook. No unions, no quotas, and no minimum wages. Everyone works there at their own free will with no compulsion from government of any kind. You don’t like the pay or the terms of the job? Then leave.
Make this ‘free labor zone’ large enough and you’ll probably be able to get every employer in Michigan to move into it. Unemployment will fall to zero, and economic growth will soar. So why won’t we do it? Why do we allow our industrial base to move to Mexico instead of giving them a place inside the country with the same rules? We won’t be losing anything that we wouldn’t already lose to other countries anyway… so why not? (The answer is probably obvious but...) It seems like it would all be upside to me.
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