No right to a job

A friend recently sent me an e-mail disclosing the complete disappointment, utter disgust, and total disillusionment a certain Filipino contract worker suffered when he learned that his wife could not be hired for a professional job in the CNMI. Although the man’s wife was qualified to practice her profession in the Philippines, she could not be employed in the same capacity in the CNMI, because she lacked certain mandatory U.S. professional credentials.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the man’s wife is actually quite qualified to ply her trade here in the CNMI, and that the required U.S. certification is merely a protectionist ploy used to limit the number of nonresident aliens and thereby eliminate the alleged “unfair” competition directed against local workers. But that is not the focus of my discussion.
The focus of my concern lies in the deplorable fact that many CNMI contract workers seem to think that they have an absolute, God-given, and inalienable right to work in the CNMI no matter what. To protect this alleged right, many workers are willing to consult unscrupulous attorneys, file questionable labor complaints, seek the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and/or join labor unions.
I do not mean to single out nonresident workers, because some indigenous citizens apparently feel the same way: that they have a right to be gainfully employed–that they have a right to a job. Still, it is significant to note that not too many local residents resort to the use of attorneys, labor unions, and/or the EEOC. So most local residents have not embraced such a morally repulsive position: the right to a job.
No one–no alien and no indigenous person–has a right to a job. Not in the moral sense they don’t. Not in the pure natural rights sense they don’t. Not in any meaningful way they don’t.
For claiming the “right” to a job is essentially the same as claiming the right to the theft of private property. No individual can ever claim such a right.
When an individual claims the right to a job, he is demanding that the employer furnish him with certain private economic resources, that is, payment for services rendered. This is an intolerable act of coercion–and, in a sense, a very real form of robbery, because the employer then has no right to refuse the services of a particular individual.
When an employer is no longer free to decide how to run his business, to decide who he can and cannot hire or fire, his business is then essentially co-opted by the government. His private property rights are clearly infringed and violated. It is as if the government were telling the capitalist that he no longer had the right to prevent a person from invading his own home on account of race, religion, whim, or reason.
Thus, unless we abandon the sacred principle of private property rights, we just have to accept the fact that no one has a right to a job. Period.