Politician Rejects Award from Us Chamber of Commerce For the Wrong Reasons

Congressman Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan has declared that he doesn’t want an award from the US Chamber of Commerce, which he says isn’t really devoted to “free enterprise.”  So far, so good. The US Chamber of Commerce is indeed anything but devoted to free markets as is obvious from its frequent support for corporatist programs from the “stimulus” to the auto bailouts to No Child Left Behind. In short, the Chamber is a rent-seeking organization that seeks government favors for its members, day in and day out. So, if one wishes to oppose them from a free-market perspective, there is plenty of reason to do so. Bentivolio, on the other hand, has decided that the Chamber is wrong, first of all, because it is too much in favor or free trade, and therefore in league with “Communist China.” Apparently, the Chamber’s support of friendly relations with a foreign country is just too much for Bentivolio to stomach. A cold war with China seems to be much more to the Congressman’s liking. Moreover, the free-market giant Benitvolio is angry with  the Chamber because it wants more flexibility to employ foreign workers. The Chamber is for “big companies seeking cheap labor” Bentivolio thunders. They “exploit people for profit” he adds.   It’s unclear is Bentivolio is okay with small companies “seeking cheap labor,” because we all know how small businessmen really relish the chance find some high-priced labor. Against “Exploiting” Immigrants At the heart of this is Bentivolio’s opposition to immigration “reform,” which is fair enough, but if Bentivolio is under the impression that employers act immorally by seeking to hire low-cost workers, he is very much mistaken. We’ve heard it all before from anti-immigrant activists who, usually for nationalistic reasons, oppose immigration, but also realize there’s political gold to be struck by making the issue into a populist crusade against employers. We’ve seen at all before, of course, and anti-immigrant efforts have spanned the gamut of punitive measures from punishment of the immigrants themselves to punishing and micromanaging employers and landlords who dare to do business with people who lack the proper government approvals. Obviously, there’s nothing “free market” about fining and imprisoning landlords who rent apartments to not-government-approved persons, or employers who offer jobs to the same, or locking people up for the “crime” of working for a living without government approval. Yet this doesn’t stop “pro-freedom” activists from demanding these very same measures. In spite of himself, Benitvolio is not completely wrong.  The government’s plan for “amnesty” has nothing to do with expanding freedom, and everything to do with expanding the welfare state and certain interest groups, and if the Chamber wished to put a stop to the harassment of employers and landlords in these cases, it could advocate for just that. In contrast, the Chamber is instead playing a political game, by getting a little bit of what it wants (fewer shakedowns from from the Fed’s immigration police) while helping the supporters of amnesty obtain their political goals of more welfare for more low-income American citizens. This has been the Chamber’s M.O. for decades. As Murray Rothbard shows here, there is no economic argument against employers being free to hire foreign nationals.  The claim that some human beings are taking “our” jobs is nothing more than a claim that it is the job of the government to use violence to exclude some workers from the marketplace for the benefit of other workers.   None of this makes employment of foreign nationals moreover, what is his justification for claiming that Now, I’m not here to defend the politicians’ amnesty program or the Chamber’s position on it. If the Chamber wanted to make the labor market more free, they could simply call for the repeal of laws that make it illegal to hire foreign nationals.   and the efforts to grant amnesty to so-called illegal immigrants. Far enough. Amnesty is a political act that, if it includes automatic citizenship for migrants,