Drugs, Workers, and Capitalism

A supply chain can be pinched, temporarily reducing supply. But if the demand remains, alternative supply routes will be established so that demand can receive supply.

Does anyone remember how Mexico came to have drug cartels? The US war on drugs decided to stop drugs coming into the US. It shut down the trans-Caribbean water routes. It was effective.

But Americans’ demand for drugs remained, so the supply route changed. The suppliers started using land routes through Mexico.

I suggest the same will happen with businesses’ demand for these workers. Alternative supply sources and/or routes will develop. We recently read that the largest US immigration raid in history involved not Hispanics at the Mexican border but Koreans.

The expense of ICE and related actions must be enormous and financially unsustainable. But putting the exploitive employers into jail for their roles would be cheap and would cut the demand side dramatically.