Have they all gone mad? Not exactly — though the motives and tactics of some of the new minimum-wage proponents may surprise their allies on the left.
Some conservatives, including activist Phyllis Schlafly, actually have endorsed increasing the federal minimum wage. Ron Unz, a onetime GOP gubernatorial candidate and former publisher of The American Conservative, favors a state hike. He tried to put an initiative on the California ballot this fall that would raise the California minimum wage to $12 an hour but backed off this week when he failed to entice others to help fund the campaign. Still others, such as columnists Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, want federal intervention of a different sort, which they claim would raise pay for millions of low-wage workers.
What unites these conservatives is their desire to halt immigration — legal, as well as illegal. Unz is explicit in making the case. The Daily Caller reports that Unz thinks his $12/hour plan would “flood American businesses with Americans who have dropped out of the workforce, and also push low-skilled illegals to the sidelines and eventually south of the border.”
Provocateur Coulter agrees, though she thinks the process should work in reverse. Stop immigration, and wages will rise. “Republicans could guarantee a $14 minimum wage simply by closing the pipeline of more than one million poor immigrants coming in every year,” she wrote in a recent column.