RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE, NOT A WALL

Now here's the kind of thinking I like. Mike Dukakis and Dan Mitchell argue that raising the minimum wage would be a better deterrent to illegal immigration than the other solutions presently offered, because U.S. citizens would accept jobs, no matter how humble, that enable them to earn a living wage as opposed to slave-labor-wage-jobs that currently only appeal to third-world denizens.

Now here's the thing that they didn't quite say. By raising the minimum wage the onus is put on employers instead of taxpayers. The costs of a multi-billion-dollar border wall construction would fall on taxpayers. The costs of raising the minimum wage would fall, appropriately, upon business. Why should millions of taxpayers subsidize cheap labor costs for employers? Don't Republicans famously favor "personal responsibility"? Isn't one of the sacred conservative principles to oppose governmental subsidies?

Tags: minimum wage, illegal immigration