Posted by
Lady Logician on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 9:12:46 PM
One of the many reasons why, we are told, illegal immigration is a good thing is because the illegal immigrants are doing jobs that "no one else will take" and that their taking these jobs is not hurting anyone...it's a "win-win". Well on the tails of the identity theft angle (of the ICE raids on the Swift Company plants) that we spoke about last week comes this, out of the Houston Chronicle. Houston, being on the front lines of the immigration battle would know, far better than most, what the real story is.
"Illegal immigration is usually presented as a win-win situation: Undocumented foreigners earn far more than they could back home. Consumers get a bargain.
Nowhere to be seen are America's working poor who get stomped on 13 different ways. They have to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs and housing. Low-skilled natives and legal immigrants also end up subsidizing the undocumented because they tend to live in the same communities, which must provide hospitals, police, schools and garbage pickup."
Oops - aren't these the same working poor that are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the minimum wage increase? If they are fighting illegals for these same jobs, how are they supposed to benefit from the wage increases?
Well if that is the case, then who is not hurt by illegal immigration?
" For starters, the people who write about it. I speak of the journalism profession, which has the habit of covering the issue by anecdotes. Reporters thrive on sympathetic stories about illegal immigrants who work hard and go to church.
But, were a busload of illegals from Australia to turn up at their newspaper and offer reportage at 10 percent below the going rate, the writers would call the authorities so fast that your head would spin. And the publisher's argument that thanks to the cheap Australians, he's able to trim a few cents off the newsstand price would make no impression."
Here is a dirty little case of outsourcing that you will not hear the press decrying.
"In 1980, the average meat-processing job paid $19 an hour. The companies then moved their plants to rural areas, far from the Midwest cities and their unions. The industry's wages now average about $9 an hour.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes to wail about the "labor shortage." It says there aren't enough chambermaids, dishwashers, etc. to work for its members at lousy wages. Odd, but when there's a shortage of labor — or anything else — doesn't the price of it go up? The price of unskilled labor in the United States hasn't gone up. It's gone down."
You know...now that you mention it...but what can we do?
"For some reason, the job of keeping prices low has fallen entirely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. If we banged down CEO compensation and sliced lawyers' pay by a third, the same thing would happen. Everyone's prices would drop. The corporation could sell its products for less, and the cost of legal services would fall.
No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. "If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors," Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, "everyone in this room would benefit." Except the American doctors."
Well that would certainly narrow the income gap, wouldn't it?
"Suggest a U.S. labor policy that depresses professional pay as a means of keeping prices in check, and you get laughed out of the room. "
And there is the rub. US labor policy is set, not by what is good for the American worker and good for sales (a la Henry Ford's vision) - it is set up lobbyists and labor unions. Watch to see how this next Congress handles this situation. Will the Democrats (who claim to care about the working poor) really do something to correct the situation (get a handle on illegal immigration, balance out who gets to come in - skilled versus unskilled labor, etc) or will they kow-tow to the interests of big business, big government, big labor and their big campaign contributions. I will not be so cynical as to place bets on which way they go, but I have a sneaking suspicion I know...