The Immigrants Are Coming! The Immigrants Are Coming!

Abstract

Four years ago, in an op ed column for my local paper, I wrote on threats to water resources posed by privatization and commercial bottled water. I expected e-mails defending private water rights or bottled water. Instead, one respondent commented: “As with almost all stories about wages falling, overpopulation, increases and diminishing resources we never see the actual cause identified-immigration… King George realizes that by increasing the labor supply wages go down while unemployment skyrockets.” Other op eds in which I have commented on labor law reform have brought on angry e-mails asking me to address our real economic problem, “illegal immigrants.” What part of illegal am I failing to understand, some of my readers angrily ask.