Free market snake oil

From the Washington Times:

A centrally planned immigrant labor market. Buried inside the guest-worker provisions is an extension of the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates “prevailing wages” to workers in specific industries contracted by the federal government. The bill would extend “prevailing wage” laws to include immigrant workers in all private sector jobs, even those not covered by Davis-Bacon. A “Temporary Worker Task Force” made up of 10 political appointees and the secretary of Labor would choose which industries have unmet labor demands and devise a prevailing wage employers must pay to their immigrant workers.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s Tim Kane, the extension would effectively bring 5 percent of the U.S. labor market under federal control, rendering arguments coming from the right favoring a guest-worker program on free-market grounds absurd. For instance, the Wall Street Journal editorial page attacked “anti-immigration conservatives” yesterday for “showing they don’t believe in free labor markets.” If by “free” they mean markets controlled by 10 bureaucrats sitting in the Department of Labor, we plead guilty.

You’d think conservatives would have learned by now, after the bait-and-switches of the European Common Market, NAFTA and FTAA. What Washington sells as a “free market” measure generally turns out to be anything but.

More freedom for Mexicans and other foreigners, less for American citizens. That’s been the pattern of this administration since the beginning.

So, you might want to think twice when they tell you that they’re building a wall to keep foreigners out. Given the federal government’s track record, that’s the one thing you can count on being untrue.