Illegal immigrants packing up and leaving Arizona

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/22/immigrants.leave.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

"As the jobs dwindle and the environment becomes more unpleasant in more ways than one, you then decide what to do, and perhaps leaving looks like a good idea," she said. "And certainly that creates a problem, because as people leave, they take the jobs they created with them."
- Dawn McLaren

Ok, Ms. McLaren is a professor at ASU so she is close to this issue and has studied it herself. She wrote a paper on the subject. But her paper attempts to show that the issue is not being clearly defined and thus the solutions are short sighted. She may be right in some respects. But her paper also makes it clear that she does not understand her own free market society that she lives in. That's sad for an economics professor. Her entire article addresses the job market but mentions nothing about supply and demand in the marketplace.

McLaren gives an example about a factory worker in Michigan being laid off. She says that just because there's a worker in Michigan and a job in Arizona does not mean that the worker will move to Arizona. She's right that there would have to be other factors to give the worker incentive to move. One of the major factors would be economic. If the pay rate were such that the worker realized he could provide for his family by moving to Arizona, I bet he'd move.

Price is not static, if demand increases, the price will increase. If supply diminishes, the price will increase. This is one of the factors that brings stability to a free market society. It's also the way that a market regulates itself into producing only those goods and services that are necessary. If a service becomes unnecessary, the workers providing that service must adapt.

What boggles my mind with the quote above is not only that McLaren doesn't understand this simple concept of economics (or understands but does not think it exists), but that she apparently believes that illegal immigrants create jobs when they come over. The absurdity of this thought is compounded when the very thing she is commenting on is a policy that takes away the job that the illegal came for in the first place. If the illegal immigrant brought the job with him, there would be no way for us to take it away.

It's just silly, but that's what happens when you live your life in a world set apart from the free market. Professors are not part of the free market so they can't understand the culture they live in.