The underground economy comes out of the shadows. America likes what it sees VIDEO
Topics:
anti-immigration law,
DACA repeal,
Jeff Sessions,
Los Angeles,
President Trump, Politics News
All right, let’s have a show of hands. How many of you have eaten at a restaurant in an American city lately? How many of you have driven through an American middle-class suburb during the past year? How many of you live in a neighborhood where there is new construction, or a city where a lot of renovation projects are underway? Do I see a lot of hands out there? I thought so. Well, if you’re one of those people, then you have been in the presence of, if not actually enjoyed or benefitted from, the underground economy in this country. Lots of those people cooking your meals in the kitchens of those urban restaurants are immigrants — usually recent immigrants. Lots of those lawns you drive by are being mowed by immigrants. Lots of those guys you see in hard hats up on scaffolding wielding a nail gun or unrolling tar paper or using a paint brush are immigrants. Some of them might even be legal. A lot of them aren’t.
That’s what is amazing about DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It’s the one example we have today of the underground economy peeking out of the shadows, and it’s working. In fact, the most prominent argument for maintaining DACA isn’t a moral one, it’s economic. Even Trump acknowledged it with a tweet this week: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!. . ” Turns out, the country agrees with him. A poll taken by Politico/Morning Consult just after Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions announced on Sept. 5 that DACA would be “rescinded” revealed that no less than 73 percent of Americans want those covered under DACA to be protected from deportation. Fifty-four percent want DACA immigrants to be granted some sort of path to citizenship, and 65 percent say that protecting them should be “either an important or top priority for Congress” according to the poll.
The fact that the economic logic behind DACA appears to be taking hold among the public has to be a nightmare for opponents not only of DACA but of immigration reform in general. Because if you accept that the program covering immigrants who are here “through no fault of their own” works, it’s not a gigantic leap to start thinking about applying that logic to the rest of the 11.3 million undocumented immigrants who currently reside within our borders (according to figures published by the Pew Research Center in April of this year). These are the people who comprise the underground economy in this country. Like those covered by DACA, many of them are “accomplished” and “have jobs, some serving in the military,” as our president was good enough to remind us this week.
It’s how the underground economy actually works that isn’t well understood. Opponents of immigration reform, who are against doing anything to formally weave these people into the fabric of America, would like to keep it that way. Why? Because the economy as a whole benefits greatly from those on its margins. There have been studies galore on both sides of this question, with those opposed to immigration finding facts and figures to support the idea that so-called “illegal” immigrants are “taking jobs from hard-working Americans,” and “depressing wages.” There are just as many studies that show just the opposite, that the jobs being done by undocumented workers are, in large part, jobs that would go unfilled if they weren’t there to take them, thus not affecting wages at all. But studies churned out by think tanks and the facts and figures they spew don’t provide much of a picture of how the underground economy actually works.
As it happens, I lived for 15 years in the city that can be thought of as the headquarters of the underground economy: Los Angeles, California. Today, it is described by immigration opponents and supporters alike as a “sanctuary city,” friendly to undocumented workers as a matter of policy. When I lived there between 1992 and 2007, it was just a city with a thriving economy in large measure because of its immigrant population, both documented and undocumented.
I guess it was possible to live in L.A. and not be aware of its underground economy, but I didn’t know anyone who did. When I look back on those years, I realize that I lived in several L.A.s. I lived in the L.A. of the above-ground movie and TV business in which I worked; the L.A. of the Hollywood Hills, where I lived; and in the L.A. of shopping malls and big box stores and funky Melrose Avenue boutiques where I occasionally shopped. But I also lived in the L.A. of Thai, Japanese, Russian, Mexican and other ethnic markets where I did nearly all of my shopping for food. And I lived in the L.A. of Korean and Japanese gray-market electronics suppliers where I bought my computers, the L.A. of Hollywood Boulevard Mexican family restaurants where I took my family for lunch and dinner costing $25 for four, the L.A. of Thai restaurants in the deep San Fernando Valley and Korean restaurants way down Western Avenue where I found food that I’ve never eaten anywhere else, the L.A. of sushi joints in grubby Sunset Boulevard strip malls where you could stuff yourself on fish so fresh it was practically flopping on the little mounds of rice and leave with change for a $20 in your pocket. Over the years, I got to know a number of the proprietors of these places and learned the way the underground economy worked and how much it contributed to the city. Allow me lay it out for you.
I was sitting at the counter of my favorite Hollywood sushi joint one day at lunchtime. It was slow that day. The only two customers were me and a friend who had a business distributing blank video tapes to porn producers. A guy came in and started talking to the sushi chef, who I took to be the owner of the place. He opened a thick catalogue on the counter and they began haggling over the price of something. I was curious, so I scooted down the counter to have a look. The catalogue was written in Japanese. I asked what was going on. It turned out that the sushi chef wasn’t the owner of the place. His sister was. She was the one with the green card, who signed the lease on the storefront in the strip mall and opened the bank accounts and applied for the necessary city permits.
