Monday, August 9, 2010 Arizona’s illegal immigration law and illegals impact on jobs
From http://www.usillegalaliens.com/
“Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Jobs
The MSM (Main Stream Media—my addition.) report ad nauseam that illegal aliens are only ‘doing work that Americans won’t.’ This mantra is mercilessly bandied about by illegal immigration supporters and echoes throughout the halls of Congress and the White House whenever the topic comes up. What is never mentioned, however, is that the illegal aliens are artificially depressing compensation and that illegal aliens are the only ones who will do the work at such low wages. In actual fact, illegal immigration distorts the law of supply and demand in a capitalistic society. Additionally it is grossly hypocritical to want to raise the minimum wage on one hand while the other hand winks at illegal aliens working at far below prevailing wages. (Which is exactly what the Democrats did!—my addition)
In any case, illegal aliens are not just picking lettuce and digging ditches any more. It wasn’t that long ago that being a dry-waller, brick-layer, house framer, painter, roofer, carpet layer, plumber, or electrician was a decently compensated, middle class trade. Now it is increasingly becoming the work for illegal aliens at far less than the free market rate. While illegal alien workers are only a small portion of many of those job categories their willingness to work at dramatically lower rates artificially drags down the compensation for all workers.
When the resident poor and uneducated Americans can subsist on welfare they are not going to pick lettuce, dig ditches, clean toilets or wash dishes at minimum wage.
However, if there are massive shortages of workers for such jobs, the forces of supply and demand will come in to play and the compensation for those jobs will rise to attract more workers. At some point, it will pay more than being on welfare and be attractive enough to turn off Oprah and the labor shortage will be alleviated.
There are also side affects of ‘only doing the jobs that Americans won’t do,’ at artificially depressed wages anyway. One is that it increases the load on the welfare systems as there are fewer working poor and more welfare recipients. Another is that many unscrupulous employers pay illegal aliens in cash, off-the-books, avoiding all taxes which also makes the illegal alien worker have little or no income ‘qualifying’ them for welfare benefits as well. (Surely, illegal immigrants wouldn’t do both—work off-the-books and also collect welfare payments—would they?—my addition)
One of the problems with the MSM, the President, and Congress believing that only illegal aliens will do the work that Americans won’t is that they must have never done any of that kind of work. It must be so beneath them that they just can’t believe ‘Americans’ will actually do it.
When I was seventeen I was 6’2” and weighed 155 pounds. That summer I took a job in a Dole Pineapple plant where for 12 hours a day, six days a week for three months I had to lift, carry, throw, and stack 100 pound sacks of cattle feed. Working on the loading dock one day where the sacks were filled, it was my job to pick up a bag from two automatic filling machines and carry them eight feet or so to the edge of the dock and throw them into a truck. The two filling machines produced four bags a minute. That is 240 an hour and 2,880 a shift. At 100 pounds each that was 144 tons.
It was hot, humid, dusty, stunk and I was paid minimum wage—with an agricultural exemption from any overtime. While Tennessee Ernie Ford wrote a song entitled ‘Sixteen Tons’ about mining coal, we didn’t get any songs written about us doing 144 tons—you just did the job.
When I started that job I could barely pick up a 100 pound bag with two hands. At the end of the summer I still weighed 155 pounds but could pick up a bag with each hand and fling it ten feet. I also learned that it wasn’t the kind of work I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. (No kidding!—my addition)
Many of the people reading this report have similar stories and work experiences. These are the jobs that legal immigrants, students, and the working poor have been doing for the last 100 years. The jobs were not done by illegal aliens. Do we need a bona fide guest worker program to allow seasonal migrant workers from Mexico to come in and earn money picking lettuce? Probably, but I am tired of hearing that illegal aliens are only doing the work that Americans won’t do because that is BS—I’ve done that work. I even did it in December 2006 when I spent five and a half hours snow shoveling 36 inches of snow from my, around my, and one of my neighbor’s Colorado homes. I didn’t want to do that work either but I did it because it had to be done. Where were all the illegal aliens when you really needed them?
A March 2006 article in The Christian Science Monitor by Ron Scherer, Immigration debate crux: jobs impact - Experts weigh how illegal workers affect US employment, reports:
‘Do undocumented workers take away jobs from Americans?’ asks Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Private Client Services in Columbus, Ohio. ‘My best guess is that they take some jobs away. Some Americans are willing to work at those jobs at low salaries, but not all [Americans are].’
Analysts are quick to point out that the economics of undocumented immigration are complex. Few models have been crafted that try to look at how the US economy would perform without tapping into inexpensive labor for some jobs.
‘We can’t run econometric models. The numbers aren’t good enough,’ says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.
One challenge in performing any calculations is agreeing on the number of undocumented workers. Only estimates exist, and they range from 9 million to 20 million. The conventional estimate is 11 million. But no one really knows for sure.
By way of contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates how many people out of a workforce of 143 million are unemployed. Last month, 7,193,000, or 4.8 percent, were out pounding the pavement. (Today, off course, it is 9.6% officially and must higher unofficially—my addition.)
The Center for Immigration Studies, which is in favor of some restrictions on immigration, recently issued a report looking at jobs and undocumented workers. One of its conclusions was that between March 2000 and March 2005, only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults went to people born in the US.
‘This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18- to 64-year-old population,’ writes Steve Camarota, director of research.
Howard Hayghe, an economist at the Department of Labor, confirms that this number is correct. But he also points out that by 2005, the economy was doing a better job of producing jobs—and the percentage of native-born residents finding jobs rose to 41 percent. In other words, the stronger economy absorbed more workers of all educational levels. ‘The more office buildings you build, the more people you need to clean them. The more roads you build, the more workers you need,’ says Mr. Hayghe.
In addition to the 7 million Americans looking for jobs, another 1.5 million are considered to be ‘marginally attached’—that is, not actively looking for work. Moreover, some 386,000 are counted as ‘discouraged’ workers. And there are about 19 million, including students and senior citizens, who are not in the workforce.
‘If we close the borders and have less undocumented workers, it would put some upward pressure on overall wages,’ says Mr. Chan. ‘It’s no secret business will have to pay workers more money.’
The National Academy of Science reported in Dropping Out - Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005 that from 1980 to 1995 there was a 44% of the decline in the real wages of high school dropouts as a result of immigration. Since Black and Hispanics Americans lead the statistics in dropping out of high school this means that illegal aliens affect these two groups the greatest and is a great contributor to the high unemployment rate in this segment of the population.
A commentary by Dan Stein, Executive Director, Federation for American Immigration Reform in Mass Immigration Takes Greatest Toll on African-Americans notes that:
‘In some cases the influx of immigrants has allowed native-born workers to move up the ladder. But in all too many other instances, mass immigration has moved American workers off the ladder entirely, particularly Black Americans. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences done during the economic boom of the late-1990s, the dramatic rise in immigration was a direct cause of dramatic declines in jobs and income for Americans with a high school education or less.
If one tracks the economic progress of African-Americans, or the lack of it, over the past century there is an unmistakable correlation with patterns of immigration. Blacks have made the greatest economic advances during periods of low immigration, while economic conditions have stagnated or regressed during period of high immigration.’
The prestigious Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns recently published a report, The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface, which claims that the illegal alien population is double the official government estimates and that the Government vastly underestimates the cost of illegal immigration. According to Bear Stearns:
The illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million—roughly the population of New York State.
1) Between 4 and 6 million jobs have shifted to the underground economy since 1990. These are not ‘jobs Americans won’t do,’ but rather jobs Americans used to do.
2) On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.
3) There are approximately 5 million illegal workers who are collecting wages on a cash basis and are avoiding both income and FICA taxes.
4) The United States is hooked on cheap, illegal workers and is deferring the costs of providing public services to these quasi-Americans.
Long before the nation was flooded with illegal aliens somebody picked the lettuce, mowed the grass, flipped burgers, dug the ditches, and cleaned hotel rooms. These entry level jobs were done by guest agricultural workers, the working poor, legal immigrants and, in the summer, by students. Given supply and demand in a capitalistic society and there still are plenty of legal immigrants and resident Americans who would do these jobs at a fair and free market wage. (Exactly! Let supply and demand determine the price of labor instead of allowing illegal labor to artificially lower the price of labor by artificially increasing the supply of labor. This is nothing more than basic supply and demand economics altered by illegal immigrants who become a cheap labor force whether on-the books or off-the-books—my addition.)
As Victor Davis Hanson recently noted in Rethinking illegal immigration:
‘Areas in the United States that have experienced far less illegal immigration seem to have no insurmountable problems manning restaurants, cutting lawns or serving the needs of hotel guests. Travel to the Midwest, for example, and you’ll see students are employed as cooks and maids. Construction relies on legal laborers. The evidence suggests massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents—while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States.’
When illegal aliens take these jobs they not only take jobs from American teens and drive the wages down but also deny entry level work and the ladder of opportunity from the working poor and legal immigrants thus making the American Dream harder to obtain. Additionally, even Wal-Mart can’t hire all the retirees who want to work part time. Have you ever gone to Las Vegas? Next time note all the retirees working in the restaurants. As noted by Frosty Wooldridge in Our Country Coming Undone:
‘Illegal immigration hurts America’s poor. In a recent account in the New York Times, Black children suffered 50% greater poverty in the past 10 years due to immigration. Illegal immigrants compete for jobs normally done by America’s poor. A study by the Center For Immigration Studies wrote that ‘Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled and it’s hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration because it tends to reduce wages for U.S. workers.
... Cheap labor from illegal immigration is not ‘cheap.’ It’s subsidized by all of us in the form of our tax dollars paying for their services. It makes a few employers wealthy at the expense of all of us.’
Steven Malanga notes in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy, ‘A handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill.’ Sounds like a great deal for some employers but, as usual, the taxpayers are the ones getting ripped off.
An October 16, 2006 article in the Boston Globe, by Andrew M. Sum and Paul E. Harrington, Two kinds of immigration, notes:
‘The overall effects of new immigrant inflows from 2000 to 2005 on American labor markets are unprecedented ... new immigrants accounted for 86 percent of the total gain in employment that the nation experienced over the past five years. Our analysis suggests that close to two-thirds of these new immigrant arrivals were unauthorized. (ILLEGAL—my addition.) Among males, all of the net growth in employment between 2000 and 2005 was attributable to new immigrants. This extraordinary finding casts serious doubt on the common contention that new immigrants simply take jobs that Americans do not want.
Worse still, the impact of this displacement of native-born workers and established immigrants was concentrated among young people ... Available evidence shows that there has been a high rate of displacement of younger, native-born male workers and younger women without four-year college degrees by newer immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. Our own statistical analysis of native-born adults under 25 revealed that higher inflows of new immigrant workers in their state of residence hurt their ability to find jobs. The negative effects were larger for young men than for women, for young adults with no postsecondary schooling, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males.
The notion that there is a shortage of unskilled, low-educated workers in the United States and in Massachusetts is a canard. The evidence—ranging from employment rates to measures of changes in annual earnings, weekly wages, and employee benefits—reveals a surplus of less-educated workers in both national and state labor markets. The lifetime earnings of adults without high school diplomas over the past 25 years have declined catastrophically, and these declines have imposed increasing fiscal burdens on the rest of the taxpaying public.’
A May 8, 2006 article in the Washington Times, Immigrants and wages, reports:
‘Examining more closely the pattern within the 2000-2005 period provides compelling evidence illegal immigrants have been used deliberately to force down wages. In most industries that use illegal immigrants heavily, inflation-adjusted wages rose modestly during the first years of the current decade. Yet soon after, they dropped significantly. Obviously, the nation’s restaurateurs, hoteliers, contractors and cleaners decided paying workers $12 per hour and often less, with few or no benefits, was outrageous. In response, they stepped up efforts to bring Mexican and Central American labor markets and standards into the United States.
The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They’re facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay. If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they’ll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout U.S. history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren’t good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.
Denying pauper-wage industries the crutch of a wage-depressing flood of illegal immigrants is essential for keeping the United States a high-wage, First World economy. It is also essential for offering real economic opportunity to legal immigrants and native-born low-income Americans. The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They’re facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay.’
Steven Malanga also stated in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy:
‘Consequently, as the waves of immigration continue, the sheer number of those competing for low-skilled service jobs makes economic progress difficult. A study of the impact of immigration on New York City’s restaurant business, for instance, found that 60 percent of immigrant workers do not receive regular raises, while 70 percent had never been promoted. One Mexican dishwasher aptly captured the downward pressure that all these arriving workers put on wages by telling the study’s authors about his frustrating search for a 50-cent raise after working for $6.50 an hour: ‘I visited a few restaurants asking for $7 an hour, but they only offered me $5.50 or $6,’ he said. ‘I had to beg [for a job].’
Similarly, immigration is also pushing some native-born workers out of jobs, as Kenyon College economists showed in the California nail-salon workforce. Over a 16-year period starting in the late 1980s, some 35,600 mostly Vietnamese immigrant women flooded into the industry, a mass migration that equaled the total number of jobs in the industry before the immigrants arrived. Though the new workers created a labor surplus that led to lower prices, new services, and somewhat more demand, the economists estimate that as a result, 10,000 native-born workers either left the industry or never bothered entering it.
With all the MSM hand wringing over the plight of the illegal alien workers recently rounded up at the Swift meat processing plants across the US in December of 2006, few reported that it was knowingly going on for years, as noted by Joel Dyer in an article in the Greeley Tribune, Meatpacking industry has a long history of reliance on immigrant laborer, and that management used illegal labor and the high turn over to artificially keep wages down.
You probably also missed the AP article in the Greeley Tribune, Former Dallas employees sue Swift alleging wage manipulation, where some former employees aren’t too happy about the way Swift kept the wages down.
As for doing the dirty work that Americans just won’t do, even at those artificially depressed wages, did you happen to see another report in the Greeley Tribune by Bill Jackson, More applicants applying for Swift & Co., on your local news where it was reported that 800 citizens and legal immigrants applied for the few dozen vacant positions in the Greeley meat packing plant?
That little fact, which goes counter the MSM’s constant blather, was also reported by Fernando Quintero in the Rocky Mountain News in Loss for one is another's gain - Applicants line up to fill jobs left empty by Swift plant raid but it didn’t make the national news cycle either.
So even with the depressed wages, caused by illegal aliens, it would appear that there are still a lot of legal immigrants and Americans willing to do the jobs the MSM say only illegal immigrants will do.
All of these dynamics were actually illustrated in another raid as noted in a January 17, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, An immigration raid aids Blacks for a time, where it was reported:
‘STILLMORE, Ga.—After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.
But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared ‘Increased Wages’ at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour—more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area’s state-funded employment office—a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider—most of them Black—the plant hired about 200.
... For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant’s processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.’
The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes.
Note that the plant once had predominantly Black workers but then replaced most of them with illegal alien Hispanic workers at lower wages. When the illegal aliens were removed, the Black workers got their jobs back and the wages went up. The article continues to go on talking about the problems of the plant keeping its new workers at such low wages. However, this is not an argument for needing workers that will ‘do the work Americans won’t do’ but illustrates that the free market equilibrium of supply and demand is still not functioning in the plant. Rather than pay a decent wage to get good workers, the mindset is still to pay the lowest wage possible for a dirty job so consumers can pay ten cents less for a pound for chicken. The use of cheap labor also inhibits modernization, automation, and mechanization where productivity would go up resulting in even more skilled and higher priced employees producing more packaged chicken than lower priced employees for the same total labor costs. Unfortunately, until all the illegal aliens working in all the other chicken processing plants have been removed the free market will still be distorted.
Given the current excitement amongst the Democrats by the potential Presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, it is worth remembering an article by Robert Engler from 2004, A goblin is haunting Barack Obama’s election campaign to become the Democratic senator from Illinois. That goblin is in the shape ... where it was noted:
‘The fact of the matter is, illegal immigration, especially illegal immigration from Mexico, is hurting Black Americans. If Democratic candidates ever getting around to speaking the truth, they will have to tell Black voters that illegal immigration is taking jobs away from Black Americans, cutting into resources available for welfare, and restructuring public schools and many urban areas. In short, the votes of Latinos are bought by the Democrats at the expense of Black America.’ (True, and Black voters were not told and are not being told this truth because it flies in the face of Democrats hoping to increase the party’s voting base by granting citizenship to all these illegal immigrants—my addition.)
Tony Brown, author of What Mama Taught Me, knows all too well how Black Americans are injured by illegal immigration. He writes, ‘The U. S. Census Bureau reported in the New York Times... the poor Black and Latino communities lose the most income of any group of Americans, including all Americans who did not finish high school and all Americans who are paying higher taxes to subsidize welfare benefits for illegal immigrants and businesses that hire them. Illegal immigrants overuse welfare benefits and services and underpay income taxes for a net loss to local, state and federal taxpayers.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) http://www.fairus.org, has also documented the detrimental impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. In California, Blacks are being forced out from communities like South Central, Los Angeles, where they have long lived. ‘This once predominantly Black neighborhood is becoming largely Hispanic. South Central is being transformed. Here we talk about ‘Black flight.’ People are leaving neighborhoods where they have lived for years because they don’t feel like they belong any more reports Terry Anderson in the San Francisco Examiner, (Feb. 3, 1999.)’
The Federation for American Immigration Reform continues in its report that, ‘Other statistics are also sobering: a GAO study found that a decade of heavy immigration to Los Angeles had changed the janitorial industry from a mostly native Black, unionized workforce to one of non-unionized Latinos, many of whom were illegal aliens. According to the Census, the employment of Black Americans as hotel workers in California dropped 30 percent in the 1980s, while the number of immigrants with such jobs rose 166 percent. A similar story can be told of the garment industry, the restaurant business, hospital work, and public service jobs.’ One can expect Blacks in Illinois to suffer the same declines as illegal immigration from Mexico continues.’
Immigration researcher and commentator Roy Beck noted in his 1996 book, The Case Against Immigration that: ‘To review the Black side of our nation’s immigration tradition is to observe African Americans periodically trying to climb the mainstream economic ladder, only to be shoved aside each time. It is to see one immigrant wave after another climb onto and up that ladder while planting their feet on the backs of Black Americans ... The most racist policy in this country for the past 25 years has been our immigration policy, because it has been the worst thing that has happened to Blacks from the federal government since slavery.’
The Harvest Institute also documents the impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. ‘Dr. Claud Anderson, president of The Harvest Institute, a Black research and education organization, announced that The Harvest Institute does not support President Bush’s recently proposed amnesty for illegal immigrant aliens and has released an Information Alert (available at www.harvestinstitute.org). Dr. Anderson said, ‘Despite the stance of many civil rights groups, immigration’s impact on native Blacks and their communities is disproportionate, direct and devastating. Blacks are losing faith because the government continues a pattern of bestowing the rights that should first go to native Blacks to immigrants from foreign countries. Native Blacks are ignored and patronized with symbolic and ceremonial actions by both political parties. The issue of immigration is roiling within Black communities and has become ... Divisive.’
As the Democrat’s ‘multicultural’ candidate, Barack Obama has little to say about this multicultural issue. You can read his position papers and look at his website and find no recognition that illegal immigration from Mexico is hurting Black Americans. One has to wonder what kind of immigration policy Obama will vote for if he ever becomes a U. S. Senator. One has to wonder even more why Black Americans continue to vote Democratic, when the Democrats are not looking out for their interests.’ (We now know. President Barack Hussein Obama is a staunch supporter of illegal immigration and hopes to grant amnesty—citizenship—to all illegal immigrants—my addition.)
This article is referenced not to slam Obama or the Democrats, because the collateral damage from illegal aliens is affecting all Americans of all political parties, but to illustrate that the Democrats know it disproportionately impacts their primary voting block the greatest but still are doing nothing about it illustrating it doesn’t make any difference what political party the inept politicians belong to.
As noted in Debating the effect of undocumented workers.
‘Workers who have been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.’
‘It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers,’ economists Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada wrote. ‘The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts.’
The study concluded that the rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers over the past decade, has contributed to a breakdown in the nation’s labor laws and labor standards, undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century.’
It is not just a Black or Hispanic thing. Illegal immigration hurts all Americans. As noted by T.J. Bonner in Judicial Watch’s Special Report, New Fronts In The Immigration Battle:
‘You cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate [is] $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions. On the other hand, people who have no interest in this country, [who] live [with] 15 adult males, unrelated, in a one-bedroom apartment ...[and] send most of their money back home—they are more than willing to take those jobs.’ (Exactly!—my addition)
Harvard Professor George Borjas has reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005. Does that sound like a ‘victimless crime?’ By any conceivable measure the answer has to be ‘NO!’ especially if you are one of the displaced workers.
Review the links at the end of this section for more detailed information on the impacts of illegal immigration on jobs.
So we now conclusively know that illegal aliens are taking jobs that Americans used to do and still would do if greedy businessmen and big business weren’t trying to take advantage of illegal aliens and hire the cheapest labor so that they could put the ill-gotten savings to the bottom line.
What are some of the results? In a recent Associated Press report, Hispanics' immigration to South raises tensions with Blacks - Groups have same goals, could be allies, some say, it was noted:
‘We’ve just never been friends and buddies,’ said Isabella Brooks, the president of the NAACP in Colquitt County, near Tifton. She said she has no white neighbors and doesn’t socialize with the Hispanics up the street because of the ‘language barrier.’ And ‘In places such as Houston and Los Angeles, where Blacks and Hispanics have long lived side by side, the two groups most often fight for jobs, notably low-income jobs that were often held by unskilled Black workers.’
Note that the language barrier creates greater balkanization and the job displacement fuels resentment. More collateral damage.
Another issue related to the impact of illegal aliens on jobs is covered in the section on the abuse of the guest worker program.
Additionally it is worth noting that all those higher priced H1B workers do not contribute to the Social Security System, as noted by Edwin Rubenstein in Can Immigrants Save Social Security? who noted:
‘An estimated 500,000 foreigners are in the U.S. on temporary H-1B visas under the 50-year-old program designed to fill employer needs unmet by U.S. residents for professionals and specialists with a bachelor’s or higher degree, including architects, engineers, accountants, doctors, college professors and even fashion models. Nearly 54% are involved in computer-related fields, according to a recent federal study. Their median income is about $50,000, and half are expected to earn between $40,000 and $60,000.
Admittedly, H-1B’s represent a narrow slice of the immigrant workforce. (Technically they are ‘guest workers’ rather than immigrants.) But their high earnings makes them valuable potential contributors to Social Security. With median income of $50,000, the half million H-1Bs could potentially contribute $1.9 billion to the pension system, or enough to fund benefits for more than 95,000 retirees.
Foregone payroll taxes are just the tip of the iceberg. H-1b’s are entitled to every social service funded by U.S. taxpayers. They use our city parks, roads, and other infrastructure. And after working six years without paying Social Security taxes many H-1bs get Green Cards, qualifying them for Social Security benefits when they retire. No effort is made to collect back payroll taxes. And what about those American workers who lose their jobs, their health insurance, and Social Security points because companies prefer the cheaper H-1bs?
Recent immigration laws have raised the H-1B quota and made it easier for displaced H-1Bs to stay in the country. That’s good for companies that employ guest workers, but ordinary Americans and their Social Security System are worse off because of it.’
Come to think of it, aren’t these the kind of legal immigrants we want rather than unskilled and uneducated immigrants who are a drain on society?
In any case, when you hear the Government wanting to increase the amount of ‘guest workers’ in the country to solve the illegal immigration problem, remember that what they are not saying is that they are also allowing YOUR company to bring in guest workers for YOUR job, whatever it may be. The devil is in the details.
Only when H1-Bs are given to foreign correspondents and media people will the MSM start reporting on this disgraceful program.
Finally, while counter intuitive, it is worth noting that increased immigration is actually bad for union participation as illustrated by
Go to Numbers USA – Unions for more information on the relationship between immigration and unions.
Given the difference in wages between union workers and illegal alien workers, I suspect that illegal immigration is even worse for unions.
Reduction in wages, job displacement, and billions of dollars out of the pockets of American workers from a ‘victimless crime’ to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.”
From http://www.usillegalaliens.com/
“Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Jobs
The MSM (Main Stream Media—my addition.) report ad nauseam that illegal aliens are only ‘doing work that Americans won’t.’ This mantra is mercilessly bandied about by illegal immigration supporters and echoes throughout the halls of Congress and the White House whenever the topic comes up. What is never mentioned, however, is that the illegal aliens are artificially depressing compensation and that illegal aliens are the only ones who will do the work at such low wages. In actual fact, illegal immigration distorts the law of supply and demand in a capitalistic society. Additionally it is grossly hypocritical to want to raise the minimum wage on one hand while the other hand winks at illegal aliens working at far below prevailing wages. (Which is exactly what the Democrats did!—my addition)
In any case, illegal aliens are not just picking lettuce and digging ditches any more. It wasn’t that long ago that being a dry-waller, brick-layer, house framer, painter, roofer, carpet layer, plumber, or electrician was a decently compensated, middle class trade. Now it is increasingly becoming the work for illegal aliens at far less than the free market rate. While illegal alien workers are only a small portion of many of those job categories their willingness to work at dramatically lower rates artificially drags down the compensation for all workers.
When the resident poor and uneducated Americans can subsist on welfare they are not going to pick lettuce, dig ditches, clean toilets or wash dishes at minimum wage.
However, if there are massive shortages of workers for such jobs, the forces of supply and demand will come in to play and the compensation for those jobs will rise to attract more workers. At some point, it will pay more than being on welfare and be attractive enough to turn off Oprah and the labor shortage will be alleviated.
There are also side affects of ‘only doing the jobs that Americans won’t do,’ at artificially depressed wages anyway. One is that it increases the load on the welfare systems as there are fewer working poor and more welfare recipients. Another is that many unscrupulous employers pay illegal aliens in cash, off-the-books, avoiding all taxes which also makes the illegal alien worker have little or no income ‘qualifying’ them for welfare benefits as well. (Surely, illegal immigrants wouldn’t do both—work off-the-books and also collect welfare payments—would they?—my addition)
One of the problems with the MSM, the President, and Congress believing that only illegal aliens will do the work that Americans won’t is that they must have never done any of that kind of work. It must be so beneath them that they just can’t believe ‘Americans’ will actually do it.
When I was seventeen I was 6’2” and weighed 155 pounds. That summer I took a job in a Dole Pineapple plant where for 12 hours a day, six days a week for three months I had to lift, carry, throw, and stack 100 pound sacks of cattle feed. Working on the loading dock one day where the sacks were filled, it was my job to pick up a bag from two automatic filling machines and carry them eight feet or so to the edge of the dock and throw them into a truck. The two filling machines produced four bags a minute. That is 240 an hour and 2,880 a shift. At 100 pounds each that was 144 tons.
It was hot, humid, dusty, stunk and I was paid minimum wage—with an agricultural exemption from any overtime. While Tennessee Ernie Ford wrote a song entitled ‘Sixteen Tons’ about mining coal, we didn’t get any songs written about us doing 144 tons—you just did the job.
When I started that job I could barely pick up a 100 pound bag with two hands. At the end of the summer I still weighed 155 pounds but could pick up a bag with each hand and fling it ten feet. I also learned that it wasn’t the kind of work I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. (No kidding!—my addition)
Many of the people reading this report have similar stories and work experiences. These are the jobs that legal immigrants, students, and the working poor have been doing for the last 100 years. The jobs were not done by illegal aliens. Do we need a bona fide guest worker program to allow seasonal migrant workers from Mexico to come in and earn money picking lettuce? Probably, but I am tired of hearing that illegal aliens are only doing the work that Americans won’t do because that is BS—I’ve done that work. I even did it in December 2006 when I spent five and a half hours snow shoveling 36 inches of snow from my, around my, and one of my neighbor’s Colorado homes. I didn’t want to do that work either but I did it because it had to be done. Where were all the illegal aliens when you really needed them?
A March 2006 article in The Christian Science Monitor by Ron Scherer, Immigration debate crux: jobs impact - Experts weigh how illegal workers affect US employment, reports:
‘Do undocumented workers take away jobs from Americans?’ asks Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Private Client Services in Columbus, Ohio. ‘My best guess is that they take some jobs away. Some Americans are willing to work at those jobs at low salaries, but not all [Americans are].’
Analysts are quick to point out that the economics of undocumented immigration are complex. Few models have been crafted that try to look at how the US economy would perform without tapping into inexpensive labor for some jobs.
‘We can’t run econometric models. The numbers aren’t good enough,’ says David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.
One challenge in performing any calculations is agreeing on the number of undocumented workers. Only estimates exist, and they range from 9 million to 20 million. The conventional estimate is 11 million. But no one really knows for sure.
By way of contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates how many people out of a workforce of 143 million are unemployed. Last month, 7,193,000, or 4.8 percent, were out pounding the pavement. (Today, off course, it is 9.6% officially and must higher unofficially—my addition.)
The Center for Immigration Studies, which is in favor of some restrictions on immigration, recently issued a report looking at jobs and undocumented workers. One of its conclusions was that between March 2000 and March 2005, only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults went to people born in the US.
‘This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18- to 64-year-old population,’ writes Steve Camarota, director of research.
Howard Hayghe, an economist at the Department of Labor, confirms that this number is correct. But he also points out that by 2005, the economy was doing a better job of producing jobs—and the percentage of native-born residents finding jobs rose to 41 percent. In other words, the stronger economy absorbed more workers of all educational levels. ‘The more office buildings you build, the more people you need to clean them. The more roads you build, the more workers you need,’ says Mr. Hayghe.
In addition to the 7 million Americans looking for jobs, another 1.5 million are considered to be ‘marginally attached’—that is, not actively looking for work. Moreover, some 386,000 are counted as ‘discouraged’ workers. And there are about 19 million, including students and senior citizens, who are not in the workforce.
‘If we close the borders and have less undocumented workers, it would put some upward pressure on overall wages,’ says Mr. Chan. ‘It’s no secret business will have to pay workers more money.’
The National Academy of Science reported in Dropping Out - Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005 that from 1980 to 1995 there was a 44% of the decline in the real wages of high school dropouts as a result of immigration. Since Black and Hispanics Americans lead the statistics in dropping out of high school this means that illegal aliens affect these two groups the greatest and is a great contributor to the high unemployment rate in this segment of the population.
A commentary by Dan Stein, Executive Director, Federation for American Immigration Reform in Mass Immigration Takes Greatest Toll on African-Americans notes that:
‘In some cases the influx of immigrants has allowed native-born workers to move up the ladder. But in all too many other instances, mass immigration has moved American workers off the ladder entirely, particularly Black Americans. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences done during the economic boom of the late-1990s, the dramatic rise in immigration was a direct cause of dramatic declines in jobs and income for Americans with a high school education or less.
If one tracks the economic progress of African-Americans, or the lack of it, over the past century there is an unmistakable correlation with patterns of immigration. Blacks have made the greatest economic advances during periods of low immigration, while economic conditions have stagnated or regressed during period of high immigration.’
The prestigious Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns recently published a report, The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface, which claims that the illegal alien population is double the official government estimates and that the Government vastly underestimates the cost of illegal immigration. According to Bear Stearns:
The illegal alien population of the U.S. is about 20 million—roughly the population of New York State.
1) Between 4 and 6 million jobs have shifted to the underground economy since 1990. These are not ‘jobs Americans won’t do,’ but rather jobs Americans used to do.
2) On the revenue side, the United States may be foregoing $35 billion a year in income tax collections because of the number of jobs that are now off the books.
3) There are approximately 5 million illegal workers who are collecting wages on a cash basis and are avoiding both income and FICA taxes.
4) The United States is hooked on cheap, illegal workers and is deferring the costs of providing public services to these quasi-Americans.
Long before the nation was flooded with illegal aliens somebody picked the lettuce, mowed the grass, flipped burgers, dug the ditches, and cleaned hotel rooms. These entry level jobs were done by guest agricultural workers, the working poor, legal immigrants and, in the summer, by students. Given supply and demand in a capitalistic society and there still are plenty of legal immigrants and resident Americans who would do these jobs at a fair and free market wage. (Exactly! Let supply and demand determine the price of labor instead of allowing illegal labor to artificially lower the price of labor by artificially increasing the supply of labor. This is nothing more than basic supply and demand economics altered by illegal immigrants who become a cheap labor force whether on-the books or off-the-books—my addition.)
As Victor Davis Hanson recently noted in Rethinking illegal immigration:
‘Areas in the United States that have experienced far less illegal immigration seem to have no insurmountable problems manning restaurants, cutting lawns or serving the needs of hotel guests. Travel to the Midwest, for example, and you’ll see students are employed as cooks and maids. Construction relies on legal laborers. The evidence suggests massive illegal immigration causes as much upheaval inside Mexico as it supposedly prevents—while aggravating, not solving, problems in the United States.’
When illegal aliens take these jobs they not only take jobs from American teens and drive the wages down but also deny entry level work and the ladder of opportunity from the working poor and legal immigrants thus making the American Dream harder to obtain. Additionally, even Wal-Mart can’t hire all the retirees who want to work part time. Have you ever gone to Las Vegas? Next time note all the retirees working in the restaurants. As noted by Frosty Wooldridge in Our Country Coming Undone:
‘Illegal immigration hurts America’s poor. In a recent account in the New York Times, Black children suffered 50% greater poverty in the past 10 years due to immigration. Illegal immigrants compete for jobs normally done by America’s poor. A study by the Center For Immigration Studies wrote that ‘Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled and it’s hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration because it tends to reduce wages for U.S. workers.
... Cheap labor from illegal immigration is not ‘cheap.’ It’s subsidized by all of us in the form of our tax dollars paying for their services. It makes a few employers wealthy at the expense of all of us.’
Steven Malanga notes in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy, ‘A handful of industries get low-cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill.’ Sounds like a great deal for some employers but, as usual, the taxpayers are the ones getting ripped off.
An October 16, 2006 article in the Boston Globe, by Andrew M. Sum and Paul E. Harrington, Two kinds of immigration, notes:
‘The overall effects of new immigrant inflows from 2000 to 2005 on American labor markets are unprecedented ... new immigrants accounted for 86 percent of the total gain in employment that the nation experienced over the past five years. Our analysis suggests that close to two-thirds of these new immigrant arrivals were unauthorized. (ILLEGAL—my addition.) Among males, all of the net growth in employment between 2000 and 2005 was attributable to new immigrants. This extraordinary finding casts serious doubt on the common contention that new immigrants simply take jobs that Americans do not want.
Worse still, the impact of this displacement of native-born workers and established immigrants was concentrated among young people ... Available evidence shows that there has been a high rate of displacement of younger, native-born male workers and younger women without four-year college degrees by newer immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants. Our own statistical analysis of native-born adults under 25 revealed that higher inflows of new immigrant workers in their state of residence hurt their ability to find jobs. The negative effects were larger for young men than for women, for young adults with no postsecondary schooling, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males.
The notion that there is a shortage of unskilled, low-educated workers in the United States and in Massachusetts is a canard. The evidence—ranging from employment rates to measures of changes in annual earnings, weekly wages, and employee benefits—reveals a surplus of less-educated workers in both national and state labor markets. The lifetime earnings of adults without high school diplomas over the past 25 years have declined catastrophically, and these declines have imposed increasing fiscal burdens on the rest of the taxpaying public.’
A May 8, 2006 article in the Washington Times, Immigrants and wages, reports:
‘Examining more closely the pattern within the 2000-2005 period provides compelling evidence illegal immigrants have been used deliberately to force down wages. In most industries that use illegal immigrants heavily, inflation-adjusted wages rose modestly during the first years of the current decade. Yet soon after, they dropped significantly. Obviously, the nation’s restaurateurs, hoteliers, contractors and cleaners decided paying workers $12 per hour and often less, with few or no benefits, was outrageous. In response, they stepped up efforts to bring Mexican and Central American labor markets and standards into the United States.
The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They’re facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay. If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they’ll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout U.S. history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren’t good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.
Denying pauper-wage industries the crutch of a wage-depressing flood of illegal immigrants is essential for keeping the United States a high-wage, First World economy. It is also essential for offering real economic opportunity to legal immigrants and native-born low-income Americans. The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They’re facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay.’
Steven Malanga also stated in How Unskilled Immigrants Hurt Our Economy:
‘Consequently, as the waves of immigration continue, the sheer number of those competing for low-skilled service jobs makes economic progress difficult. A study of the impact of immigration on New York City’s restaurant business, for instance, found that 60 percent of immigrant workers do not receive regular raises, while 70 percent had never been promoted. One Mexican dishwasher aptly captured the downward pressure that all these arriving workers put on wages by telling the study’s authors about his frustrating search for a 50-cent raise after working for $6.50 an hour: ‘I visited a few restaurants asking for $7 an hour, but they only offered me $5.50 or $6,’ he said. ‘I had to beg [for a job].’
Similarly, immigration is also pushing some native-born workers out of jobs, as Kenyon College economists showed in the California nail-salon workforce. Over a 16-year period starting in the late 1980s, some 35,600 mostly Vietnamese immigrant women flooded into the industry, a mass migration that equaled the total number of jobs in the industry before the immigrants arrived. Though the new workers created a labor surplus that led to lower prices, new services, and somewhat more demand, the economists estimate that as a result, 10,000 native-born workers either left the industry or never bothered entering it.
With all the MSM hand wringing over the plight of the illegal alien workers recently rounded up at the Swift meat processing plants across the US in December of 2006, few reported that it was knowingly going on for years, as noted by Joel Dyer in an article in the Greeley Tribune, Meatpacking industry has a long history of reliance on immigrant laborer, and that management used illegal labor and the high turn over to artificially keep wages down.
You probably also missed the AP article in the Greeley Tribune, Former Dallas employees sue Swift alleging wage manipulation, where some former employees aren’t too happy about the way Swift kept the wages down.
As for doing the dirty work that Americans just won’t do, even at those artificially depressed wages, did you happen to see another report in the Greeley Tribune by Bill Jackson, More applicants applying for Swift & Co., on your local news where it was reported that 800 citizens and legal immigrants applied for the few dozen vacant positions in the Greeley meat packing plant?
That little fact, which goes counter the MSM’s constant blather, was also reported by Fernando Quintero in the Rocky Mountain News in Loss for one is another's gain - Applicants line up to fill jobs left empty by Swift plant raid but it didn’t make the national news cycle either.
So even with the depressed wages, caused by illegal aliens, it would appear that there are still a lot of legal immigrants and Americans willing to do the jobs the MSM say only illegal immigrants will do.
All of these dynamics were actually illustrated in another raid as noted in a January 17, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal, An immigration raid aids Blacks for a time, where it was reported:
‘STILLMORE, Ga.—After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.
But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared ‘Increased Wages’ at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour—more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area’s state-funded employment office—a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider—most of them Black—the plant hired about 200.
... For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant’s processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.’
The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes.
Note that the plant once had predominantly Black workers but then replaced most of them with illegal alien Hispanic workers at lower wages. When the illegal aliens were removed, the Black workers got their jobs back and the wages went up. The article continues to go on talking about the problems of the plant keeping its new workers at such low wages. However, this is not an argument for needing workers that will ‘do the work Americans won’t do’ but illustrates that the free market equilibrium of supply and demand is still not functioning in the plant. Rather than pay a decent wage to get good workers, the mindset is still to pay the lowest wage possible for a dirty job so consumers can pay ten cents less for a pound for chicken. The use of cheap labor also inhibits modernization, automation, and mechanization where productivity would go up resulting in even more skilled and higher priced employees producing more packaged chicken than lower priced employees for the same total labor costs. Unfortunately, until all the illegal aliens working in all the other chicken processing plants have been removed the free market will still be distorted.
Given the current excitement amongst the Democrats by the potential Presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, it is worth remembering an article by Robert Engler from 2004, A goblin is haunting Barack Obama’s election campaign to become the Democratic senator from Illinois. That goblin is in the shape ... where it was noted:
‘The fact of the matter is, illegal immigration, especially illegal immigration from Mexico, is hurting Black Americans. If Democratic candidates ever getting around to speaking the truth, they will have to tell Black voters that illegal immigration is taking jobs away from Black Americans, cutting into resources available for welfare, and restructuring public schools and many urban areas. In short, the votes of Latinos are bought by the Democrats at the expense of Black America.’ (True, and Black voters were not told and are not being told this truth because it flies in the face of Democrats hoping to increase the party’s voting base by granting citizenship to all these illegal immigrants—my addition.)
Tony Brown, author of What Mama Taught Me, knows all too well how Black Americans are injured by illegal immigration. He writes, ‘The U. S. Census Bureau reported in the New York Times... the poor Black and Latino communities lose the most income of any group of Americans, including all Americans who did not finish high school and all Americans who are paying higher taxes to subsidize welfare benefits for illegal immigrants and businesses that hire them. Illegal immigrants overuse welfare benefits and services and underpay income taxes for a net loss to local, state and federal taxpayers.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) http://www.fairus.org, has also documented the detrimental impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. In California, Blacks are being forced out from communities like South Central, Los Angeles, where they have long lived. ‘This once predominantly Black neighborhood is becoming largely Hispanic. South Central is being transformed. Here we talk about ‘Black flight.’ People are leaving neighborhoods where they have lived for years because they don’t feel like they belong any more reports Terry Anderson in the San Francisco Examiner, (Feb. 3, 1999.)’
The Federation for American Immigration Reform continues in its report that, ‘Other statistics are also sobering: a GAO study found that a decade of heavy immigration to Los Angeles had changed the janitorial industry from a mostly native Black, unionized workforce to one of non-unionized Latinos, many of whom were illegal aliens. According to the Census, the employment of Black Americans as hotel workers in California dropped 30 percent in the 1980s, while the number of immigrants with such jobs rose 166 percent. A similar story can be told of the garment industry, the restaurant business, hospital work, and public service jobs.’ One can expect Blacks in Illinois to suffer the same declines as illegal immigration from Mexico continues.’
Immigration researcher and commentator Roy Beck noted in his 1996 book, The Case Against Immigration that: ‘To review the Black side of our nation’s immigration tradition is to observe African Americans periodically trying to climb the mainstream economic ladder, only to be shoved aside each time. It is to see one immigrant wave after another climb onto and up that ladder while planting their feet on the backs of Black Americans ... The most racist policy in this country for the past 25 years has been our immigration policy, because it has been the worst thing that has happened to Blacks from the federal government since slavery.’
The Harvest Institute also documents the impact of illegal immigration on Black Americans. ‘Dr. Claud Anderson, president of The Harvest Institute, a Black research and education organization, announced that The Harvest Institute does not support President Bush’s recently proposed amnesty for illegal immigrant aliens and has released an Information Alert (available at www.harvestinstitute.org). Dr. Anderson said, ‘Despite the stance of many civil rights groups, immigration’s impact on native Blacks and their communities is disproportionate, direct and devastating. Blacks are losing faith because the government continues a pattern of bestowing the rights that should first go to native Blacks to immigrants from foreign countries. Native Blacks are ignored and patronized with symbolic and ceremonial actions by both political parties. The issue of immigration is roiling within Black communities and has become ... Divisive.’
As the Democrat’s ‘multicultural’ candidate, Barack Obama has little to say about this multicultural issue. You can read his position papers and look at his website and find no recognition that illegal immigration from Mexico is hurting Black Americans. One has to wonder what kind of immigration policy Obama will vote for if he ever becomes a U. S. Senator. One has to wonder even more why Black Americans continue to vote Democratic, when the Democrats are not looking out for their interests.’ (We now know. President Barack Hussein Obama is a staunch supporter of illegal immigration and hopes to grant amnesty—citizenship—to all illegal immigrants—my addition.)
This article is referenced not to slam Obama or the Democrats, because the collateral damage from illegal aliens is affecting all Americans of all political parties, but to illustrate that the Democrats know it disproportionately impacts their primary voting block the greatest but still are doing nothing about it illustrating it doesn’t make any difference what political party the inept politicians belong to.
As noted in Debating the effect of undocumented workers.
‘Workers who have been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.’
‘It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers,’ economists Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada wrote. ‘The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born Black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts.’
The study concluded that the rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers over the past decade, has contributed to a breakdown in the nation’s labor laws and labor standards, undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century.’
It is not just a Black or Hispanic thing. Illegal immigration hurts all Americans. As noted by T.J. Bonner in Judicial Watch’s Special Report, New Fronts In The Immigration Battle:
‘You cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate [is] $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions. On the other hand, people who have no interest in this country, [who] live [with] 15 adult males, unrelated, in a one-bedroom apartment ...[and] send most of their money back home—they are more than willing to take those jobs.’ (Exactly!—my addition)
Harvard Professor George Borjas has reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005. Does that sound like a ‘victimless crime?’ By any conceivable measure the answer has to be ‘NO!’ especially if you are one of the displaced workers.
Review the links at the end of this section for more detailed information on the impacts of illegal immigration on jobs.
So we now conclusively know that illegal aliens are taking jobs that Americans used to do and still would do if greedy businessmen and big business weren’t trying to take advantage of illegal aliens and hire the cheapest labor so that they could put the ill-gotten savings to the bottom line.
What are some of the results? In a recent Associated Press report, Hispanics' immigration to South raises tensions with Blacks - Groups have same goals, could be allies, some say, it was noted:
‘We’ve just never been friends and buddies,’ said Isabella Brooks, the president of the NAACP in Colquitt County, near Tifton. She said she has no white neighbors and doesn’t socialize with the Hispanics up the street because of the ‘language barrier.’ And ‘In places such as Houston and Los Angeles, where Blacks and Hispanics have long lived side by side, the two groups most often fight for jobs, notably low-income jobs that were often held by unskilled Black workers.’
Note that the language barrier creates greater balkanization and the job displacement fuels resentment. More collateral damage.
Another issue related to the impact of illegal aliens on jobs is covered in the section on the abuse of the guest worker program.
Additionally it is worth noting that all those higher priced H1B workers do not contribute to the Social Security System, as noted by Edwin Rubenstein in Can Immigrants Save Social Security? who noted:
‘An estimated 500,000 foreigners are in the U.S. on temporary H-1B visas under the 50-year-old program designed to fill employer needs unmet by U.S. residents for professionals and specialists with a bachelor’s or higher degree, including architects, engineers, accountants, doctors, college professors and even fashion models. Nearly 54% are involved in computer-related fields, according to a recent federal study. Their median income is about $50,000, and half are expected to earn between $40,000 and $60,000.
Admittedly, H-1B’s represent a narrow slice of the immigrant workforce. (Technically they are ‘guest workers’ rather than immigrants.) But their high earnings makes them valuable potential contributors to Social Security. With median income of $50,000, the half million H-1Bs could potentially contribute $1.9 billion to the pension system, or enough to fund benefits for more than 95,000 retirees.
Foregone payroll taxes are just the tip of the iceberg. H-1b’s are entitled to every social service funded by U.S. taxpayers. They use our city parks, roads, and other infrastructure. And after working six years without paying Social Security taxes many H-1bs get Green Cards, qualifying them for Social Security benefits when they retire. No effort is made to collect back payroll taxes. And what about those American workers who lose their jobs, their health insurance, and Social Security points because companies prefer the cheaper H-1bs?
Recent immigration laws have raised the H-1B quota and made it easier for displaced H-1Bs to stay in the country. That’s good for companies that employ guest workers, but ordinary Americans and their Social Security System are worse off because of it.’
Come to think of it, aren’t these the kind of legal immigrants we want rather than unskilled and uneducated immigrants who are a drain on society?
In any case, when you hear the Government wanting to increase the amount of ‘guest workers’ in the country to solve the illegal immigration problem, remember that what they are not saying is that they are also allowing YOUR company to bring in guest workers for YOUR job, whatever it may be. The devil is in the details.
Only when H1-Bs are given to foreign correspondents and media people will the MSM start reporting on this disgraceful program.
Finally, while counter intuitive, it is worth noting that increased immigration is actually bad for union participation as illustrated by
Go to Numbers USA – Unions for more information on the relationship between immigration and unions.
Given the difference in wages between union workers and illegal alien workers, I suspect that illegal immigration is even worse for unions.
Reduction in wages, job displacement, and billions of dollars out of the pockets of American workers from a ‘victimless crime’ to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.”
posted by Christian Gunslinger at 6:06 PM
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