PhillyDeals: Going once, twice and well at car auction

Mark Kreider

started pumping gas when he was 15, in 1969. Ten years later, he started

Overseas Motor Works

, at 15th and Fairmount. For the last 20 years, his main business has been his wholesale used-car dealership, just down Route 72 from the 500-acre

Manheim Auto Auction

in Lancaster County.

Kreider buys cars for resale to small dealers. That gives him a front-row seat watching the contortions of the U.S. economy, through the auto business.

"These weekly wholesale auctions are just another commodity exchange, where prices rise and fall based on supply and demand," he told me Friday from the checkerboard-painted two-story office of his wholesale firm, Manheim Imports.

"All the negative news on the economy definitely skewers consumer confidence. We're bombarded

with ridiculous offers from customers who assume we're all in trouble."

But business is good - that is to say, demand is up, supply is down, and prices are firming, since the drop in new-car sales has cut the trade-ins that get sent to the auction.

Records show 34,100 cars were sold in Manheim in the first six weeks of this year, up from 28,600 last year - even though the number of cars registered for sale dropped. Two-thirds of the cars offered for sale this winter are finding buyers - up from just over half last winter.

Electric-hybrids and all-electrics aren't showing up at the auctions yet. Kreider has a theory: Too many are being offered by fancy dealers in the suburbs as high-end products. "These are urban cars," Kreider said. "They're perfect for Center City."

America is for sale, if you have the cash.

Last week, 200 rich Chinese natives were able to purchase American residency when they pledged to lend $122 million to help build the Convention Center, at 1.5 percent interest over five years.

The same day, researchers at the Pew Hispanic Center reported one-quarter of all federal court convictions are now for immigration violations, mostly by Mexican and Latin American laborers.

Foreign capital is welcome, but labor has to sneak in. That's a problem for U.S. farm, factory, and service employers who rely on cheap immigrant labor.

Former President George W. Bush called for a more rational immigration policy; Congress balked. Candidate Barack Obama promised the same, but it's not looking very likely, at a time when more Americans fear losing their jobs, and Congress is extra-scared to look as if it's favoring foreigners.

But U.S. labor immigration policy is broken; immigrants keep coming, though in reduced numbers, as the economy slows. Too many end up in prison on repeat immigration violations. Washington's failure to fix the problem gets more expensive and dangerous every year.

As the Pew report and U.S. prison data show, there are now more Latinos - most of them noncitizens - going into U.S. prisons, than blacks or whites. The cash-strapped federal government is feeding, housing, and guarding more people whose crime is looking for work.

The effort diverts federal law enforcement from fighting violent crime, corporate theft, and potential terrorism. And it makes Americans less safe, by driving immigrants further underground.

We can build more fences and prisons, hire more immigration agents, bust more employers.

Here's a more practical solution:

Register foreigners who want to work in this country. Let them - make them - get drivers' licenses and car insurance, and pay taxes, in their true names.

Force employers who insist they need to hire foreign citizens to pay a few dollars more than the going rate.

That's already U.S. labor policy for the relatively small number of skilled workers allowed in with employer visas every year, though Bush cut some of those wage rates before leaving office.

The current policy hasn't stopped immigrant workers, or business demand for them.

Let's get these workers out in the open, where we can keep track.